Author: Lynn

Before we get into today’s adventure, which luckily, did not include bugs, here are a few photos of the beautiful hotel we stayed in last night. The Moulin de Vigonac was built on the banks of the river Dronne in the 16th century and was originally a mill.

Unfortunately, shortly after this picture was taken, Peter said he didn’t feel well so I took him to our room. He insisted I go back to dinner as we had already ordered. Luckily, they hadn’t started making our main course yet, so they were able to cancel his dinner. I kept checking on him during my 2-hour meal (3 courses) and he slept most of the evening.

So sorry foodies, I was so distracted by the fire, Peter’s tummy troubles and my conversation with a lovely British couple at the next table that I totally forgot to take pics of my delicious meal of melon in wine appetizer, duck confit main course and pear tart for dessert. This was my second BIG meal in two days, which is so unusual, but oh, so good.

The Moulin de Vigonac is not a hotel you’ll stumble into on your drive through town. We turned down several small roads before the final turn on a tiny “road” put us into the parking lot. I found it on booking.com then made the reservation on the hotel’s website. Our room was the lovely “Helene”. How cool that they’ve named all the rooms. It’s a family run business owned by the restaurant’s chef. It’s an absolutely delightful place and we’d stay here again in a heartbeat. The region is beautiful filled with chateaux, picturesque towns and amazing people. There’s also another Cro-Magnum prehistoric cave in the area. But one of those is enough for us.

That takes us to today’s journey to the pretty town of Saint Emilion. It was just over an hour from our hotel, but we got a late start and we stopped to buy Peter a new cane as his was too short, so it was past noon before we got there and found a place to park. Like all medieval to towns, it’s all hills, and since it had rained a little, the cobblestones were slippery. We managed to make it around town without falling and had delicious burgers for lunch.

This town has an 11th century church built into the rock. We weren’t able to get in, but here it is from the outside.

There was another church we could go in. It was fairly small but pretty. The unique feature of this one was the small section on original 13th century frescos.

We stopped at a winery to Peter a bottle of his preferred dry red wine, so we’re both set for the next few days. This area is red wine country and we passed about 30 different wineries. Every other shop in town was a wine shop. You certainly won’t go thirsty around here.

We are spending the next 3 nights in a delightful cottage in the town of Arsac, about 30 minutes north of Bordeaux. Our hosts are wonderful but speak not a word of English. I’ve said it before but thank God for Google translator.

Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy and since Peter is still a bit under the weather, we may take a day off. At most we’ll drive to a nearby lake or chateau. We’ll visit Bordeaux on Wednesday. Talk soon and, as always, thanks for sharing our adventures with us.

We had quite the travel adventure today. Actually, it started last night. We checked into our lovely Airbnb flat in Sarlat and everything was wonderful, that is, until the bug infestation started! How many bugs does it take to have an infestation? I don’t know but one bug is one too many for me.

I saw a small bug in the living room earlier in the evening but picked it up and didn’t think anything of it. As I headed into the commode closet before going to bed a few hours later, I saw about 30 of the same creatures crawling all over the floor. I picked up as many as I could (in bunches of napkins, of course) but they just kept coming.

We went to bed and since nothing keeps Peter awake, he’s sound asleep while I’m in bed imagining bugs crawling all over me. They weren’t but you understand the creepy feeling. I went back to the commode closet with my shoe and started slapping at them but as soon as I got them, more kept coming. I couldn’t relax enough to fall asleep, so I laid on the couch, finally falling asleep around 2:30am.

We woke up this morning to bugs, not only in the commode closet, but also in the bathroom, in the tub and a few strays in the bedroom, living room and kitchen counters. They were also starting to climb the walls. That’s when we said, “We’re so outta here!” This was a first for us. After more than 60 Airbnb flats over the 6 years, we left a flat prematurely.

I had notified the host Saturday night when we first saw them, but we didn’t hear back until this morning as we were packing up to leave. He offered us the flat next door, but since it shared a wall with the bathroom/commode closet in our flat, we said no thanks. Even if I didn’t see a bug, I would have been awake all night looking for them.

Not an auspicious start to our day. But it got better as we drove about 30 minutes to the Lascaux Caves. In 1940, a boy’s dog fell down a hole. After getting the dog out, the boy and his 3 buddies climbed down the 50-foot hole to explore.

What they found was a cave system containing over 600 wall and ceiling paintings from about 20,000 years ago! Not much happened with the cave because of the war, but it opened to the public in 1948. The cave got about 1200 visitors a day so in 1963, it was closed due to deterioration of the paintings caused by exposure to carbon dioxide, heat, humidity, etc. This original cave is called Lascaux I.

Lascaux II is an exact copy of two of the main caverns. It opened to visitors in 1983.

Lascaux III is a traveling exhibition. And Lascaux IV is an exact replica of the entire cave system. That is the one we toured today. It was really phenomenal. The paintings were just incredible. We couldn’t take photos in the cave but were able to get some in the museum.

Here’s short video of one the demonstrations of how the cave paintings were probably made.

The tour was amazing and was well worth a stop. Our 2nd stop of the day was the Chateau de Bourdeilles, about 90 minutes away. We were originally going to see a different chateau where the singer Jospsehine Baker lived, but since we weren’t spending the night in Sarlat as planned, we decided to head towards Bordeaux instead of going back where we started. Because of that, her chateau was too far out of the way, so we headed to Bourdeilles instead.

It was a beautiful drive through the French countryside, again rounding corners to see more chateaux.

We got there much later than we thought, just after 4:30pm. The chateau was open until 6:00 but it was a 15-minute uphill walk from the parking lot and, according to the steward, there were a lot of stairs, most of which didn’t have handrails. Since stairs without handrails are very dangerous for us, we ended up not even going to the chateau.

But there was a pretty little church we stopped in to visit.

And there was a small park with the requisite WWI monument. Virtually every town in France has one. Sometimes they are for French soldiers were served and/or died and sometimes they’re for foreign troops. We’ve seen quite a few dedicated to the bagpipe regiments of Scotland.

By this time it was almost 5pm and I had no desire to drive another 90 minutes to Saint Emilion, which is where we planned to spend the night. So, I found a beautiful boutique hotel only 10 minutes away….sold!!

The hotel also has a restaurant, so we don’t even have to leave to have dinner.

I still haven’t heard from Airbnb about refunding the canceled night at the bug palace and that’s one more frustration. But then I have to remember that it’s Sunday. Hopefully I’ll hear something tomorrow.

I guess there was more good than bad today but it has been a very long day. We’re looking forward to a relaxing dinner followed by a great bugless night’s sleep.

Or, more commonly known as Sarlat, is a town in which modern history has passed it by. As a result, it is one of the best-preserved medieval cities in Europe. We planned to visit the Lascaux cave on the way here but realized that it would be closing for lunch exactly when we would have arrived. Since it’s only 25 minutes from Sarlat, we decided to visit the town today and go to the caves tomorrow as a half-day trip.

More than half of our 5-hour drive was through the beautiful countryside of southwestern France. Of course, that also meant we had to slow to 30 kph (about 18 mph) through every one of the 25-30 towns we drove through, but it was worth it. You can’t throw a rock in this part of the country without hitting a chateau, so we saw quite a few today. There was only one, though, where there was a place to grab a photo.

We had no idea where to go once we got to Sarlat so we pulled into the first parking spot we saw. It was right in front of a restaurant and because we both need the bathroom, and we were hungry, we thought it was as good a place as any to eat. I think it was the most expensive restaurant in town and had only “fancy” food. But we decided that we don’t eat fancy very often so why not splurge. Besides, we had no idea where there were any other restaurants. As with just about every other meal we’ve had, lunch was delicious. We both had a steak with bearnaise sauce, fries and a glass a wine.

The best part is that lunch also came with dessert. Peter had his usual ice cream, but I tried a profiterole. I’ve seen them on Great British Baking Show but have never had one. OMG! It was delicious.

Well, it turns out that we didn’t need to spend $65 on lunch because about a 3-minute walk down the hill were about 10 other restaurants. But that’s okay, we don’t splurge that often and the food was delicious.

The town is adorable; loaded with medieval building with conical roofs. Of course, there’s a cathedral from the 13th century, the Saint-Sacerdos cathedral.

The Lantern of the Dead (also called Lantern of the Moors) was built in the cemetery behind the cathedral. It held a light in the top of the tower to let everyone know the location of the cemetery. Apparently, these can be found all over France, Germany, Austria and Poland. They also indicated the location of a hospital or leper colony. The idea was that people passing by would see the light and avoid that location.

The town was filled with narrow streets that were fun to wander.

Once again, we have a pretty slow internet connection. Not as bad as at Martine’s house, but not great. So, I think this will do it for today as it’s too frustrating to get pictures to upload. I think you get the idea, though, about Sarlat. If you’re ever in this region, I highly recommend a day trip stop.

Tomorrow we’ll catch the cave and maybe one of the chateaux in the area; there are about 15 in the general area. I’m sure we can find one on our way back from the cave.

Today was an absolutely lovely day. Weatherwise, it started off cold (low 40s) then climbed to the upper 60s. Our only planned activity was to visit Chateau du Clos Luce, a manor home behind the Chateau d’Amboise we visited yesterday. This is the home where the great painter, architect, civil engineer and inventor, Leonardo di Vinci, spent the last 3 years of his life.

These are the rooms he used as his workshop. Here are some of the pics.

Leonardo brought these two paintings, along with the Mona Lisa, with him to the Manor House.

Leonardo designed many things that were ahead of his time, including the parachute, tank, machine gun, automobile and plane. Here’s a picture of his model for the tank.

Here was his idea of an airplane.

One of the rooms contained a hologram video. It was in French, so we don’t know what it was about, but it was still pretty cool.

After visiting the house, we walked around the expansive garden. By this time the temp was up and it was gorgeous out.

One of the outbuildings had a large room with information about his scientific studies, cities he helped design and his inventions. Of course, Peter read every word on every plaque which is when I took the opportunity to upload pictures to the blog.

Have you ever seen the Immersive van Gogh exhibit? I’ve seen it twice and it was amazing. Anyway, they had a much shorter version of that about Leonardo’s work. It was very good. Here’s a small snippet.

At the far end of the garden, we found a building that was a 16th century inn.

After spending at least an hour roaming the garden, we headed back to the car for the 5-minute drive to the city center. Here we walked along the Loire River, enjoying the beautiful day.

We wandered the pedestrian street until we came to a creperie where, of course, we had to stop for a snack.

Once home, we enjoyed wine in the garden.

We ate cold, leftover pizza for dinner and played a few rousing rounds of Rummikub before getting settled for the night.

We thoroughly enjoyed our 2 days here and loved meeting our host Martine. What a delightful woman. When she found out we had dirty laundry, not only did she volunteer her washer, but she insisted on doing it herself. I was perfectly happy to run the load myself, but she told us to leave, and she would do it for us. Above and beyond the call of a B&B hostess.

The house is veritable menagerie with 5 chickens, 5 cats, 2 ducks 3 rabbits, 2 hedgehogs and a dog. Only a couple of cats and the dog were inside the house, and they never bothered us, but it was wonderful to hear her talk about her pets.

As much fun as we had here, we’re looking forward to our next stop….Lascaux Caves where we’ll see reproductions of the Neanderthal cave paintings. It will be fun.

We started our day in Orleans (Or-Lee-O with the accent on the last syllable). After stumbling into a park and ride, we took the tram about 5 stops to the Cathedral. You would think that after over 2 months of visiting dozens of cathedrals, basilicas and churches we would be numb to them but no. They are so beautiful you can’t help but be awe-struck. This one was no different.

On our way from the Cathedral to the main town square, we passed the Hotel Groslot, a 16th century building that was originally a Town Hall. We didn’t get to go in, but it’s a cool looking building.

After just a few minutes, we arrived at the Place du Martrol, the main town square of Orleans.

Then it was on to our final destination, Amboise, in the Loire (Low-R) Valley. The main reason to come here was to see the Chateau Royal d’Amboise, the former residence of Kings of France. Before the Chateau, there had been a fort on this spot since the Roman times. The Chateau originally was built by the powerful Amboise family before being confiscated by the Crown in 1434.

There weren’t that many rooms open to the public but the few that we saw were very nice.

King Francis I of France invited Leonardo di Vince to be court painter. Leonardo lived at the manor house Clos Luce adjacent to the Chateau Amboise until his death in 1519. He is buried in the Chapel which, unfortunately, is closed for renovation until later next year. While we didn’t get to see his gravesite, there is a bust of him in the garden. Tomorrow (Friday) we’re visiting Clos Luce.

Since we couldn’t check into our B&B until 5pm and it was still only a little after 3pm when we finished at the Chateau, we wandered the streets of this cute little town for a while. I found a store that sold linens and picked up some beautiful handmade cloths for our bedroom furniture. It was one of the few things on my must-buy list for this trip.

Before coming to the house, we drove across the river to get pictures of the front of the Chateau. Since there was no way to do that from the Chateau itself, we luckily found a place to park to get some beautiful pics.

We’re staying at a B&B tonight and our host, Martine, is delightful. Our suite is lovely, but the internet connection is atrocious. It has taken almost 4 hours to write this post as the pictures are taking FOREVER to upload. So, I’m going to close for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll take pictures with my phone rather than my camera so I can upload them to the blog from the phone while on 4G. It will be much faster than trying to upload from my computer on the house WiFi. So frustrating. Night everyone.

Not too much to report today as it was a 6-hour drive day. We left our new friends in Rheinau this morning heading back into France. After driving for almost 2 1/2 hours, we stopped at the St. Mihiel American Cemetery and Memorial. It’s dedicated to dead and missing from WWI. It was much larger than other WWI cemeteries we’ve been to, and like all of them, was very beautiful and peaceful.

From the cemetery it was a short, 15-minute drive to Montsec Monument, commemorating the Battle of St. Mihiel in September 1918, a victory for the Allied forces. In spite of achieving their objectives, the cost in lives was very high. Many of the men buried in the cemetery were killed in that battle.

Peter didn’t climb the stairs, so I stayed up there only long enough to grab a few pics. The view was beautiful.

We had our lunch looking out over the beautiful French countryside.

Then it was back in the car for the more than a 3-hour drive to next lodging. It’s a beautiful house that we could easily live in, if we wanted to live in the middle of nowhere…which we don’t. But we’re only 90 minutes from our first stop tomorrow….Orleans.

A more accurate title for today’s post would be eating our way through the Black Forest. First, why is it called the Black Forest? Well, when the Romans invaded the area, they noticed that the forest was very dense which made the green trees look black. So, there’s your trivia for the day. Just how have we lived without knowing that??

Just like yesterday (Monday), the day started very foggy and cold, only in the mid-40s. We started off for Baden Baden, about 45 minutes away from our flat. By the time we arrived the fog had burned off and, while still chilly, the sun was shining.

We stopped for coffee and hot chocolate but when we went into the café, we found some delicious looking ice cream creations. Since we didn’t want the chef to feel bad, we decided to try a couple.

There was nothing special we wanted to do in town, so we just walked around for a while looking at some of the beautiful buildings.

After about an hour in Baden Baden, we headed out through the Black Forest to Hornisgrinde, which at 3818 feet, is the highest mountain in the Northern Black Forest.

Even though we brought our sandwiches, we decided to save them for dinner and had lunch in the restaurant. Peter had bratwurst and I had what I thought was a tart. Turned out it was a giant flat bread.

Our plan was to have Black Forest Cherry Cake for dessert (I told you we ate our way through the area) but we were both full so we brought a piece home with us.

After a very leisurely lunch (service was incredibly slow) we headed back through the forest. Our ultimate destination was a winery that our host told us about, but on the way we passed so many adorable little towns and beautiful vistas. Most times there was no place to take pictures but we did stop in one of the villages for a few minutes. Here are some shots of Ottenhofen.

At the Oberkirch Winery, we tasted several wines. Peter wasn’t crazy about any of the dry whites, but did pick up a small bottle of Rose. I loved 2 out of the 3 sweet wines I tried, so now I have 3 bottles of wine in the car. That should last me the next couple of weeks until we fly to Amsterdam.

Then it was another 30 minutes home where we sat on the front patio chatting with Stephan, our host. What a delightful person! He’s a local police officer, one of 5 in a town of over 12,000 people. He said they’re spread pretty thin, especially when the French cross the border (only about 5 minutes away) and start causing trouble. He also told us that the house we’re living in was built in 1770….how cool is that!

While we were visiting, we broke into the Black Forest Cherry Cake, and yes, it was as good as it looks.

Tomorrow, we’re back in France. It’s primarily a driving day as we head west towards the Bordeaux region. It will take about 4 days, though, and we’re excited about seeing some cool things along the way.

If you count Switzerland, which was only a drive thru, we’ve been in 4 countries in 3 days…Italy, Switzerland, France and now Germany. Today started cloudy and very foggy but ended up beautiful, sunny, and warm.

We spent several hours in Strasbourg, France, a town that Peter has been wanting to see. I was here for an afternoon almost 30 years ago but didn’t remember anything. It’s very much like Colmar, a fairy tale town, with half-timbered buildings and a river running down the middle. But, this one had a Cathedral. Since it’s been 3 whole days since we’ve visited a Cathedral, of course, we had to stop in.

The Cathedral of our Lady of Strasbourg, the #1 tourist attraction in the city, broke ground in 1015 and was completed in 1439. Unlike most Cathedrals in Europe, it has only one tower instead of two.

Like all the others, the inside was remarkable. My favorite part was the rose window in the nave; the colors were gorgeous.

This was just a few of the many beautiful windows, 73 of which were removed during WWII and stored in a nearby salt mine.

Of course there was a grand organ.

The Astronomical Clock is one of the Cathedral’s most famous features.

The carved pillar was also unique.

After leaving the Cathedral, we enjoyed some music in the square. These musicians were wonderful, I could have listened to them for hours.

Then we walked to Petite France, the city’s lively tourist hub, known for cobblestone streets, canals, and well-preserved half-timbered homes. On our way, we stopped for a mid-morning snack of eclairs.

And a few minutes later…

In addition to sweet eclairs, they had savory including salmon. A salmon eclair!?! That’s just wrong on so many levels.

We finally made it to Petite France and it was very reminiscent of Little Venice in Colmar.

It didn’t matter, though, as it was so pretty. We really enjoyed the view.

Then we saw the covered bridges from a distance. It was a bit too far to walk.

Since we had seen everything we wanted to see, we headed back to the car, stopping first for a baguette to bring home and a sandwich to share. We ate on a bench on the Ill River. By this time the sun was out and the temp had warmed up considerably.

We were only about 25 minutes from our new Airbnb flat in Rheinau, Germany, just about 10 minutes over the border with France. We’re staying in a lovely ground floor flat in an old farmhouse. Our hosts, Stephan and Ruth, live upstairs. When we arrive, Ruth greeted me like a long lost relative with a big hug.

There’s a gorgeous garden and, once we were settled, we enjoyed a glass or two of wine while sitting in the sun.

Tomorrow we’re going to drive through the Black Forest on a circuitous route Stephan suggested. There’s even a great spot for some Black Forest Cherry cake. I can’t wait!

After 3 lovely days in Italy, we’re back in France. The drive yesterday (Saturday) wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The weather was cloudy and drizzly, but the ride was an easy one and the countryside was beautiful, even in with the clouds.

Here’s a short video Peter took out the front window. It wouldn’t embed so, if you want to see it, you’ll have to click the link. Don’t know why that happens but luckily it doesn’t happen to often.

https://youtu.be/BAw7Afq9AKI

There were a lot of tunnels to get through the mountains, the longest of which was over 10 miles long. It was only one lane in each direction as the northbound tunnel was shut down. So, two lanes of traffic in each direction went down to one lane to get into the tunnel. The back up on our side was only about 5 minutes long, but the one on the southbound side was about 5-6 miles long!! It was going to take them hours to get to the tunnel. Once we got in it moved at a steady pace but the merge to one lane each way was cumbersome. We felt pretty bad for those drivers knowing how long that traffic jam was.

After about 2 1/2 hours of driving we stopped for a break and petrol. We wandered around the giant rest stop for a little while looking for yummy things to eat. Here’s a sample of Swiss pastries. We bought some Swiss chocolate instead…very good.

Once back in the car, we were just over an hour away from Colmar. It’s in the Alsace region of France which has bounced between France and Germany throughout the years. The German influence is very evident in the food and the buildings. Most people here speak both languages, but not much English. We’re managing with sign language, pointing, and google translator.

You might be wondering why there is a Statue of Liberty at the entrance to the town. Well…Colmar is the home town of August Bartholdi, the Father of the Statue of Liberty. This is one of several replicas throughout Europe.

Other than the birthplace of Bartholdi, Colmar is most known for it’s well-preserved old town and the half-timbered buildings. Yesterday we took the Petite Train through the city which gave us an overview of the tourist part of town and an idea of the things we wanted to visit today. Here are the highlights of our wanderings. As you can tell, it was cloudy both days but, luckily, we didn’t have much rain.

The Unterlinden Museum used to house a 13th century convent but is now the most visited arts museum in France, outside of Paris.

We only covered one floor of the museum as the other floor had archeological artifacts and we’ve seen enough of that to last awhile. The salons we saw contained mostly religious art.

There were so many beautiful buildings in town, it was hard to decide which ones to include but there are a few that are notable.

There are several churches in town but we only visited this one.

We visited Little Venice, one of the most photographed areas in Colmar. There is a small boat ride down the river but since we’ve been on a gondola ride in the real Venice, we passed on this ride.

In addition to walking around and looking at the very cool buildings, we had some wonderful local Alsatian cuisine.

The first two pictures are Saturday’s late lunch. Both mine (top) and Peter’s (bottom) were Cordon Bleu but with veal rather than chicken. Mine had a rich mushroom sauce while Peter’s was smothered in cheese. The Alsatian pasta was actually spaetzle, a German pasta. This was very different from the Cordon Bleu we had in Paris which was cooked in the traditional French way.

Today we had a little snack mid-morning.

Then for lunch today, Peter had a burger and I had what was basically a broiled ham and cheese sandwich but, oh, it was delicious.

Colmar is on the Alsace Wine Route which is France’s oldest wine route. It spans about 100 miles north to south along the region. We only visited a couple of them on Saturday but driving to them through the picturesque villages was a lot of fun. The wines are more of a sweet variety which I love. Peter, not so much. He didn’t even get out of the car for the 2nd one. I bought a couple bottles of lovely sweet Gewurztraminer (impossible to pronounce correctly) wines that I get to enjoy all by myself.

The only shops open today were the tourist shops and, while we only went into a couple, we really enjoyed the Christmas shop.

Even with the cloudy, cool, rainy weather, we thoroughly enjoyed our short stay in Colmar. It is well worth a visit if you ever get to this part of France. Tomorrow we head about 40 minutes northwest of here to Strasbourg where we’ll spend the next couple of days. The weather is supposed to clear up a little so maybe we’ll see the sun.

Before getting into today’s adventure, here’s a clip from last night (Thursday) I took from our back balcony. This is what we love about staying in Airbnb flats versus hotels. We were in a regular neighborhood, listening to the local kids playing. It totally flashed me back to when I lived in Sicily 30 years ago as I used to watch the kids play in our courtyard. Of course those kids are now approaching 40 years old, but…

We had a very short drive today, only about 90 minutes, but it rained all the way. Not terribly hard, just enough to have the wipers on. As I didn’t want to drive into Milano and deal with trying to park the car in the city, we found a park and ride. It was at the end of one of the metro lines and, once on the train, we were at the Duomo in less than 20 minutes. Perfect.

The official name of the Duomo (Italian for Cathedral) is The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. That’s quite the mouthful so it’s no surprise everyone just calls it the Duomo. It is the largest church in Italy, 2nd largest (after St. Peter’s in the Vatican) on the Italian peninsula, and 3rd largest in the world after St. Peter’s and Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady Aparecida in Brasil.

Construction began in 1387, was consecrated in 1418 but took 600 years to complete, with the final touches being done in 1963. There are more statues on this gothic-style cathedral than any other building in the world. There are 3,400 statues, 135 gargoyles and 700 figures, and that’s just on the outside. There are hundreds more on the inside.

It was heavily damaged in WW2. Luckily the incredible stained glass windows had been removed so those were saved.

The last time we were in Milano in 2016, we didn’t go inside because the line was crazy long and it was crazy hot outside. Seeing the inside was the main reason we came back this year. Because of our handicap placard, we didn’t have to wait in line and we didn’t have to pay. I’m so glad we came back because the inside of this remarkable building really takes your breath away. The carvings and windows are beyond belief. You almost don’t know where to look first. Here are just a few of the many pictures we took.

There is an archeological museum in the basement of the Duomo, but there were too many stairs and there was no handrail so it wasn’t safe enough for us to go down. Instead we went to the Duomo Museum, which was phenomenal. It contained many of the original windows, carvings and spires that are too old to expose to the elements. There were also original tapestries, chalices, and molds used to make the components of the Duomo. I took about a zillion pictures but here are some we (Peter helped pick them out) think are representative of what we saw.

I could go on and on, but I won’t. I think you get the idea that both the Duomo and Museum were well worth the trip.

Here’s a short video of the Piazza from the front of the Duomo.

Then it was time for lunch. We wanted to eat at the restaurant we visited in 2016 that specialized in Risotto, but we couldn’t find it. If it hadn’t been raining (just drizzle but enough to get wet), I would have left Peter on a bench and looked a little harder for it, but I didn’t want to drag him through the streets without even knowing if the place was still open. So, we ate at a restaurant just behind the Duomo. They had outside seating under a large canopy and heaters so we were perfectly comfortable.

Today we switched it up. Peter had pizza and I had Risotto alla Milanese.

Our last stop of the day was the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II which is on one side of the Piazza Duomo. Factoid: Every city in Italy has dozens of things named Vittorio Emanuele II. Why you ask? He was the first king of the unified Italy.

Anyhoo….the galleria is 4 stories and is meant to look like a covered pedestrian street. It was built between 1865 and 1877 and is Italy’s oldest active shopping mall.

One of the mosaics on the floor is of a bull.

Legend has it that spinning 3 times on your heel in this exact spot will bring good luck. Well, Peter needs all the good luck he can get right now so it gave it a whirl.

Here are some yummy looking pastries we found a few steps from the bull.

If Milano is on your bucket list, there are many more things to see/do than we did today. We spent 4 days here in 2016 and didn’t feel the need to repeat those adventures. But if you come be sure to…

Then, of course, there’s the shopping. Milan is the fashion capital of Europe so there are more than a few shops for you to browse. Depending on what you like to do, you could easily spend several days enjoying Italy’s 2nd largest city.

Tomorrow we have a long drive (about 5 1/2 hours) through northern Italy and Switzerland to Colmar, France. I looked at places to stop along the way but we’ve already been to Lugano and there wasn’t much to see/do in Bern or Basel, so we’re going to power through to Colmar. Besides, weather is still rainy and we’re driving through the Alps, so I’d rather get it over with before snow starts.

Hopefully we’ll get to Colmar in time to actually enjoy some of the city before checking into our flat. It will be sad to leave Italy but we’ll be back next year. Buona notte cari amici.