For those of you thinking about European travel, now is the time as fares are low, a lot of seats are empty and hotels are fairly easy to book. Here’s some technical stuff for our last adventure.

- Going to and from Toronto airport, we stayed at the Doubletree because they would let us keep the car there free for 21 days for $115 each of the two nights on either end.

- We used our Delta air miles to fly first class on Air France and it was wonderful. The seats were almost fully reclinable and made into beds with your own TV and impeccable service. For the 18 people in first class (half full) we had 3 attendants … “Another wine Madam to go with your roast duck?” It will be tough (impossible) to get Jo-Anne back into “cattle class” again.

- We used a company called Airport Connection in Paris to get from the airport to the hotel. They pick you up in a 9 passenger van by a guy in a coat and tie who has a sign with your name on it exactly at the time you arrive. And they do the same in reverse from the hotel to the airport. It was about $60 each way and you may share the van with a couple more folks, but well worth it.

- We used Auto Europe to book the car at the CDG airport. They are a broker and get the best deal for you from a variety of companies. We got a Renault Scenic, which is considered a mid-size hatch-back car, seating 5 adults and having room for 2 large suitcases and 2 carry-ons. If you have less than the 5 adults, of course you can pack in more luggage. It cost about $40 per day, all inclusive, which I think is a fair price. Nice, solid, quiet car that would do the 100 MPH on the autobahn very comfortably.

- In Paris we stayed at the Hotel Le Clement (6 Rue Clement, Google it, especially with the street views) for about $162 per night for an air conditioned, two room junior suite. Small but very nice. It is a block off St Germain avenue on the Left Bank and in the center of action. In front of the hotel is an enclosed mall with about 50 stores, including bars, restaurants, and a market. Easy walk to the Louvre, Notre Dame, and other sights of central Paris.

Here's a shot of the larger front room which was on the street ... no noise. The back room was on the courtyard and had another twin bed.

While we were walking about Paris we watched the action on the St Martins Canal which is just to the northeast of the Marais area and north of the Seine just to the east of the Notre Dame. This was a functional commerce canal in the 1800s, but now hosts mostly tour boats. But the fun part starts here ...

After a couple of locks which drop the boat about 50 feet ... it then drops one more time into the tunnel under the city streets ... cool!

And directly above where the boat is, these guys are playing ping pong in a city park. The park runs for about 2 more miles down toward the Seine River and covers the canal and the ship traffic humming happily below the street level.

Of course, as we had come from Canada, we had to stop at "The Great Canadian Paris Pub" for a cool Moosehead beer. The pub is located right on the left bank of the Seine River just to the west of the Notre Dame in a super popular location.






With your Moosehead or Labatts, you can watch hockey and Canadian football on the big screens ... so what else would you want in Paris, eh? I think we had chili cheese nachos and a chicken quesedilla to share.

Of course any trip to Paris must include the Musee du Louvre and this one wasn't any different. Only this time as we had seen a lot of the museum before, we were more interested in the shops below as well a strolling the grounds and getting some pics. Nice day of about 70 degrees and low humidity.

A beautiful lady who enhanced the beautiful structure and grounds!

And an erstwhile wedding photographer literally getting down and dirty for that perfect wedding shot ... I'm sure representing how Brooks and Leigh get thier awesome wedding pictures.

We are back in Canada from the latest and greatest trip to Europe!!!

Because of bad computer connections and the fact we were having too much fun, I didn't blog as much of the really great stuff that I would have liked, so over the next few days, I'll hit some of the highlights.

For those of you with a military connection, the base facilities at Ramstein are great and getting much better. The new hotel below is wonderful, however, right now it still has only about half of the rooms ready for occupancy so you might still be placed in the old rooms across base.

Here's an interior shot of the hotel lobby ... your taxpayer dollars at work, eh. In the building are all the normal hotel things plus a Macaroni Grill, outdoor recreation center, travel agency, and a small Shoppette. Attached to the building to the rear are the new Commissary and BX which will be open very soon.

Standing in front of the hotel and looking the other way you can see the new terminal building; again an awesome and very functional facility.

Ah ... Paris. This will be our last post before we depart for Canada in about an hour. Our plane leaves Paris at 1:50 Paris time Sunday afternoon and arrives in Detroit about 5pm. Then a flight out of Detroit at 9pm arriving in Toronto at about 10pm Monday night ... zzzz. We'll spend Monday night in Toronto and head back to Meaford Tuesday morning.

We took about 1,000 pictures in Paris and this one will have to do for now. This is looking west down the Seine River from Pont Neuf at the west end of the Ile de Cite. Houseboats line the river's edge.

About 12 miles north of Rothenburg is the little town of Weikersheim. Even after all of our time here over the years and another visit to Rothenburg, we never went to Weikersheim. Well .... The palace where many generations of counts and princes lived is around 400 years old and is an impressively well preserved place. The main room inside is almost half a football field in size and is overwhelming in the paintings, animal 3D reliefs, and pristine flooring ... again, not altered in almost 400 years.







But the real treat was in the garden which rivaled Versailles on a smaller scale ... wow!

Last weekend we went to Rothenburg ob der Tauber for two nights. This is another picture perfect place in east central Germany with over 2000 years of history. It is located on the Tauber River which was very important to the Romans and this was one of their outposts and wine regions.




Here is the front of the Burg Hotel where we stayed which was part of the original west wall of the city in Roman times and then later a monastery.



And a view from our bedroom window with the Tauber River several hundred feet below. The rest of the former monastery is to the right and now a really detailed museum of the town history.

This is the view of the countryside from our breakfast room.

And a placard on one of the buildings next to a park ... Buster beware!!!

For the last two days we have been exploring our old haunts here in Ramstein where we were lived and have come back to several times. Today we were just driving by and happened to see our landlord from 1997-2000 (Franz Schmid) walking by the house we rented from him at that time. He was a super person at the time and is still; and we had a long chat about his ailing parents and his kids that we remember. Good memories. He still runs the driving school out of the basement of the rental house where we lived upstairs, and when we had to be quiet on Thursday nights from 6-8 because of the class.

As you drive away from the Mosel you can look back down the river valley and it is truly spectacular, with the vinyards lining the hills as far as you can see.





Here are our hosts swapping some secrets in the Greek restaurant the first night we arrived in Diehlheim.

Todd, the barman, in his awesome mahogany bar in the rental house in Diehlheim. Yes, it is part of their furniture to be shipped if and when they get assigned back to the States.

Closing out this piece is a very nice sunset from the porch of their house. The weather to date has been 70s with rain every day and cool at night. Right now at 8 pm in Ramstein it is about 62 and just clearing from another shower. As we head back up to the river tomorrow it is supposed to be 61 for the high and maybe more showers.

Because of the good connection from here at Ramstein, I've posted a bunch of stuff and probably won't be able until the 16th at the earliest as I know the hotel in Paris will have wi-fi; but I might get lucky and hit a site before then.

A little bit more about the Mosel house. On the inscription above the entrance door it reads "1776" and that is the date the place was built; hence the connection to our having a Fourth party this and following summers. In very tiny print above the BBQ tent to the left of the picture you will see some writing up on the wall. This highlights the flood of 1784 and where the water lever was. Just to the right and below the striped umbrella is a door that leads down a dark and cool hallway to the wine cellar I showed a couple of entries ago.

Also to recap our schedule a bit as we travel around Germany and France, here is what we are up to. From the last blog entries you could see that we were up in Piesport on the Mosel for the Fourth weekend. We came back to the LaVigne's house in Heidelberg on Sunday. Then on Tuesday the 7th we came up here to Ramstein for the nights of the 7th and 8th. We are staying in the Officer's quarters on base where we have stayed many times before.

On the 9th we go back up to the Mosel and will stay in the house on the river while Todd and Diana have to work. Friday we'll head back to the Heidelberg house and stay there until the 16th when we drive back to Paris to stay until the 20th.

To regress a bit here is a nice shot of one of the many autoroute (interstate highway) rest stops in France as we came from the airport in Paris heading toward Germany. This one is near Verdun and we have stopped here several times. In addition to three other full service restaurants they have this little snack shop called "Too Snack" where you can get a quick hot dog and fries.

A couple more shots of the Mosel from the front of the house. This little sailboat is dwarfed by the Traben Trarbach ferry boat in the second picture. The village of Piesport is now made up of three former small villages on both sides of the river and is famous for its wines from the vinyards on the hills that line the river.

This is the view from the street in front of the house and a replica Roman wine transport boat now ferrying tourists.

Behind where I was running the Barbie is the wine cellar where the food and drinks were set up ... a nice cool place deep under the house.

This a view of the house with the picknic setup. Just to the right is a little city park with benches right on the Mosel River. Note the appropriate bunting and flag stuck up in the hay loft.





And to earn my keep I was the master BBQ dude ... here getting adult supervision from Diana as we prepared to feed the 40+ guests at the party.

The main reason for our trip over here was to attend a 4th of July party at Todd and Diana LaVigne's new house on the Mosel River in the town of Piesport. Here is their new place that they paid about $100,000 for ... yes, the whole building you see here. Like 6 bedrooms, living, dining, bakery, kitchen two garages and a wine cellar, and more, much more. The Mosel river is about 50 feet in front of the house.

Wednesday night was Greek at a little restaurant in the next town over from where Todd and Diana live called Diehlheim. OK so we are a bit jet-lagged, but the food was great.

Like our last trip over here the time flies by quickly and the computer connections are iffy.

Our flights from Toronto to Detroit, then to Paris went flawlessly. The first class trip over the ocean was a treat with 18 of us up in the front of the A340 and three attendants waiting on us constantly. The seats make into beds so I missed most of the trip while Jo-Anne was able to surf through the 12 channels on her personal TV! Champagne and roast duck ... don't know what the other 300 folks in the back of the bus were doing or eating, but we had fun ... airmiles are great ... total cost $400 for the two of us round trip.

We arrived in Paris last Tuesday, spent the night at the CDG Airport Hilton, and then headed for Germany on Wednesday. Weather was a warm and humid 80 or so.