Clair and Tiffany's 2012 Adventures - #9 Ile de France Walks

One of our favorite Paris activities is our Wednesday hiking group, Ile de France Walks.  Every Thursday or Friday, an email arrives telling us who is leading the next hike, where we're going, how many kilometers, what train station, which train and the departure time. The evening before the hike, we prepare our backpacks, check that lunch fixings are ready for sandwich-making the next morning, calculate how much coffee we'll have time to drink before rushing out the door, and check the weather report.  We start checking the weather report first. It's not a lot of fun to walk in mud and we have an especially drizzly April, May, and June.  We skip a lot of Wednesday walks, only to learn afterwards that the forecasts were overly pessimistic, and the weather was grand.  We stop checking the weather report.

Here are highlights of some of our 2012 walks. Click here.

Clair and Tiffany's 2012 Adventures - #8 The Valley of the Sarthe

We don't quite know how we allowed this to happen, but until last week, we had never been to the Loire Valley. This omission has been at least partially remedied. We had the good fortune to visit friends Chloe and Joe Erkenbrecker in the Sarthe Valley, just north of the Loire, and to zig-zag and explore parts of both regions. Click here.

Clair and Tiffany's 2012 Adventures - #7 St. Malo and Brest

Over France's July 14 Bastille Day holiday weekend, we took a two-day no-frills motorcoach trip to the coast of Brittany for a visit to the medieval walled city of St. Malo, and then to Brest to attend the large, colorful International Sea and Sailing Festival.  Click here.

Clair and Tiffany's 2012 Adventures - #6 Paris Streets and Sidewalks

Most parts of central Paris are now familiar stomping grounds. We know that just around the corner or just over the bridge will be a visual feast.  We know those historic facades, market stalls, and trendy boutiques and we stop and admire them all over again. 


We also love the surprises. No matter where we're heading to or coming home from - the grocery store, shoe repair shop, a movie, the library - we invariably come across something unexpected that draws our attention; something lively, colorful, intriguing, sweet, oddball, or combinations thereof.  They are like little gifts from the streets and sidewalks of Paris for merely venturing out the door.
Click here.

Clair and Tiffany's 2012 Adventures - #5 Saint-Gervais-Les-Bains

On June 11, Clair and I took the train from Paris to Saint-Gervais-Les-Bains in the French Alps and met up with 12 other members of our Wednesday walking group for five days of hiking and sightseeing. Our understanding was that this would not be very strenuous. Good, because we're not all that much in shape.  In Sacramento, we don't hike, we don't walk, and it's rare that we ever encounter stairs.  In Paris we walk, although our stair climbing has fallen off this year: we've got an elevator, and we don't get as much Metro stair workouts anymore because we've been using the bus.

So there we are, trying to keep up - and up, and up, and more up, on trails that were slippery, narrow, rocky, steep, and often muddy, sometimes holding an umbrella.  Then down, down, down, not that much better. Incredibly, we did it. We had a great time.  Click here for our album.

Clair and Tiffany's 2012 Adventures - #4 Tulips, tulips, tulips

We've been surprised at how excited we can get when we see well designed tulip displays in the large public gardens in Paris, so since we were going to be in the Netherlands at THE peak of the tulip season, we check out how the Dutch do tulips. Click here.

Clair and Tiffany's 2012 Adventures - #3 Amsterdam

After attending the EUU Spring Retreat, we spend a few days in Amsterdam. Click here.

Clair and Tiffany's 2012 Adventures - #2 Kerkrade, Netherlands

Clair and I join about 200 Unitarian Universalists from various English-language fellowships around Europe at the annual Spring EUU Retreat in Kerkrade, Netherlands, April 20-22, 2012.



Rolduc Abbey, Kerkrade, Netherlands



Click here.

Clair and Tiffany's 2012 Adventures - #1 Settling back into our Other Life

March in Sacramento is always full to the brim, with taxes, getting the yard in shape, organizing closets, getting together with friends, and basically trying to cram in everything that we never get around to during the last 6 months because we think we'll have all the time in the world.

Then April arrives and with it, metamorphosis.  Rolling our carry ons behind us, we shed Sacramento and fly off to Paris, our Other Life.

Click here to go to our Flickr photos.