From Barcelona to Tramuntana

May 2017
I forgot how mesmerizing night sailing can be in the right conditions.  We set off from Barcelona in mid afternoon under amazing weather and wind conditions.  We had a most magical, peaceful sail through the night, with the moon lighting our way and big blobs of fluorescence (perhaps jellyfish?) trailing behind the boat.  We rounded the formidable Cap de Formentor in NW Mallorca in the morning and anchored in a secluded anchorage, shedding the sleepiness of the night as well as our cold weather clothes.  The weather has been improving with every mile we sailed since France and it finally feels like the Mediterranean summer. The water is still fairly cold for swimming but its turquoise hue and clarity beats even that of the Bahamas.  We dropped our anchor in 10m of water and I could clearly see the chain paying out and the anchor getting set.  How convenient!

We loved our stay in Barcelona, spending four days in a yacht club right at the foot of the La Rambla, taking in the funkiness of the city.  Barcelona is so full of life, music and whimsical art. We spent our days working on the boat (yes, there is a lot of chores and fixes) and walking through the city, and the evenings in jazz clubs and even once made it to an opera!  We checked on the progress of Sagrada Familia since our last visit.  It is now consecrated, but far from being completed.  In fact while some parts have not yet been built, other parts need to be already renovated.  The plan is to complete the construction by 2026 in honour of the 100th anniversary of Gaudi's death.  A very ambitious plan we think.

But after the bustle of Barcelona, it has been nice to just hang out.  We took our time rounding Mallorca via the north and east coast before tying up for a few days in Palma.  Along the way we managed to do some hiking (which I believe was more intended for goats than people) and of course biking in the Tramuntana mountains.  We heard this before arriving, but now we can confirm that Mallorca truly is a mecca for road biking.  We have seen literally hundreds of road bikes along the way, of course pretty much all of them passing us (we have folding touring bikes, and that's my excuse). And not just any bikes, these were high end, fancy machines.  Lot of pro teams are apparently doing their spring training here. In certain towns, wherever you look - hotels, restaurants, roads...  there are bikes everywhere.  But oh the Tramuntana, a wild, spectacular mountain ridge running along the west side of the island, meaning that one part of a bike ride has to go continuously up and the other part continuously down.  Flat road doesn't exist. I have to honestly say that the hairpins on the way down scared the hell out of me, I much preferred the slow uphill.  The bonus is that along the way there are monasteries and limestone caves to be visited and after a bike ride (well, maybe even without a bike ride), there are wonderful treats to be had...

We have managed to avoid creating any more incidents (although Kuno did prompt the yacht club in Barcelona to install more steel plates on the gate to the dock after Kuno reached in around to open it when we didn't have the code and triggered the alarm) and we did manage to wrap a quay mooring line into our propeller, forcing Kuno to do a harbour dive to free it. Thankfully, no damage other than to our sailing egos. We considered rescuing a stranded goat from a rocky ledge above the water, but after contemplating its horns and the soft nature of our dinghy and eliminating Kuno's idea of lassoing the goat and pulling it behind the dinghy, we had to accept the principle of natural survival of the fittest and gave up.  Shopping trips to chandleries continue, the latest in Palma creating significant damage to our credit card for a very small number of very expensive boat bits and bobs.  I have now concluded that chandleries to men are the equivalent of shoe stores to women.  I just can't decide which camp am I in.  I like both.

As a slight diversion, we are now in Switzerland for 3 days, visiting with Kuno's mom, while Blue Moon is safely in the harbour of Palma.  It is so cool, a flight from Palma to Basel in Switzerland is just 1.5 hour!  But it is cold and raining here, so I am looking forward to returning to Mallorca.

That was a bit more of a first sail than I bargained for

It sure is nice to be Canadian these days.  We hoisted our Canadian flag shortly after moving onto the boat in La Grande Motte in France and it immediately started attracting attention.  The combination of our unusual boat and the flag became a magnet to the point that Kuno considered taking the flag down again as he spent all the time chatting and not getting on with his boat chores.

With the French election underway and the string of frequent security incidents in Europe, France seems to be a bit on edge.  In short few days, we were delayed at the airport coming in when part of the airport was closed off for security reasons (unclaimed luggage), then our train was stopped for an hour because there was a security incident and they had to evacuate the train station.  And to top it off, our own luggage almost created an event.  We left our old empty suitcase on the quay by our boat, thinking that overnight somebody might pick it up (must be a Canadian thing).  At about 11pm, I hear a knock on the boat, a French man saying that there is an unattended luggage and he is going to call the police.  How embarrassing.  So I took the luggage in and next day went to throw it out into the garbage bin.  But to make sure I don't create another incident, I made a show of opening it up, shaking it out and placing it open into the bin.. clearly no danger inside.  Phew, who would have thought.

We spent a week in La Grande Motte settling into the boat, setting things up, equipping and provisioning.  The 600lb crate we shipped from Vancouver with all our "stuff" arrived unharmed, even though a bit delayed.  But apparently that wasn't enough stuff and we still made endless trips to the chandlery and hardware store to buy even more stuff.  When I entered the hardware store for the second time, the girl there was ready, offering me bigger shopping baskets and storing my other bags by the cashier just so that I could make even more purchases than the day before.  But the boat is now fully functional with just a few things left to do and on Thursday morning we finally made it out of La Grande Motte.  We now have 3 weeks of sailing ahead of us with absolutely no place to be and no schedule or plan to follow.  We are truly following the wind.  And so, instead of sailing to Mallorca, we decided to hop along the Spanish coast to Barcelona before we cross over to the Balearics.

Our first sail was much more than I bargained for.  We started on a cold early morning in very calm wind, with about 80nm (or about 10 hours) to sail to a little town of Port Vendres on the French side of the border with Spain.  As to welcome us to the world of sailing, dolphins joined us, crisscrossing the bow wake for fun.  The wind increased steadily but unfortunately not quite in the forecasted direction.  We ended up with 25-30knt winds sailing close hauled or on beam all the way.  
We averaged 8-9 knot speed (in comparison, our old boat would have been about 6), registering up to 12 knots when surfing the waves.  It was a pretty wild ride for the first time on a new boat, with the bow getting buried and waves occasionally crashing over the side into the cockpit.  Not to mention that one of the shackles on the main sheet pulleys was busted and somehow nobody told us, so Kuno had to provisionally fix it while underway.  Once again I totally underestimated the weather in the Mediterranean.  And this became quite apparent when I saw the snowcapped Pyrenees in the background once we got close to the coast.  Clearly the northerly wind was going to be cold!  I put on all the warm clothes I possibly could and even then I was cold the whole way, sitting under a blanket tucked into the downwind corner under the dodger.  But, as I got used to the motion of the boat, I was once again reminded that boats are meant to do this and our new boat felt really solid and safe.  So in the end, even though I would have preferred an easier sail to start with, it was a good confidence building trip.

Now we are hopping along the coast south and its starting to feel like a vacation instead of a work party.  We even managed to get in a nice hike along the coast and today we are hoping to go biking along the river Ter. There is a bike path that leads about 200km and 2200m up all the way toward the source of the river in the Pyrenees.  That would be a great trip in the right direction!  But we will just manage a piece in the flatlands.

Powerplants, battlefields and cathedrals

 Normandy, August 2014

 

Aaahhh, these things just happen to us. We peacefully drive through the French country side and bang, there it is, we don't even have to take a detour - the second largest tidal powerplant in the world.  How could I resist.  And so we spend an afternoon exploring the La Rance 240 MW powerplant, studying the 10 bulb turbines and principles of tidal energy.  The tide difference is about 13m here, one of the largest in Europe, and the plant operates at about 26% power factor, not bad considering the bonus of predictability.  The units generate on flow in, flow out and they also pump water in at high tide to increase the head in the basin.  Very cool, I think I would like one of those please!  And even more impressive, this plant started operating in 1966; pretty visionary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we meander through the Brittany, we stay close to the coast, visiting beautiful towns with well preserved medieval history and feasting on local fare of galletes and cider.  I am proud to say that after a bad 30 year old experience of eating mussels, I have conquered my fear and thoroughly enjoyed a pot full of them.  The towns here are beautifully preserved and at times, after most tourists disappear and we walk through the little alleys all alone, it is not a stretch to think of life few hundred years ago.  

We are in awe of St. Malo with its seafaring history.  The town had a great tidal harbour and as we looked around, we counted 8 forts, including a number of them on surrounding islands for protection.  It never got conquered and served as a base of the corsairs (basically pirates sanctioned by the French kings).  We walk around the ramparts and I am grateful that for once we are not on a sailboat, as the winds are howling and even walking into the wind is a challenge.  

We continue from Brittany to Normandy and enter a more touristy area as we visit the abbey of Mont St. Michel, a UNESCO heritage site.  The business takes some time of getting used to, but the magic of the little island city, rising steeply from the tidal flats makes up for it.  We wonder about the thousand year effort of building the abbey, from a little chapel to the three story masterpiece several hundred years later and to the humongous effort of maintaining it now.  Floating all the building materials in from nearby island, hampered by low tides, resulted in a 60 year construction span at one point.  And that is nothing compared to some of the cathedrals we have visited.  

The one in Rouen underwent pretty much a 1000 years construction, having endured fires, lightning, tornadoes and other disasters, yet being rebuilt grander each time.  The 1944 bombing by the allies prior to the D  day left some unbelievable damage though.  Rouen, and its cathedral, like many cities from the coast of Normandy to Paris, was reduced to ruins, yet we still see the remnants of gratitude toward the British, US and Canadians for the liberation, both in action and displays.  I find it interesting to reflect on the passing time.  When I was growing up, it was only 20 years from the war end and the memory in Europe was still so raw, it was part of our life, even mine.  And now, 70 years later, the generation that experienced the war is slowly leaving us and the history will only live on stories.  On one hand, it is important to move on and yet, just as important, is to have a remembrance of the terrible events and what caused them. Sadly, considering recent events, the world hasn't learned.   We pay our deep respect by visiting several of the D day landing sites, most importantly the Juno beach where the Canadian regiments landed.  The beach is now a resort area with a very active sailing club, but the coast is dotted with remainders of fortifications, landing equipment and memorials. 

 

You might be puzzled by the two pictures in the shape of a cathedral - in Rouen, they have an evening light show, one of my favourite experiences of the trip, where they project specially made movies to  music onto the facade of the cathedral.  It is awesome, kind of a Rouen version of Symphony of Lights, just not as many people.

 

This is our last day in France, tomorrow, we drive to Paris to start dreaming about what our next adventure will be.  Bonne journee!

A Sailboat Wannabe

Bretagne, August 2014

 

Once a sailor, always a sailor, and even though one might reason that boating is boating, it isn't so and we are pulled in the direction of the ocean by taking our little canal boat as far as we can down the river Vilaine until the Arzal Dam (sadly no power installation, it was built to prevent tidal flooding) where sailboats can jam into a huge lock and continue on to the ocean.  For our boat though, this is the limit of where she can safely go and we tie up on the dock among all the sailboats, listening to the halyards banging in the wind, walking the docks checking out the sailboats and pretending we belong.  

The marinas in this area are huge, there is easily a thousand boats here, if not more.  We have never seen anything like it.  Our canal boat looks a bit out of place on the dock and the harbour master was a bit perplexed of what to do with us at first.  Not many canal boats make it down here, mostly staying in the proper canals but this reach of the river is wide and very scenic, definitely one of the highlights of our voyage.  As it doesn't have low bridges, sailboats can make it quite far inland on the river and people store their sailboats here during the off season.  

We bike around the coast, but the water and weather remind me of our coast; even though its sunny, it feels on the cool side. Kuno dips his feet in, but I am content just watching. We also take two train trips, one to the historical port of Vannes and one to the seat of the dukes of Brittany, Nantes.  After the solitude of canal boating, the bustle of these cities, with lively historic cores and artsy atmosphere is a welcome change (notice the cheeky picture of the Non Thinker that was installed in the courtyard of the castle in Nantes).  

Kuno insists on taking the routes less travelled (at least by bikes) and, in a typical Kurschner fashion, instead of following a nicely marked velo route, we end up biking on the hard packed beaches and pushing our bikes through sand dunes, supposedly for enjoyment.  At least the bikes are rentals.  The horizon is dotted by wind turbines wherever one looks, but I can't help but notice that even though its windy they are not running often.  Clearly the folly of improper green energy integration is not just limited to North America, sigh.

 

We return to the boat base drenched by full day of rain.  Even the weather is telling us that it is time to move on.  And so here we are on a Saturday early morning, waiting for a train that will take us to Rennes for the fourth part of our vacation, free traveling wherever out interests take us.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The north parts of Brittany with St. Malo (and a tidal power plant) and Mont St. Michel and beaches of Normandy to pay homage to WWII events and Canadian part in the liberation of Europe are beckoning.  Then again, who knows what will distract us :) along the way.

Floating in the shadows of French castles

Bretagne, July/August 2014

"Schnuggi, do we have a magnet?" Kuno asks on this lovely Thursday morning as we are getting ready to start our daily canal odyssey through Brittany.  I continue to brush my teeth, pondering the question.  Or, more precisely, the reason for the question.  It doesn't take long to figure out that we have a problem on hand as Kuno sheepishly explains that he dropped the keys overboard.  Generally a very bad move. We have two sets of keys on board and this bundle includes the engine key and the safe key containing our passports and money.  They are now apparently very safe!  While Kuno contemplates taking apart the boat speakers to get a magnet, it is clear to me that this is a folly and instead he needs to jump into the canal and find them before other boats start buzzing by.  So in he goes.  Now you need to understand that these canals are not intended for swimming, the water is murky and its best not to think about what floats there considering the boat traffic.  However, as my mom used to say, there is a punishment for every act of stupidity, and Kuno reluctantly dives.  After about 10 minutes, against the odds, he victoriously pulls out the bundle of errant keys and following a long hot shower, we can finally continue on our journey toward the historic towns of Malestroit and Josselin in Brittany.
We chose Brittany as our cruising ground for this year after pouring through brochures and websites, hoping for a rich history and beautiful nature.  It was difficult for us to trade the option of Mediterranean sailing for a landlubber kind of boating, but Brittany, so far, did not disappoint.  Proud to be different than the rest of France in heritage and attitudes (as pointed out to us but also observed), we are enjoying friendliness and hospitality that we have not encountered in other parts of France.  Castles, old towns, rural bike routes, sun, cheese, baguette and fruit pies make a perfect vacation in our books.  And now we discovered a local speciality, apple cider, and have added a bottle or two of this lovely beverage to our daily consumption to complete the happiness.  Its rich yellow color and sweet, mildly alcoholic taste goes refreshingly well with the meandering rivers and canals that pass on the side of our boat, as we progress from Messac on the river Vilaine, through the Nantes-Brest canal to the medieval castle town of Josselin where we turn around and continue to other parts of the area.  But not before we explore by bike what lies beyond, an "up and down" lock staircase over a mountain connecting two watersheds.  Having two weeks gives us a luxury of time to stop and stay wherever we like it, not following a particular plan (gasp!).  Yes, even I can do that occasionally.



Our days unfold slowly, but that is not to say they are without action.  In fact, I am having tough time progressing through my book despite the fact that I like it very much.  In the mornings, Kuno searches nearby villages ostensibly to get a fresh baguette for breakfast, but invariably comes back with all sorts of other goodies that he just couldn't resist.  I suspect that sometimes there are also goodies that he bought but that never made it back to the boat, surely needed for Kuno's refreshment during the strenuous search of boulangeries.  We generally spend a few hours on the boat going to the next destination and then hop on the bikes and explore the countryside, never forgetting to sample any patisserie that comes our way.  

Sometimes its just a few kilometres to the next little town, sometimes a circle route through the countryside and other time, like the trip to the lock staircase we end up out for the whole day of biking.  The bikes we have are rugged and heavy, the wide saddle presenting a particular challenge on longer distances.  But biking along the tow path of the canal route is wonderful, no hills!  We see families with little kids loaded up with camping gear crisscrossing Brittany all the way to the Atlantic.  It seems that the path is in fact more used than the canal itself.  We go for hours without meeting another boat and have the locks to ourselves.  They are much smaller than those we experienced in Canal du Midi, barely holding two boats at a time.  All of them have lock keepers (often students on summer break) that operate the locks and pride themselves on how beautiful their lock is compared to others, particularly in decorating their houses and keeping beautiful gardens with an abundance of flowerpots in every possible spot.  They even have a competition for the most beautiful lock! But  we would be hard-pressed to pick a winner.  

Perhaps the part that I enjoy the most are the castles along the way and the picturesque old villages and towns.  They are all very well maintained, and houses in the old towns are either made from rock or timber with slate roofs.  The oldest one we saw was from early 1500's and other than being crooked so that the newly installed windows did not align with the originally vertical timber, it was just fine.  And lived in.  




We have concluded that the hierarchy of amenities to be found in a village is as follows (you will find more of this sequence with increase in the size of the village): Church or two, followed by at least two bars, a hairdresser or two, and only then a boulangerie and maybe if one is lucky a boucherie.  A grocery store is way, way down the list and so we live on bread, cheese, pate and deserts.  Occasionally we find a town market in progress and stock up on fruit and veggies. The local specialty seems to be something called a galette - it looks like crepe, but it is made from buckwheat flower filled with a selection of savoury or sweet stuff.  It makes for a wonderful lunch.

It is harvest time in Brittany and as we bike through the countryside, it reminds me of the sounds and smells of my childhood; the hay, the cows, the summer rain, the river weir,... It dawns on me that these would not be the same smells that Tatiana would have in her memory and makes me ponder how different her childhood had been than mine.  I wonder if hers would be ocean waves and salty wind.  She is now happily at Cambridge, just finishing a week of leadership training and starting two weeks of law.  As usual when she is happy, her texts to us are minimalistic and that means all is well.

La Dolce Vita

Tuscany, August 2011

For two blissful weeks we have the good fortune of staying at a villa in the Tuscan countryside, just outside of Florence, enjoying the food, wine and history so plentiful in this corner of Italy. This is the part of our trip dedicated to visiting with our families, who join us for the duration from both Switzerland and Czech Republic. Our meal times are filled with a wild mix of English, Czech and Swiss German with neither language common to all of us.

At times I get confused and start speaking to Kuno in Czech wondering why he has a blank expression. Our villa is set among olive trees and just downhill from a 13th century castle. While this is very romantic and initially feels unique, we soon discover that there is a 13th or so century castle on pretty much every hill in Tuscany. Kuno and I rent bikes and try to compensate (unsuccessfully) for the copious amounts of amazing food we eat here by (almost) daily early morning bike rides through the countryside around our villa. This allows us to see a different “view” of Tuscany, meandering through little villages, vineyards and olive groves. As we don’t have a detailed map, we never know exactly where each bike ride will take us, adding to the sense of discovery. Of course most of our rides consist of 2 hours of steep uphill and only 20 minutes of a lovely downhill time, but there is so much to look at that one forgets the pain of the uphill or the heat. Biking seems to be very popular in this part of Italy and we see a lot of older men (no women) riding race bikes dressed in loud pink, yellow, turquoise etc bike outfits one would only expect for Tour de France. Next thing I know, Kuno wants to check out a store for a fancier pair of bike shorts.

With the rest of the family (there are at times nine of us) we explore the major sights of Tuscany in a minivan. Driving itself is an adventure, but Kuno seems to get quickly accustomed to tailgating, overtaking in a curve and putting the right half of the minivan in the ditch to fit with oncoming traffic – simply driving Italian style. We visit the well known sights in Tuscany: Florence with its Michelangelos,Botticellis, great gelato and leather markets, the 17 tall towers of the hill town of San Gimignano, Lucca with its oval shaped piazza, tiny old town of Montecatini perched on the top of a steep hill, and the town of Vinci where Leonardo da Vinci was born. The exhibit of his inventions is mind boggling. The imagination and astuteness of his thinking for the time is incredible. And that on top of his painting and medical science skilss! Although many of his inventions didn’t really quite work, most of them formed the basis of designs that today are part of our lives. Kuno’s favourite place is a little town called San Miniato that we discover while biking. It lies on the ancient trading route Via Francigena and is full of churches and monasteries. My two favourite trips are to Carrara and Siena. In Carrara we drive into the mountains and join a tour of the marble quarries. This is the source of the pure white marble that Michelangelo used for his statues. We drive deep into a mountain (600m in, exactly the middle of the mountain) and there, in a giant cavern, we get an explanation of how the slabs of marble continue to be cut. The effort going into it gives me a new appreciation for the stone and I will never look at a kitchen countertop the same way.

And then there is our trip to the Siena Palio, an annual horse race of the Siena neighbourhoods that has been going on for centuries. For the days of the race the piazza in Siena is covered by sand and bleachers are built around the outside.

Balcony seats on the houses bordering the piazza sell out months ahead for hundreds of Euros. Celebrations are carried out for days before the race. This is serious stuff - on the morning of the race, the horses are led into the Duomo (the main cathedral) and the archbishop himself blesses each horse. During the race, 10 riders representing the various neighbourhoods race, without a saddle, two laps around the piazza. The corners are sharp and accidents happen. However, it is the horse running to the finish that counts in the race, with or without a rider. We don’t make it to the actual day of the Palio, figuring that the mayhem would be too much and choose to come two days early to watch the trial races. The celebrations are in full swing already. Hundreds
of tables line the middle of the streets of the various neighbourhoods for open air dinner in the evening. Giant flags decorate houses and we often have to jump out of the way to let yet another procession of singing and chanting people go by. We barely make it into the middle of the piazza to see the race. It is jammed with thousands of people, but because the piazza is on a slant, everyone can see at least a portion of the race. It is enthralling, just to be part of the hoopla, even though the actual race only last a minute. What an unusual experience, one that can only be seen in Siena and on a few specific days of the year. How lucky for us.

Unfortunately everything comes to an end and we have to leave for Switzerland, the last portion of our European trip. As a heat wave sets in over Europe, we hop on a train to Luzern. Tatiana is counting the days to get back and see her friends after two months. Kuno and I feel that we have had a great fill of exploring and are relaxed enough to happily come back home too.

The Tale of Two Cities

Dubrovnik and Venice, August 2011

We visit Dubrovnik and Venice in short succession and are struck by the similarities and differences between the two cities. Both are strikingly beautiful, have a strategic location on the Adriatic Sea and an incredibly colorful history, especially from the time of being powerful sea merchants in the 14th – 16th century. But the cities feel to us different, as if one is coming alive and the other one dying.

Dubrovnik is small, clean and happy.  Despite being destroyed during the war in the mid nineties, the city is rebuilt without a trace and clearly proud, basking in being rediscovered by the world. Once the heat becomes bearable, it comes alive with music, street restaurants and cafes late into the night. We are fortunate to arrive during the summer festival and are welcomed with fireworks and live band performances on the first night. Who knew that Croatian rock could be so good. We stay in a shoebox of a room on a small street right above a pizza restaurant and quickly learn that going to bed before midnight is futile – the smell of pizza baking and the racket from a row of restaurant tables right under our window makes it impossible. So we switch our time and spend the mornings exploring, early afternoons in a siesta (ie nap) and like the town, come alive in the evening. One night we go dancing to a night club, discovering that the next oldest person is roughly 30 years younger than us, but having fun anyway. There is a freedom in being our age – “fitting in” doesn’t seem to matter that much anymore.

We are, however, grateful to Tatiana for persistently listening to Beat 94.5 at home, realizing that we actually know all the songs that are being played. Surprisingly, they are pretty good for dancing. But the age catches up to us and Kuno’s ears start to hurt from the loud music, so we leave. This is when we discover why the city is so incredibly clean - it gets completely hosed down in the middle of the night!

Venice is a fairytale, but we can’t help feeling that every time we visit, the fairytale is a little bit closer to a sad ending. There is a bittersweet feel to Venice, like a beautiful doomed queen of a city. The riches in art and architecture are beyond description, it has to be seen, or perhaps, more appropriately in Venice, felt. The palaces show past glory, but are being eaten away by the constant presence of tide and boat wake. For every one that gets renovated, ten fall further behind in needing work. To avoid regular tidal flooding, the city built movable tidal gates in the lagoon, reinforced some of the quays to higher elevations and is rebuilding the drainage under San Marco. Yet the work remaining is endless. Other signs of decay are present.

The water and the streets are dirty. Restaurants on San Marco insist on charging outrageous fees for listening to live music while having a coffee and as a result the seats are empty. We check into a four star hotel and are ushered into a room right off the main reception hall which we quickly rename the “cupboard under the stairs”, our window just 2 feet above the side canal, walls showing signs of past flooding and our floor sloping in alignment with the sinking corner of the building. But the patio faces the Grand Canal, and grand it is.

We spend a lot of time observing the comings and goings on the water – from all sorts of trade boats zooming around (how would you like your electrician to arrive with all his tools and equipment in a boat slightly bigger than a gondola), boats delivering food, water busses, beautiful old style water taxi boats (that are beyond our reasonable means so we walk) and of course the gondolas. I just finished reading a book called the Midwife of Venice and am imagining what the city looked like centuries ago.

We admire the glass from nearby island of Murano and the famous Venice masks - I wonder what it would be like to be here in February during the Carnival. One can’t help but be transfixed by Venice, sense of wonder and melancholy mixed together. Its pure magic will always draw us back and perhaps, one day, we will sail in, just like the merchants so many years ago.