After our pleasant stay in San Gimignano, the romantic City of Florence, or as the Italians call it, “Firenze”, was actually out of our way, but with its reputation for being one of the most beautiful cities in the world, according to Forbes, it was worth the short drive back north. Florence is considered the […]
Heading south out of the enchanting town of San Gimignano, we couldn’t resist a quick stop in Volterra to visit its Guarnacci Etruscan Museum, with thousands of funeral urns dating back to the Hellenistic and Archaic periods. Main attractions are the bronze statuette “Shadow of the Night” and the sculpted effigy of an Etruscan couple […]
Christmas 2013 We’re playing catch up again. In case you wondered where we were and what we did for Christmas, here’s a brief report. Leaving Pisa behind us we followed secondary roads through beautiful Tuscany of Italy. The scenery was truly everything we could have expected from this famous region, even in wintertime. Chief navigator […]
With our water leak fixed and the assurance we would have a warm Christmas with hot water, we headed east and crossed into Italy. Our first stop was the famous town Pisa, which much to Monika’s annoyance I continued to call it Pizza. Certainly on the short list of things we had to see in […]
It had been an interesting morning. We had spent several hours wandering through the Pont de Gau Bird Park near the town of Stes Maries-de-la-Mer, photographing thousands of pink flamingos who flock there every day to gobble up the rice that the Park provides for them. Returning to the truck, we decided to have a […]
A must-stop on the way to Arles is the Pont de Grau Bird Park founded in 1949 by the passionate Camarguais ornithologist André Lamoroux. In 1974, his son, René Lamoroux, took charge. He envisioned a large sanctuary for local and migrating birds. Today, the park has grown to 60 hectares where thousands of birds can […]
The Camargue – It has a mystical ring for any European. Beautiful wild white horses and Gypsies gathering in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer once a year. The Camargue, the Rhône River Delta, is the largest delta in Western Europe, but it is much more than that: Fighting Camargue bulls, straw thatched white farm houses, dykes, brine lagoons, lakes […]
Driving through the Southwestern part of France, many people had insisted we visit Carcassonne, the largest fortified city in Europe. What struck us first were the impenetrable walls high up on the hill, yet people were driving their cars into the fully walled cité where they clattered by us over the cobblestones. Cars in a […]
Being members of the Silk Road Motor Caravan Club, fellow travelers British/Scottish Chris and Jack Kane, invited us to stop by at their home in Vinça, France. Having just returned from a six-year journey through Central and North America, they were keenly aware of our needs to get off the road for a few days. […]
It was in Figueres that we met up with our old friend Chema Huete, past editor of Solo Auto 4×4. The readers of this magazine followed our travels through South America in the late 80’s and our Siberian trip in 1996. Chema now owns 4×4 Pasion.com, an online magazine. We spent a couple of fun […]
