Our 2017 European Adventure Begins

Duke and have started another long travel adventure. This time we plan to spend two months in Europe. We flew into Madrid and will fly out of Zurich. We will have a rental car in Spain and then we will use public transportation in France, Italy, Slovaki, Hungary, Austria and Switzerland. If you would like to see our itinerary there is a link on the side of the blog to our current plan if you are using a phone to read this you can get to the itinerary using the menu button.

We made it to Madrid. It is a long way from Reno! We left Reno on Jet Blue at midnight Friday night and arrived in New York Saturday morning.  The best thing about Jet Blue is the extra few inches of leg room they provide. It is amazing what a big difference those few inches make to the comfort of the flight.
At JFK in New York we picked up our bags and found a seat to doze and wait for the Iberia Airlines  check-in counter to open. About two pm we finally got checked in, went through security and had a meal. It was incredible that in Terminal 5 where we were waiting you couldn’t even buy a water until you went through security.

Our Iberia flight left about 6pm Saturday night and we arrived in Madrid at 5:30 am Sunday morning.  Iberia gave us both dinner and breakfast and the food was really good. It is so nice to be on a full service airline!!

I’m sure that there will be a lot of sharing of food pictures on this trip so I’ll start now.


We took the metro from the airport to our hotel, The Tryp Gran Via. It is very near where we stayed last year when we were in Madrid. It was pouring rain and the wind was blowing hard when we walked from the Metro to the hotel.

We couldn’t check in until 1:00 so we walked to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. The sun had come out by this point and the buildings were shining!


Notice the Welcome Refugees sign!

The Thyssen has a vast collection of mostly European art from the thirteenth century to the present.  What a wonderful museum!  We saw Van Goughs, Renoirs, and Picassos. In fact they have at least one work from almost every famous painter.


I’m planning to blog everyday. If you want to get an email every time I post you can click the follow button which is usually in the bottom right corner of the Blog. And I really would be interested to know what you like and don’t like to include. Would you like more pictures? Fewer pictures? More words? Fewer words? What else?

Snowshoeing along Prosser Creek north of Truckee

Duke and I had a very nice snowshoeing outing today along Prosser Creek North of Truckee. We parked just off of highway 89 and headed southeast along the creek. You can see our route at the link below.

Snowshoeing route off of Highway 89 north of Truckee.

This link will open an interactive CalTopo map of our route in a new browser tab.

2017-01-15-12-27-23

2017-01-15-12-04-30

Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Switzerland – Looking for Suggestions for Our Next Trip

We are looking for advice!!

Duke and I are starting to plan our next trip. We will leave February 4 and return April 4. We bought airplane tickets to fly into Madrid and out of Zurich.

Our current plan is to rent a car in Madrid and spend almost three weeks in northern Spain.Then we will make our way across southern France, northern Italy and into Austria. Then to Hungary and Slovakia and finally fly out of Switzerland.

I’ve decided to resurrect my French from High School. I’ve started studying and taking lessons from a great French teacher through italki. Bonne année!!

We know lots of people who have traveled or lived in that part of the world and would love suggestions of places to stay or eat and things to see.

Pisac to Cusco – Friday, November 4, 2016

Tomorrow we fly out of Cusco to Lima and from Lima home. So today we took a taxi from Pisac back to Cusco. Before we left we wondered around Pisac people watching and browsing. We bought some souvenirs too. 

In Pisac we stayed at the Pisac Inn. It was a wonderful place although all the doorways were only about 5 foot 10 inches tall. This is the courtyard. 

In Cusco we visited a couple of museums and wandered around people watching. 


We did some more shopping and bought some more yarn. Duke says he is going to learn to knit!


Pisco is Peru’s national drink. It is s distilled wine. This afternoon we did a tasting at the Museo de Pisco. We liked the blended version best. 

The Inca walls and how tightly they fit together never cease to amaze me. This twelve sided stone is a perfect example. 


For dinner we are at Morena. The whole meal was wonderful but the desert, Cacao was especially good. A chocolate brownie with chocolate ice cream served in a cacao pod. 

Urubamba  to Pisac – Thursday, November 3, 2016

This morning before we left Sacred Dreams Lodge near Urubamba we hiked to some ruins near the lodge. The hotel dog accompanied us on the hike. 


We took a taxi from Urubamba to Pisac. We are staying at the Pisac Inn. Around 3pm we took a taxi up to the Pisac ruins and walked down to our hotel. It was quite a walk. Around every turn there were more very different and very impressive ruins. 




We had a great dinner at our hotel.