Monday in NYC

We had another easy day today. After taking care of a few things back home we headed out to the Museum of Modern Art. Again, we were only blocks away. It looked a bit like rain so we ducked into a little gourmet shop that had all kinds of good things on the menu for lunch. We made a couple of quick choices, settled on a nice table outside, and watched the newly arrived rain splash the street. The rain quickly let up lowering the temperature to a very comfortable level, and we continued on to the MoMA.

This was the first time either LaDawn or I had been to this MoMA - and we are museum "nuts" to some extent. I had just read about this unbelievable exhibition by Richard Serra. He is a sculpture who works in really BIG spaces. This exhibit included pieces that weigh upwards of 200 Tons! Unbelievable! Check out the link here for his exhibition. This was the last day of the show so the link won't last long.

We continued visiting all the displays, but I was particularly fascinated by the work of photographer Josef Koudelka. Every one of his photo journalistic images was a beautiful study in composition. I plan to check out his books on Amazon.

That's about it for today. We walked the city a bit, and headed back. Enjoy the slide show of NYC and MoMA views below.

Sunday at St. Patrick's

We slept in a bit on Sunday morning and felt quite a bit more refreshed after our non stop stint in Las Vegas. We were only abut 6 blocks away from the world famous St. Patrick's Cathedral, so we headed there for Sunday services - what a magnificently beautiful church. The sanctuary was full as expected, but we found a seat, after a very long walk up the center aisle, in the fourth row. The singing was just beautiful, and the thunderous and beautiful sound of the pipe organ gave you "goose bumps" as you listened.

After leaving St. Pat's, we found a street fare just a block or two away. These are pretty popular in New York. You can find an amazing eclectic collection of goodies - from falafel to underwear - colors and delicious food smells everywhere.

Check out the slide show of our walk through the street fair. We didn't want to rush into our New York experience to quickly though, so we headed back to our hotel, caught up on about three days of emails, enjoyed a nice Chardonnay, and called it a day.

Across to Country to NYC

We were up way to early on Saturday - 4 A.M. - to catch the flight to New York. We had to fly through Cincinnati, Ohio - our home town - on the way east. The down side of the flight was that we had to take all our convention gear with us - and extra 3 bags at about 60 pounds each - whew! The good news - we got upgraded to first class - the only way to travel.

We arrived at our hotel - the Manhattan Club - about 7:30 P. M. The Manhattan Club is right around the corner from the world famous Carnegie Deli on 7th Avenue, named after Carnegie Hall which is also right across the street on 56th Street. We are right in the middle of everything. We had a great dinner at Red Eye Grill and then "hit the sack."

Off to Las Vegas

Yep, LaDawn and I are on the road again - this time to Las Vegas, NV for the huge Photoshop convention. We are two people who happen to love to visit the city though. It's not the bright lights, the whirlwind activity, the gambling - it's the great restaurants (yes, we are both motivated by food), wonderful shows, but most importantly, the majestic, beautiful quiet areas around the area.

That would include the Valley of Fire - our favorite; Mt. Charelston area - our second favorite, and many other beautiful sites that make for wonderful day trips.

This trip had no time for any such casual site-seeing pleasures. We hit the Luxor and it was non-stop till we left on Saturday. We did have a chance to catch up with our friend Kent Smith of Kent Smith Photography and also Jason and Julie, his assistants. We spent the last night in the city at one our favorite restaurants, Piero's - best Osso Bucca in the world.

Please head over to our sister blog Digital ProTalk and check last week's posts for more info and pics on our activities at Photoshop World.

Off to New York. --Dave and LaDawn

Final Thoughts on our Trip

Wow! What an experience! With 118,127 steps over 56 miles of exploring on foot, many more miles by car, and 4658 photographs later, we could reach one conclusion - the beauty of this country continued to amaze us. That includes the beautiful art we saw in the unbelievable museums, which in themselves are magnificent. Versailles still continues to astound us as we revisit the images from our tour. The beauty of Paris and then later the small towns of the Provence area just continued to take our breath away wherever we adventured. The architecture from hundreds and hundreds of years ago, the cobblestone roads and bridges, real wood shutters that they actually use, bikers, fields of lavender, vineyards for miles and miles, terracotta roof homes, window boxes everywhere, prams filled with children and dogs on leashes nearly everywhere you looked. Truly, it was a walk back through time.

LaDawn and I were constantly astounded as to how they even built these amazing palaces, churches, and towers – nearly everything we saw. The French live in their history – everyday!

The pace of the people is quite a bit slower than what we have in our go – go – go American lifestyle. I “swiped” my credit card into and out of a ticket machine for one of the tours – nothing happened – I did it again – nothing happened. Then the attendant said the Americans are always in a hurry – he showed us how, in a much less hurried manner, we could acquire the tickets. No wonder their heart disease rate is so much less than the Americans – it’s not just the wine, it’s the lack of stress too – something to be learned here. Being there makes you want to slow down a bit too – and “stop and smell the roses” now and then.

The main thing that struck LaDawn and I were the people themselves – how friendly, how helpful everyone was - how just plain nice they were – that included just about everyone we met. At one point while reading a map, we had a couple just walk up to us to volunteer help. Heck, even the language barrier was not a problem - we all just picked through the words we knew and eventually got the help we needed.

People have asked, “Why were you blogging on your vacation?” The main reason is this. Vacations are something we all enjoy, and we all enjoy sharing the stories when we get home. But sharing the stories day by day via our blog, along with the interesting links, was a way for us to relive the day and also a way for you, our family and friends, to journey with us. We hope you all enjoyed the trip.

Au Revoir, Dave and LaDawn

Heading Home

The alarm went off way too soon, but we were up and out the door in 45 minutes. We wanted to get to the train station early so we could drop the rental car, organize all the bags, and find out where we needed to be to catch the right train to Charles de Gaulle Airport around 6 a.m.

We arrive at 5:00 a.m. but the gates are locked shut – the guards tell us they don’t open till 5:30 a.m. – 30 minutes before we needed to be on the train! Nothing we could do but just sit there. LaDawn kept telling me to practice the “P” word.

Once those gates opened, it was a whirlwind to get in, drop LaDawn off with all the bags, return the rental, get 5 bags muscled through the station, find the train, and prepare to board – remember, there are no skycaps around to help with any of this – you are on your own. We even managed to keep another American couple from boarding the wrong train. Anyway… we made it, saw a nice sunrise in the south of France, and the beautiful farm lands as we headed north.

Airport check-in was a breeze. As we stood in line, we struck up a conversation with some other passengers standing with us in line. This is where the “small world thing” popped up. The young lady we visited with was returning from her third business trip to India – she lives in Independence – not 5 miles away from us. Another gentleman was just returning from the West Bank, Lebanon, and Israel – he reports directly to the Vatican in Rome about the conditions of catholic elementary schools in the mid east. He lives in Cincy, but was going to spend a day or two in Dry Ridge, again right down the road from us – like I said, small world.

An hour later we were in the air. Yep, That's the Great American Ballpark and Paul Brown Stadium from the air as we were coming in for a landing at CVG.

Avignon – Palace of the Popes

On Thursday we left Crillon le Brave and headed back to Avignon to spend the night. We had to catch the TGV bullet train about 6 A.M. That meant a pretty early wake up call and we wanted to be close to the train depot.

We arrived Avignon about 1 p.m., got settled in at the Avignon Grand Hotel – a very nice place – heck, they even upgraded us to a suite – “clean living” I suppose. We still had one more day in the country and the Palais des Papes was walking distance away.

Avignon is a very old French city that sits right on the Rhone river. It’s claim to fame it that it housed the Popes for about 100 years from the early 1300’s – so of course, we had to tour the Palais des Papes. This was one very “cool”, and very big palace. All the treasures have since been looted, but it was quite an experience walking the space the popes walked 700 years ago. You look at the size and breath of these medieval structures, and you just marvel at the engineering that must have gone into these building projects.

We settled in for our last meal in France – you won’t believe where – it was O’Neill’s Irish Pub. Please no emails. It was prepared in a French style, very delicious, and heck, it was happy hour too. After that, it was back to the hotel and set the alarms for 3:45 a.m.

Heading For Home - But...

We had another wonderful day today visiting Avignon today - this city was the home of the popes for most of the 1300's. I'm not "reporting" tonight because it is almost midnight here in Avignon and LaDawn and I have a train to catch at 6 AM. After about 3 1/2 train ride, we have to catch our Delta flight back to Cincy in Paris about 11:40AM - yep, kind of a tight connection - so it's off to beddy-bye for now. Updates and recaps over the weekend - Au Revior - Dave and LaDawn

Carpentras, Sunflowers and the Oldest Synagogue in France

Wow! What a trip trough the mountains - just beautiful! After we got out of the mountains, we continued on and passed some of the most beautiful sunflower fields we had ever seen - considering we had never seen any, it was a sight to behold. We had to beat the rain drops, but still got some great shots - I think LaDawn has one of the best shots with her close-up of one of the sunflower images that closes the slide show.

Now we land in Carpentras, a nice medium size town in France. Although we visited a beautiful church, one Carpentras' claim to fame is that it is home to the oldest synagogue in France. We took the tour and it was beautiful. About 100 families now call this synagogue their spiritual home.

We also visited Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, a quaint little village known for it's antique shops and water wheels. The traffic was bumper to bumper, but once we got parked, it was a fun little visit.

Across the Mountains Again

We had a great time on our short visit to Sault. Now we headed back east in the direction of Carpentras, France - we had to cross the mountains one more time. We could have taken the quicker highway route, but saw a sign for the "Tourist Route" - we took that one - WOW! what a site. I was stopping the car about every 10 feet to take more pictures - the views were magnificent!!!

The first stop was this unbelievable Lavender field - LaDawn and I were both out wondering the beautiful views taking a million pictures among this this gorgeous French county scape.

After the lavender fields, it was the mountain route descending through the Gorge de la Nesque - be sure to check out this video of the bikers decent - it's what we saw! - the mountains the views were unbelievable.It was like traveling Route 1 through the US. It looked like a glacier just carved it's way down the valley. LaDawn and both think we saw more beauty today on our little adventure than any other day. Just fantanstic!

Heading to Sault - Lavender Capital of the World

Today we decided to head out to Sault. Now to get to Sault, you have to cross the mountains - what a trip. It reminded LaDawn and I a bit like Scotland - the trees get a bit scrubby and are not as tall - you just get a feeling that you are a bit higher than where you started.

The first thrill was coming back down the mountain on the other side heading in to Sault. Sault produces 80% of the world's Lavender crop. Lavender is a beautiful purple plant that fills the air with an absolutely wonderful fragrance. When we saw it by the road and got out of the car to take a closer look, you could smell it instantly - just beautiful.

The town itself sits up on a hill - a lot of towns in France seem to have that same kind of geography - very interesting and romantic to see. We roamed around a bit - there was a very nice street market going on which was fascinating to explore - yep that's where most of the souvenirs came from. Each town in France that we visited was a special joy - both in the look and in the people we met (and did our best to communicate with). It was a nice visit.

Wine Country!

Off to Chateauneuf de Pape today. Chateauneuf de Pape was home to the Popes in the early 1300's. Pope John XXII was the first to plant vineyards there. The drive was about 45 minutes from our hotel - and no wrong turns today! - but what a treat to drive through the French countryside.

We had lunch at a great little restaurant named Le Mere Germaine - wonderful food and ambiance, but be sure to take your MasterCard as Amex and Visa did not work in their credit card machine.

The cool thing about the town is that many of the wineries have their "Cave degustation" - that's tasting cellar to us - right in town. Wow! You can hit a bunch all at one time!

We also ventured out to some of the vineyards for some great tastings too. One of our favorites was Chateau Cabrieres. Our host was heading to Cleveland in a few months because he has family there - small world.

The experience was fun because they didn't speak much English and we didn't speak much French - but it all works out. We tasted many wines, purchased a few bottles, and had a great time visiting with the people.

A Walk to Bedoin - and Back

Bedoin is a small town just 4 kilometers (or an hour) - that's about 2.4 miles to us Americans - from Crillon le Brave. It was a warm day and that little road sure was busy. And when I have a camera in hand the walk can be kind of slow - so many pictures, so little time. Check out those weird little snails in the slide show too- they were everywhere!

By the time we got to the town - about 2:05 P.M. - we were a bit tired and in need a little lunch and refreshment. To our surprise, all restaurants close at 2 - no lunch to be found. Ah, but a little market had just what we were looking for - a little bread, wine, cheese, and a snack or two.

After our little respite we headed back - did I say there no taxi's for the ride back either. Yep, we got our exercise in for the day - still a pretty walk.

Crillon le Brave

It was not the easiest place to get to, especially if you don't speak the language, but no problem. LaDawn and I took about 10 wrong turns before we got here and finally pulled into a gas station - many of the gas stations here have no attendants, at least on Sunday - to ask for help from a fellow motorist. I know what you are thinking - LaDawn doesn't speak French - your right, but she communicated enough so that in the end the accommodating driver said follow him. I have to say the people over here have been about the friendliest any we have traveled. The language is a challenge, but after a smile or two, we all get it worked out.

What an idyllic location. The hotel is about 25 miles outside Avignon, located in the town of Crillon le Brave. The city was named after a famous French warrior. Check the link for more info - very fascinating. It was in decline until the 1970's, but now is host to the wonderful hotel - Hotel Crillon le Brave.

We had our best meal of the trip at the hotel restaurant last night. Service was very good - thankfully everyone spoke very good English - and the wine was wonderful. We are headed back there again tonight. All the images are from just around the hotel, restaurant, and our room - absolutely gorgeous!

Heading South

We had a train to catch to Avignon in the South of France - Part 2 of our trip. The train station is a bit different than the airport -no skycaps to help with bags. Nevertheless, we managed just fine.

We traveled the TGV bullet train down to Avignon. These trains travel at about 200 mph - that's fast - so an 8 hour drive turns into and a 2 1/2 super comfy, quit ride.

It was really cool to see the countryside change as we headed south. Paris in pretty flat, but as you head further south the topography turns into rolling hills and finally mountains. One more very important item - we made it to wine country - the adventure continues!