Thom Walstrum's Blog

From Rome we took the train up the western coast to the Cinque Terre, a group of five villages perched on cliffs overlooking the sea. The region is exquisitely beautiful and therefore (quite understandably) touristy. Luckily May isn't yet peak tourist season, so the crowds didn't really get in the way of us enjoying the hiking, views, and food.

Hiking is the main daytime activity (you go to a nice restaurant in the evening and watch the sunset) because there is a lovely path that follows the coast and connects the five towns. The towns are close enough that you could hike from one end to the other pretty easily in one day. We opted for taking it easy and splitting the hike between two days.

This is the best overview picture I have. You can see two towns, Corniglia (closer) and Manarola.

This is a view looking northwest at the northernmost town, Monterosso. There were pretty flowers like those in the foreground along the entire path.

There is a also a ferry (and a train) that goes between the five towns. These more modern forms of transportation allow you to hike the path without having to do any backtracking. I spent pretty much the entire ferry ride snapping pictures, and this is the best one I got, a view of Corniglia.

Here we are zoomed in a bit with a focus on the path. This is a pretty little bridge crossing a pretty little stream.

The path got steep at points, and this was the steepest part. They were kind enough to build steps though. As you can see, there were lots of people, but I think we were pretty good at not getting in each other's way.
Here's me enjoying some of the best pizza I've ever tasted. It's basically a cheese pizza, but it has pesto slathered all over it, and that made it especially yummy.

After Croatia, it was back to Italy, but this time for longer than an afternoon. And, happily, it was in Rome that Marisa and I got to see each other for the first time in more than three months. It was a wonderful reunion.

Not nearly exciting as seeing Marisa again, but also quite nice, was the chance to see the sights in Rome. There was far too little time to delve deeply into its centuries of history, but we got to visit many of the most famous spots.

You shouldn't be too surprised to see the picture below. And you also shouldn't be too surprised to hear that the Colosseum is a rather amazing piece of work.

Here's the inside of the Colosseum. Notice the reconstruction of the floor in the middle. They kept the animals and the slaves/gladiators under it. A beautiful structure, even if what happened inside wasn't always beautiful.

This is the Roman Forum, where all the action took place in ancient Rome. This is where the senate met and where Julius Caesar was killed. It was fun to walk down the main street and try to imagine what it used to be like. Note the Colosseum in the upper right hand corner.
This single column captured my attention when I learned that it was the last monument built on the Roman Forum. It was constructed in honor of the Byzantine emperor Phocas; a fitting indication that the Roman Empire was finished. For some reason it really makes sense to me that a single standing column symbolize the end of the Roman Empire.

This is the outside of the Pantheon. The structure is very impressive, which is why there are so many people in the picture.
Here's an attempt to help you understand the size of the Pantheon's columns. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stand back far enough to get the very top of the column in the picture, but I was close. If you look at the base of the column, you can see Marisa acting as a point of reference.

The inside of the Pantheon is jaw-dropping, and it's very well conserved because it was turned into a church shortly after the fall of the empire. This picture does little to create the feeling you get when you enter, but at least you have an idea of what it looks like.

Apart from the ancient monuments, the other major attraction in Rome is the Vatican City. Saint Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museum are the areas open to the public, and both are spectacular. Unfortunately, the museum didn't allow pictures (or if it did, I misunderstood the policy), so I don't have a wonderful shot of the Raphael Rooms or the Sistine Chapel. You'll just have to click on the Wikipedia links. But you can believe me when I say that the Sistine Chapel was beautiful, and definitely worth the sore neck.

Below is a view of the basilica from Saint Peter's Square. We followed the guidebook's advice and visited late in the day, which explains why the sky is a little washed out.

The inside of Saint Peter's is immaculate beyond description. I had no hope of truly capturing it on (digital) film, so I decided to focus on a few highlights. This is the baldacchino created by Bernini. It's fabulously ornate, but I wouldn't necessarily say in bad taste; it seemed to fit in perfectly with the rest of Saint Peter's.

This is Michelangelo's Pieta, definitely the most moving sculpture I've ever seen. Too bad they have it behind glass.
Vatican City is its own country and therefore has its own post office and stamps. Here's Marisa sending off a postcard.

Our next planned stop after Athens was Croatia. My American intuition told me that the fastest and easiest way to get between the two would be by road, but from what every travel agent in Athens told us, I was wrong. Apparently, the infrastructure in the former Yugoslavia is still developing. So the best way to get from Greece to Croatia is a night ferry to Italy and then another night ferry to Croatia. The night ferries were surprisingly nice, especially the one between Greece and Italy. And since it was off-season still, the ferries were empty and there was enough space for getting a decent night's sleep.

Croatia turned out to live up to all the rave reviews we read in the guidebooks. Personally, I prefer it to the Greek Islands because the more temperate (and rainy) climate allows for many more big trees. Also (at least for the time being), Croatia is cheaper.

Here is a picture of the sun setting over the Adriatic Sea as seen from the ferry between Greece and Italy. Rather nice I would have to say.

The ferry between Italy and Croatia left us in the Croatian town of Split. Split's claim to touristic fame is the ruins of Roman Emperor Diocletian's retirement palace. It's completely integrated into the town, with shops, restaurants, and hotels inside many of the remaining structures. It's free to walk around the open air sections and the picture below shows a number of tourists doing just that.

From Split we took a ferry to the island of KorÄula. KorÄula is also the name of the main city on the island, and a cute little walled city at that. I didn't get a great picture of the city, but this picture should give you an idea of what it was like to walk along the main road that goes around the island. There were lots of pretty houses with red-tiled roofs and a number of church steeples.
The main activity on KorÄula is walking around and looking at the scenery. We had two days to do so, and on the second day, as the result of a dearth of good maps, we got lost on the way to a highly recommended cove. We decided to hike to the water and walk along the coast in the direction of the cove (even though there wasn't a path, we knew the direction of the water and of the cove). When we got to the water, we found ourselves on the spot from where I took the picture below. It's hard to see from the picture how steep the coast is, but you can get an idea. Needless to say, it was quite a tedious walk to the cove. We did finally get there, and were rather relieved to have done so.

This is a view of the cove I told you about above. I took this picture on the way back, which turned out to be a difficult climb, but still a much easier route than the way there.
From KorÄula, it was a short ferry ride and then a windy bus ride to the much vaunted tourist destination of Dubrovnik. It's understandable why so many tourists visit Dubrovnik and also understandable why the entire old town has been turned over to tourists. While at times it felt just barely more real than Disney World, I did really enjoy walking along what our guidebook claims are the finest walls in the world. Below is a picture looking east over a large swath of the old town.

This is a picture looking south taken from the tower you can see in the above picture. On the left side of the picture, you can see the path that goes along the top of the wall.

After the islands, it was on to the mainland. We had only a couple of days to spare, so we decided to spend them in Athens. There was enough time to go to the Acropolis and to one of the smaller--but still very well done--museums. The big ones were closed for Orthodox Easter. But there was one benefit to the holiday: entrance to all the major sites in Athens was free.

This is the Parthenon, by far the most important site on the Acropolis. It was too bad there was so much scaffolding, but seeing it in person was still quite a thrill, and everyone knows preservation work is important.

Here's a view from the Acropolis looking down on the Temple of Olympian Zeus. I really liked the open green space with just a few erect columns and one that they left fallen down. Aside from the the temple, hopefully you can get a feeling for what Athens looks like when viewed from the Acropolis.

From a town near Ephesus, it's a simple ferry ride to the easternmost Greek Islands. In a week and a half we made it to four islands, Samos, Patmos, Mykonos (no pictures of this one, it was an intermediate stop), and Santorini. We were looking for beaches and hiking, and the islands were accommodating for both.

This is a picture of the beach we frequented on Samos, as taken from the ferry. The water was clear and cold, and the beach a bit rocky, but it was still enjoyable. And since we were there before peak tourist season, it was practically empty.

Patmos is a small island: you can day-hike to practically any destination. Aside from its beaches, it's home to the monastery of Saint John the Theologian, who wrote the Book of Revelation there, while secluded in a cave. We visited the cave and the monastery. Both were quite nice. This is a chapel at the monastery. It's got the classic Greek Orthodox look, except usually the churches are whitewashed with a blue roof.

This is Gabe swimming at one of the beaches on Patmos. Gabe really likes swimming and would often try to get me to venture into the frigid water. This time he didn't succeed, which is why there is a picture.

This is one of the places where we lunched on the way to the beach. A rather idyllic setting, to say the least.

Our last stop was Santorini. It was a worthwhile stop in spite of its touristiness because of the splendid scenery. The group of islands are a caldera, formed by a volcanic eruption. Here's a satellite image of Santorini that I ganked from Wikipedia.

The caldera has very dramatic cliffs on the inside. People construct buildings (mostly hotels) right up to the very edge. Hopefully the picture below provides a little perspective on just how tall the cliffs are.
The highlight of Santorini was a hike along the inside of the caldera. The path featured beautiful views and flowers. Thankfully, it wasn't hot yet. This picture was taken looking westward along the northern rim.
This picture is from virtually the same spot as the above picture, only looking south. You can pretty well make out the circle of the caldera.
This picture highlights the pretty daisies along the path. You can also see a Greek Orthodox church peeping out over the trees on the left. We're looking to the outside of the caldera this time.
And finally we have a picture of all the buildings that allegedly have the best sunset spot in Europe. We witnessed the sunset, and while it was quite nice, I think it goes too far to say it's the best spot in Europe. The cheese farm in Normandy gives it a serious run for its money.

From Istanbul we took a night bus (ahh the joys of traveling overnight) to Selçuk, the town nearest to Ephesus. I recognized the name of the city because Paul wrote a letter to its residents in the Bible, but had little idea of how impressive its ancient ruins were.

Ancient ruins require a good imagination, and for those of us who need lots of help, there are auidoguides and guidebooks. I decided to employ both means for my visit to Ephesus. Here I am in front of the Celsus Library in my full tourist uniform.
This is one of the main drags. At the very end you can just make out the Celsus Library.

This is the Roman Amphitheater, which could hold about 50,000 people. I overheard a tourist guide say that they multiplied the capacity of the amphitheater by 10 to arrive at an estimated population 500,000 people for the city. Aside from being really big, this is where, according to Acts 19, a great crowd gathered to protest the teachings of Paul.

Technically, we visited Istanbul before going to Azerbaijan, but the visit was little more than a layover during which I spent the majority of my time updating this blog. So the real exploring of Istanbul began when we the return flight from Azerbaijan landed us in Istanbul once again. It's a huge city, with a very important place and history, and a number of important sites to prove it. You get to see pictures of the two main ones, the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. Both are breathtaking.

We also took some time to visit the modern Istanbul, which was across a bay and to the North. It was lively and fun yet unfortunately, the camera didn't make the trip. So you'll just have to be satisfied with pictures of the old stuff and a bridge.

Have a look at this lovely suspension bridge, which spans the Bosphorus Strait. I very well may have been straddling Asia and Europe when I took the picture. Istanbul is the only city to have residents on two continents.

And what a proverbial bridge between the East and West Istanbul truly is. The culture certainly felt that way to me, and the beautiful buildings fell into line as well. Here we have the Hagia Sophia, one of the most beautiful structures I've ever visited. It was originally a basilica, then a mosque, now it's a museum. It's gone under a number of changes over the years, so you have to use your imagination to picture it in its various incarnations of splendor, but its still mouth-gaping to be inside.
And here is the best I could do to capture the interior. Sadly (or from the perspective of preservation, gladly), the big, central dome was having work done on it at the time. My camera could not taken in its full height, but you can make out a couple windows at the bottom of its perimeter at the top center of the picture, to the left of the scaffolding. Obviously, it's a really big place.

Built, many would interpret, as a response to the size and beauty of Hagia Sophia, we have below the elegant Blue Mosque. It sits at the other end of a beautifully landscaped square facing the Hagia Sophia.
I also couldn't find a way to capture the vastness of the Blue Mosque, so I focused on the wonderful colors and designs instead.

It's been nearly 4 years since I went to Azerbaijan the first time for a college internship. I spent 6 months there working for a Microfinance Organization called Azercredit. I made some good Azeri friends and I'd always promised I'd return again to visit. It was great to reconnect with the people and the place. I'm hoping the relationships I've maintained will last for the rest of my life. While I'll only ever get to see my Azeri friends on rare occasions, I feel the relationships have already made a significant impact on my perspective.

Our visit was a little short, but enough time to feel reconnected. We had a weekend in Mingechevir (the city where my friends Azer and Alizamin live) and a couple days of sightseeing in the capital, Baku.

Both of the nights we were in Mingechevir, Azer's wife Aygun cooked us some traditional Azeri cuisine. It was very delicious. This is a group photo after dinner on the first night. Azer is leaning on the couch, Djavidan is sitting on Aygun's lap, then there's Cara, and me (Gabe was the photographer).

On Sunday, my other good friend, Alizamin took us to a mountainous region for a hike and lunch. He brought his son Ferid (who was just a baby when I was there last). The picture does a poor job of capturing the beauty, but it's at least a cute shot of Alizamin and Ferid ambling up the hill.

Azeris love cars and there are three common makes: Mercedes, BMW, and Lada. This is Ferid in front of his dad's 4x4.
After visiting my friends, it was time for a little sightseeing in Baku. This is in the Palace of the Shirvanshahs in the old part of Baku. I really liked the entrance to their reception place for guests. Unfortunately, the living quarters had been turned into office space, so we weren't able to explore as much as we wanted.

Baku is flanked by steep hills on both sides of its bay, offering lovely views. As you can see, the day we went up to the top was a little hazy. Nevertheless, it was a rewarding climb.
Drinking tea is the national pastime in Azerbaijan, and Baku has a number of quality tea-drinking establishments. My favorite is right next to the spot from which I took the above photo. You can clearly see a very satisfied look on both Gabe's and my face. To accompany our tea, we treated ourselves to a special rose petal jam, which you eat straight, using a teaspoon.
Gabe and I both love bumper cars, and Baku has them set up permanently at a spot along the boulevard next to the bay. No one else was using them at the time, but that didn't stop Gabe and me. Yes, the video is boring (and long) due mostly to our being a little rusty. Maybe that's why, if you know us, you could also construe it as being entertaining.

From Jordan we took a ferry across the Red Sea to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. We arrived at about 7pm and decided to take a night service taxi (an old van in which you squeeze 14 people) across Sinai to Cairo. Like Jordan, Egypt was kind of tacked on to the Israel portion of the journey, so we set aside only a couple days. This was enough to see the Nile, the Pyramids, and get a taste of contemporary Cairo. Sadly, I didn't take my camera when we visited one of Cairo's crowded markets, so you only get to see the Nile and the Pyramids.

Perfect for tourists like ourselves, there are a number of sailboats that will take you out on the Nile for a very reasonable rate. Our tour book recommended going at sunset, which turned out to be a very good idea.

I have lots of pictures of the Pyramids because they're so impressive. Here's a photo where I try to get as many of them in one picture as I can.
The aim of this picture is to impress you with the pyramid's size.

Here's an attempt at perspective. I'm at the base of the of one of the Pyramids with the other big one in the background. I'm not sure if the picture works. Anyway, the two big Pyramids are about 450 feet or 34 stories tall (i.e. very tall).

This is the Sphinx. It's also very impressive to see, especially when you have the Pyramids in the background.
Visiting the Pyramids seemed like an appropriate time for a group photo. So here it is. In case you forgot, that's me with Gabe and Cara.

Lots of tourists visit Cairo and the locals know it. People are always inviting you to buy some of their wares. The folks offering camel rides eventually got to us, so we took a nice 30 minute ride across a bit of desert nearby the Pyramids arriving at a lovely perspective point. I have to say, camels are pretty fun to ride.

I was a little too entranced by the scene of this salesman approaching me, so I decided to ask him how much for a Coke. At the slightest indication of intention to purchase (before I was sure of the price), I was holding an open Coke bottle in my hand. Feeling obliged to pay, I figured I would add in a tip in order to get a picture with him. I'm sure he's taken in many silly tourists like myself before.

Having already gotten all the way to Israel, it made sense to take a few days to head over to neighboring Jordan for a visit to its most famous site, Petra (Greek for rock). Prior to visiting, the word Petra had made only an occasional blip on mind's radar, mostly in reference to a Christian rock band (I'm not sure whether they took their name from the place or the word), and also in a cultural reference much more widely known, the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It turns out that the hotels nearby also know about how Petra appears in an Indiana Jones movie, and the one we stayed at happened to have the DVD. It was a nice little bonus I suppose.

This is the most famous site at Petra, the Treasury (where Indiana Jones finds the Holy Grail). Perhaps it's so striking to me because it looks like how I would imagine a city that dwarfs build in fantasy books like the Hobbit (which I've recently read in French). Unlike the book though, there isn't a city behind the facade, only a few dark chambers. This fact, however, doesn't take much away from Petra's mystique.

This is the Siq, which leads from the entrance to the treasury. The Siq is a mile-long, 300-600 feet deep cavern formed as the result of an earthquake. It's quite an amazing walk.

Petra was built by the Nabateans, who got rich controlling trade routes between the east and the west. They were independent for 6 or so centuries before the Romans took over in AD 106 (however, the Greek influence is quite obvious). Water management was crucial, and the large tree that has grown in the cistern below shows how skilled they were at trapping water. It's one of the few large trees in all of Petra.

Lots of people visit Petra. In the picture below, you can see a bunch of them walking down the stairs to the Urn Tomb.

This picture is here because I like the formation. Petra made me really wish I knew more about geology.

There are a number of lovely hikes around Petra and my favorite was this one through a long, narrow cavern. Hopefully you can get some kind of idea of how beautiful the formations were from the picture. That's Gabe and Cara traipsing down the path.

We spent a week in Israel, enough time for me to get a taste of the place and enough time for me to know that I should go back someday for more than a week. It's a sacred place for three religions, one of them being Christianity, of which I count myself among the ranks. If you aren't too interested in Biblical or Islamic sites, Israel is probably not the place to go. As for me, I am, and that made the visit very special. I also have a friend going to medical school there, who, aside from being a pleasure to visit, knew his way around the place pretty well. He outfitted us with a map, a rental car, and "The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide", which was extremely helpful for understanding the sites and for drawing the line between tradition and archaeological evidence.

Even with the book, it was still hard to imagine what things were like 2000 years ago. And, of course, just a picture and a few words from me will make things even more difficult. I also didn't take a picture of some places because it just felt weird to me. For example, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (If you're curious, you can see what wikipedia has to say). Speaking of churches being built over purported historical sites, I discovered that pretty much every place of traditional significance has had a church built over it. This is good and bad I suppose. Good because the fact the early Christians built churches over everything increases the likelihood that they are the actual places, bad because my Western sensibilities would rather see things as they were originally. Anyway, hopefully my pictures and commentary will serve to give some idea of what it was like.

If I were reading this post, I would appreciate a map, so here it is.
My friend Johnny goes to medical school in Beersheba, which is quite near the Dead Sea. The day we arrived, he took an afternoon off and we made it there just after the sun went down. There was still enough light for a short swim in some very salty water. It was quite a sensation. Adding to the mystique was the Dead Sea's fame for being the lowest place on earth.

After Beersheba, we drove up to Galilee and found a place to stay in Nazareth. Nazareth is a pretty big place these days and doesn't actually have much for a Holy Lands pilgrim such as myself. I did make a quick stop at the Church of the Annunciation, built on the spot where Mary was visited by Gabriel. It had a number of lovely mosaics of the Madonna and Child, my favorite being the Japanese version, because it was a much different image than what I was used to.

Nazareth is pretty close to Capernaum, the town where Peter comes from. It situated on the North side of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus spent quite a bit of time there teaching in the synagogue. It happens to be no longer inhabited, so there are some ruins to explore. There's been a spaceship-like church built over the site of Peter's house, which according to our Oxford guide, is "very probably" the actual place. If you go up in the picture from the spaceship-church (the picture's a photograph of a photograph), you can see the ruins of a synagogue built on top of the ruins of the synagogue Jesus would have taught in.

This is the Jordan River. It was smaller than I expected. It still would have been quite a feat to stop up and cross on your way to Jericho.

This is a pretty picture of the sun setting over the Sea of Galilee. It's entirely surrounded by nice, verdant hills.

These are military helicopters flying over the Sea of Galilee while the sun sets. It's much easier to see the present state of things, rather than how things were 2000 years ago.

This is a fish from the Sea of Galilee. How could it not be a descendant of the fish that the disciples caught and that Jesus multiplied?
After Galilee, we drove down to Jerusalem. We were lucky enough to be there for Easter weekend, which made it extra special. This is the view from the Mount of Olives. The most prominent feature is the Temple Mount, where the golden Dome of the Rock is built.

We got up really early Friday morning to participate in a Stations of the Cross service on the Via Dolorosa. Our Oxford guide said that there is no historical or archaeological evidence that they were the actual spots of the Passion (save the Church of the Holy Sepulchre), but that didn't keep the service from being very special.
Friday night, we went to the Wailing Wall for the beginning of Shabbat.
This is the entrance to the Dome of the Rock. Certainly a very beautiful building. I was going to try to go inside, but unfortunately it was the time for prayers.
We briefly ventured into the West Bank for a trip to Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity. The attention grabber was not, however, the church, but the wall surrounding Bethlehem on three sides. After visiting, it's hard not to feel like there is something quite wrong about walls fencing in places.
This is me with my friend Johnny just before attending an Easter Vigil in Jerusalem. Apologies for the attempting-to-look-cool smirk. Unfortunately, the big group picture from the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem didn't turn out. However, the blog still needs to have a picture of Johnny; and I think this one will suffice.

Before leaving France for my next major destination, Israel, I met up with a college friend, Cara, who decided to join Gabe and me for our travels this spring. She wanted to do a little WWOOFing in addition to traveling, so we decided to go back to Chateau Ribagnac (to see my previous post about the Chateau, click here). We spent a brief week there, doing some more gardening and enjoying some delicious meals with the Bergot family. All the same characters were there: along with the family, I got to see Patrick's parents again and got to visit Danielle's house. It was lack of space at the Chateau that made the time so short and as a result made a return to the Limoges train station (pictured below) come all too quickly.
I had taken a train from Normandy to Paris to Limoges, then a week later a train from Limoges to Paris. It was a lot of time spent moving in a short week. Back in Paris, we met up with Gabe, who had been by a week delayed in getting to France because of flight scheduling troubles. More flight scheduling troubles were to come. When we got to the airport to fly to Israel, we were told by the airline that we needed a round trip ticket to Israel (not the one-way we'd purchased), otherwise Israeli immigration would assume we were staying to work illegally and deport us. After some finagling (the details of which you'll have to ask me about in person) an agent at our airline found a friend who had seats on another airline where everything would be ok. The seats ended up being cheaper, with the catch that we had to spend the weekend in Paris (one can't really be too disappointed about that). I took the weekend to spend a little more time at some of Paris' cultural institutions. You can see below the Friday night crowds at the Louvre, the free night for students.

The last weekend I was at the Cheese Farm, I took a bus to a nearby town where I was able to catch a ferry to nearby Jersey. I'd never really thought that much about the fact that New Jersey was named after another place or that I would ever go there, but Emeric recommended the trip and I do like islands (for more information about Jersey, go here).

The ferry schedule was limited because it's not peak season right now, so I had essentially one full day to explore the island. Luckily, it's not that big, so I feel like I got a pretty good taste of what the island has to offer.

This is one of the castles on the island, probably the most well known. I spent my morning there, exploring every room and trying to imagine what life would have been in the middle ages, when the likes of Sir Walter Raleigh would have been hanging out there.

This is the view from the top of the castle, looking over the town of Gorey.

There is a bell for the castle, incidentally named Thomas. I figured I was obliged to take a picture.

Here you can see the bell close up. It says, "Je m'appelle Thomas," hinting at the influence it's nearby neighbor has had on the island.
In the afternoon I went to the north side of the island and walked a path along the cliffs. Jersians really like daffodils.

This is a sign I encountered after the cliff walk.

I saw the above sign while walking to the western shore to watch the sun set over the Atlantic. It was hazy, but still quite a beautiful finish to the day.

Well my last post was lacking some very important aspects of a baby goat's life, namely eating and sleeping. So I've got a picture and a video that hopefully will provide a clearer picture. Also there's a bonus photo of Emeric at the market selling his cheese...

It takes a little while to teach the goats how to drink out of the bucket, but once they learn, it works pretty well I think.


The baby goats have a boatload of hay under the metal awning. With a wonderful house and a big rock formation to play on, this has got to be one of the best places for a baby goat to grow up.

Emeric is in the green hat behind the counter. If you didn't guess, "Fromage Fermier" means "Cheese Farm".

Well I'm back at the cheese farm and the baby goats have arrived. They are wonderful little creatures. At first, they seemed a little less affectionate than most puppies or kittens, but they've come around, especially since they've picked up on the fact that I'm responsible for their food (we've moved them away from their mothers, so we can turn the rich, postnatal milk into cheese). Now they start baying whenever they see me and have gotten the idea that my person, not the milk bucket, is the source of the milk. It makes you feel special and it's ridiculously cute, but it does get annoying sometimes when you're always having to turn them around and point their noses in the right direction.

We've moved them to a field with a nice big rock formation that they love to run around on. One recent day, I took the opportunity to do a photo shoot.

Here they are playing on the rock formation in their field. You can see the yurt in the background.
Proof that baby goats like me.

Baby goats like to suck on fingers...

Baby goats (and pigs, if you care to know) sleep together to keep warm. They also do so in order to get humans to elicit sounds like "awwww". Here they are sleeping under an overhang of the rock formation.

Here we have a goat standing almost regally on a rock...

Last but not least, a nice little video to give another dimension to what baby goats are like.

Gabe and I scheduled a weekend layover in London on our way back home for Christmas. London turned out to be a great place to visit. It was fun to see in person all the famous things I've always just heard about. The only drawback was the prices. Things were what you would expect them to be if they were in dollars, except they were in pounds, which happen to be twice as expensive as dollars. Oh well.

London is so big that we struggled even to get to all the most famous touristy things. I think we did an admirable job though. Our first stop was the relatively new London Eye. It's a fancy ferris wheel that takes 30 minutes to go around. If you want to, you can pay to go in a car where they serve Champagne. Gabe and I opted for the more economical 15 pound option.

Here's a shot hopefully to provide a little perspective on what our journey around the London Eye was like. I have to admit it was worth the price.

The obligatory shot of the Parliament with Big Ben. You can see one of the white towers of Westminster Abbey in the background.

This is the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The blue flag means he's at home.

Gabe and I both like boat tours. The one on the River Thames was as good as any we've been on. This shot is of Tower Bridge. It was the coolest looking one we went under.

Here's proof that we visited Buckingham Palace.

The Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace are behind that huge fence you see in the picture above. Gabe and I had always heard that you could walk right up to the Queen's Guard and they had to ignore you, but at Buckingham Palace they had a big fence to protect them. We finally found a more vulnerable guard at Saint Jame's Palace. We didn't harass him though. We just took the obligatory picture.

Chateau Ribagnac (see the post below) is about 3 hours by train from Bordeaux. Gabe and I used one of our free weekends to make the trek. We almost didn't get to go because of the nationwide train strike, but it ended just in time. We were hoping to visit some nearby vineyards, but it turned out to be doubly impossible as tours don't run in November and you really need a car to get to vineyards. So we settled for visiting pleasant parks, interesting museums, and beautiful churches. This picture is taken from the tower at Cathedral Saint-Andre.

This is Chateau Ribagnac (www.chateauribagnac.com). About four years ago, Patrick and Colette Bergot, a couple from London, purchased and converted it into a bed and breakfast. Gabe and I spent the month of November here, primarily working in the garden. In addition, we did some odd jobs around the estate, such as spreading gravel on the driveway and cleaning out a pond.

It was definitely late in the season, but there were still a few things left in the garden. We spent some of our time harvesting and some weeding around the permanent stuff. We also spent some time getting the garden ready for plowing and transplanting things like raspberries and strawberries. Below you can see Gabe digging up an extraneous raspberry shoot, which he then moved to an empty spot farther down the row to the left.

Yes, this is a small tractor, but it's still a tractor and it was fun to drive. And yes, I'm trying to look cool, just like all the other people who take pictures of themselves in front of their houses with their cars. There's a load of cattails in the trailer, pulled out of a nearby pond. They're on their way to the burn pile.

My fancy digital camera is capable of taking videos, so I figured I might as well use the functionality. Unfortunately, the camera's sound recording is screwed up, so you're going to have to deal with a hastily thrown together Windows Movie Maker job that replaces engine noises with a Doc Watson song. I'm driving back from the burn pile. Gabe's the cameraman, sitting in the recently emptied trailer.


Between Gabe and me is Danielle, a local man who came once a week with his big tractor to do jobs around the estate that we couldn't do with the little one. We were his assistants whenever he came. Danielle was a lot of fun to get to know. He's twice our age and put to shame not only our "farming" skills, but also our energy level (he ran a marathon over one of the weekends we were there). He speaks essentially no English, but luckily was the most accommodating French speaker we met. He actually made me feel like I could communicate in French.

In the 6th century the Limousin region in France was home to Saint Leonard. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Leonard_of_Noblac) One weekend, Gabe and I went with the Bergot family to a festival celebrating his tradition. Saint Leonard is a patron saint of prisoners. The main event of the festival (pictured below) is teenage equestrians destroying a wooden model of a jail. They gallop toward the model and try to hit it with a mallet. After the jail is destroyed, everyone gets to keep a tiny shard of the jail as a good luck charm for the year.

This is the Bergot family watching as the jail gets destroyed. From left to right are Patrick's parents, Gerard and Marcella (who were visiting the Chateau). Next is Collete, then Eve, then Patrick with Agnés on his shoulders. Gilberto is in the stroller. I have to say, they make quite a lovely family.

Between the cheese farm and our next WWOOFing spot, Gabe and I spent a week at a monastery called Taize (http://www.taize.fr/en_article166.html). It's about an hour and a half north of Lyon. The monastery is a special place because it brings together thousands of visitors (or pilgrims I guess you could say) each year from all over Europe and the world. The monks allow you to take part in the life of their permanent community. They have 3 services a day. The rest of your time is spent hanging out with other visitors, helping to maintain the premises (Gabe and I collected garbage), or doing whatever you want. I enjoyed going to "The Source" (yes, it's a cheesy name) where they have nice paths for walking and reflecting. Below is a picture I took while sitting and enjoying the late afternoon.