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Movie reviews: Two that were inspiring
*** Temple Grandin (February 2010) – Rental Claire Danes, Julia Ormond. Dramatization of the young adult years in the life of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who had great career success. She says:...
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Southern Italy
Been quiet for me on the blogging front, as we’ve been out of country. We were on a hiking tour of the Amalfi Coast of Italy, followed by a couple days in Rome. The itinerary was as follows (each...
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Movie reviews: Two British comedies
*** The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (May 2012) – Theatre Judy Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith. British retirees are lured to the bargain price Marigold Hotel in India, only to find it’s not quite like...
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A tale of two cities
Our latest vacation had us spending about one week in Budapest, Hungary, and another week in Prague, Czech Republic. This gave us time to visit both cities in a fairly relaxed fashion, spreading out...
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About the red hat
We’re just back from a trip to the French Riviera, and I expect I’ll be writing a few blog posts about that. I feel a need to start, though, by explaining my attire. I have travelled the world (well,...
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Of walks and weather
The two things I fretted about most before our “Walking the French Riviera” tour were fitness and weather. Though the tour was classified as leisurely / moderate, we’d found with the Amalfi walking...
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Cities of the French Riviera
I had never heard of Menton, France before this trip, but that’s where we stayed the whole time. It was a great home base. Quieter than Nice, but still offering plenty of interesting shops, good...
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French food
Other than its lack of in-house wifi (which we solved by bringing our own), we were pretty happy with our hotel room in Menton, which was Hôtel Club Le Balmoral. The hotel’s location, I think I noted,...
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Croatian vacation: Wherein Jean and Cathy learn to relax (sort of)
Why did we go to Croatia, of all places? Jean had heard good things about it. He’d found a small-ship cruise that fit into one of the few periods this spring where we could fit in a 10-day vacation....
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Dalmatian Island highlights (with pretty pictures)
Our recent trip took us to Dubrovnik, Croatia (after a 9+ hour flight, transfer, and additional 45-minute flight). We then took a one-week, small-ship cruise of the Dalmatian Islands, ending up back in...
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Berlin, mon amour
Tuesday morning. It’s cold. It’s raining. The museum lineup has slowed to a crawl, as groups of school children gained entry ahead of us. Jean has lapsed into a grumpy silence. My mood is darkening...
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Tear down the wall
Modern Berlin is vibrant. Its streets are always busy, though never uncomfortably crowded. Its people are a multicultural mix who speak a variety of languages, with German predominating, of course. The...
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Other Berlin highlights
Berlin has a lot to offer besides memorials to its Wall. Initially I’d thought that since we were staying in the city a whole week, it should be pretty relaxing—that we’d be able to take in activities...
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Dining in Berlin
The Hackescher Markt area of Berlin is the one end we ended up dining in the most. We went there first on the Monday, aiming for an Italian restaurant named Muret La Barba. We knew it was wise to try...
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A bewildered Canadian on a world gone mad
It’s Canada Day. And right now the world is giving me many reminders of how lucky I am to live here. 1. That Quebec’s referendum on separation was defeated. I wasn’t paying much attention to Brexit...
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Walking in the Basque Country: Part 1
Jean had this trip in mind for a while. I was less certain about it, as I knew nothing about these places—San Sebastian, Bilbao, Biarritz—which meant I had no particular desire to go there. But when I...
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Walking the Basque country: Part 2
This is a continuation of Part 1… A little interlude… I mentioned that our hotel had some interesting architectural features, including a glass partition dividing the bathroom from the bedroom, which I...
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Hey, ho and away we go! Donkey riding in the Douro
The original choice for our Fall vacation was the Exodus trip Walking the Prosecco Hills, but when we went to book it, they had only one spot left. So we switched to Portugal: Walking and Wine. This...
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Ireland
We headed out for our one-week trip to Ireland without great expectations. We had done some research and put together an itinerary that seemed manageable in the limited time we had. We had a lot of...
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