The Trip to Nice!

 Hello World!

Well, maybe not the whole world, but since we traveled through five different countries, it sure seems like we saw a lot of it! We started our two day trip in Denmark where the temperature was around 50F (10C) the morning we left. After 13.5 hours in the car driving through Germany (yes, Germany is a very large country with lots of construction) we arrived in Niederbronn-les-Bains and visited Q's family for the night.

The next day we went through Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France. Sascha was not so happy about the trip at times and is shown here during an emergency "walk" in Switzerland. The weather in Switzerland was a bit warmer, but as you can see from the pics, very cloudy and gray, but still beautiful scenery. 

The photos of Switzerland feature lots of mountains, tunnels, and cute Swiss towns with lots of chalets. Normally the cows are out, but I think that since the weather was bad they were either inside or hiding.

 When we got to Italy, the sun came out. We saw some nice villas and churches in the middle of farms from the side of the road. Also, the driving became a lot more interesting as things like speed limits and lane markings were really just suggestions to many drivers. We also had our first glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea here with a backdrop of orange, pink and yellow houses and blue skies!

The weather in Nice is decidedly nice, with most days now around 26-28C (75-80'sF), not too hot, but not too cold. Our first night in Nice we went to a traditional Nicois restaurant that was featured in the NYTimes, L'Escalinda, in Vieux Nice. Our food was excellent as was the vibrant atmosphere among the wait staff. We took a little walk around some of the old winding streets afterwards and took a few pictures of some nice buildings. There is definitely more exploring that needs to be done here!

Finally, I included some pictures from along the promenade des anglais (walk of the english) where the very fancy hotels are. In the last picture, you can see two palm trees, which grow like weeds here. That's right, we live with palm trees, orange and lemon trees and tons of other very fragrant plants. Each time we walk down boulevard de Cimiez the air is heavily perfumed from all of the Tilleul trees (Linden trees).

That's it for now, these are just the pics we took with the iPhone, more pics from our real camera and other excursions to follow. It's nice here in Nice!

Cherry (and plum?) blossom in Denmark

Spring has been unusually sunny here in Aarhus, with about 4 weeks of uninterrupted sunshine! That was a lot of sun, since it's up around 5am and sets around 9:30pm... We marveled at how everything could be so green, even though no raindrop had fallen for all that time. But make no mistake: it was not necessarily warm and not windy all that time! It was truly pleasant however to be spoilt with sun after the long and cold Winter.

Some rain today and a bit chillier, but it was nice to get shelter from the rain under all these pink flowers... Enjoy!

Wishing the Queen a happy 71st birthday!

Yesterday (April 16th) was the Queen of Denmark's birthday. Quite an event for the Danish folks, with major celebrations all around Denmark, starting of course in Copenhagen. Last year, the Queen had arrived to Aarhus a few weeks later on her famous Dannebrog boat and she had traveled across town on a horse carriage. A concert had been given in her honor in the local stadium.

But this year, "completely against tradition" as we were told, the Queen was in Aarhus and not Copenhagen to celebrate her 71st birthday. Must have been quite shocking to our friends in Copenhagen, but oh well, they'll get over it...

For this special occasion, all of us faithful subjects of her majesty in Aarhus were allowed on the Eastern lawn of the Marselisborg residence. There, it was arranged that the Queen and her dear husband Henri would walk out on the balcony to wave at the crowd and receive happy birthday wishes from us. We would also be treated to a pure display of delightfully old-fashioned tradition with life-size (and alive) lead soldiers like we expect to find them around royal castles, were it in Denmark, England or Monaco.

So sure enough we were present at such an important event (might as well go to see what they do with your taxes when you can ;-). And at 12pm the door opened to let the Queen and her husband be greeted by a chorus of "tilykke" ("congratulations" in Danish), as well as both the traditional Danish birthday song and the more famous one that the rest of the world knows... Of course Danish flags were everywhere...

The Danes really love their Queen, and well, such traditions are growing on us... Q relates to her husband Henri, a fellow French expat in Scandinavia... Wishing we could all get together and have a good time around some glasses of red wine down in his chateau in Sout-Western France... Aren't we all part of the same large family anyway?

We could debate for hours on the purpose and usefulness of holding on to such outdated traditions, but in the meantime, long live the Queen!

Done with the snow in Aarhus: Spring, welcome!

Well, actually it's been a while since we have not seen snow here, and that's good! Spring actually starts on March 1st for the Danes, but we were not gonna get fooled...

In fact, we did get some snow flakes yesterday during our walk (hence the winter jackets...) but that was just a wink from defunct Winter...

Now closer to April, flowers are enchanting us everywhere. Tons of white, purple, and light blue crocuses are spurting on all the lawns, it's just dazzling!

For Q's b-day yesterday we also had a dense bunch of tulips ("like in the movies" said C), which brought the Spring season to our table as well.

Not too many flowers yet in the park around the Queen's summer residence in the Marselis forest. But several bronze sculptures here and there, which complement nicely the elegant landscape of the estate, and contribute to giving it a very romantic atmosphere. So we'll be back when the rose garden will be in bloom!

On a bike ride this afternoon, stop over at the Marselis harbor (where we had seafood for the birthday dinner last night) and at the deer park, a wild-life reservation where people can just walk among friendly animals, and most importantly, where animals can frolic among friendly humans. By jumping around and chasing each others, fawns were truly giving quite a show!

More soon as the Spring unfolds...

Making it into 2011... hidden in a closet...

After our exciting but busy trip throughout some of Europe's principal cities like Paris, Brussels and Strasbourg, we opted to spend New Year's Eve at our place in Aarhus. A fine meal made of fresh crayfish with home made mayonnaise, als home made carrot soup, and a cake from one of the best patisseries in town. We also had our bottle of Henriot champagne that we imported ourselves from France, naturally...

The big event associated with New Year here in Denmark is private fireworks looking like professional ones, and coming from pretty much every other household. Of course the peak was from midnight until 2am on New Year's Eve, but we started hearing them quite frequently after sundown (around 4pm these days) since December 30th, and way until January 7th or 8th. And on December 31st, people did not even wait for sunset to start lighting their firecrackers. On that day we heard the first bangs around noon.

With this increasing agitation outside, we quickly learned that Sascha was in need of special attention and care. Apparently fireworks are a well-known cause of stress for pets that can be quite traumatizing. Q knew this about his old dog, but we never really had a chance to witness this with Sascha earlier. Fireworks were not that common in Colorado (and more regulated). So we actually felt fortunate that we had decided to spend our New Year's Eve at home, in order to not make him any more anxious than he already was.

We actually found that the safest thing to do was to give him half a pill of the sedative we had gotten for him a year ago when we brought him to Europe by plane. Combined with organizing hiding places at the bottom of various kitchen cabinets, that seemed to do the trick. At least, he survived!

And so did we! From hearing the war-like explosions all around us at the turn of the year, we felt much safer to not have had to go anywhere... That may seem like an over-reaction, but we did hear on a daily basis the ambulance sirens shortly after the peak of fireworks festivals. We were also told that every year at least one house (only one?) gets set on fire because of poorly handled fireworks. Well, it was quite a windy night...

But fireworks were actually quite nice seen from the safety of our home, through our large windows. It was sort of non stop, so we'd regularly pause our meal to go check out what was happening. Sort of like a free show! Check out the movie to see what we mean...