France

The Palais Garnier Opera House made SUCH an impression.  Napoleon III (Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew) having survived an assassination attempt at the "old" opera house, decided to build a new one with a separate and secure [...]

If the first religion of Paris is food, the second must be art.  Musée D'Orsay and the Van Gogh Atelier des Lumières immersive light and music experience were food for the soul.

Seriously, that's how the French take their food.  In order to have the full French experience, we had lunch at Guy Savoy.  Year after year, Guy Savoy is bestowed with THREE Michelin stars, making it [...]

The Louvre is the largest museum in the world - so big that it's impossible to see all the museum has to offer in one visit. How long would it actually take? Well, if you [...]

Paris in the spring was a delight - cool, dry weather and plenty of flowers.  Paris at its best!  

Now that we slogged through the sandy hike to Mont Saint-Michel, we spent the next day hiking up the interior.  Mont Saint-Michel started as a monastery (monks only) in the 7th century, became an abbey in [...]

During the Middle Ages, pilgrims had to walk their way to Mont Saint-Michel during extreme low tide. It was considered very dangerous. Back then, people who planned to go to Mont Saint-Michel first made out a [...]

On June 6, 1944, more than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. General Eisenhower called the operation a [...]

We hiked a piece of the Grande Randonnée which runs through the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain.  It runs for thousands of miles, like the Pacific Crest Trail.

We hiked a windy trail for miles along the Étretat cliffs, in the northwest of Normandy, near the English Channel.  This was a favorite location of Impressionist painter Claude Monet.  He moved to several locations [...]

We started our Country Walkers tour in Rouen, along the Siene river, and worked our way to Honfleur, a picturesque seaside town.  We hiked, and they moved our bags from hotel to hotel.  Nice! [...]