Atherton Family Notes

This post is out of order, but I just put the picture together, and I wanted to post it. The picture below is a panorama of St. Peter’s Basillica, one of the primary locations in Vatican City. As you can see the panorama looks pretty bizarre– I took the pictures without benefit of a tripod , so the rolling nature of the pictures is due to my unsteadiness. There are also a lot of places in the pictures where shapes don’t quite match up properly causing some serious blurriness, and there are spots where people in the picture moved between shots. Plus, I wasn’t standing in the middle of the circle– the obelisk in the picture occupies that spot. Carissa and Celia aren’t in the picture because they are behind the fountain. If you look very closely, you can see Sandi back by them.. . she can be seen just over the shoulder of a man wearing a yellow shirt and sitting on the fountain.

I think it still gives a pretty good idea of the spaciousness of the basilica. The picture is almost a complete 360 degree view.

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The people of Cologne have made a conscious effort to preserve the historical heritage of the city. What that means to us, as tourists, is that the skyline of the old city has been well preserved, and also that many historical structures, some dating back to Roman times, can still be seen.

On the other hand, Cologne is still a big city, and in some ways feels like any major metropolis with all the hustle and bustle one can stand. In that sense, Cologne wasn’t one of Sandi’s favorite cities, but I still found it fascinating.

The skyline of central Cologne. You can see in the distance that some skyscrapers have been built, but they are kept far from the city center. The biggest such buildings are built in the opposite direction from where this panorama was made. from left to right, the three major building pictured are the “Neue Rathaus”, Gross St. Martin, and the Cathedral. The bridge over the Rhein leads to the main train station just behind the Cathedral.

A satellite map of the same area, at a 1 pixel = 1 square meter scale. The details are a little unclear. The tower of the Rathaus is just above the letter “h” in “Rathaus”, and the tower of Gross St. Martin is just above the “M” in “Martin”.

It’s clear that most of the area in the photograph is decidedly modern. It’s easier to undertake such renewal projects if the previous buildings are destroyed by bombs.

Our hotel is located south of the Cathedral. If you look immediately south of the cathedral, you can see a big sqaure building (the Roman-German Museum). Just south of that are two more smaller buildings. Our hotel is right across the street from there.

This is the remains of a portal through the city wall built by the Romans in the fourth century. This wall, if it still existed, would pass through the north side of the cathedral. In fact, the cathedral is casting the shadow that runs through most of the picture. I believe the portal itself has been reconstructed, but using stones from the original wall.

This is the steakhouse where we ate dinner the first night. It sits directly across the square from the Cathedral. Normally, I would make fun of people that seek out food from back home while on vacation, instead of trying the local cuisine, but in this case I felt it was justified for us. We’ve been eating the local cuisine for a long time. Eating at this restaurant was like taking a mini-vacation home to Indiana. Juicy steaks, baked potatoes, and Cesar salad. Yummm! It was the first time we had food like this in almost a year.

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We went to Austria last week over the long holiday weekend in Germany. About half an hour out of Munich, we stopped to buy gas. There happens to be a good view at this rest stop, because it’s close to the Bavarian Alps. Here is a panorama I made while the kids
played:

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As I mentioned in another post, we went to Austria last weekend. One of the places we visited was a mountain outside of Salzburg called Schaffenberg or Schafbergspitze. It’s mainly accessible by a cog-wheel train that takes you up to the very top.

We almost didn’t make the journey up the mountain. It rained most of the morning, and we were about to leave the town where the train is when Sandi noticed that the sky was clearing up. We waited a few minutes, and sure enough, it was suddenly turning into a beautiful day.

Sandi and I both think it was a good thing that we decided to stay. Here is the view we saw from the top:

[update Feb 2009: fixed the link to the full size picture -- sorry about that]

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Here is a different view, from another part of the mountain:

(Click picture to see full size)

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As it turns out, St. Gregoire is located to the west of a canal called the Ille et Rance. The canal is part of an irrigation system that provides water to regional agriculture.

It also is a good place for a Sunday walk, and since today was a nice one, I took the opportunity to walk around my new town.

The canal system in Brittany is broken up by small, manually-operated locks. I passed by three of these devices on my trip today. Each one is accompanied by a small residence where the operator presumably lives.

At St. Gregoire, the canal widens significantly and divides. There is a lock located at this place, but because of the width, there is also a spillway. It makes for a pretty entrance to the village.

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Last weekend, I had the opportunity to go to Normandy and visit the beaches of the northern coast, famed as the location of the landings on June 6th, 1944. The trip worked out mostly as an orientation visit to the area, partly because I only had a crappy little camera to work with, and only a small memory card. There is clearly a lot to see in this area, and I am sure I will post more after future visits.

I did however, get one picture that I wanted to share now.

Arromanches is a small village located right on the shore and marks one of the locations where the British invasion force came ashore. The allies built an artificial harbor there to protect their supply line. There was another one at Omaha beach that was destroyed by a storm soon after it construction. The one at Arromanches is still visible though, forming a half moon out in the water, as well as some bigger pieces right on the shore.

I took this shot from atop a small hill on the east side of the town. Imagine being here on a June morning almost 60 years ago…

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Last weekend, we went to the beach in St. Malo, which is located about 40 minutes away from our house in St. Gregoire (naming towns after saints is very popular here).

St. Malo is on the northern coast of Brittany, and it is a popular destination for the local populace when the wheather is nice. This weekend was the first really nice one of the spring , so it was a good day for the kids to take off their shoes and play on the beach. The temperature was in the low 70s, and St. Malo was bright and beautiful, even with the mounds of seaweed at low tide.

Here is a panorama I captured:

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The bad news about Brittany is that it rains. A lot. There’s statistically a 55% chance that it is going to rain on any given day of the year. In the winter the odds are higher, in the summer the odds are lower, but even now it still can really interfere with our weekend exploring.

Last Sunday, we were bored and decided to go out anyway.

We visited a nearby town called Vitre. It has a lot of medieval achitecture, including a very complex city wall, a large
portion of which still stands.

Unfortunately, almost from the time we opened the car door after arriving, it began to rain. It was a light rain at first, but within 45 minutes, it was developing into a downpour. So we didn’t get to see as much ofthe town as we hoped. We’ll probably go back sometime when the weather is better.

We did get some interesting photos, though, even in the short time we were there.

A view along part of the pedestrian area in Vitre.

A view of one of the, shall we say, less well-maintained areas of the city wall. There is a sign along this part of the wall warning people not to climb it. I wonder why? They just don’t make 15th century wooden structures like they used to.

I had trouble making a single picture that could capture all of this church– I couldn’t get very far away from it with out introducing major obstacles, so I built a vertical panorama. This church is representative of one the major styles we have seen in this area. By the way, flowers like the ones in the foreground can be seen throughout the city in public areas, which contributes to the town’s charm.

To be perfectly honest, even though Sandi and I weren’t enjoying the rainy weather, the kids probably had as much fun on this trip as they have had on any other that we have taken in a while. Sadie has discovered it’s fun to carry an umbrella, just like her sisters.

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Caen is the home city of William the Conqueror, and most of the major medieval structures in the city exit because of him. William, of course, was the victor at the battle of Hastings in 1066 and a lot of the historic and tourist sites in the city glorify this period of Norman power.

As a contrast, it is interesting to note that Caen was the site of major fighting during WWII and also the sites of many Nazi atrocities because of a notorious prison in the city. The reign of the conqueror (who was quite cruel in his way) is remembered much differently than the time of the occupation and liberation.

While we saw many of the sites related to William, but we did not have time to explore that WWII part of Caen’s history. I hope to get back there someday to do this: the city has what I understand to be an impressive war memorial and museum.

We did see one place where the two stories met: the church of St. Etienne-le-Vieux. The church was founded by William and ruined during the war in 1944. It stands today as a reminder of the destruction that Caen endured during this time.

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