Lindsey and I rented a car a few weeks ago and saw a ton of Europe :), where did we go?

First we drove up to Milan to meet two friends, then to Lake Como, then through Switzerland to check out Geneva, and then down to the Cathar region of France near the Pyrenees mountains to hike.

What does gas station food in Italy look like?

In Lake Como Lindsey found us an amazing place to stay, we managed a little hike even though it was windy.

We visited Geneva for a day, and drove through all of Switzerland which was pretty stunning. Our photos from that area didn’t turn out well since they were all taken from a car :). We spent a half day exploring Geneva since that might be where Lindsey goes to grad school too!

Next we drove down through France to the Languedoc region where we did a lot of hiking. I’ve always wanted to go to visit this region of France, I was very interested in the Cathar religion, the Crusade against them, and the castles that emerged from that fight and subsequent border fights with the Spanish. I got to crawl around a lot of castles, we went on a lot of hikes, and we tried to stay warm as the Tramontane wind was out in full force.

Lindsey is an awesome navigator and got us from point A to point B which was hard considering we had no net/gps and no paper map :).

I also realized I’ve now been to 40 countries with my trip to Switzerland :)!

Lindsey found an amazing hike for us this weekend! We took the train to the Biot stop, and hiked from there to city center, and then along a beautiful 7 mile path to the village of Valbonne. We ended up staying the night (instead of riding the bus back), and hiked back in the morning. Fun weekend :)

The nearby town of Menton puts on a Lemon festival every year, so we wandered over to take a look. The theme this year was “the tribulations of a lemon in China”, which is really weird and I couldn’t find any further info on what tribulations the lemon endures. What I like best about this poster is the ninjas on the bottom, which is not very chinese, but maybe they are kung fu ninjas? Not to mention all the crazy weird things they did in the spirit of china…

Question, is drawing asian eyes on a white mannequin racist or thrifty?

Lindsey found an awesome coastal walk for us :)! We took the train up to Menton, walked along the coast all the way to Monaco, through the entire kingdom of Monaco (it wasn’t a very big kingdom), and to Cap Mala where we caught a train back to Nice. It was beautiful an awesome day to spend in the sun. We ended up walking about 12 miles :)

I especially love the stairs leading down to the sea in a few of the pictures below. I’ve had this story in my head for a while about a kid who lives in an underwater cave off the coast with an old wise giant octopus, and the stairs really seemed a cool touch for that.

We landed in Nice, France! And, it is nice… that will never get old :). We will be here for a few months, and then moving over to Croatia. All part of our long honeymoon intermixed with work, grad school applications, and side trips. Work has been crazy busy, and hopefully as I get free in a few weeks I will feel like writing some longer updates :).

The only suprise so far has been how few yoga classes there are in a city of 200,000. I was hoping to do Yoga about 2 to 4 times a week, and it is hard to find a location that has yoga more than once a week :(. Oh well, I guess I will have to start smoking, wearing black, and drinking espresso.

So what is the plan for 2015?

Where will we be in 2015?
We are headed to France in late January, and we are going to stay there through April, and then move over to beautiful Croatia through June. I am really excited about living next to the ocean, I always find it peaceful.

I am also looking forward to being in Europe because the work schedule is amazing, I can focus on project work in the morning, and meetings in the afternoon/evening. Whereas in the USA I do meetings in the morning, project time in the afternoon. It should be a nice change of pace for us :). Lindsey is in the process of applying to grad school, so by June we should know where we are headed next.

I don’t often post book recommendations on the blog, in fact I’ve only written two full blog posts on books this year, the rest just get a small blurb on the big list. So keep that in mind as the title of this book I’m about to recommend should scare you away, the title is Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French.

So the title sounds a bit weird but the book is absolutely amazing! I’ve visited France three or four times over the last couple years and I’ve been trying to learn more about french culture and history and this book is the answer, it is as if someone forced a book on french history, french politics, and french business outlook to have menage a trois and this book is the baby. The book is well written, well researched, and well laid out.

And a quick example, I’ve been involved with computers for a long time and I’ve never heard of the Minitel yet after a chapter of reading about it in this book I was stunned. This was basically a very successful precursor to the internet that launched in 1982, a mere year after I was born. This little networked device could do online dating, message boards, buy airline or train tickets, order stuff, porn, etc. Crazy that I’ve never heard of it.

So go buy this book if you want to learn how France works. It is great to learn more about another democracy that continually chooses a different path then the USA. And hopefully we can pull some ways to change our system out of the mistakes they have made, and the things they are doing very well.

And…

The other book I strongly recommended this year is War (Click Here to learn more about it). A documentary is also going to come out about the author and the soldiers he wrote about.

I really liked this wine and highly recommend you drink it.

What I love most (and hate if you are there) about Italy is that they will never be any kind of economic threat to the rest of the world, ever… Why might you ask? Because if you are wanting to buy a drink at a disco, you might think oh i’ll go buy a drink, but nay, you must first buy a ticket in a very long line, and then after that you must go to another line to present that ticket for that drink, oh and they don’t really take credit cards very well, and they have nothing like a tray to hold all the orders. I’m so glad I was not born in Italy as I would have shot myself in my sober sober head years ago from frustration. I encountered this again with sandwiches etc. My only guess is they like lines, or they like to pretend they are employing twice as much people, or they like being inefficient.

I exaggerate a little as I wasn’t that frustrated (mostly cause they have a lot of cheap wine which makes you very patient), but it is very evident they will never be able to complete globally with the USA and China’s and even Japans of the world. It’s just sad to see. Beautiful country through, and at least they make great ice cream.

I am also biased as I HATE their “soccer” team, I use quote marks as their team is mostly just a bunch of pussy actors who spend their time practicing their dives. And when I start to love a head butting french man over you, you might be in trouble as a country.

Venice was absolutely amazing, most expensive place I’ve ever been though. Go for a day or two and see a dieing city and just imagine how amazing it would have been 300 or 400 years ago.