A lovely dawn in Leysin before we depart for Zurich, Switzerland, on October 22, 2012!  Brenna was off to Florence, Italy, and Brendan to Austria and Germany for his Outward Bound excursion.  A BIG week of travel for the Bigelow clan...

Dinner at the Movie Restaurant our first night in Zurich with our crowd of 18 students and 4 adult guides - pretty good food and great decor.  We ate dinner at Blindekuh the following night - a restaurant where patrons are seated in totally darkened rooms and served by blind waiters and waitresses.  Sorry - no pictures since there would be nothing to see!

Zurich is known for its more than 1,700 fountains where water can be collected for drinking.  Here is one - too many others to share on this blog. 

A picture of a cobbled street in old Zurich - very typical of countless neighborhoods found throughout cities and towns in Europe.  Another city we visited during this trip was Luzern - very pretty and well worth the visit.  Pictures not shared include the visit to the Kunsthaus Art Museum and and evening at the Zurich Opera House to see Jenufa - a production performed in Czech with German and English subtitles.  Unfortunately, the subtitles failed to work after the performance was underway - we were left in the dark with regard to the storyline much like we were at the Blindekuh...

Pictures of Lenin's residence in Zurich...

Ira at Starbuck's next to our hotel.  We enjoyed great coffee as part of our morning ritual every day!

Paris in July (2012)

Paris, France

Ira and I took a group of students to Paris this summer and just happened to arrive on Bastille Day.  What a fabulous light show we enjoyed!

Next stop was the beautiful Sainte-Chapelle royal chapel. It features a truly exceptional collection of stained-glass windows. It was built in the mid 13th century by Louis IX, at the heart of the royal residence, the Palais de la Cité. It was built to house the relics of the Passion of Christ. Adorned with a unique collection of fifteen glass panels and a large rose window forming a veritable wall of light,the Sainte-Chapelle is a gem of French Gothic architecture. Designated world heritage site by UNESCO.

MOULIN ROUGE!!!!!

Yes the Musee du Louvre is amazing but so is Musee d'Orsay.   The museum boasts the best collection of Impressionist paintings in the world.   In room after room, some of the most famous paintings in the world are side by side.   I've grown to really love Van Gogh.

A day trip to Versailles...so gorgeous!  Here to the right is the Queen's Chambers and below, the Kings.  The gardens are hard to describe if you've never been but equally as beautiful and are enormous.

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris, commonly known as Sacré-Cœur Basilica A popular landmark, the basilica is located at the summit of the butte Montmartre, the highest point in the city. Sacré-Cœur is a double monument, political and cultural, both a national penance for the supposed excesses of the Second Empire and socialist Paris Commune of 1871 crowning its most rebellious neighborhood, and an embodiment of conservative moral order, publicly dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was an increasingly popular vision of a loving and sympathetic Christ.

The Sacré-Cœur Basilica was designed by Paul Abadie. Construction began in 1875 and was finished in 1914. It was consecrated after the end of World War I in 1919.

Always time for shopping....

And the last day was Euro Disney!  Our favorite ride was of course, It's a small world.  Space mountain rocked my brain. :(