This is the third and final part of our trip to France in 2019.  Part 1 was to  champagne country , Part 2  Bordeaux , and this Part 3 to Cognac, which is both a town ( 250 miles southwest of Paris ) and the highest form of brandy.  All bottles labeled Cognac are produced from grapes grown in this location.  The population of Cognac is around 19,000, but was as high at 22,000 in 1975. We only stayed two nights in Cognac, at what was then a new  Chais Monnet , one of the very finest hotels we have ever experienced.  Virtually adjacent are the grand four cognac companies, Martel, Hennessey, Courvoisier and Rémy Martin.  I picked this hotel because Rémy Martin is just across the street, where we had made a special appointment to get a private tour.  These four make 93% of all the cognac drunk.   We arrived by train.  Every major train station has a taxi stand, right?  Nope.  We waited for 15 minutes, and finally got some...

First of all, this is Friday, and if you are in the USA, it is a day off for our country's 249th birthday.  How much longer we'll have  a Democracy will be a challenge with Donald Trump as president. Greece is where Democracy was born. However,  Democracy in Athens 2500 years ago  was not quite what it is supposed to be.  First, only males who served in the militia could vote.  With all the ineligible men, women, children and foreigners, only around 15% could participate in the democracy of those days As best as I can determine,  modern Greece did not return to Democracy until 1974!   Joined the European Union in 1981, but elected a socialist government later that year.  The government continues through crises, sometimes with coalitions involving communists, other times just messed up and in scandal.  So is Greece a Democracy today.  I guess yes. San Marino claims to have been a Republic since the year 300, but its current constitut...