Paris, France

For Fathers Day we decided to go to Paris, France to do a quick tour.

 The famous Notre Dame.

 We looked long and hard but no Quasimodo. 

 It is a beautiful Cathedral.

 The Eiffel Tower was built in 1889 for the Worlds Fair. 

 It is 1063 feet tall, it has 2 restaurants in it. 

 You can buy a ticket to take the elevator or stairs to the first and second floors.

We also placed a lock on the Love lock bridge, there are so many locks on this bridge that the city safety board is trying to figure out how to keep the railing from collapsing. 

 We decided to make a stop at the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa.

 If you have seen Edge of Tomorrow this should look familiar.

 Since we just saw the movie the day before Jonah thought it was cool.

 The line didnt take to long at all, i think we were in line for prob 30 min.

Inside the Louvre. The museum originally opened in 1793 with 537 paintings today it houses over 35,000 objects.

 Leonardo De Vinci painting of John the Baptist

 De Vinci's Mona Lisa

 This huge painting was hung high on the wall and looked like a photograph it is so realistic.

The interior is beautiful, over 650,000 square feet you can not walk around the thing all in one day.

 As we were leaving Paris we decided to take a look at the other lady liberty.

 Yes the french artist made 2 lady liberty's the one in Paris is only 37 feet tall.

She faces West and the American Lady Liberty faces East, pretty cool huh?

Zurich, Switzerland

We are just coming off of a long field exercise and have a 4 day weekend so we decided to jump on over to Zurich, Switzerland and Leichtenstein.

Driving across the border into Switzerland. 

 The Limmat River downtown Zurich

 This s the end of the Limmat River which feeds into Lake Zurich. 

 The Alps from a reststop, it is a beautiful area.

 This is a vending machine at the rest stop, we thought it was funny there is Cannabis ice tea, above that is a prego test, next to a condom which is next to a cigarette! It is a one stop vending shop!! Too funny.

 Pictures just do not do justice to how tall and steep this mountain range is.

Spring Break, Italy Edition.....day 8 Venice

 Venice is a beautiful place.   

 Zackary is great at adding filters to his pics they look like postcards.

 The grand canal is big and busy, there is no reason to spend loads of money on a gondola unless you just want pictures and memories of it.  It is just as easy to use the public transportation boats and travel the waterways.

 There are no shortages of gondolas and people spending loads of cash to ride them.

 It is a whole different world watching the locals travel on water and park their boats at the local docks.

 There is just a maze of waterways and narrow roads.  The Venice card is well worth the money you get public transportation, wifi, and bathroom visits.  You can also add entry to the museums and churches but we chose not to. 

 This pic that Zack took looks like a painting.

 We went to go see the area that has the Venetian glass makers and watched them hand blow some glass.  Unfortunately you can not take pictures.  The hand blown glass is amazing, super detailed and works of art. 

 There was one place we went into and they had hand blown chandeliers that where 2 stories tall hanging from the ceiling, they had a life size all colored glass trike that looked like you could start it up and drive away.

 As beautiful as this place is, to me it is a place that you go see once and then you are done.

Spring Break, Italy Edition.....day 7 Milan

Our next trip was to Milan, I admit I didn't think I would like it to much.  I didn't take to many pictures, but to my surprise it is one of the places we would like to go back to and explore more.

Outside the Milan Cathedral. 

 Some street vendors were selling birdseed.

 The cathedral was started in 1386 and has taken over 600 years to complete

 The huge bronze doors are extremely detailed.

 These are individual panels of the doors.

 The marble floor is beautiful

I loved the huge columns.

We decided to leave Milan early so we could get to our next hotel and rest before we went to Venice on our last day in Italy.  We will return to Milan to walk around the shops more. Kim was able to buy some things in Milan before we left.

Spring Break, Italy Edition.....day 5 and 6 Pisa and Cinque Terre

Our next leg took us to Pisa but since the only thing to see in Pisa is the church and the tower we just made it a stop on our way to Cinque Terre.

 This is the entire site of Pisa. 

 We decided not to climb to the top of the tower, after all the tower is what we wanted pictures of. I was also tired from Florence and didn't feel like climbing the 200+ stairs.

 Just like all the rest of the tourist you have to have a pic of pushing the tower over or holding it up.

 We left Pisa and went to our B&B to be able to explore Cinque Terre the next day.

We booked our B&B on https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1030343 and Barbara was a great host, the room was fantastic and view outside our window was beautiful.  If you decide to visit Cinque Terre look her up.

 The road to Cinque Terre was very small and winded around, over and through the mountains.

 Whenever we could find a place to pull over we did to take pics the views were outstanding. 

 No matter how steep the side of the mountain it was all used, there are vineyards all up the side of the mountains and their is a single person rail system built into some of the land for the locals to harvest the grapes.  It looked like a scary one man roller coaster.

This picture does not show just how steep this is. Cinque Terre is made up of 5 villages, Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. 

We Parked at Monterosso and it was a beautiful site.  It is the only sand beach between the 5 villages, You can see in the above pic that the hotel has carved out a man in the rock overlooking the water.

 Because of the steep terrain there is only 2 streets lining this village most are souvenir shops, but there are restaurants and hotels too.  We hopped on the train and went to the next town. 

 Vernazza has one main street to walk down to get to the cove.  We stayed here, ate lunch and looked at the water. 

This is still a main fishing village, you can see fisherman coming in and out of the cove constantly.

 This was a great place to sit at the outside cafe and eat a late lunch. 

 I love this pic of Zack and Jonah on the rocks overlooking the water.

We found a tunnel to walk through and this is what was on the other side. There was a few people sunning and others just looking into the waters. The construction of the houses on the cliff edges where cool.  This is all we had time to visit on this trip, I hope we are able to come back and visit the other 3 villages.  There is a hiking trail between the 5 villages, I think that would be a fun trip and prob some great pics.