Sedona from the air

A helicopter tour seemed like a good idea-and it was. Here I am climbing aboard while Carol waits her turn to approach. We'll be sitting in the rear seats.

Up, up and away!

A Grand Vista if ever there was one!

The mountains that look so close from our cottage are a long trek away on foot. We'll get to see them up close without any walking.

The trees manage to grow in narrow cracks between the rocks with barely any soil visible.

The sun is starting to go down and is casting long shadows

An ancient cave dwelling, the only sign that humans have been in these rocks. There are jeep tours out into the foothills (coming up later) but none visible this afternoon.

Wilderness for miles

Trees growing on the summit of this lone rock

Signs of shallow caves on this rock.

We're heading back to the airport after a 45 minute flight.

You can just see the airport runway in this next shot between the bushes and the mountains. The airport sits on a flat plateau just outside of town.

An exhilarating flight and one we will take again when next in Sedona, even though the rocks won't have changed!

Sedona, Arizona

There are some places we have visited that lure us simply for their scenic beauty and promises of relaxation as they are off the beaten path. These can be places where there is not much to do-no exciting nightlife or man-made wonders. One such is Sedona, 125 miles North of Phoenix, Arizona.

Even though there is no exciting nightlife in Sedona there can be in Flagstaff which is maybe 30 miles North and it was Flagstaff that was the lure back in 1995 when we went to see a Richard Wagner opera known commonly as "The Ring" which is 4 operas telling one gigantic story and takes 4 nights spread over a week to tell. Rather than stay in Flagstaff close to the theater we looked to Sedona as a more relaxing place to spend between evening opera performances.  We've visited twice as we went back a few years later as the ending to one of our Las Vegas trips so photos will be from those two trips. As always we looked to TripAdvisor when researching places to stay and found a resort called L'Auberge de Sedona.

They have cottages there down by a lazy creek loved by ducks and by us. They also have regular hotel rooms in the main building.

You can just see the creek in this next photo, down below our cottage.

The stone chimney means that, yes, we have a wood burning fireplace. We like to sit and read by a roaring fire in the evening or have dinner brought over from the high-end restaurant on the water's edge.  http://www.lauberge.com/dining/  Down here by the creek at night the only sound we would hear would be the crackling of the burning logs, the ticking of the clock and an occasional duck quack.

As some of you may know from reading some of my cruise reviews on Cruisecritic. com I recently suffered a robbery which sadly took my computer and hard drive storage from me and my photo collection dropped from 31,000 to 9,000 overnight. So a long drive to an American geographical icon called Monument Valley is lost to me now-we drove from Flagstaff so that's why I mention it. Also missing is a bi-plane ride over the Red Rocks of Sedona which I had hoped to share with you. Sigh.

So this will be made up of the Sedona photos I am left with.

Eventually I am going to put down this newspaper and grab the camera and go exploring among the beautiful scenery.

Ok, I've read all the news that's fit to print, so let's go!

To get to the opera in Flagstaff night after night we rented a car. This came in handy to go exploring for although the mountains look really close from our cottage they are a few miles away over uneven land.

As you can see we have the place to ourselves as Sedona isn't a huge tourist magnet-one of the reasons why we love it.

This view is from the highest point in town-the airport where we once caught a bi-plane for a thrilling (but cold and noisy) aerial view of the valley. Later we'll take a helicopter flight and show you the photos.

Even when we turn our backs to the mountain for just a moment we are surrounded by wilderness. And peace. And quiet. There's only the sound of the cold rushing stream.

It's great weather for driving a convertible!

The twisting mountain roads are wide open.

I didn't have a camera back then that could take night shots which is a pity as Sedona is a "dark town" at night with minimal street lighting so that the residents have a starry sky to enjoy. Returning from Flagstaff at midnight down a twisty hairpin road that drops 2,000 feet in maybe 2 miles is a challenge. But it was fun!

More to come....

Caribbean Cruise

Hello again!

I thought I'd like to share my latest Caribbean Cruise with you which is published on cruisecritic.com.

I have finished it after 3 weeks of writing and am now engaged on another lengthy piece there.

You don't have to be a member to read it. Only if you want to respond to something or ask questions.
There's no charge to sign up. You just have to make up a screen name.

Here's the link!

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2306122

Cheers!

Norris

Intermission

I fly to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida tomorrow to join a cruise ship- Celebrity Silhouette, so I will be "off the air" again for some time.

My last cruise review on Cruisecritic.com   http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=47937585#post47937585  took 6 weeks to write and post.

The Silhouette one shouldn't take so long so I hope to return to the blog in late February (if not before)

Hope to see you then!!

Norris

Looking down on Munich

There's a remarkable church near Marienplatz called the Frauenkirche which has two red brick towers and one of these has an elevator which affords a birds-eye view of Munich. We had to go up there!

View from the top

The ferris wheel on the far right is part of Oktoberfest which is held in the same green park each year

You can see a rollercoaster to the right of the ferris wheel in this next photo

There are many pedestrian-only streets in the heart of Munich

The Bavarian State Opera house is at the center -the building with the concrete columns

As you can see the city isn't laid out in a grid pattern like American cities.  Satellite Navigation really helps when trying to drive through Munich as it's hard to know where you might be on a compass.

Here is the Marienplatz clock tower and the square

The tall tower at center is in the Olympic Park where the Summer Olympics were held in 1972.
BMW headquarters is the cylindrical tower to the far right.

We have had a 360 degree view of the city and now it is time to go back down

Back on the street

One of the many human statues found plying their trade in Munich's pedestrian streets

It was at this time we decided to go visit Oktoberfest out of curiosity. It lasts for 16 days and draws 6 million extra tourists to Munich. We walked to the festival site. I don't have my own photos to show you so I have borrowed some from Wikipedia to give you an idea of what to expect there. We had ZERO idea of what to expect and were in for a surprise at the scale of the event.

Here's a shot of the funfair part

But beer and food are the main draw. There are huge tents set up by each of the breweries and people sit at communal tables drinking beer and eating good food while a live band plays happy German music. We visited the Spaten Brewery tent as that's a favorite beer of mine but once we got inside we only stayed for a couple of minutes as it was so noisy and crowded.

Here's a photo that will give you an idea of the size of the tents...

and another tent

We fled and caught a taxi back to our hotel to sit on our balcony and listen to the Blackbirds sing.

Dinner on Saturday, our last night, involved the discovery of a great German restaurant which is under the clock tower of the Town Hall in Marienplatz called the Ratskeller (Town hall cellar). It's a warren of underground dining rooms serving good German food staples, seating over 1,000 diners.
They also have an outdoor restaurant in the town hall courtyard seating several hundred more...

We were up early on Sunday morning and packed for our flight home to Chicago.

It had been a great week of discovery of places we would return to again and again over the years- Munich, Rothenburg and Oberwesel all worked their magic on us: and all because I needed a new car and found out about the BMW European Delivery Program and took advantage of it.

We enjoyed our last breakfast in the tranquil hotel garden

It's a small hotel but it does everything with style

I've mentioned the "simple German breakfasts" during this blog so here are some photos to illustrate

Hard boiled eggs are maybe the only hot food you'll find (look inside the ceramic chicken!)

German bread station

A hearty breakfast and then we took a taxi to Flughafen  Munchen (Airport). One thing to be aware of- due to Oktoberfest  processions of horse-drawn beer wagons in festive garb we were held up by street closures and our driver had to make some detours to get us out of the city.

We always allow a time-cushion when going to the airport so we weren't late.

That's the end of our first visit to Munich. We have returned in 2005, 07, 08, 09 and 2013.

We'll be back!