Side trip to Chamonix, France and goodbye to our Ski Vacation

Greetings and salutations, We got up on our last morning in Courmayeur and set our sights on accomplishing three trips today. Our first goal, a 1 hour hike into the stone village of Verrand right next door to Courmayeur. After getting directions from our helpful desk clerk Laura, we set off on our first adventure of the day. Hike up the road from the hotel through the forest over a bridge and voila, you will be there. On paper things look so straight forward, in reality we hiked up the road into the forest for about an hour, seemed almost straight up in some sections following a trail until we came upon an old man driving down the road. We asked him in our not too pretty Italian, if we were close to Verrand, to which he shook his head and pointed the complete opposite direction. So back down the road and turned left at the junction instead of the right and we were at Verrand in about 30 minutes. A beautiful mix of a medieval stone village with new condominiums in the mix. Nice side trip and now for our second trip; the Monte Blanc funivie or tram up the side of Mont Blanc. Jumped in our Jennifer Lopez inspired Fiat 500 and sped up to the end of the road in Enteves to ride the tram. The ride consists of 3 separate tram rides up to the summit of Mont Blanc and the Glacier. First tram holds 20 people and up we go dangling by one tiny cable up the mountain. Out at the platform we pile into tram 2 that holds 12 people and up we go with a bunch of skiers to the second level. Out at the next platform and we squeeze into a gondola that holds 8 people and we arrive at the top. We step outside and watch as a group of skiers head out and down the glacier to Chamonix which is on the other side of the mountain. We had a cafe in the snack bar where the Pope visited in 2005 so basically we had coffee with the Pope. We will hopefully see him on his porch at his own crib AKA The Vatican city, next week for Easter. I'm told this is a small gathering of around 50,000 people or so. Nice trip and as always great scenery. The hotel we were staying at had a special pass through the tunnel between Italy and France that would save us 20 euros off of the normal 48euros to go into France. So we are off to the ski village of Chamonix, France. This is a 11.6 kilometer tunnel to France that comes out in the ski village of Chamonix. When we arrive and park we immediately have to make arrangements to come back for a ski vacation in France; incredible! The entire village surrounded by several ski resorts and the view into the mountains from town is of a massive glacier on one side and a couple of ski resorts on the other side. Walked the town and had lunch in Chamonix and then headed back. Mission accomplished, three adventures completed. Tomorrow we leave the Val d' Aoste and drive back to Milan. Up on schedule, checked out of the hotel, and on our way back to Milan central train station. Getting the hang of driving the J'Lo mobile, she's somewhat sassy and a little sexy until a 6 series BMW comes blasting by us at 200 kilometers an hour, now the Sexy J'Lo mobile is just a little car. We both agree that our bitch gps Garmin nuvi really saved our bacon again getting us back to the station with only 2 mistakes on my part. We arrived at the Milan train station and turned in our little J lo mobile, I have separation anxiety from my bellisimo Fiat. Into the station and reserve our seats on the train to Venice And get our final cost for little car; 130 euros for the car and 58 euros to fill it up ; a little expensive but only way to get to mountains easily. On the train and dashing along at up to 200 kilometersan hour we arrive at Venice, St. lucia station and then onto the water taxi for our trip through the Grand Canal and onto the southern island of Lido. We found a 4 star hotel on Lido island just recently renovated and for a lot less than the Venice hotels and a lot fewer people. Had a nice dinner after stRolling through the main street of Lido island. Tomorrow the sights of Venice starting at St. Marks church. 2 days in Veniceand onto Florence. I am able to post pictures on Facebook on Terri's page, but not tonight. Ciao from Bella Venezia, Italian.

Goodbye Cote D Azur Hello Italian Alps

Good afternoon everyone, After spending 2 hours trying to get this blog post to go through, I find that it all went poof when I published it. A brief synopsis of our journey from Nice to Milan central station and from Milan by car to Val D'Aoste in the Italian alps. Got up early in Nice to take the train to Milan central train station. We really enjoyed Nice quite a lot and were sorry to leave. Got on the train at a little before 7:00 am for the journey to Ventimiglia, the first town in Italy where we changed trains for our journey to Milan central train station through Genoa. Arrived in Milan and looked for our National car rental office located in the staton, sounds simple enough, right? For those of you that haven't been through the Milan central train station it is a massive building constructed in 1931 to handle the huge amount of passenger traffic through Italy. Each day 330,000 passengers go through the station and There are 4 levels to the station so finding this little car rental booth was no easy feat. Of course they had a map of the statn but the rental booth has been relocated since the map was put up. I left Terri with the luggage and scoured the station for this booth. After talking to several people in my terrible Italian, I located it, went back and got Terri and went down to pick up my internet reserved car. After 45 minutes of working with, waiting, and waiting some more, we finally got our papers to pick up the car,,,,,,,where is the car,,,,,just go outside, turn right and you can't miss it. Went outside, turned right and spent the next 20 minutes looking for the rental pickup area.......oh wait, there is a parking sign and in little tiny letters it says Rimaggiore / national car rental.....finally. Picked up our stylishly compact Fiat 500 and we are on our way.....kind of. Took us 30 minutes to get to the Autostrade for the trip to Courmayeur in the Italian Alps. To add to our stress level, the Fiat has this nifty little feature that turns off your motor every time that you stop and let out the clutch. I kept thinking this piece of crap keeps stalling out at every intersection..no they built it that way. We finally get to the Autostrade and we are on our way out of the city. You pick up a ticket at a dispenser much like a parking structure when you enter the highway. As the city buildings slowly faded away, we we now in the countryside. After we got to the city of Aoste things really got interesting. Every little ancient town we passed has it's very own castle guarding the town. Simply amazing wondering how they built they beautiful structures with no power tools. Now the toll road ends and we must pay for our ride on the road,,,,28 euros, and I had 1 and 2 euro coins for the toll, I don't think so! We arrived in Courmayeur and even Terri had to give our "bitch" Gamin Nuvu 350 kudos for helping us find our way. We now appreciate the US for the conciseness in their freeway signs. We are at the Hotel Cresta A Duc in Courmayeur. I lucked out again, choosing this hotel because it has excellent accomodations, king sized beds, and is 100 yards to the tramway up to Courmayeur ski resort. Nice little village with lots of shops and restaurants, and of course, Gelaterias. Got up this morning and went up to ski, rented all the equipment on the mountain and, they have a discount from the hotel and a discount for women (sounds like descrimination to me). Rent equipment and purchased lift tickets for less than 100 Euros. The snow is not the greatest but for gods sake we are skiing the Italian Alps, what'sm not to like. We wound up skiing all day and it was quite nice. We took the tram up to the very top and skied down from the top, very nice. We are back in the hotel and planning tomorrows adventure, either a d at trip to Chamonix, France to see the village and ski resort or visit the hot springs at St. dicier in La Palud up the road.. The following day we head back into the insanity called Milan, to return the rental car and catch the train to Venice. Good night all and thanks for allowing us to share our adventure with you. ciao

Nice is Nice and Monte Carlo is proof that some people have way too much money and time on their hands

Hello all, Greetings from Nice, France, a beautiful town in France. Our idea of Nice was that it would be this nice sleepy little town on the French Riviera with a few quaint restaurants and some souvenir shops. Uh wrong. By a long shot. This is a town with a beautiful history, new area and fascinating Old Town area with miles of winding little streets full of shops, gelaterias, restaurants, and bars. We lucked out booking our hotel, le meurice as it right in the pedestrian section of town full of people packing the restaurants and bars until wee hours of the morning; how do these people get up in the morning?

Some of the feedback from Trip advisor complain of the noise but it is full of life, we left our windows open to take it all in after we retired to our room for the night. Got up this morning late and decided to take the bus from Nice to Monte Carlo, Monaco, set us back a whopping 1 euro for the trip. They should be charging 20 euros for the view along our route, it is the most amazing view We have ever seen of a coastline. Jumped off the 100 bus and found the hop hop off tour around the city to get a back story on the town. Jumped off at the Palace. The view of the marina with all the million or should I say multi million dollar yachts, boats and ships was a sight to see. After that, we walked over to the Casino Monte Carlo to try our hand at baccarat, roulette, and how you say, Le Braque jaac. Again, after reading articles in trip advisor about the rudeness of the people working in the casino, we were pleasantly surprised to find that everyone was very friendly and more happy to explain the history of this unique building. Truth be told, we walked around the casino and dropped some money in the slots and were out of there. I did see one gentleman that was playing 50, 100 euro chips at a time,and losing the entire time we were there. The best part for us was grabbing a chair at the adjacent cafe and just hanging out watching the maserati's, Aston Martins, and Bentleys arriving and departing. Oh yeah, there were also several of those lower end cars, Mercedes there too, they didn't even get a spot in the front.

                                             View of the Grand Casino in Monte Carlo.

After spending the day in Monte Carlo we headed back to Nice and decided to hike to the top of Castle Hill, the highest spot in Nice. Put over 10,000 steps on the pedometer today and a big part was this hike. Went up ancient staircases built in the 1400's to finally arrive at the pinnacle of the castle. We were treated to a 360 degree view of Nice, the mountains, and of course the azure colored waters of the French Riviera, cote d azur. It's starting to get dark and we haven't seen a soul the entire time we have been on this hike. We hotfoot it down the mountain onto the road into old town and hear someone using a whistle,must be a criminal about somewhere,,uh no, it's the guard for the castle whistling that the park is closed and why are we there, and he was not haaaappy that we are preventing him from his dinner.

                                                         View from Castle Hill of Nice

                                                         Waving to all of my "subjects"
 

                                                        Inside of Church in Monte Carlo

                                                 
                                         Terri Smoozing with Doorman at Casino Monte Carlo

                                         Some of the cars parked in front of the Grand Casino

 We walked down into old town and found a French provincial restaurant to have dinner at. It was the best meal we have EVer had in our lives.

This quaint little restaurant with a few outside tables and some inside seating along with one table in an alcove at the front of the restaurant that Spoke to Terri. Glass of wine, French onion soup, the lady had pork medallions with a grain mustard reduction sauce and the man, a wonderfully tender Filet Mignonette with foix GRAS (not the pâté but the whole liver on top with a reduction sauce, ci magnifique!

This has been such a wonderful stay that we are extending our stay one extra day so that we can see the stone city of eze and the summer residence of the garibaldis in Antibes. They have museums of Picasso and Matiss that we would like to see before we head up into the Italian Alps. I promised to share pictures with everyone, however Apparently Blogspot hasn't figured out to upload pictures from an IPod. If I get an answer on how to do it, I will share our pictures, until then, ciao!

Best laid plans of mice and men

Buone Giorno all and greetings from Milano!

Well we made it to Milan malpensa airport right on time after starting our day in Moorpark at 3:30 am. We rented a car in moorpark to take the trip to Burbank Airport because the shuttle wanted to pick us up at 3:20 am for a 7:00 am flight. Car to airport, check.

Arrived at airport with plenty of time to spare, check, turned in car, and literally walked 75 feet into the airport, and checked in, Nice!

On the next leg of our journey from Salt Lake City to Atlanta we sat behind a couple that was also going to Milan for a late honeymoon
Terri taking over...ok, The guy had served as a missionary in Italy and spoke fluent Italian, which came in very handy as our flight from Utah to Atlanta was late, we all made a mad dash across the airport to our connecting flight to Milan, however, our luggage did not. We had to fill out paperwork so that they could deliver our luggage in the am. Being the world travelers that we are, we were prepared and had all we needed for a day or so in our one carry on we brought. Ten points for the old folks, zero for the newly weds, they were left with not even a toothbrush, chalk one up to experience...
It is now 9a.m. So we stow our luggage in a locker for ten euro and head off to see Milano. Choose a hop on hop off city tour, then headed to see the duomo, lots marble and frescoes, just amazing detail.

They had two mummified cardinals where you could actually see the hands...rather Erie. Lit a candle for all my deceased family and relatives.

So much to see in there we spent several hours looking around then left to go eat. Next to the duomo is this huge area with a glass/steel framed overhead built in 1865, it was spectacular. We had lunch there an picked up a sweet ashtray for Tam, literally, blame her she made me do it. It was her only request we had to oblige.

After close to 30 hours without sleep we decided to head to our hotel. Jim decided it would be faster to walk then wait for the bus.....let's just say some of us were more than crabby. Took a Train to rho, but got off at the wrong exit there are two Rho's, had to backtrack on another train,finally made it to our hotel, showered and went to bed EXHAUSTED!

Notice the ashtray at the edge of the table; not there when they cleaned the table. Tamie made us do it!

Got up the next day and decided to go to a real Castle Sforezesco in Milan that in addition to being a castle,  housed a couple of museums.

The museum was a whole treasure house of Renaissance paintings, sculptures, and most notably, Michelangelo's Pieta Rhodonini, an unfinished Pieta that was one of the last sculptures he worked on.

In one of our walkabouts we saw a Ferrari store and had to snap a picture. Pay 120 euros and you can drive in this Ferrari a mile and a half around the city; for 200 euros you could drive 2 miles around the city. Problem is that this is Milan and it was Rush hour, why would I want to drive 15 miles an hour in a Ferrari.

Jim and Terri hurl towards their grand vacation starting March 21, 2012

 Hello Everyone,

Thanks for looking in on our adventure!

After talking and talking, and talking some more, about a return trip (50 years ago for me), I finally got off the dime and booked a month long journey to Italy for Terri and I to celebrate our 35th Wedding Anniversary this year.

As Terri would say, "This marriage thing is starting to sound like a life sentence to me".  I sure hope she is kidding!

As you can well imagine, the logistics of planning a 29 day trip are staggering. Booking the airfare was the easy part, everything that follows is well,,,,,not so easy.  There are so many pieces of this jigsaw puzzle that have to go together just right, or disaster could ensue. Hotels, Train Passes, Ferries, Car Rentals, and Tours, arghhhh!

After putting this trip together, Terri and I have a new found appreciation for my daughters going to Europe a few years ago, and planning everything 1 or 2 days in advance and "on the fly"

I have found that type of planning which is basically, "casting all cares to the winds and just winging it",  is not in my nature!

So here is the plan, not cast in stone, but nevertheless a good start.

Fly into Milan, Italy
Spend 2 days exploring Milan,
Take the train to Nice, France spend 2 days on the French Riviera.
Stop in at Monte Carlo to try our hands at Baccarat (I had my Tux dry cleaned to fit right in with the beautiful people and in case I run into Daniel Craig)
Return to Milan and pick up a car for a drive up into the Italian Alps to snow ski and stay in the beautiful little village of Courmayeur, Italy, for a few days.
Back in the car and drive back to Milan.
Trade in the car for a train and head over to Venice for a few days of sightseeing.
Leave Venice and travel by train down to Florence for a few days.
After Florence we head down to beautiful Roma where we stay for 3 days near the Vatican (over Easter)
We move our digs to the ancient area of Travestere on the southern side of Rome for 4 more days.
After Rome, we head down to Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento and on to the incredible paradise Island of Ischia as well as a day visit to Capri.
After several days of unwinding and relaxing in Ischia, we head back to Rome, and after a month, finally come home.

I get tired just writing about it! Not really, we are so looking forward to our upcoming journey and glad that you could share it with us!.

Anyways, this is a start..my first blog ever......Wednesday 7am, we start the grand adventure!

Ciao Bello!