How embarrassing to note that I, Miss Photography, took very few pictures while we were in Paris. So here's the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Notre Dame, which will just have to do.

One special excursion in Paris was to the Bois du Bologne, the huge park on the southwestern side of the city that is home to Roland Garros, where the French Open is played every year. There were no guards or other staff anywhere in attendance, so after a brief hesitation Bill and I ventured out onto Court Centrale, stepping on the terre battu (red clay) where some of the greatest matches in tennis history have been played.

The entrance to Court Centrale.

Bill at last makes his debut on the terre battu.

We left Paris early on Sunday morning, taking the TGV (Train de Grande Vitesse, the high-speed train) on a southeastern route through France to Bern, Switzerland.

A small town in southeastern France, near the Swiss border.

The archways of Bern hide a lot of small shops, whose 1970s-era decor are a great contrast with the look of the cobblestone streets and the buildings.

You know the Swiss and their clocks....

The fast-moving Aare River that runs through Bern, its color thanks to the mineral-laden runoff from the Alps.

Looking back up to the center of Bern.

From Bern it was a short train ride to Zurich, where we met up with Brian and Maria, who had launched our Europe trip in the first place by inviting us to meet them in Zurich to see U2. We spent two days in Zurich, eating fondue, wurst, and rosti, and wandering around. We stayed the Hotel Bar Rossli, just two blocks off the Limmat River in the "old" part of Zurich. We also got a kick out of the trams that run on the honor system for ticket purchases. (Somehow we think that wouldn't work in the States.)

The Limmat River runs right down the center of Zurich.

Brian and Maria soaking in the sun during our boat ride on Lake Zurich.

The morning after the concert (which was beyond fabulous, and if you ever have to go to a concert with festival seating, make sure to do it in Switzerland, where they take politeness to an extreme), the four of us boarded the train to Salzburg--we managed to snare two six-person berths, and so for most of the trip were able to spread out and relax and enjoy the ride right through the Alps. It was an overcast day, unfortunately, but it still gave us some stunning views of the scenery.

One last look at Zurich before heading off to Salzburg.

Imagine a six-hour train ride with views like this the entire time.

An alpine village nestled at the foot of a mountain.

I've been yakking about wanting to go to Salzburg for about 15 years now--I had been there with my family when I was five, but remember very little of it, and of course the years of repeated viewings of The Sound of Music left me drooling over the scenery. Bill probably went into it with a certain level of ambivalence, but ended up enjoying Salzburg as much as any part of our trip. We were good Americans and took a Sound of Music tour, but we also got ourselves to a beer hall, bought some "Mozart Balls" (chocolate specialties of Austria), and just to be different went to a fantastic Irish bar right on the river, where we heard a guy with just an acoustic guitar doing amazing covers of tunes. You'll note that the vast majority of pictures on this page are from Salzburg--it's too scenic to avoid snapping many many pictures.

The view out our window at the Hotel Amadeus. The downside of overlooking a church courtyard is the bells that begin ringing at 5 a.m.

The Hotel Amadeus, with Bill having a quick drink at the cafe next door.

The street outside our hotel, looking toward the river and the center of Salzburg.

The Smart Car gives new meaning to the term "sub-compact."	The famous Mirabellgarten, where much of the "Do-Re-Mi" sequence in The Sound of Music was filmed.
This house was used as the back of the von Trapp house in the movie; the mansion that they used for the front of the house is about 10 minutes away.	The resort town of Mondsee (good thing these pictures aren't black and white!)

On the way back from Mondsee, we were taken to a "summer luge run". Despite the terror on his face as he went up the hill, Bill enjoyed the ride down.

Another view of part of Salzburg's old town. At the top of the rock formation is the Cafe Winkler, or the "Restaurant Fonzarelli" as we took to calling it.

On our last day in Salzburg we finally went up to the Hohensaltzburg Fortress, taking the fun ride up the funicular.

Thankfully the weather was clear and gorgeous as we looked over Salzburg from the fortress.

One of about 60,000 churches in Salzburg's "altstadt" (old town). This is the main cathedral--those Catholic bishops who ruled Salzburg for so many centuries certainly liked their architecture.

When planning our trip, we found that Munich was only an hour away from Salzburg by train, and since neither of us had been to Germany as adults we decided we'd better go. After 9 days of being on the go, however, our energy was starting to flag a bit--but we should probably be honest and admit that eating heavy German food (wurst! more wurst!) and drinking stein after stein of beer may have taken a toll as well. Plus it was hot and our hotel (the Drei Lowen) didn't really understand the concept of air conditioning. But on our first night in Munich we took a "Munich by Night" tour, where we got bused around the city, and even out to the Olympic Park.

Alas, I took very few pictures in Munich. I didn't have the guts to take any during our brief stop at the nude sunbathing areas in the Englischer Garten. And I should have taken some when we went to the Lowenbrau Keller, the great outdoor beer garden right next to the Lowenbrau brewery.

The venerable Hofbrau Haus (top left) is a standard stop for organized tours of Munich, but we're never ones to turn down a beer garden. Yes, that's singers and dancers in native garb up on the Hofbrau Haus stage (top right). Goofy, but fun. The street our hotel was on, just one block away from the train station, was a tad noisy and probably increasingly dangerous the farther down the blocks you walked, but it made for a cool Euro-urban nighttime landscape.

We flew home on a 9 1/2-hour nonstop flight from Munich, tired but thrilled that our trip went off without a hitch. And with our appetites whetted for more across-the-pond adventures, hopefully before too much longer.

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