Land of Loveliness

A remarkable thing has happened here. It's not just that the tulips that were planted last month by the thousands in the traffic islands and little plots around the city have now been dug up and replaced with the next series of blooming flowers. But in seeming coordination, the woods that were brown all winter, then suddenly came alive with an amazing carpet of green have again suddenly bloomed with millions of white flowers! It is so surreal to enter the dark canopy of leafed-out trees and into a white carpet! (Notice in the very center is a deer bedded in the flowers).

I'll often run at dawn, first past a lovely row of houses, a manor house with its statues and gorgeous wrought iron gate, through intoxicating smells flooding the empty street from the bakery, past a village church and the 1750 wineries and up the cobbled road flanking a huge park. I turn into a vacant lot (a forest laced with a trail and run through the trees about a kilometer before returning home). This morning I passed all of two cars– here in one of the major cities in Europe. Amazing!