IONA Note: For both of you who have been diligently following this sabbatical blog (my mother and the one other person), you'll notice that I've given myself permission to take a bit of a break from blogging. While I'm at "home" now in the Black Hills I still feel the need to catch up a bit and say a word about my time in Iona. An hour's train ride from Edinburgh to Glasgow. A second train ride of three hours from Glasgow to Oban. A forty-five minute ferry...

A CASTLE & LAUNDRY IN EDINBURGH A quick flight from Paris got us to Edinburgh, Scotland late in the afternoon on Thursday, July 26. We took a bus from the airport to the main train station in Edinburgh (Waverly) and then walked to our hotel. We had enough time to walk the "Royal Mile" (the main street in Edinburgh which is so-called because it connects the Edinburgh Castle with the Palace of Holyroodhouse) and sit down for a meal at an Italian restaurant...

PARIS WITH A TODDLER We arrived in Paris on Sunday afternoon and stayed until Thursday afternoon. Being a tourist with a toddler in Paris wasn't as bad as you might think (most of the time it was much better, but a few times it was a bit worse). With that said, here's our time in Paris 'by the numbers'… # of museums/churches/sites we visited with our Paris Museum Pass… (11 - the Louvre, Pantheon, Cluny Museum/Middle Ages Museum, Museé d'Orsay, San Ch...

LIFE AT TAIZÉ It is possible that from the other blog entries about Taizé that one could get the impression that life at Taizé is perfect. This is not the case. Like life everywhere, life in community at Taizé is filled with challenges. For example, there are many rules at Taizé. For someone who has never been before, you learn the rules as you go along… sometimes by breaking them. Many of the rules center around worship (which makes sense because ...

CLUNY On Thursday afternoon Elisabeth and I traded community life at Taizé for time as tourists. We hopped on a bus (which we almost missed, but just barely caught by running for the last half mile) with a woman from France who is in our small group and rode for about 15 minutes or 10 kilometers to the nearby village Cluny. Cluny was the center of a Benedictine monastery from as early as the year 910 until as late as 1790. In its heyday it rivaled Rome as ...