Crimson Kathryn and her crew

It’s hard to believe that our month in Greece is coming to an end. We’ve explored many ruins, had some amazing swims and managed to empty all the Retsina from a few grocery shores shelves! The weather is finally starting to become fall-like. We’ve had some rain and it’s getting cooler at night.

Early this week, we visited Kalamata and Voidokilia beach (which is said to be the nicest beach in Greece). The beach was truly beautiful and the water was the warmest we’ve had in Greece. It kind of gave me a taste of what our winter beaches will be like⛵️🏝

On Saturday we leave our Astros house and head to Athens. We’ll meet up with Matthew, Margie and the boys at our hotel and then fly to Melbourne on Sunday. Matt and Jonah are making a 3 day stopover in Dubai while Margie and Oliver head directly home.

Next blog will be from down under! Get ready!!

We’ve had a full house in Astros this week – Jim, Lisa and Lucas joined us. We’ve done some more exploring, this time to Korinthos and back to Nafplio. The crazy ones among us (that’s not me!!) even climbed one of the stony hills/mountains near the house.

Matthew, Margie and the boys head to Santorini on Sunday and then we will be 6 in the house. Next week we are planning to visit Kalamata and maybe do a little more swimming. After that, it’s off to Australia🇦🇺

We’re at the end of an amazing week with Caroline, Matthew, Margie, Oliver and Jonah. We did more awesome exploring, this time driving further away from our Astros villa. Caroline’s goal was to see as much of Greece’s history in one week and I think she did well!

Our first visit was to the ancient ruins of Mycenae where we walked through the Lion’s gate and learned a lot about the Mycenaean period. Some great views and a very interesting museum were part of this archeological site. 

Our next major ancient site visit was to Olympia which is about 2.5 hours from Astros on the west coast. It was our first day of rain but we still explored the ruins of Olympia. It was amazing but a little hard to find. After a bit of searching around, we noticed many buses traveling along a fairly major road and sure enough, they were headed to Olympia. 

Our last visit was to Athens. Man it’s crazy driving in this city!!! Cars, buses, streetcars and worst of all, the motorcycles and scooters who don’t obey traffic rules or lanes. But all the craziness was worth it when we visited the Acropolis site and museum. It was quite spectacular and very impressive.

Tomorrow Caroline heads back to Toronto. It has been a very fast week and we have loved traveling as a family again! Jim and Lisa arrived on Wednesday, so we’ll be 9 people until Monday when Evelyn’s friend Lou joins us for a week or so.

All of us here in Greece wish all of you at home a very Happy Thanksgiving. Eat lots of turkey for us and we’ll raise a glass for you. We’re having a great time visiting ancient ruins and eating yummy food.

After a rough departure from Paris (Air France had some technical issues with the luggage conveyor belts), we landed in Greece and met up with Christine and Rob. We had a great drive to our Greek house in Astros. The last part was quite spectacular as we curved along the coast. The house is very much with tons of Greek charm. We  are slowly discovering where everything is and settling in for our month stay here. Unfortunately, we are back to no wifi. We have to sit in the town square to find some free wifi so blog posts will be limited for the month.

We have had a few adventures already. We’ve been to the theatre of Epidavros (very exciting for me because I have talked about this theatre for more than 15 years in my gr 9 drama class) and the city of Nafplio. We also ventured to Sparta and the ruins of Mystras. One of the best parts of our Greece visit is the swimming. We’ve splashed in the sea 3 times already and hope to do more.

On Saturday, Caroline arrives and Christine and Rob head to Italy. On Sunday, Jim and Lisa and Matthew, Margie, Oliver and Jonah arrive for part 2 of the Greece expedition.

Lausanne, Switzerland (by Mark)
After a spectacular drive through the Alps from Italy we arrived in the lakeside city of Lausanne. We spent the afternoon wandering the lakeside parks on a beautiful sunny Sunday. There was a colour run in the area, and we saw many cuckoo clocks and Swiss army knives. Bring a thick wallet to Switzerland.

The Black Forest of Germany.(by Mark)

Freiberg is a university town in the Rhine river valley in southwestern Germany. It claims the warmest climate of the country. We saw many things on our quest to have sausages and beer. The town had a farmer’s market that day and a large cobblestoned part closed to cars. Very pretty well maintained architecture. This was the most challenging place so far in terms of language. Very little in German is similar to English/French/Italian, so road signs and menus were a challenge. I ticked off a bucket list item: to drive the ‘no speed limit’ autobahn. 

Strasbourg, France. (by Mark)

A very short drive brought us to this city in the Alsace region of France. Wines from this region are among our French favourites. They come in tall thin green bottles, and they have their own particular glassware with green stems.

This is my favourite city so far. It has the most impressive cathedral I’ve seen, it has a vibrant mix of German and French architecture and culture, it has closed a huge portion of its streets to cars and is surrounded by rivers and canals. We went for a second wander this evening, and found the streets alive with locals and tourists, families and couples, walking and riding bicycles, eating and drinking at the many indoor and outdoor restaurants, in a very pleasant atmosphere. Decent prices here too. 

Google translate will help with the title😄😊😉

The northern part of Italy is quite spectacular – amazing mountainous views, lots of castles and also lots of Roman ruins. We spent today in the town of Aosta. We ended up staying near Aosta because we found an inexpensive apartment. We knew very little (well nothing really) about the town but we certainly weren’t disappointed. The town is very old with many ruins from the Romans. It was very cool to walk around ruins that were almost 2000 years old. 

You might be wondering about the title of this blog. Well for the past 2 days, Evelyn has been practicing her Italian by saying lasagna a lot. Today Evelyn had lasagna for lunch and had loads of fun saying lasagna as many times as possible. I think she has mastered the language😉😊

It’s been a very exciting few days after leaving Avignon and heading to the south of France – the Riveria! It’s hard to believe we are in the same small country. It looks so different and feels very tropical in a way. There are significantly more apartment buildings, all facing the sea (go figure) and the boats…oh my! We picked our next boat – when we win the lottery 😊🎉 We stayed in Juan les Pins which is about half way between Cannes and Nice.

We left Juan les Pins this morning and headed to Arvier, Italy. We traveled through some absolutely amazing scenery, starting with (what we thought) some large mountains with some crazy hairpin turns. But these mountains were just babies next to the ones we saw in northern Italy! It really takes your breath away. Tomorrow we will be exploring a town called Aosta, which is fairly close to Turin (Torino). 

Avignon is a lovely, old city with lots of history and a very famous children’s song (hence my fun title for this blog). We arrived on Sat. Sept. 17 – the circus was in town (it was set-up behind where we were staying which made the streets super busy) and it was European Heritage weekend (which meant all the museums and historical places were free!). We have explored the Palais des Papes, Fort Saint Andre, the Pont d’Avignon and the walled city centre. We’ve had nice weather – a bit cooler and super windy. 

One more night in Avignon and then we head to Juan les Pins on the French Riviera. We’ve decided to drive back to Paris via Italy, Switzerland and Germany. Should be lots of fun.

We’ve been staying in a wifi free zone for the past week so we have a bit of catching to do (including Evelyn’s arrival in Paris). Here we go:

Sept. 10

Canadiana

On our way from Reims to Paris we detoured north to the Vimy ridge memorial and the Somme memorial. We lunched in Arras on market day, which was very lively, and included a Porsche car rally.

The war memorials were exceptional in many ways. The pictures convey some of it. It was nice to talk to the ‘park’ interpreters, who were all Canadian students, mostly from U of Ottawa. The parks are both run by Veteran Affairs Canada.

Sept. 11 – 17

And then there were three. Evelyn has joined the crew.

After connecting at the Paris airport we were off to our ‘Gite’ or accommodate in Trouhaut, 30km from Dijon. On the way we stopped in Provin, a UNESCO recognised town. 

I really liked Trouhaut. We had a small two bedroom house, on a hillside looking over a steep narrow valley. We could see the dairy cows, and hear the church bells and the rooster. We enjoyed a nice hike right out the back door. Great to retreat to after touring all day. There are no businesses in the village, but a bakery and a grocery truck would make deliveries for the seniors. Evelyn made friends with a magpie, which was domesticated by a child after if fell from its nest.

Dijon and Beaune are the two cities that we explored in the northern burgundy wine area. We toured a museum and church in Dijon, went on a wine tasting bus tour with Leona, bought a number of different types of mustard in Baune and sampled a variety of white and red wines. We did our best to retain what we learned on the wine tour, but its a challenge while you are sampling. Most days we would eat lunch in the towns we visited, and then buy food to take home for supper. The French eat well, but some of the cheese is aromatic (stinky!) 

After our week in burgundy we drove south through the Beaujolais vine region, stopping to drive to the top of ‘Mont Brouilly’. Vintners pilgrimage here to pray for a good harvest at the chapel. What a scary drive up, but what a spectacular view! 

We stopped in Avignon, home of the bridge, where we will be for 4 nights. Its at the junction of the ‘Cotes du Rhône’ wine region and the Provence region.