Bittersweet ending

I now leave Paris tomorrow morning after spending time in both Italy, with a teacher from the International School in Ouagadougou on Spring Break, and in the Netherlands visiting a longtime friend that I lost contact with for about 6 years.

Italy was fantastic--I took the night train from Paris where we met up in Venice, we then traveled by train to Florence where we spent a few days, enjoyed the Tuscan countryside including Siena, San Gimignano and Pisa, then went on to Bologna, before taking the night train from Milan to back to Paris.

  
 Random shots of Venice above

 And Florence

And the Tuscan countryside

 

And Bologna below

Where we had some wonderful meals

 

 

 Upon returning to Paris briefly, I ordered some books for Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL) from ScoLibris--the remainder of the series that I mentioned in an earlier post from the Editions du Figuier, the titles by the Malian author, Moussa Konaté.

I will take them with me the next time I visit, probably the same time next year.

This was a crazy time for me as I then took the Thalys train to the Netherlands, traveling to the town of Amersfoort via Schiphol, where I saw again my friend Sandra and met her husband of two years, Bert.

The heart of Amersfoort is a beautiful medieval town, which I enjoyed greatly, and the weather was delightfully warm and pleasant. 

But I return home with a heavy heart, because during my absence one of my dogs, Noisette, had been taken to the vet with pneumonia, then to a specialist for confirmation diagnosis and treatment.  Unfortunately it turned out to be a pernicious strain that did not respond at all to antibiotics, she took a irreversible turn for the worse, and I had to make the decision to allow the vet put her to sleep.  She was the sweetest long-haired dachshund, only 7 years old, and I am heartbroken.