Tom and Roberta Trips

We woke up pondering where our travels should take us today. We had a lovely time in Antibes by the sea and a challenging time driving to Ventimiglia, we thought today would be a great day to visit Cannes the next town West of Antibes. Yes Cannes, home of the international film festival in June. It's another town by the sea and the weather is still hot and very humid so off shore breezes won out. We've become fond of traveling by the local train. We hike down to the Villefranche-sur-Mer Gare, buy our tickets and hop on. While my French in general suffers from lack of proper accent plus the fact that I only know very bare basic words, one area I do exceed in is ordering red wine from the St Emilion region AND ... read more

We drove to La Turbie yesterday so today we decided to let the car rest, it's had enough trauma for a day. Tom and I have been wanting to test the local trains anyway so we headed down to the Gare (station) to check out the schedule. We found that the trains that come into Villefranche-sur-Mer run about every half hour and stop at most of the towns along this beautiful coastline, it's a milk run. We decided that today would be a good day to head out to Antibes by the sea as the day is hot and very humid. We are dripping wet as we wait for the next train West. We are feeling particularly lucky as we boarded because this train is air conditioned, it really helped as it was crowded with local ... read more

La Turbie I'm at the point in this journey where I cannot remember the actual date nor do I know what day of the week it is. This trip has been long with many different legs. Usually I'd be here for two precious weeks counting each day as it slips away into the past trying to squeeze fantastic memories into every second as the vacation races towards its ultimate end. Not so this time, I've managed to completely engross myself daily in the views from our house perched in the hills of Villefranche-sur-Mer and what we may or may not do today....... or tomorrow........ or maybe it just doesn't matter if I stare out our window all day watching the fishing boats bob up and down in the water. I can fantasize about sunning myself on ... read more

July 25th Strasbourg and Colmar Several years ago Tom and I went to Normandy to see the beaches on which D-Day was fought. I remember seeing Omaha Beach, Pont du Hoc and the American Cemetery and was duly thankful for all who participated in this incredibly well orchestrated invasion. This was the year I began to really see what it took for the world to come together to defeat Hitler. A few years later when planning a return trip to France Tom wanted to include Strasbourg as one of our stops because he knew that his Father had walked the streets of Strasbourg as the 3rd Division continued to push the German army back over the Rhine to Germany. We walked the streets of Strasbourg knowing we were stepping where he stepped and thought that was ... read more

July 23rd Koblenz and up the lazy river to Rudesheim........... I must say I love waking up on these mornings and wondering where we are. The first thing I like to do is look out the window to get a precursory view of our upcoming adventure for the day. Today we woke in Koblenz, another tiny village along the Rhine River. The six of us boarded the bus together and headed out to St. Mark's Castle. The village was beautiful with many quaint hotels made of white plaster and dark wood beams. Petunias and geraniums of every color spilled from the windows and balconies. I couldn't help wondering as we bused pass them who would come here for longer than a day. We're here because a two hour guided tour of the castle is on Viking's ... read more