Looking at the World from a different angle

2012-01-15T08:16:00.000-08:00

It's been quite a long time since I posted last. I can't even say what has occupied my brain. The battery in my camera has surely drained by now and will need to be recharged before I take it out and seriously use it again. Life has just seemed to have this drifty quality, very similar to the feeling I had years ago when I read the book Cold Mountain. If you've only seen the movie, you've definitely missed what I'm talking about, since the book was able to take pages and pages to develop a scene where a movie would fail commercially if it tried to do the same on film.

My daughter Grace has received her PhD and has returned to the United States as planned. Just before she left Germany, she was offered a position back in Germany. She is having a hard time adjusting to the thought of returning back to Germany for the next three years, but this new position will definitely be good for her career.

It has been wonderful having her around to simply hang with, run errands, etc. We have been working on making quilts, which is my latest passion. http://gotkwilts.blogspot.com/2011/12/polar-express.html?spref=fb
http://gotkwilts.blogspot.com/2012/01/tumbling-batiks.html
She is also taking me in hand and doing a Clean Sweep on my craft room downstairs. At the outset, she was concerned that I would be resistant to getting rid of things, but the purging has been rather cathartic. Working down through the layers on the flat surfaces of my work space is a bit like an archeological dig. I think the oddest thing we have found so far is a pair of brown ribbed pantyhose that was tucked into a spot in one of the bookcases. There was absolutely nothing wrong with them so I'm rather puzzled how they migrated their way from my bedroom upstairs down to my craft room. Needless to say, I have a lot of things to either sell online or give away to friends or GoodWill.

At work there have been changes recently. I have acquired more people on my team, making it even larger than it was. I am working on putting the additional load into perspective. I got off to a rough start at first as along with my new responsibilities, I inherited a highly visible project that was behind schedule. I've let myself get wrapped around the axle with anxiety as I worked to get our part of the project back on track. In hindsight, I recognize that and I'd say that is half the battle towards beginning to take a more easy going approach to dealing with that kind of stress. The light went on one day when I realized that these types of things are not problems, they really are opportunities. In the past I have hated it when people used the word opportunities, because it was an excerpt from one of those management "books of the month". However, they really are nothing more than a chance to push yourself outside the normal box in which you operate and try a new approach or at the very least, to approach it with a different frame of mind that may result in a new approach. Luckily, I like the people with whom I work; they are a very funny, quirky set.

Tomorrow, we have an appointment for a local firm that remodels kitchens to come in and meet with us. They will measure our kitchen and talk with us about what we want before they go away and come up with a design and what will seem like a very high price for the work. Our kitchen is original to the house which was built in 1962. Wow, doing the math I realize that's 60 years this years. I wonder if we can call it vintage? At any rate, it is way past needing the remodel. The counters and cabinets were not high end at the time they were installed and it will be so nice to have them replaced and to have a new workspace that will be more modern. Bob has some great, practical ideas and I am looking forward to cooking our first meal in the near(?) future.

I started this entry with the idea that I had something important to say. Needless to say by now, that I am several paragraphs into this and haven't found it yet. Since probably no one is reading this, it's not a big deal. At least my state of mind has been recorded. I believe that 2012 has a lot of change in store for me and this is as good a place to record if for later reflection as any.

The Magical Mystery tour takes to the road in a Toyota Sienna van

2011-10-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

The weather since I have arrived in Asheville has been variable to say the very least. This morning as we set out on our magical tour in our natty Sienna van, the weather was gorgeous. The air was crisp but not too chill and the sunlight made everything it touched glow and shimmer.

Charlene and I rode tail gun from the back seat.

We headed straight to the Southern Highland Craft Show where Dawn had some friends participating in the show. I was interested in seeing if the show was different or similar to the Best of the Northwest show in which I have participated back home. One major difference was that there is more glass and photography in the NW and more wood, pottery and weaving here in the SE. The booths were also pretty tight up on the concourse, but very nicely set up.

I bought a few Christmas gifts and met some very nice people. One vendor, Russ's Rural Rockers, had the most incredible hand carved rocking "horses".

The detail in his work was gorgeous as was the finishing. The layering of the woods and his use of burls was also beautiful.

After the craft show we went for lunch at Salsa's . What a wonderful menu. I wish this restaurant was in my home town so that I could taste my way through it. I had a Mocaljete, which came in a hot lava cauldron with three legs. In this video, my meal is happily sizzling away in the pot. It had chicken with a curry-coconut sauce alongside mushrooms that had a carmelized-chipotle flavor. There were vegetables underneath and a little side plate containing rice, beans, salsa and a freshly made guacamole. Yum.

Afterwards we went to the University of North Carolina Botanical Gardens where we walked around for hours enjoying the serenity of the forest within the bustling city. The creek that ran through it made just enough noise that it blocked out the traffic on the edge of the park.

Some "groovy" rock formations.

This is the bark of a tree called The Devi's walking stick. One can just imagine why.

Afterward a couple of hours of plant therapy we head back to the house for dinner and an evening of working on uploading photos and laughter. The highlight of the evening was having Ken Thomas show me how to use the various tools in iPhoto to improve my photos which I really appreciated.

Going walkabout in Asheville

2011-10-20T19:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a busy day as we began our workshop experience. After covering the structure of the workshop, we convoyed off to The Screen Door in downtown Asheville first thing. This place was phenomenal. I had a hard time actually getting inside as there was so much cool stuff outside.

Inside the world exploded.

This is detail from one of three velveteen pumpkins with real stems just inside the door.

And this is a photo of "retired" yarn or thread spools from some of the old closed mills that used to populate the area. All of this work is now done overseas.

As I've noticed in the past, some of the items are odd if not down right disturbing in some instances.

We had a wonderful late lunch at a restaurant named Tupelo Honey Cafe. The menu was really loaded with wonderful sounding options and they even had gluten free items. Here are Chris and Andrew waiting at the restaurant. We had an hour wait, this place is that popular...and we got there at 1o'clock.

While we waited I took pictures in the little triangular park, tucked in between three intersecting streets as the buses, trolleys and ambulances whizzed by.

During lunch it seems like the temperature had dropped even further and with the wind chill factored in, it was bordering on uncomfortably cold. We walked through town and dropped into a wonderful little bookstore called Malaprops and also a little cafe, The Chocolate Lounge, where we drank coffee, hot cocoa or wine depending on our individual whim. They also had some very nice looking chocolates from which I abstained - although I’m not sure why I did. They looked and sounded really tasty as I listened to the exclamations all around the table.

We also visited the Chevron Trading Post & Bead Co. where I spent my time trying to get the fish to pose nicely in front of the interesting corals in the salt water aquarium.

Before leaving the downtown area, we stopped into a lovely little store called the Funky Mutt with the express purpose to meet this cute little kitty in the window. Her name was Fancy and our timing couldn't have been better. Susan, the owner, provides a foster home in the store to pets like Fancy until they are adopted. This photo was taken just moments before Fancy left the Funky Mutt for her "forever home" with her new owner. What a neat concept. (It kind of looks like she's watching the fish...)

Back at the house, Andrew’s sister Cynthia and her husband Greg came by and brought us dinner which was a very tasty vegetarian chili. One of Kate’s old friends Ken Thomas, a photographer, also dropped in. It was another evening of convivial conversation and laughter and a late bedtime for most of us as it took a while to wind down afterwards.

Unakite Mountains

2011-10-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

I flew to Knoxville yesterday arriving about 3:30 on a sunny, warm and slightly humid afternoon. I picked up my rental car - a Nissan Versa. What a disappointment. No electric locks or windows. The car has one lock on the driver door so you have to reach over to unlock the passenger side and then contort yourself around to unlock the doors in the back seat. Drives like a tank and the engine is sluggish going up an incline. I kept wanting to shift into a lower gear, but alas, it was an automatic.

The drive ahead of me was about 2 - 2.5 hours which I didn't mind. I like to drive "cross-country", watching how the landscape changes and noticing the regional differences. Once I got onto I-40 (two lanes) through Knoxville and for a ways beyond, the driving was a bit difficult. A lot of people drive at least 15 miles over the speed limit, a smaller portion drive the speed limit and then there are the trucks cruising along at whatever speed. Great fun; keeps you on your toes.

After turning south on I-40 where it divides from I-81 you enter the Cherokee National Forest. This part of the drive was beautiful as the road winds through the mountains. As a storm front moved up from the south, the sky lowered and the light became flat. The autumn foliage on the mountainsides had a pointillistic style in the same colors as Unakite. It was gorgeous, but I had to keep my eyes on the windy road with all the trucks. I arrived at the house about 6:45 and was greeted by a group of women gathered around the island in the kitchen, drinking wine, eating chicken and pulled pork and chocolate while we caught up and introduced ourselves.

Big day tomorrow.

What's in a name?

2011-10-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

Last spring I signed up for another blogging/photo workshop. This time in Asheville, NC. I thought it would be a wonderful place to go in October with the changing leaves.

Then a month and a half ago, I found out that I was going to Las Vegas for a conference for work the week after my trip to Asheville. In fact, I will fly home this coming Sunday, be picked up by my husband, go home and swap out the contents of my suitcase and then he'll drive me back to the airport for a mid afternoon flight.

So, I thought I'd call American airlines to see how much it would cost to change my ticket. Here's how it went...

Thank you for calling American Airlines....bla, bla, bla. Several selections later, we get down to business.

"the Voice" asks me 'What is the name of the airport from which you will be departing?'

I say 'Knoxville'.

"the Voice" asks me 'What is the name of the airport at your final destination?'

I say 'Seattle'.

"the Voice" asks me 'What is the date of your travel?'

I say 'October 23rd'.

"the Voice" asks me 'What is the passenger's last name?'

I say 'Kay'.

"the Voice" says 'I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. What is the passenger's last name?'

I say 'KAY'.

"the Voice" says 'I'm sorry, I still didn't undertand. Please repeat the passenger's last name?'

I say 'Kaaaayyyyyy'.

"the Voice" says 'I'm sorry, let me transfer you to the first available agent.

I think to myself that it's about time.

I couldn't believe that the voice recognition software could pick up individual city names and dates but couldn't figure out a simple last name like mine. Since I married into the name, I've been amazed how a name so simple can stump so many people. I get varied reactions from people when they ask me for my last name.

'Kay'

No, your last name...

What does the 'k' stand for?

Does that have an 'e' on the end of it?

What IS in a name? Obviously, not enough...

And to finish the other thread in this: to change the ticket was going to cost about $500.

Ouch. There is the reason for my rapid turn around next Sunday.

Countdown to blast off

2011-07-21T19:43:00.000-07:00

Wednesday morning arrives with leaden skies that develop into rain as we set out on our drive to Aschaffenburg where we will spend our last night of vacation. Since the actual driving part of the drive will only take about 3 hours, we make the decision to stop in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. This city had its heyday in the Middle Ages as it was on the road to the Crusades as well as the trade route with Asia. The quartering of troops in the town in 1634, followed by an outbreak of plague left it poor and empty; effectively turning it into a backwater village with little change. In the 1880s, the artists from the Romantic movement "discovered" it once more and put it back on the map for tourism. At that point laws were created to prevent major changes and to preserve its 17th century state. This means that the old fortress walls and towers are intact.

We make our way towards the old medieval town in the center, park the car and head in through one of the gates in the wall and wend our way to the center. A few blocks in, I recognize a coworker whom I knew was going to be in Germany at the same time, but never dreamed that we would both be anywhere on the same date at the same time.

We ate our lunch in the main square after catching the clock's noon time display. This consists of a window opening on each side of the clock face and a figure in each window hefting a large tankard (of beer) and drinking heartily. Of course, you have to be told that is what is happening before you "get it". We walked around a few streets for a while enjoying the ambience of the old wall, towers and houses.

CDB?

We even found a 1 Euro Store, but we didn't go in. I'm sure that would have been a highlight of the entire trip.

We then headed for the Criminal Museum along the south wall. This museum consists of 4 floors of torture devices as well as displays that covered how all manner of bad behavior has handled in past times. An Iron Maiden, a water torture device and a rack are some of the larger items. Manacles and shame masks were also present. These shame masks are iron masks that are clamped on your head for a mandated period of time. One was a wolf head for a person that told baudy jokes. There were masks for gossips too. Women who fought were placed in a double yoke. Outside they have a pillory that people can pose in for a picture. (First three photos courtesy of Hayley)

The rain had stopped before we arrived in Rothenburg, but started again as we arrived in Aschaffenburg. I had saved the map in Google the night before, but made the mistake of not getting a good enough reference of where the hotel was in the town so we had only the directions provided on the hotel confirmation email. We eventually found our way to the hotel, but I think the big lesson here is that taking the GPS would have been a good idea.

We went out for a nice dinner at a Restaurant called "The Potato" (in German of course) where it was "schnitzel day". Everyone had a nice meal that was even reasonably priced.

Then it was back to the hotel to begin the preliminary weeding out of items from our luggage in preparation for our flight home and an early bedtime for all.

The next morning we drag ourselves out of bed. Justin and I were kept awake last night by live music being performed loudly and close by. Bob and Hayley have slept through it all. Justin correctly points out that it would have been easier to tune out if the band was lousy, but it wasn't. The female vocalist had a nice sound.

At this point, we have packed our bags in preparation for the heavy-handed treatment from the Condor agents at Frankfurt airport, eaten breakfast and head to the car. Lucky me, there is a yarn shop on the street that we stop at on the way to the car park and the kids each pick out a ball of sock yarn to be knit up for them. This is probably the most shopping I have done on the whole trip. 6 balls of sock yarn. Harumph.

Onto the Autobahn for the last time with a stop to fill the gas tank of the rental car before dropping it off. We get to the Condor counter where there must be about 15-20 stations in a row. There is one agent on duty, with someone watching over her shoulder. The same family has been standing there for over 10 minutes as the line begins to grow and some official person begins to run the line back and forth like a ride at Disneyland. Eventually 3 more people show up and begin to check people in. Entire process took maybe 20 minutes which wasn't too bad. Unlike in Seattle on our outbound flight, no one has any interest in weighing our carry on to ensure that they weigh less than 6 kilo. Mystified, we check our luggage and head for the gate.

Oddly, we don't go through a central Security Checkpoint, but instead they have all the scanning equipment at the gate. We are informed by a fellow passenger that they cannot let us into the gate because the plane has not yet arrived. The flight was scheduled to leave at 2:30p, and they didn't begin scanning us until 1:30. This is the first time in all the flights I have taken with Bob and the kids that they get additional attention and I sail through. Works for me. We're now sitting in the gate area where they have a little shop where you can buy snack type foods, magazines and beer. As we sit there we have some fellow Seattleites surprisedly and loudly greeting acquaintances from back home while drinking beer standing in the boarding lounge.

Having a seat at the back of the plane, we are boarded first. As we sit there with our 6 kilo of carry-on, on come passengers with luggage bigger than the bags we checked and proceed to shove them into the overhead. We are baffled as to why the flight out of Seattle was so horrendously handled by making everyone check in their carry-on AND make everyone adjust their luggage to ensure nothing over 6 kilo was carried on. Go figure. The experience with this airline on the way home was almost as if we had flown a different airline on the outward bound portion. I think we'll avoid this airline in the future.

We arrived on time in Seattle. The kid's mother had offered to pick us up so I called from my phone to let her know we were at the curb and ready to be picked up. The calls kept going to "this subscriber is not available". After a worried hour wait, we decide to catch the bus home which took another hour. Once home, Bob gets his cell phone and calls the correct number (she had a new cell phone and I didn't have the new number). Turns out that she'd been circling the airport, calling the airline and worrying about us for the last few hours. She quit circling the airport and came by and got the kids on her way home. Bob started a load of laundry and we crashed early.

We're now all back in our old routines, none the worse for wear. We have a lot of outstanding memories to reflect upon or as Marcel says "we can eat from our memories for a long time". It was a fun trip, we saw a lot of cool things, took some great pictures, ate some very nice food and shared a lot of laughs. Can't say anything against all that! I wonder where we'll go next?

A Tale of Two Castles or Two Tales to Tell

2011-07-18T19:51:00.000-07:00

This post will be made in two parts since I had a totally different day than Bob, Justin and Hayley.
In the middle of the night, even with my homemade "Nyquil" I managed to have a coughing fit that kicked the stuffing out of me. It closed up my throat like asthma and I proceeded to cough and wheeze painfully trying to get some air into my lungs. It hurt and it scared both Bob and I. Needless to say, the next morning I woke up exhausted and in no mood to go hiking about the castles and the hills on which they both sit. I elected to stay home and do laundry as there was a washing machine in our apartment at Casa Patrizia.
Bob and I then drove up to the market we'd seen the night before and got the makings for a couple of breakfasts, lunches and dinner.
After breakfast and assuring Bob that things would be written in English, they took off for the day. I proceeded to try to figure out how to make the washing machine work. Unlike other places we'd stayed on this trip, there was no notebook with instructions for appliances, good restaurants, etc. I began pushing buttons in random sequence to elicit some type of reaction other than to simply reset the length of time for the wash cycle. I had to go down to fetch our landlady for assistance. She indicated that they had lost the paperwork for the machine. She proceeded to punch away at the panel, indicating that two buttons needed to be held down simultaneously to get it to start. Eventually, she found the correct two and it started. I then tried to sleep but there were was a little girl outside next door playing in her inflatable swimming pool which involved a bit of squealing.
The first load finished and I hauled everything out and draped it over the drying rack that Hayley had noticed on the backporch. I then started a second load of laundry successfully guessing the correct two buttons (or maybe two other buttons that also worked). I have no idea what cycle it actually ran since it was in German.
Again, I tried napping and reading. This is the period of time where I learn why the apartments are called Casa Patrizia. The owner's daughter's name is Patrizia. I heard her calling her daughter in the back yard. I also know that it was Patrizia's birthday because over the next few hours, about a half dozen little girls were dropped off and they all began to play in the pool in "our" backyard. The tip off came when they sang "Happy Birthday" in German. More squealing, some crying, a game involving a metal mixing bowl clanging on the cement and no nap. :(
Eventually Bob and the kids returned from a busy day and we had salad with sliced chicken breast for dinner. As we ate, we all shared our day with each other.
Their version of the same day: (Photos courtesy of Hayley and Bob)
First they went to Hohenschwangau, the older of the two castles. This castle is finished in comparison to Neuschwanstein. It was the childhood residence of Ludwig II and the walls were decorated with romanticized paintings of medieval times. This artwork had a profound influence on young Ludwig and predisposed his later interest in Wagner's operas.

After they toured the first castle they headed over towards Neuschwanstein stopping to eat their lunch on a convenient bench along the way. During lunch they watched the many horse-drawn carriages hauling the lazy tourists back and forth between the parking and the castles on the hill top. They also saw a man whose job seemed to be cleaning up after the horse. The description indicates that he wasn't very effective at his job.
After waiting for their appointed tour time at Neuschwanstein our intrepid trio was rewarded with a fine tour of this castle. This castle was Ludwig's biggest project but was never finished as he drowned mysteriously in a nearby lake before it's completion. The fact that Ludwig was draining Bavaria's fiscal resources to build this castle and several others is suggested as one of the reasons for his untimely death. Hayley says it was totally awesome. Bob says it was "the bomb". Do you see the level of cooperation I am getting here?
Apparently the tour guide made a bigger impression than the castle itself. Also of note was that they were not allowed to take pictures although many on the tour thought they were being clever by taking pictures surreptitiously. Neuschwanstein's other claim to fame is that unlike other tourist attractions that run you through the gift shop on the way out, it had TWO gift shops that you went through on the way out.
Then they walked up to the Marienbrucke up behind the castle. The construction of the bridge gave Hayley second thoughts about walking on it. They walked out on it to take pictures of the waterfall. It is a great place for a perfect shot back at the castles.

Afterwards they walked back down to the river, took off their shoes and cooled off in the ice cold, rushing waters. This is where Bob decided to temporarily misplace his glasses in the water; luckily they didn't wash away in the current. Further exploration found the flume that channeled water to power an old sawmill.

They also spent a considerable amount of time making rock art along the river. The landscape will never be quite the same again.

They then followed the bread crumb trail back to the car and rushed home to check to see how I was doing and coincidentally to eat dinner. We then watched The Brothers Grimm on DVD and crashed for the night.

Deutschland, here we come.

2011-07-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

The final country on tour tour...Germany. We load our things into the car and drive out of Lucerne which was amazingly easy all things considered. Google says that the drive time is a little over 3 hours, however, Google always knows where it is going. WHEN we have Internet access, I've been saving off the Google map of the destination on my desktop to be able to guide us when we each our final destination. Unfortunately, the map doesn't always translate to what you're looking at...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

On our way to Fuessen, we wind up driving through the western tip of Austria. We stopped in the town of Bregenz to find some lunch and pull over to this little market we find. We're walking around trying to collect sandwich makings. I'm at the back counter where they have the meats and breads. Bob comes up and says that he thinks we are in an ethnic market as he holds up some item in his hand and the writing on the package is not in a language that I recognize, why heck, it's not even the same alphabet! As I'm waiting for someone to come out of the back room to get service in the bakery section, I here this ZAP noise. I look up and there, mounted on the wall, is one of those bug zapper units. Some fly has met it's maker, which is probably a good thing given the open meat counter. I'm thinking it's a creative solution when a woman comes out and grudgingly offers to serve me. I ask for some of the rolls in the bin over there and she tells me that they are old and then walks off.

At this point, we decide to buy only the fruit that we have collected and get out of Dodge. We finally found another market further along and lunch was purchased and consumed. The fruit purchased at the earlier stop turns out to be beautiful to look at, but tastes borderline nasty.

Through Austria and onto the German Autobahn where the other cars begin to pass us at speeds that cause our car to be sucked over into their lane as they whiz past. At this point, it's fairly easy going until we get off of the Autobahn and start to find our way around Fuessen. Since we are early for check in, we decide to go to visit Linderhof, one of Ludwig II's castles. Now we run into the problem of having a map that doesn't show all the little roads, the scale is too large. I try to navigate by dead reckoning and a large percentage of luck, but the stars are not aligning themselves on our side. After several abortive attempts (and driving back into Austria a couple of times), we wind up heading north on one of the roads that actually shows up on the map. By now, I'm thinking "screw it", we'll go visit WIeskirche and then go all the way around and get to Linderhof. It's not what I had in mind, but it worked. Unfortunately, it did lengthen the time in the car...

Wieskirche is a church that is situated on a little knoll and is now surrounded with buildings given over to the tourist industry which dampens the effect of the church. When I first saw it in 1973, it was this simple looking little pale yellow and white church standing on a rise in the middle of a field. It has since been repainted to a pale peach and white and a new "wing" built on the backend in addition to the restaurant and gift shops built out front.

At any rate, you walk up to the church, walk inside and get hit right between the eyes. Built in the mid 18th century, the interior is decorated in the high Baroque style called rococo. The style of the exterior is diametrically opposed to the interior.
Side altar.

Front altar.

The organ loft at the back of the church.

The clerestory windows that run along the sides of the church letting in the light.

While we were inside, a visiting group of tourists gathered at the front and began to sing "Amazing Grace". It was very pretty to hear their voices as we admired the magnificence of the ceiling and different altars. It's a bit choppy as I tried to shorten it using iMovie on my laptop.

We left Wieskirche and continued on the large loop based on the map. We finally arrived at Linderhof (the long way around) about 5p. The man at the gate waved us in without paying the parking since we were so close to closing time. We were able to get in to last tour of the day.
The tour no longer allows photography - even without flash which is a disappointment to Hayley and I. It is also conducted primarily in German with notebooks containing laminated sheets that say roughly the same thing in "your" language as the tour guide is saying German. The binders are labeled on the spine in German with the various languages. Mainly Eastern European, English, and Korean. If you are from a neighboring EU country apparently you are expected to speak German. The Swedes on the tour went with English.
Linderhof is one of the few completed castles that Ludwig II built.

It was patterned after Versailles and Louis XIV was a big influence. One of the little rooms was was patterned after the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. A lot of the art on the walls were portraits were of French nobility from the courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV. Ludwig was apparently not playing on a level field as he had a tendency to sleep all day and cage around in the middle of the night. He had a dining room with a table that stood on a trap door. At meal time, the table was lowered to the floor below, set by the servants and then winched back up into place. He didn't like to interact with people. There was a lot of carved and gilded woodwork all over. I remember reading that over 22 lbs of gold leaf was used throughout the chateau. Given the weight of gold leaf, that's a heck of a lot of gold leaf.
After the tour of the castle, we walked around on the grounds and took pictures.

This urn had the signs of the zodiac running around it. Oddly though the faces covered up Scorpio and Taurus.

Hayley getting a shot looking down at the fuchsia.

After we finished we got back in the car, drove back through Austria again and found the apartment where we would spend the next two nights. Again, not an easy task. As I mentioned earlier, the Google map lacked any distinguishing landmarks. I finally used my cell phone and Google maps to find out where we actually were and used it to retrace our route and find the address. As we rounded the sharp right hand turn to roughly the 5 o'clock position, I noticed that the street sign was jammed up into a bush and leaves covered it up. Small wonder we missed it, but the mishap was a blessing in disguise as we found a market up the road a ways.
We unloaded everything and Bob and I managed to put a pasta dinner on the table with food that we had brought with us. We turned in fairly early. I had been coughing quite a bit so I dosed myself with some "homemade" Nyquil. Cough syrup and a stiff snort of Calvados, an apple brandy we had picked up in Normandy. The lengths one goes to for a good night's sleep...Nyquil tastes better than this stuff did.
Tomorrow the castles.

One day in Lucerne

2011-07-16T16:49:00.000-07:00

After breakfast at the hotel, we hit the streets of Lucerne. it’s a Sunday morning, so it’s kind of quiet except for the other tourists.

Random photos along the way.

Water spigots in the water fountains in the squares

These are some of the pictures that are painted on the headers under the roof of the Kappelle Bridge here in Lucerne. This is one of the two bridges that spans the River Reuss. I thought it sent an interesting message visually....no one escapes death.

We went first to the main train station to buy lunch items since that is usually where the shops are open on a Sunday. It was a very crowded location. This shot is of the large arch that is the sole remainder of the old station before it was remodeled.

As we walked towards the Lion Monument, we encountered a Sunday concert in the park.

This was interesting...not sure what the motive was with this. If one translates the top of the sign, it informs the reader that in the ground floor of this old building is the company Mixer, providing "full service solutions". Was there really a desire to aid the hapless, lost tourist? Or was it more a desire to keep people from walking down their street? Odd way to advertise your business.

We head across to the lion monument, which is full of Chinese tourists (from the looks and sounds of them) that have just been dumped out of a tour bus. Dead center in front of the monument is this noisy, gesturing throng trying to take pictures of each other in front of the monument. We stand off to the side, wait for their rapid departure and take our pictures. The monument was from Louis XVIII to the Swiss in memory of the Swiss Soldiers that had lost their lives trying to protect the Royal Family at the outbreak of the French Revolution.

We then headed to the Gletschergarten (glacier garden). Luckily for us the gardens, which are right behind the lion monument, were not on the tour for the Chinese. This attraction has been there since the end of the 19th century and has grown over time. Originally, a wealthy wine merchant had bought the land and begun to dig into the sandstone to create caves in which to keep his wine. While digging they found all sorts of anolmalies in the rock caverns and called in local scientists who confirmed the formations as being the result of glacial activities.
Rocks with fossils of ancient life forms.

One of the holes created by the glacier.

The park had remained in the family and over time, each generation added to it. It had a number of interesting exhibits but also had more “family” oriented items also. The one that seems to engender the most enthusiasm is the house of mirrors which had a Persian type of feeling in the decorations, but this little vignette shows some of the other "attractions".

The mirrors...how many Bobs and how many Hayleys do you see?

Will the REAL Hayley raise her hand?

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As is usual for us, we spent hours in the museum looking at all the exhibits and sometimes discussing them. We ate a late lunch in the picnic area of the gardens and then left to explore more of Lucerne. Bob took the kids to see the old city wall and towers and I walked back through the old city to the hotel. It was obvious that we were in from some rain as the clouds were darkening and we could hear occasional thunder. I had left my umbrella with Bob and the kids, but it really didn’t start raining until I had reached the hotel so that worked out fine. They tumbled into the room not long after I had and we spent the next few hours watching it pour and counting the time intervals between lightning and thunder to determine how fast the storm cells were traveling over us. By dinner, the weather cleared up again and we headed back out to find a restaurant. We choose one of the restaurants on the other side of the River Reuss. We seated ourselves outside as close to the water as we could find and ordered some drinks and then dinner. Again, the skies started to threaten so just before they were about to serve us, we moved under the building where it wasn’t so scenic, but the chairs were more comfortable. It’s interesting to sit along the sidewalk and watch people go by. One middle age couple came semi-staggering along with a big brown glass beer bottle that they had obviously drained. A short while later, it was obvious that they had been out for a refill as they staggered back with a now full bottle as well as some other full vessel. I guess they took it to a local bar and had them fill it up since the stores were all closed.
The name of the restaurant was Der Schiff (The Ship) and the placemat had instructions in German to make this origami piece.

It was kind of a quiet day today. Bob thinks that the kids are subdued because of the difference between being out in the beautiful alps vs. being in the city. I think that we have just all kind of hit a point of being ready to head home. Three weeks seems like a long time to be on the road and living out of a suitcase. Two seems too short. Perhaps three weeks would be good with fewer stops and more time spent at each stop.

When traveling with the kids, I have always felt a responsibility to make sure that everyone has a good time. Now that they are older, I tried to engage them by having them make decisions on what they wanted to see and how they wanted to spend their time. I think it was successful overall, but I still think I heard that the few 4-5 hour drives between some of our stops seemed like long days, no matter how we tried to break them up with activities. Perhaps the stops actually made the travel part of the day seem longer. I’m not sure. I think that some of the drives were planned to be shorter but when you can't find what you're looking for, it means some extra time in the car.

In most of the places we have stayed, there has been TV, but the kids haven’t paid it much attention since the english speaking channels are rare and usually news stations although The Simpsons seems to be watchable even when you don't understand German. They have been reading or using the laptop to keep themselves entertained in the evenings. Given the timing of this trip, it will most likely be the last one we take with them and I think that it has provided many memories for us all to look back upon in coming years.

Back on the Air: Leaving Muerren

2011-07-13T13:47:00.000-07:00

Blogging a trip can be difficult. So much happens each day and so little makes it into the blog. As things happen, I try to make a mental note to myself “put that in the blog”, but I have a tendency to lose my mental note pad. It boils down to my not having the time to make it any more elaborate than it is and you, my faithful reader, lack the time to read it if I did!

I am typing this on Monday as we drive from one of our activities towards our “home” for the next two evenings. However, this entry will be about Saturday and our departure from Murren. I always think I can get two entires in one evening and get caught up, but it doesn’t happen. The writing is the easy part. Culling through the dozens of photos taken during the day and trying to select the ones that best represent the day and a few photos that I found interesting. Then the speed of the connection impacts how long it takes to upload the photos. A slower connection makes for a long evening. There are always many more photos that you don’t see. I keep thinking that I will have a blog like a blooper reel, or a blog of all the animals that we have encountered. Until then, we’ll keep to the events.

We were able to get packed up and out of the apartment by 10:15 and down into the valley by 10:45. I finally got a video of the bells on the cows.

It was a sad parting from Grace and Marcel. I don’t know when I will see her again. Her life is up in the air right now as she applies for various grants and “post doc” positions which is what one does after getting a PhD. I’ll have to content myself with “seeing” her on Skype in the coming months. Both cars left in the same direction, but we passed some cars and lost them within the first 20 kilometers. I had forgotten to tell Marcel that an Italian driver is a lobotomized driver and that he needs to be careful on those narrow twisty roads around Lake Guarda.

Since the drive from Lauterbrunnen to Lucerne was a short one, we stopped at an open air museum in Ballenberg which is a town at the head of one of the lakes on which Lucerne sits. This museum has collected examples of buildings from the various geographic regions of Switzerland into one large park set in a forest setting (naturally). Inside some of the larger dwellings, they covered regional costumes, musical instruments, and forest uses as well as taking care of theIt was fascinating to walk through the different farmhouses and barns and see the similarities as well as the differences between the different regions, different decades and different economic standing. We all enjoyed climbing up and down and into the darkened rooms, seeing how they were decorated, looking at the equipment used and even feeding some of the bunnies. The museum claims to have species that are no longer found in Switzerland in the “wild”.

They hand-pleated these sleeves!

Six different harmonicas in one spinning device.

An assortment of accordions.

The original double-paned window?

This is a closeup of a wall. They used newspaper to cover cracks and for insulation. When they could afford it, they would cover it with colored wall paper.

We didn’t leave Ballenger until about 2:30 - 3:00 and drove into Lucerne. We had only a 20,000’ view map and a little 3” x 4” map from the Bible according to Rick Steves, but we made it without too much confusion and checked into the room. The room was on the second floor above the restaurant, facing the street and the church across the way. It had four beds jammed into it and you had to take turns standing up and walking around in it. Ok, maybe not that bad, but really close to it. The others dropped their suitcases next to or at the foot of their bed, but if I did that, we’d all die if there was a fire, so I kept mine in the little wall closet. A wedding at the church had just finished as we arrived. The bells were ringing and ringing.

We rested for a while, before Bob and I headed out. The kids decided to chill in the room, playing cards and eating pretzels when we didn’t show up for a couple of hours. We had arrived in Lucerne as the shops were closing, so we walked across the old Kapelle bridge into the old part of the city, looking into the shop windows and simply getting our bearings. I guess I was heading towards the area where I had stayed when I visited Lucerne back in high school in 1973 because as we came around a corner, there it was in front of us. Hotel de la Paix. To confirm it, the first floor was the Lapin Restaurant with it’s logo of a red rabbit and I had remembered that too.   At this point we headed back by heading up hill to reach the old town wall with its many towers. We walked back along the top of the wall, going up a few of the towers and taking pictures of the city and outlying countryside.

We returned to the hotel, got the kids and went to dinner at the Taube Restauraunt. Taube means pigeon in German. After the meal we headed back to the hotel and planned our next day before retiring for the evening. Across the street the church bells marked the time all night. Justin says that it doesn’t strike every hour or quarter hour at night, but none of us were awake to be able to contest his statement.

:(

2011-07-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

I Just discovered we have no internet access the next 2 nights. I will work on the entries offline and post when I can. Dataplan too small to use my phone. until later.

Gone Hiking

2011-07-10T08:40:00.000-07:00

Friday, Grace was determined to get her money from the train pass that she bought for the Jungfrau region. So once again, down into the valley from our side and up the other side to Wengen. From there we took a lift from Wengen up to Mannlichen. Here is a map of the area to give you some context.

Once on top of Mannlichen, we hiked to the top of the "peak" called a gipfel. This was a climb from 7,306 feet to 7,677 feet in maybe a half of a mile? It was pretty steep. The weather was variable with sunshine as well as fog blowing up out of the valleys every few minutes.

Heidi, coming through the fog. At last we've found her. Grandfather must have bought her sunglasses and a camera but they didn't put that in the book.

I stall for time to catch my breath by taking pictures of wild flowers.

Bob started to take a panoramic view, but the clouds were moving too rapidly to make it worthwhile.

On our way back down from the top, we encountered a young woman setting up to paraglide into the valley. We stopped to watch as she carefully unpacked her sail and laid it out on the hillside above her. She kept straightening out her lines as she attached them to her harness. The wind was not helping her at all as it would blow up the valley towards us and then come back over the top of the crest behind us and roll her sail back down the hill like a big blue croissant. Marcel offered to help her and she was very thankful. We had a bit of a wait for the fog to abate and then Bob got involved with helping her with the sail and pretty soon she was running down the hillside and was off the ground. I caught it on video, but it is way too long to imbed here. Maybe if I figure out how to clip it.

Waiting for the uplifting moment to occur.

This was one of the highlights of the trip so far for Marcel. That and the base jumpers that we saw on the hike to the falls yesterday. As a brief recap of that experience, we were walking along the road next to a big open field when Bob calls out "look, base jumpers" and there in the air above us (approaching very quickly) are two of them. They look like big flying squirrels. They landed and then one calls out to us that another one is about to jump in a few seconds. Sure enough the next one comes plummeting off the cliff to make a safe and graceful landing in the field.
But, I digress.
We ate our lunch on top of Mannlichen where the "kids" play on the playground equipment close at hand.
Marcel...

Hayley...

Justin...and this bed was too scratchy.

After lunch we took another lift down into Grindelwald. Some of these lifts are LONG. Here are a few specs:

Wengen to Mannlichen: 5,436 feet in length with a 3,106 foot elevation gain with a gradient of 70.8%
Mannlichen to Grindelwald is a gondola cable car: just over 3.75 miles long with an elevation loss of 4,225 feet

From that station, we were told that the next gondola was a 5 minute walk. Ok, here's the part where we learned a big lesson. The time estimates on the little yellow direction signs are for the most part accurate. It depends on how many times you stop to catch your breath. Any time estimates given to you by the Swiss people should not be trusted. Everything is 5 minutes to them. This little mini-hike consisted of a 20 minute hike with steep elevation gain through town (carrying Bob on my back both ways). Along the way, we had to brave the hordes of (mainly Japanese) tourists in Grindelwald. It made us very happy to realize that where we were staying wasn't plagued with all the people that this side of the valley has. Ugh.

The gondola ride to First (pronounced feerst) had several segments like the ride down into Grindelwald. I can't find the specs on this lift as i did for the previous ones. Suffice it to say that it was long and steep. It changed direction a couple of times, each time "catching" a new cable.

Midway up the first mountain there is a stop where you can get off and then rent a little standing scooter and ride back down the mountain. Looked like fun, but our plan was to hike to the Backalpsee ( basically, it means alpine lake) which was described as an undulating hike, accessible with a baby stroller. The time estimate was 50 minutes (which turned out to be accurate).

We got off the gondola at First and started off on the trail. Undulating my backside, the damned trail went straight up! Hayley and I almost stayed behind. Luckily, the first part was the worst part and after that it did pretty much undulate but no way could we see anyone pushing a stroller on this trail. Each time we hit a nasty bit, we'd snort "stroller, right".

The orange on the rocks is lichen. Tough for anything to grow at this altitude.

Some varmint's domicile.

We got to the lake as the skies begin to lower to the tops of the mountains around us.

Justin skimmed rocks in the lake and there were little black goats or sheep up the hillside with their bells tinkling in the breeze. It would have been really pretty in the sunshine. We dallied at the spot for 30 minutes or so and the rain drops began to fall sporadically as we set out to return. Within 10 minutes or so, it's raining steadily and pretty soon we're in a downpour. We all had rain jackets with hoods, except Hayley who used the umbrella that Bob had in his backpack. However, the rain runs down the jacket and gets the pants all wet if you are wearing long pants. If you are wearing shorts, it runs off the jacket, down the legs into your shoes. Squoosh squoosh or squish squish, pick your sound effect.

It took us just under 50 minutes to get back to the top of the gondola but not before we entertained thoughts of being struck by lightning. We're all soaking wet and figured that instead of riding down together, we'd take separate cars so the we wouldn't steam the cars up so badly.

Just as we get into the gondola is when I start doing the math in my head; adding up all of the segments of time we'll need to get back to Lauterbrunnen in time to catch the last tram up to Murren. A nagging, background worry starts to set in. After misreading the timetables we spend a costly extra 45 minutes in Grindelwald where Bob and I seize the opportunity to run up to the co-op near the train station and buy rolls, lunch meat a pack of Camembert cheese and some cherries. It always seems that a nice soft cheese will help what could be a dry sandwich taste yummy. Using the 3 Swiss Franc paring knife that I had bought for just such an occasion, we made some sandwiches that tasted pretty darned good. Wish I could say the same about the cherries.

We had a 25 minute wait at our first transfer point and made it to Lauterbrunnen with about 5 minutes to spare. If we had missed the last tram, I'm not sure where we would have spent the night since we wouldn't be able to hike it - too tired and soon to be too dark.

All's well that ends well. A little light packing in preparation for departing the next morning and then turning in for the night.

Total step count for today: 22,035

Today is my 20th anniversary of working at Costco (originally Price Club)

Over the river and through the fields...

2011-07-09T13:54:00.000-07:00

To Trummelbach falls on Thursday. The falls are down in the valley so we hopped on the train and caught the tram and set out on foot following the little yellow signs.
Here is a photo of the garden at the very bottom of the tram. I was too late to get a picture of the huge lettuces that they must have already harvested. They were at least 20" across. They are able to grow a lot of cool season crops, lettuce, peas, chard and kale and there are gardens everywhere.

We didn't realize it until later that there is the way that the signs direct you to go and then there is the short, more direct route. Granted the longer version was more scenic and we walked along a swiftly moving and very cold river, but since there are no bad views here in Switzerland, the shortcut certainly works.

Bob is indicating that the water is COLD. Marcel is smart enough to not put his hands in the water.

The color of the river is very milky here which indicates it is glacier melt. Sometimes the streams are pale green and after a storm, they run milky gray as they carry away suspended grit from higher elevations.

I have discovered that Justin likes to stand on things. Stumps, poles stuck in the ground, little stakes. You name it, he'll balance on it. He walked along this fence for awhile.

This is a boring picture of gorgeous scenery, but look, what's that in the upper left of the picture? It's a helicopter airlifting supplies to one of the mountain top restaurants.

Trummelbach falls are a series of 10 glacier waterfalls inside the mountain. They have been made accessible by some enterprising Swiss gentleman who drilled out enough of the mountain to install a lift that takes you up about 2/3 of the way to the top. The rest is reached by clambering up and down a series of stairways. The falls drain the glacier defiles of the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau mountains and carries about 20,200 tons of boulder debris per year. It's total drainage area is about 14.5 sq. miles. Half of that area is covered by snow and glaciers. The rate of flow is over 5,000 gallons/sec. They are claimed to be the only glacier waterfalls in Europe that are inside a mountain and yet still accessible.
In the picture below, the displaced air from the rushing water causes Hayley's carefully coiffed hair to be blown to smithereens. Those with short hair were not affected.

Of course all of that pounding water sent up quite a mist. We all kept dry by wearing our rain jackets. The cameras were not so easily kept dry.

Inside the mountain.

And nothing quite conveys the experience than a video. Turn up the volume!

After we finished at the falls, we took the "shortcut" back into town, stopping for a picnic lunch on the way. Along the way we saw a sign at one of the little houses announcing that they were selling cheese. We stopped and bought some from this nice little old lady.

We stopped at the co-op market in Lauterbrunnen for supper makings (Marcel and Grace treated us to a great spaghetti dinner with our fresh alp cheese) and Bob and I hit the bakery where we picked up a variety of goodies to share; plum kuchen, something like a Napoleon and a slice of apple kuchen. All of it yummy.

Evening was kind of laid back watching TV in German and having Grace and Marcel translate some of it for us and me working on the previous blog post. We also planned out our next days travels which would involve a lot of tram travel. The weather won't last forever, but we sure are enjoying the sunshine.

Total Step count for Today: 17,896.

Update

2011-07-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

Ever since the night in Normandy when the Internet was not available, I have been behind one day. It's the end of the day on Friday and I have a Thursday post to create and we are all very tired. We had a very long day taking trams and trains and hiking to alpine lakes (and walking back in a downpour). I am going to take my book and do some reading and crash as soon as possible.

So that you didn't come here in vain, I'll share something that shows that there are somethings about my camera that I may never figure out.

Snow fun and hard work

2011-07-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

Today we visited the Jungfraujoch at the staggering altitude of over 11,000' above sea level.

This involved an early departure from the apartment (7am) to catch the train from Murren to Grutschalp where we caught the 7:30a tram down to Lauterbrunnen. A few fast and furious minutes at the ticket booth to purchase tickets and then we hopped on the train that would take us back up out of the valley on the other side to Wengen and beyond. Way up the mountain, we changed trains at Kleine Scheidegg for the final leg to the top. Along the way there were 2 stops that allowed us to get off the train and go look out some large windows at the various snow capped peaks and glaciers.
We arrived at the top about 10:30. The whole affair is much fancier than the first time I was there in 1973. We first took the elevator to the lookout point called the Sphynx. You walk around the observation deck that is made up a heavy duty metallic grid so the wind is coming at you from all different directions. Looking down is dizzying as the whole thing seems absurdly poised on a rock ridge with the sides dangling over basically nothing. (They kept telling me to not look down.)

One of the glaciers with two morains.

There were a lot of holes in the snow. They were a bit creepy to me as I imagined someone falling down one and landing who knows where. It was even a little creepier to look at the virgin expanses of snow and wonder how many holes lurked under the surface.

This video was Justin's idea.

From this viewpoint we could see the path in the snow that led up the mountain and around the edge to the Monchsjochhutte. The work joch means the pass that runs between two mountains. So we took the elevator back down and walked out through the tunnel to the snow.

It was sunny and blinding as we trekked off up the trail. The sun was quite warm and felt good, but the wind could be quite brisk. In spite of the wind, the exertion kept us plenty warm and we were wearing either a light windbreaker or our fleeces. 15 minutes along the path, we find a sign that says 45 minutes to the hutte. We have since come to the conclusion that the estimated trail times are clocked by mountain goats. They are never accurate for those of us that need to stop and catch our breath in the thin atmosphere. This was a heck of a workout.
Here is a photo with Justin way out in front with Bob and Hayley in the foreground waiting for the laggers to catch up.

The scenery was incredible. In fact Bob and I agree that everywhere you look is a postcard shot. Here are several.

We had lunch in the hutte; mainly soup or goulash and were fortified for the trek back down. Everything that they serve there is brought in by helicopter and the prices reflected the extra expense.
Since coming up, the sun had turned the trail to slush as the temperature hovered between 32 and 35 degrees. So while it meant that the trail wasn't as icy, it also made it similar to walking in sand. At one point, I got the notion to try to slide down the trail on my back in my windbreaker. It worked pretty well on the steeper sections. On the more shallow (?) sections, it was too slushy, but Bob, Justin and I all tried it with Hayley doing the video portion. The other hikers were not amused.

At the bottom of the trail, there was a snow park where you could inner tube or sled and a ZIP LINE! Bob and Justin took a whirl at this and both deemed it to be great fun.
We then headed to the Ice Palace. This is really more like a cave and tunnels that have been bored into the ice at the top.

Striations and sediment in the ice.

I found a Yeti in the Ice Palace.

The return trip was a simple reverse of the outbound trip and it started to rain a little bit as we got back up to Murren. We dragged ourselves down the main road of the village and back home. Along the way we had the great idea of buying the take and bake pizza from the co-op market and had that for dinner along with a salad.
One of the things that we are noticing about Murren is that it is full of Americans. I think it is possible to take the whole Rick Steves thing too far. We're hosed as tourists when they start translating his books into other languages. I just checked the website and so far we're good.
Until you visit here, you don't realize how dependent these alpine villages are upon the trains and trams. Here is a photo of the track showing you the "teeth" that are used to ensure safe arrivals.

The trams also have a shelf underneath the part that holds the people where they load supplies going up and haul out the trash or parts going in for service as I saw today.
Once you are up here in the village, there are a few little mini-trucks with a half - flatbed behind that they use for hauling things back and forth. At one end of the town is the train from the valley and at the other end of the town is the tram to the top of the Schilthorn. This is probably the route used to get supplies to the restaurant that is at the top of the Schilthorn.
After the mini-trucks the locals use the same mode of conveyance that they have used in the centuries that man has inhabited the area.

It is really difficult to convey how steep things are here with a photo. Unless I can get Justin to go stand on the side of one of these hillsides for some point of reference. Just outside of the back of the village is a long tall slope that is used by the grazing cows. When it is quiet up here, you can see the cows waaayyyy up the hillside and hear the music from the cow bells hung around their necks. It's very charming.
Tomorrow we will travel down into the valley and visit the Trummelbach Falls. Good old Mr. Steves refers to them as "God's bandsaw grinding through the mountains." God or the Swiss, they both seem to like to drill tunnels in solid rock.

Step count for today: 15,008

Going to find Heidi in the Alps

2011-07-06T12:12:00.000-07:00

This morning we were on the road fairly early as we had a 5 + hour drive ahead of us. The breakfast was another good one, but we decided to keep on schedule and not dally in France any longer.
As we drove out of the Loire Valley yesterday and into Switzerland, we noticed a change in the vegetation. Everything in the Loire was very green and as we moved into Burgundy, the rolling hills became more like foothills and the fields were already gold and for the most part already harvested. There were also a lot of vineyards now also.

As we moved into Switzerland and higher elevations, there were conifers mixed in with the trees.

At one point, we stopped for gas at a station that was part of a Renault car dealership out in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. I went to use the restroom and found the following and had to take a picture of it.

So what is it? It's the soap dispenser. So why is it in this blog? I thought it was funny. It may not be totally evident from the photo, but the recessed area that has the Renault sticker is not a square. It is more trapezoid shape. So either Renault has gone into the business of making soap dispensers or they had a specially made sticker made for the recessed spot on the soap dispenser. Either way, if you've ever driven a Renault, you would think that their time would be better spent working on refining their cars.
Along the route there were a lot of hillside fortresses and chateau that were visible from the road on distant hillsides or on the top of a cliff. Getting pictures of these buildings was not easy and successful only a small percentage of the time as they involved wrapping the camera strap around the wrist and then sticking the camera out of the window and shooting back over the top of the car.

The down side is that you sometimes get other objects in the picture that can't be easily cropped out. This is more to the point that everyone seems to have a historical site in their backyard here in Europe.

Since I'm already on an architectural frame of mind, I thought I'd share some photos of various items that have some really interesting/cool details. First the two-faced door.

With the cool handles.

Most of the houses along the streets as you pass through the little towns have shutters that they keep closed most of the time for privacy, to keep out the road noise, etc. These windows looked like portholes and had little matching porthole covers.

We arrived in Lauterbrunnen about 3p. Lauterbrunnen is on the valley floor at about 2608 ft above sea level. Murren, our ultimate destination is just under 5400 ft above sea level. We had to take a cable car up to the interrim stop of Grutschalp and then catch a little train to Murren. All told that takes about 40 minutes. Our car was left in a parking garage at the train station in Lauterbrunnen.

A lot of people take their bikes up on the trams and then ride down.

We found the apartment easily. Grace and Marcel were out on a hike so Bob and I walked down to the Co-op market and bought breakfast and lunch items and then we settled into our new rooms. For dinner we walked down the street to a restaurant and enjoyed some mighty fine fondue for dinner. Our seats were at the back of the restaurant and as you looked out the window, you looked straight down into the alley below. While we talked, we noticed several paragliders below us. One with an orange sail looked like it was doing some fancy manoeuvers. The sail was spinning and wavering a bit, but then filled up and he seemed to have caught an up draft. A minute later, he again seemed to be having the same "fun" but it became apparent to all of us that he was in a downdraft and he began to fall. He opened his secondary shoot as the primary shoot began to be useless and get in his way. As he got lower, the sail began to drag on the tree tops. He eventually cut away the main sail which fell into the forest and he continued his flight with his back up chute which was red and looked like it was heart shape.

We walked back from dinner and stopped and admired the mountains across the valley.

Here is where we are staying.

The plan for tomorrow is to get moving early so that we can catch one of the first trains up to the top of the Jungfrau. Mornings are the best chance for good weather at the top.

Steps count for today: 6,144. We'll fix that tomorrow. :)

Fast Path across France (Part Deux)

2011-07-05T14:02:00.000-07:00

The next morning we headed down to breakfast and boy was Hayley excited about that. The Hotel Diderot is known for the jams that they make. They had shown us a whole cupboard full of them when we checked in yesterday. The breakfast that we were served was really lovely. They had fresh goat cheese that they recommended we mix with some local honey and some walnuts. The walnuts were still in the hull and we had to crack them ourselves. They also gave us two big baskets full of croissant, baguette and toasted brioche bread. The jams were lined up on a table and you served yourself from the jars. Justin and I liked the Rhubarb jam the best. We were also served unfiltered apple juice and coffee, tea or chocolate. Boy if tomorrow's breakfast is like this one, I don't think I'll leave France.

As we checked out of the Hotel Diderot in Chinon, the lady presiding at the desk chatted with Bob and I. She told us that Rick Steves was checking in tonight at their hotel. We told her to say hello to him from "a family from Seattle". :)

Photos in the courtyard of the hotel.

I like the jug used as a birdhouse.

We made it to Chenonceaux with little issue and were thrilled to find out that it wasn't as crowded as Rick Steves' book indicated it would be. This is a little tower in front of the chateau.

Here is a photo of Bob at the front door of Chenonceaux. His hand is on the door knocker that is set high enough for a man on a horse to use.

There is also a regular size door set in the larger door.

This is a majolica painted tile in the guard room. Majolica is a glaze that is painted on and then fired.

Here is the room with the painted tile. The rabbit tile is just to the left of the chest. As you can see, centuries of walking on the files, have worn the glaze off of the main part of the floor. Only around the edges of the room is the glaze still intact.

This chateau was originally built by a wealthy family and then became property of the royal family at some point. Henri II gave it to his mistress Diane de Poitiers. She built the bridge spanning the river Cher to provide easier access to hunting. After Henri's death, his wife Catherine de Medici took it away and built a three story gallery on the bridge. We didn't walk up the river to take a picture of the entire chateau so here's a link to what it looks like in its entirety.

Some of the tiles were embossed with Henri and Diane's initials.

In one room some of the tiles were embossed with a crown. Again, with wear the embossing has been effaced from the tiles except along the walls. Here is another picture of what remains of the glazed tiles in the hallway. These floors must have been beautiful when they were new.

Most of the rooms and hallways were filled with fresh flowers. One of the rooms on the second floor had an enormous vase full of white Easter lilies. Their perfume filled the entire second floor.

The tour took us into the kitchen. I am always fascinated with the actual tools and objects used by people in times past. Sometimes the tools aren't recognizable, but in this case, not much has changed in cooking utensils in 400 years.

Unfortunately, this picture doesn't show the fact that this carving block had seen some heavy usage. The surface undulated from one side to the other.

Photos taken from some of the bedroom windows. It would have been idyllic to wake up to these views...at least in summer. These chateau must have been freezing in the winters.

This one reminds me of something you'd see in the Haunted House at Disneyland.

Our time here was enjoyable. We went through the maze in the gardens, grabbed a sandwich at the kiosk and then walked to the car. Along the way I took this photo. It just struck me as interesting. It's the bark on one of the trees that lined the drive into the chateau.

It took us about 3 and a half hours to get to Autun, but that's a story for another day and post.

Step count for Monday: 9,648

The fast path across France.

2011-07-04T23:54:00.000-07:00

On Sunday morning, we left Le Pigeonnier with Jackie and Des waving goodbye from the door of the manor. Our plan was to get going early enough to get to Chinon and then be able to see the fortress there, eat dinner and then go on to the chateau at Azay le Rideau to see the sound and light show that would start after 10p. As usual, adjustments were made by a committee vote.

Photos from the road:

We hit town about 2:45, ate some lunch and headed for the fortress. The fortress was situated high on the rock outcropping above the town and the river and commanded a sweeping view in all directions.

It was occupied from roughly 900 to the early 1400's when royalty decided that they didn't need to live in draughty old stone castles and started building chateaux like Versailles and Fontainebleu. The site had 3 different stages of building, each one introducing whatever new developments had occurred in that time period. Most noticeable was the style of defensive loupe or keyhole openings in the window towers. The early ones had a niche in the wall in which the archer stood. Think of a V shape opening in a 6' thick wall. The opening on the outside was about 6' wide and the legs of the V opened out from that point. It really meant that the archer was wedged into neck of the V with a small range of motion or coverage. With the later ones, the walls were less thick so the archer stood at the opening, allowing for more range of motion at the opening slit.

As you can see from the pictures, not much of the original buildings are left on the site. The French revolution caused the first round of damage and after that the site was pillaged for building materials in the 19th century. UNESCO named this a world heritage site a while back and they have reconstructed the dwelling that was used in the 12th - 15th centuries. For some odd reason, I don't have a picture of this. We had a one hour walking tour in English so I must have been distracted by this.

About the time of Henry II (portrayed in "Lion in Winter" by Peter O'Toole, they built new cook house that was housed in a horseshoe shaped tower across the compound. I was thinking that the food didn't arrive piping hot in the winter.

Henry II was king of the northwest quadrant of France and became the Duke of Acquitane when he married Eleanor of Acquitane after the King of France divorced her for adultery. Then the King of England died and he acquired the English throne though his mother's line. He made his home base at Chinon and travelled to England as needed.

This was the period of time when England had it's largest holdings on the continent. It didn't last long though. His son, Richard the Lionhearted went off to fight in the Crusades leaving his brother Prince John in charge. The French King took advantage of this and began picking off pieces of England's territory resulting in the Hundred years war. Read more about it here if you are interested. http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/archive/hundredyearswar.cfm?CFID=14381926&CFTOKEN=79065085&jsessionid=4630287c457d4a3773c26077486e50455f69

Our plan unfolded pretty well until we were at the end of the fortress tour and we were pretty tired. We decided that we would eat dinner, pass on the sound and light show and then go to bed early so that we could get an early start and visit the chateau of Chenonceaux before we left the Loire valley. These pictures were taken walking through the little medieval town of Chinon before and after dinner.

Interesting artwork seen in a gallery window.

So, if the mailman can't read Roman numerals, you don't get your mail.

Can't remember if this was a handle or a door knocker.

This sign politely asks us to refrain from putting advertisements in their mailbox. I saw quite a few of these. You have to wonder 1) if they work and 2) would this work back at home?

After sitting and having some wine in what we thought was a brasserie, we discovered that they stop serving food after 12 noon on Sundays. So we popped right over to the pizza restaurant next door and had a very nice meal. I have discovered pear sorbet. It is absolutely wonderful. I'm going to have to find a recipe and make that at home. Hayley went all out and got the banana split after dinner and she says it was gooood.

Step Count for today: 8,743
Cost for a gallon of gas: $5.86 (what a bargain)

A day at the beach(es)

2011-07-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

About 3 o'clock this morning I woke myself up with a coughing fit which caused me to get up and get a drink of water. I happened to peer through the drawn curtains and was surprised with a sky full of stars. We are so far away from light pollution out here that you see all of the stars and the Milky Way. I know that when we go camping you can see a sky full of stars, but we've usually been in a forest and all you can see is a little wedge of sky - straight up. Or a portion of the sky to the horizon if there is a break in the trees. Here I could see to the horizon in a full 180 degrees or so. I called to Bob to look, but he was a little too out of it to truly appreciate it. It was so clear, he was able to see the Milky Way without his glasses!
We headed out to the D-Day beaches about 10 o'clock. It only took about 40 minutes to get there. We started at Arromanches where the British built the mulberry bridges to allow for massive amounts of support to get on shore after the initial D-Day invasions. There is a fairly new 360 degree theatre there where they show a visual presentation. The presentation has no dialog and doesn't need any. It showed the area both then and now to send the message that the freedom that is enjoyed now would not be possible without the sacrifice of those who gave their lives on June 6th, 1944 and for weeks afterward.
When we arrived, a bicycle touring group was there ahead of us all wearing yellow, blue and red jerseys that read 'Ride 2 Recovery". They were American and crowded into the theater at the same showing that we attended. As the group mingled around us, we noticed the age range was wide and that several of them had prosthetic lower limbs. Some were riding on three wheeled bicycles where they pedaled with their arms. After the show, I asked one of them what their group was about. Ride 2 Recovery is a group that supports wounded veterans through these organized bicycle trips. This group was bicycling the coast of Normandy with veterans of the Gulf War, Afghanistan and even Viet Nam. They were also going to be bicycling the last 20 miles of the Tour de France into Paris. This was day 1 of a 7 day trip and some of them were already talking about stiffening up when they got off of their bikes to go into the theater, but they all managed to get back on their bikes and head out at the same time as about 8 antique cars went by in the opposite direction. It was a busy spot to be! Here is a link for more info on Ride 2 Recovery. http://ride2recovery.com

Next we walked down the hill into Arromanches itself and visited one of the debarkation museums. Each beach town seems to have one of its own. This one was probably the British version since the mulberry bridges were one of their major contributions to the invasion. The film presentation was not as well done as the first one, but they had some neat displays with uniforms, letters and other WWII paraphernalia. We then grabbed a sandwich and sat along the sea wall and had lunch.

Other odd things seen
Michael Jackson...really?

How do you get your car out of this if you get sandwiched in?

Afterwards, we went up to the American Cemetery at Colleville-Sur-Mer. This is a beautiful memorial. They have a museum of sorts that shows a timeline of the war and also provided some insight into the personal side of the war. They show a film that talks about three of the soldiers that lost their lives in the Normandy invasion. It was very moving as you learned about them as people. One of the soldiers was a doctor in his late 20's early 30's. He was placed in a hospital unit well behind the lines, but asked for a transfer to the front. His son told the story in the film. His father didn't like his original posting but loved being at the front and being able to help others. He was killed when he left a safe area and rescued a wounded soldier. The soldier made it home but he didn't. The poignant part of the story was that he had sent a friend a letter saying that he had asked to be transferred, but asked his friend to not tell his wife. After he was killed, the friend told the wife and she was very angry for a very long time. All three stories left you feeling like you knew these men. It was hard to keep dry-eyed.
Then we walked out into the cemetery and the bright sun. As you walk further in the immensity of the place hits you. I said to Hayley that I couldn't really figure out if the stories of the three soldiers had more of an impact than the 9,000 + white crosses that spread out ahead of us. Then it hit me that what I was looking at was 9,000 + individual stories. I'll leave it at that and let the pictures talk.

It was getting towards closing and the kids wanted to walk on the beach. Since they close the gates to the parking lot at the cemetery and it was close to closing, we sent them down to the beach and we went back to the car and drove up the coast to meet up with them. Once reunited we went to our final stop which was Pointe du Hoc. This is where the American Rangers had to scale the cliffs and take out the German Battery. The top of the cliff had been hammered and there are still many huge craters and huge shattered concrete slabs flung about. It looks like an alien landscape. Bob and I were there in 2000 with my father and he said that when he had been there years ago, it was all covered with scrub. Now 11 years later there is at least 1.5 times more area that has been cleaned up. There are many imploded bunkers that can be explored now.

One thing that I learned from this visit is that the French themselves come to honor the soldiers that laid down their lives on their behalf. Over 1/2 of the people at thees sites were French. I was pleasantly surprised to see this.
It has pushing 7p when he left the last beach site and drove to Bayeux for dinner. As luck would have it, there was a large medieval festival in town. People walking about i period costume and booths selling things that were meant to look authentic. The bad news was that I left the camera in the car. Afterwards we drove back home and began to pack our bags back up for our departure in the morning.

Step count for the day: 18,855.

_

Purple Buzz

2011-07-03T01:11:00.000-07:00

Another absolutely gorgeous morning greets us on Friday. We have decided to stay close to home today to rest and recuperate from our hectic pace and to ensure I don’t get even more sick than I already am.

Breakfast is again one of those improvised meals using what’s at hand and is quickly cleared away. Hayley and I then turn our focus to the outdoors with our cameras.

Leading up to the front door there is a 2 foot wide hedge of the deepest purple lavender I have ever seen. The hedge has a living pulse of its own as at least 4 dozen insects swarm over it at any time. As you get close enough to investigate the vibrating hum, you begin to notice that there are at least a half a dozen different types of bees in there. As you watch, you notice the big guy darting around. He’s a little over an 1.25” long and looks like a cross between a humming bird and a moth. We looked him up on the Internet and learned he is a Hummingbird Hawk Moth. We’ve been trying to get a picture of him, but even setting the shutter speed up and playing with the ISO, we can’t get a good picture. Just when I think I’ve got the shutter speed set at something that would stop bullets, I get this blur. We haven’t gotten tired of watching it. Here’s a link to some photos of it. http://www.google.com/search?q=hummingbird+hawk+moth&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=ccEOTpGOMYqfOuWu8KoL&ved=0CDwQsAQ&biw=1152&bih=532

Here's our version of the moth.

Right below the pigeonnier is a pond. We noticed when we first got here this noise coming from the pond. It’s the oddest noise. Kind of like a cross between a frog and a duck and someone playing the accordion out of tune. We go looking for whatever it is, but never see it until Des happens along and shows Bob the frogs. Their voices fill the air and seem like they must belong to frogs the size of dinner plates. When you finally see them, they are only about 4-5” across! There is one bright green frog and several brown ones. Apparently, it’s mating season which accounts for the “serenade”.

Which brings me to how quiet it is here. The only noises are the ducks, the frogs, the birds and the myriad of insects in the lavender hedge. It is so peaceful here, it is unbelievable.

Bess sometimes comes to check on us. She joined us while we were eating lunch. She lays patiently outside the door waiting for us to finish. Later when we are finished and go back outside, she joins us. She minds well and is a very nice companion. Bess was kept in the house yesterday morning to allow the mother duck to come up and get her 7 ducklings down to the pond on the other side of the lane. This morning when Hayley and I went down there with Des, there were only 6 left.

After lunch, Hayley and I took a walk up along the road to take pictures back towards the pigeonnier. We saw a dead red fox alongside the road. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a fox that close up before - alive or dead. On the way back, we stopped to talk with the cows at the top of the lane. One of them came up and proceeded to stare at us until I stepped up on the embankment to get a little closer. That seemed to spook her and she jumped away. As we walked slowly down the hill, the cows proceeded to trot along with us in spurts. We’d stop and they’d stop and stare. Occasionally, the one in front would startle and move, but we soon discovered it was because one of the other cows had butted the cow with its head which then made it the new cow in front. It was odd to watch. Eventually, they lost their interest in us and remained behind.

We also walked around behind the pigeonnier and discovered Joyjoy (phonetic spelling here) an older horse with a bit of a hitch in his giddyup. He was very interested in seeing if we had any treats for him. We came back later with some carrot tops.

We spent the afternoon reading, or trying to capture photos of the bees in the lavender hedge and I also worked on focusing dinner by preparing some apricots for the dessert I’d planned.

Dinner was pork chops baked in the oven with onions, garlic and apples. Accompanied by rice and sauteed zucchini, it worked out well as I proceeded to juggle the pans and improvise baking without my favorite french casserole. Dessert was the poached apricots in a sauce served over some Belgian style waffles (gauffres) that I had purchased at the store. The apricots were tart and the sauce tart sweet and it was yummy.

After dinner we all went for a walk deciding to go into the little village of Litteau which one finds by taking a left at the top of the drive. As we approached a small intersection where there were several fenced in fields, we were noticed by a mare and her new foal on the one side and a donkey on the right. The donkey came trotting right up the corner and proceeded to bray almost like he was a watchdog. I caught the tail end of it on video.

We were all amazed and amused at the same time.

When we returned from our walk, we noticed that the mother duck now only had 5 ducklings left. Between the herons scooping them out of the water and the magpies picking them off when they’re on dry land, it will be amazing if any make it to adulthood.

One of the things that we’ve noticed is that we are at a higher latitude and therefore the days are longer. We are constantly thrown off by the light cues. What seems like 7pm is actually closer to 8:45 or 9pm. I had noticed this when I moved from San Diego to Seattle, but this is totally new to Bob and has taken a little adjustment for him. Not sure if the kids have noticed.

We’re going to visit the DDay beaches tomorrow. Everyone has turned in for the evening and so shall I.

Steps taken today: 7,487

Invasion of Normandy

2011-07-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

Where we are staying in Normandy is absolutely amazing. We are staying in what is called a “gite”. (Pronounced “jeet”.) A gite is considered self service and they come with a little kitchenette and pots and pans, etc.

While everything that we did in Paris was about seeing famous sites and seeing how the city of Paris “works”, here in Normandy it’s about relaxing, but this revelation is in hind sight. I still have a day to catch up.

We allowed ourselves more of a sleep in on Thursday. Of course, there wasn’t much in the way of breakfast, but I had found some gluten free muesli in Paris and that along with the milk provided by our hosts allowed us to be able to eat before we found our way out to the market.

After breakfast, we began to do a little exploring. Hayley and I are absolutely delighted with the place. She can often be found outside sitting in the sun with her book or taking photos or just sitting in the breeze. The morning was blue, breezy and beautiful. I can’t begin to put into words the feeling and magic of this place. It keeps unfolding upon us. I can only hope the photos can convey what we are seeing and feeling.

First, we are staying in a renovated pigeon house. It has three floors. The ground floor has a sitting room and kitchen. The second floor a double bed and a bath and the third floor under the roof has two twin beds.

So shortly after emerging through the front door, we meet Des and his rescued Border Collie Bess. Des is one of the owners, British and very outgoing. We soon learn that he has four pieces of WWII artillery in the barns and is very willing to take us on a tour of them. One is a 40mm German anti-aircraft gun that was loaned out for the shooting of “Saving Private Ryan”. Des says that they have watched the movie three times and never saw it. He and Jackie have been here for 12 years now. They bought the property from an English Army General, complete with the guns. One was actually a chassis from a WWI artillery piece that was adapted to carry a WWII gun and Des said probably dug in to the earth to guard a crossroads.

Bess (I need to get a picture of Bess in here) had been busy that morning watching over 7 baby ducklings. Des says she guarding them and I’m trying to explain that what she really wants to do is herd them. The property is 19.5 acres, and they rent out the fields on both sides to other farmers whom Des says "don’t get along". He was full of chatter about the place.

We finally got on our way and made it the grocery store. Upon returning home, we quickly get lunch prepared, eaten and put away as our goal for the day is to get to Mont St. Michel. We’ve discovered that getting to the popular sights between 2 and 3p is the way to go. Everyone seems to have left by then or is in the process of leaving.

It took about an hour and a quarter to drive there. Along the way we noticed a banner across the roadway advertising that this road was on the 6th stage of the Tour de France that starts on 7/2. Luckily we will be ahead of the race so we won’t get caught up in any of the rerouting of traffic. Here's a wanna be yellow jersey wearer we followed on the road.

At Mont St. Michel, we used the Rick Steves’ detour to the top which involves climbing up the ramparts on the outside instead of running the gauntlet of tourist shops and restaurants on the main street that runs up the front of the island. While we weren’t alone, it wasn’t as crowded as it would have been earlier in the day. One of the things that we learned is that since the causeway was put in at the end of the nineteenth century, it has caused so much silt to build up that the island is no longer truly an island. They will be putting in a different causeway in the next few years that will once again allow the water to flow all the way around.

Hayley having a Kodak moment.

Here is an interesting shot in the abbey church. Two distinct types of architecture are found here. The Roman arches in the foreground are original, but the crypt underneath the apse of the chapel collapsed in 1471 and when the chapel was rebuilt, the newer Gothic arches were used (in the background).

More arches of varying styles.

These are in the cloister.

Since Bob and I were here in 2000, the Benedictine monks had turned possession over to a different order of monks. I do know that like so many other places, the route of the self-guided tour was different than in 2000. As we left the monastery, we walked down 5 to 6 flights of scaffolding stairs protected by netting. Possibly required due to rerouting the tour? Not sure, but I was able to get Justin to do some gymnastics on the cross beams. Sorry, I have not yet learned that you cannot rotate a video!

As we descended, we watched the tide coming in and took some pictures.

Once home, I put together a quick dinner of sausages, baby potatoes (kind of pan roasted with onions and garlic) and carrots with rosehips and a jelly glaze. Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat. I manage to overcome not being in my own kitchen and not having the ingredient or pan that I take for granted at home and they keep eating it without complaining. Which is a good thing because they know what will happen if they do. I'll tell them to fix the next meal.

Tomorrow, we’re planning a down day. We’re staying close to home so that I can do a little recuperation as I have had a sore throat and earache thing going on since I’ve arrived. I kept hoping it would go away, but no such luck. We stopped in a pharmacy on the way to Mont St. Michel and got some meds that are controlling the pain so we’ll see.

Steps count for the day: 8,481. Mostly vertical with both Mont St Michel and the staircases in the pigeonnier.

Thinking on our feet...or at 50km/hr

2011-07-01T13:43:00.000-07:00

This will be a retro post. It is actually Friday, July 1st. I haven't been able to get to the blog until now. Hopefully, no one has yet turned blue from holding their breath although some of you have sent emails indicating they are waiting for the next installments.

After a family discussion and a warning from some people we met from Ohio in the line at the Catacombs, we decided to go visit Fountainebleu instead of Versailles on Wednesday. We got out of the apartment on time (9:30a) and took the Metro to the new area on the west of Paris called La Defense. The area contains a lot of government buildings as well as planned housing with built in shopping and services. The main tourist sight here is the Arch de la Defense. It is best viewed at a distance, but from this photo you can get the idea.

Finding the Hertz agency was easier than we expected, and they had the car and it was ready so off we went with some terrible directions. The gist of it went like this: Turn right (and cross two lanes of traffic) to make a U Turn at the end of the block. Now go straight ahead. You will go through a tunnel (thank God for that info because we had to make a choice of "which" straight we needed to take at that point). Through the tunnel and then straight ahead, straight ahead, straight ahead until you see the peripherique (Paris' ring road.) Well not much further past the tunnel we arrive again with the choice of straight ahead to the left or straight ahead to the right. Of course, I chose the wrong one and we wound up in some narrow little streets where they seem to be allowed to park delivery trucks in the traffic lane and you have to be able to see through the truck to determine if it is clear and safe to pass. There are a heck of a lot of signs, but not all of them are useful.

We finally stopped and talked with a gentlemen out walking his dog and he gave us directions back to the Seine and then right, always right. At this point it's getting on 11:30, I figure that going east to Fountainebleu will put us there at least by 12:30 - 1p. By the time we arrive, we would have less than an hour, hour and a half to see the chateau and then we would have to be on the road to Normandy to arrive at our final destination by 7:30 at the latest. Call me cheap, but it wasn't worth the entrance fee or the additional hassle of getting across Paris with no autoroute since the ring road looks like a two way surface street with traffic lights. I called out that we would try Versailles since there was a sign showing "this way to Versailles". Crowds and Ohioans be damned.

We arrived at Versailles with few adventures, parked the car and waltzed up the head of the long line thinking that our museum passes would give us exclusive entry. The nice young lady in the dark blue security outfit took one look at the pass and set us on our way to the end of the long line. No, the pass would not let us in like Rick Steves says. While standing in line, I read the pass and apparently each site has the ability to decide whether you may cut to the head or not. The line went fairly quickly and we were inside. Everything is self guided with the audioguides, unless you are with a tour bus. That means there are a lot of people shuffling along with the audioguides standing gape-jawed in the middle of the road looking at the art on the wall. I say art on the wall because it seems to me that there is less furniture in the rooms than there has been in the past. The bedrooms of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and their children had beds, some tables and chairs, but there seemed to be pieces missing that I remember from before. It is possible that they have opened more rooms (to allow for more concurrent body count) and that they have had to move the pieces around to furnish more rooms.

We cut one of the indoor tours shortly after seeing the Hall of Mirrors, bolted for the exit and spent the remainder of our time in the gardens. It was a nice sunny day and the gardens were not crowded. We ate lunch, walked to the edge of the Grand Canal and then began heading back to the car. Halfway back, Justin and Hayley found a rock which they then began to kick along with us as we proceeded. It soon devolved into a soccer match with a group of French tourists wonderingly staring at the antics. It reminded me of Christmas day with small kids. The gift is opened, the toy left to the side and the box becomes the toy. Bob and I walked along laughing.

Alien shrubberies.

A group of students working in water color.

One of the many fountains in the gardens. The gardens are laid out in such a way that there are many little miniature gardens and only on the main alley do you get any type of long view. The fountains actually run and classical music is played on the weekends only (when it is also more crowded). Bob and I were at Versailles on a weekend back in 2000. The sky grew more and more ominous until the heavens opened in a torrential downpour that drowned out the music and made us wonder if there was more water falling into the fountain than being sprayed.

One of the alleys along the back that borders the Petit Trianon where Marie Antoinette liked to escape the public by playing as a milkmaid.

One of the flower borders in the garden with a photographer (named Hayley) at the end of the row.

Large temporary modern art exhibit that seemed way out of place but was fun to photograph.

The next bit 'o fun was getting the car out of the parking lot. First I forgot to prepay the ticket. We get out of line and Bob goes up to pay with our brand new chip and pin credit card that we bought for an exorbitant amount before leaving the States. It takes the pin but declines the card and eats the ticket. So the attendant gives us a new ticket and we put a 20 Euro bill in the machine for a 10 Euro charge. This time the ticket came back but the 10 Euro change didn't. That slowed us down a bit, but we finally got on the road with what should have been enough time to make it to our destination. Not too far into the drive, we got stuck in a long line of traffic that appeared to be going nowhere, so we cut off the main road and head into the little enclave of houses. Bob isn't thrilled with the decision and the kids have fallen mute in the back seat. Using dead reckoning and sheer willpower, I found a viable detour via sharp hairpin turns on one lane roads up the little ridge behind the village and then through the fields and back on the main road past all the congestion.

Oh there's more story here, but it includes some colorful language so I'll distill it. The map for the area does no good to anyone at the bottom of the suitcase.

We arrived at Le Pigonnier at about 8p. We were lucky that our hosts provided us with local cheeses, a baguette, some milk and butter and a bottle of white wine. Needless to say, we made our dinner on that since we'd had no time to seek out or stop at a market. No blogging that night as we couldn't find the Internet cable.

Not so many steps today: 11,591

Last Mango in Paris

2011-06-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

Today we left the apartment even later than the past few days and boy did we pay for that. We waited in line at the Catacombs for over 2 hours. This was a part of the trip that was totally new to me. Curiously, my mother, daughter and I had stayed in the Hotel du Midi which is right across the street from the site back in Spring '94. It is also right across the street from the RER station which has trains that take you from Paris out to Orly. At the time, we didn't know that it was right there. Not sure if my Mom would have wanted to go down there. While we stood in line, there was a jet of water coming out of the curb next to us and the local pigeons were treating it like a spa.

So what's in the catacombs? The remains of over 6 million dead Parisians. The city of Paris is built on a deposit of limestone and gypsum. The site has been quarried since Roman times and came under government control in 1777 to prevent cave ins. In 1780, another section of Paris was experiencing epidemics of sickness which was traced back to the decomposition of bodies in the local cemetery. The decision was then made to exhume the occupants of this cemetery and others. They used the quarries as ossuaries. The catacombs were consecrated and over the next several decades many of Paris' cemeteries were emptied and carted off to the catacombs where their bones were stacked in the ossuary with a priest performing a mass each time. At first the bones were just jumbled in there, but it wasn't until 1810 until the General Inspector of Quarries had the bright idea to stack them neatly, making patterns, etc. They opened the catacombs to the public at the beginning of the 19th century.

It was very pleasant to walk out of the hot sun and into the cool underground and it was a long walk from the entrance to the actual beginning of the ossuary. This provided plenty of time for stupid tourist tricks. Trying to find holes to jump out of, playing with the flashlight, walking like a monster. Great fun.

I'm not sure at all what camera setting I used, but that last photo was way lighter than it should be. So on to the bones. If you're at all squeamish, you might want to skip ahead a few pictures...

STOP! This is the empire of Death...

Signage showing the origin of the bones and when they were placed in their current location.

With the help of Bob's flashlight we can see that in this spot, the bones go back over 20 feet.

Another interesting pattern using skulls and bones ends.

This is a barrel shaped formation of skulls and shin bones in the Crypt of the Passion. It covers up a column that supports the ceiling. Form follows function?

On the lighter side of all this, there was an American couple with a 3-4 year old boy down there with us. The kid was a handful and I think the parents were afraid he was going to pull on some of the bones or something. At various points, they were taking picture of him against a wall of skulls and bones. Justin turns to us and says "I bet that'll be this year's Christmas card photo." His sense of humor has been keeping us laughing, that's for sure.

Eventually, we climbed out of the catacombs and were back among the living. Bob, Justin and Hayley headed off to the Arch of Triumph and the Quai Branley museum. The latter is dedicated to the art of indigenous people around the world and was loosely divided into continents. I headed back to do some light grocery shopping and some heavy duty laundry. The ladies in the laundromat were very helpful and pleasant. There was this machine on the wall. If you wanted laundry soap, you pushed the numbered buttons for the soap dispenser (21) and then put in the coins. Across the room on the other side of the door is this metal box on the wall with no apparent way to access anything. After you pay, you hear this clunk, clunk and you have to know that you need to reach into a little flap on the left bottom side of this box to pull out the laundry soap. This little invention lost its novelty rapidly after I put in 1 Euro and got no soap. It was a lot like those gas stations where you can pay outside after you indicate which pump you wish to use which is easy enough, but the whole soap thing was a bit far-fetched.

Dinner was a repeat of last night and we have begun to pack in preparation for leaving tomorrow. We have been working on cleaning out the fridge. Tomorrow we will eat the croissant and demi baguette I bought this afternoon, some yogurt, the last peach and mango and hit the road. We will pick up the car on the west end of Paris and eventually head out to Normandy. Not sure if we will have working wifi at the next stop. We'll see.

So, what have we learned in Paris? It used to be that if a guy was wearing a baseball hat or wearing shorts, he was an American. Now you see them on Swedes, Chinese, and even the French. If you see someone wearing a Gilligan hat, it's an Italian. The Italians have replaced the Ugly American as the bane of the European tourist industry. They no longer make raisin snails (Pain aux Raisins) - at least the good ones with the custard in them. Using a Metro map from 1991 is not a good idea. There aren't as many pickpockets as Rick Steves leads you to believe. The next generation of French people seem to be a little warmer than the last. Hot weather brings out a lot of cleavage. Some of it should remain covered. Nobody should buy and wear a tshirt or other article of clothing that has writing in a language they don't understand. We have seen some real doozies.

I'm sure there are more, but they're just not coming to me. It's time to sign off and get into bed. Another busy day ahead of us tomorrow.

Todays step count: 16,014.

Paris When it Sizzles

2011-06-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

Today we slept in. Until 8:30! The box of cereal contained too little cereal for everyone to get some, so I brought out the baguette and croissants with butter and apricot jam. Rounded out with some Camembert and cut up peaches and nectarines and we were all sufficiently filled up to start the day. Our goal for the day was to go to Notre Dame and the L'Arc de Triomphe. Before we left the apartment, we closed both the windows and drapes as the sun had already hit our wall and it was beginning to heat up.

We took the Metro into the heart of the City and walked into the usual throng around the Notre Dame. After some recon, we determined that there was a 2 hour wait to go up the tower (standing in the sun) and the Archaeological Crypt is closed on Mondays. I waited outside with the backpacks and sent Bob and the kids in to the church since the line was moving quite nicely.

Afterwards, we walked towards the Jewish Holocaust Memorial (also closed on Mondays) walking through the park at the back end of the church. It was lunch time and the park was FULL of children involved in some summer program as they all were wearing red baseball hats. There were a lot of kids and a lot of activity and I have no idea how anyone was making sure they didn't wander off.

These two boys were playing a clapping game similar to patty cake that involved spinning around in place and convoluted hand movements. They were quite intent on their game.

We then crossed the Petit Pont. This bridge connecting the little island in the middle of the Seine with the Left Bank was covered with padlocks. Here is a link describing why.
http://french-news-online.com/wordpress/?p=6063#axzz1QVcAeUn7 Cute concept but we were baffled by the plastic bags (yes, just like the little ones that you use to pick up your doggy's poop when you take him on his walkies) that were also tied in amongst all the locks. If anyone finds anything on line about these, please feel free to post in a comment. Then we'll ALL know.

At this point the temperature was increasing and we were trying to walk in the shade. We walked down the Rue de Colbert just opposite the South Rose window of the cathedral to see the hotel I stayed in on my first trip to Paris in 1972. The Hotel Colbert is now a four star hotel. Needless to say, it wasn't back then. Justin asked me if I remember which room I stayed in. I didn't, but just now I remembered with whom I shared the room. Her name was Sue LaVoie and she was a year behind me in high school and she bought French bird seed to take back to her bird as a souvenir. Perhaps I should of simply remembered which room.

A little further away from the Seine, we stopped for lunch at a nice little creperie called Creposuk. Yes, Don, that is how it was spelled and we can't comment on the pronunciation. How unfortunate for them that it doesn't translate to English speakers very well. Furthermore, there was a Chinese restaurant across the street called Palais de Grisirie. The temperature was not retreating, but neither were we. Up the hill to the Pantheon where it was relatively cool inside. This was originally a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve but was decommissioned in the late 1800's and now serves as a memorial to all the "great French people" such as Marie Curie, Victor Hugo, Voltaire, etc., who are now interred in the nicely chilled crypt below the building. Many of the occupants of the crypt were exhumed from other locations and re-interred in the Pantheon with great ceremony. We decided it was a great place to be on a hot day.

Justin and Bob through the scale model of the Parthenon.

Interior shots is all you get to see of the Pantheon!

After we had successfully dried the first (or was it the second) layer of sweat, we headed out into the bright sunshine and over to the Gardens of Luxembourg where we walked on the gravel paths and collected a fine layer of grit on our second or third layer of sweat.

Back to Notre Dame, with a side trip to Saint Sulpice church.

We only had to stand in line for about 45 minutes until we were allowed to descend the tower. Along the way the bells were chiming the half hour and it was evident that we were in the bell tower. Again, having been here in '72, I noticed that the tour wasn't the same as the one I took then. Now we were confined to the tower and before we had walked along the roof. Gargoyle viewing was much better in the old days.

We came back down out of the tower and the line to get into the cathedral was really short now so we all went in again so I could see it since you WERE allowed to take backpacks and purses in. Luggage is a no-no. Taking pictures of the stained glass windows is not easy without a tripod and using other people's shoulders does NOT work well at all. Even then I managed to get an ok shot which I cropped with the software on my handy little Airbook.

Back to the apartment, stopping at the market along the way. I saw the roasted chickens and decided that I was not going to heat up the apartment any further by cooking chicken to put on a nice green salad. Added some feta, olives, tomato, cucumber and some purchased vinaigrette. Followed by an apple tart chaser and we were satisfied. The only downside was that the white wine didn't chill fast enough or it would have been opened to accompany dinner.

Fortified by this hearty repast, we headed out to see the light show at the Eiffel Tower which provided the final layer of sweat for the day. I failed to get a photo of the light show, but I got a lot of really short little videos of it. Operator error. Got some great shots of the tower all lit up though. The other day, we were all talking about the color that they paint the tower. It's a non-descript blah-brown. Hayley suggested last night that maybe they pick that color because it illuminates so well. I think she's right!

Here's Hayley rocking that little Canon camera of hers. It doesn't have enough buttons and knobs for what she'd like to do with it, but she takes some great shots with it and she's got the intricacies of how it works down cold. I ask her camera questions all the time.

We walked back through the quiet streets and after a shower, will be fast asleep in no time at all. We are pooped. It has been another busy day. As Justin said at dinner, "If you aren't tired by the end of the day, you're just not doing something right." That's a fact.

So, Paris When it Sizzles. It was forecast to hit 95 degrees today and it is possible that it was even hotter. It's also a bit on the humid side. Tomorrow will be 10 degrees cooler and rain is possible. Hopefully, we won't feel like we're swimming down the sidewalk.

Steps logged today: 21,760. My calves can't decide if they want to keep going or reject the rest of the body that keeps abusing them.

Slacking in Paris

2011-06-26T15:01:00.000-07:00

In spite of best intentions to be on the way by 8:15, we made it out of the apartment by 8:45. From the notebook of info left here in the apartment for guests, we knew that there was a local Sunday market. Yesterday on our way back to the apartment for lunch, we noticed that under the elevated Metro tracks in front of the building, there were metal stall frames set up which meant the market was right there at our doorstep. I wanted to get up early and go out there before everyone else was ready to leave for the day, but after staying up until 1:30 in the morning, it wasn't in the cards. I had to content myself with a quick walk through the market and only stopping for an occasional photo. It was a riot of colors and smells.

When I saw this, I thought about the fourth little piggy that built his house from baguettes. On second thought maybe this is the French version of the game Jenga.

I don't think that I have ever seen fruit this colorful at home. It is evident that they do not pick the fruit green and gas it to ripen. All of the flavor in the fruit we have eaten so far has been so intense. We had some red cherries with lunch yesterday that were not Bing cherries. They were a little darker and very full of flavor.

I think they even polish some of the produce. You can see my reflection in the eggplant.

JT told me to take pictures of pretty food when I saw it. I'm hoping that this is what he meant. This variety of tomato was totally new to me. If we hadn't been heading out, I would have bought one to try.

Now we come to the "parts is parts" section of the market. All the little rows of beady black eyes caught my eye in this stall.

More eyes. I'm not sure that the photo does justice to the color on this fish.

More parts.

Hooves and ears from the little piggies that built their house from baguettes I guess.

And even more parts. There doesn't seem to be anything roly poly about these fish heads, nor do I want to eat them up, yum.

A couple of short metro rides later we arrived at the Louvre. Learning from yesterday's mistake, we actually looked up in our handy travel guide HOW to get to the Louvre. It seems that you just can't find the Metro stopped named Montmartre and expect to pop up out of the ground in front of Sacre Coeur. When you do that, you find yourself somewhere off of the map that you're carrying and you walk for 30 minutes or so using the location of the sun in the sky and dead reckoning. This helped to account for a good portion of the 20,000 steps we walked yesterday.

As we walked into the courtyard where the famous glass pyramid that is the entrance to the Louvre is located, we saw a good sized line already forming. Once inside, we bought our museum passes and headed off to the Richelieu wing where they house sculpture and paintings from the Middle Ages and Renaissance as well as the royal apartments of Louis Napoleon III.

This is the handle on one of the windows. The face measures about 1.25" Justin and I marveled at the artistry expended on something so utilitarian. I wonder how many people that visit this room even notice it.

This photo shows some of the objets d'arts that were in one of the royal collections. Justin and I spent quite a bit of time exclaiming over these and looking at them from different angles. They were amazingly pierced and multi-layered as well as beautifully decorated.

I took this photo on the way back to meet up with Bob and Hayley for lunch. Justin had stayed on a bit longer to see the Van Dyck and Durer section. This was a class that the museum puts on to inspire curiosity about art in children. The teacher was dressed up like a statue and was teaching them about statuary by getting them to look at it and tell her about what they were seeing. It was a neat thing to see. I love the pose that I caught her in.

After lunch we went into the Sully wing to see the excavation of the medieval Louvre castle that was built in the 12th century. At the end of the 16th century, the northwest corner of the current Henri II square was built over the older castle. When Bob and I were last here in 2000, all that was exposed was one corner. Now they have exposed two whole walls and also access to the donjon or keep inside the walls. Dim lighting and no flash photos prevent me from sharing that.

We also took in quite a bit of the Greek and Egyptian sculpture. I was experiencing some dissonance along the way between the Egyptian art and artifacts and the rooms in which they were housed. Some how the rococo style of the rooms just didn't seem to be the best match to me.

By 3:30 we all agreed that we were very tired and had sore legs to boot; the stairs were getting to be painful. So we wended our way back to the entrance and climbed out of the museum. It was a very warm day today and the air up on top gets hot and stifling with all that glass.

A few more quick rides on the Metro and we were back in our neighborhood. The market was long gone and the debris hosed to the curbs where the pigeons were having a field day. Another brief nap and then I cooked dinner which consisted of the country sausage, sauerkraut, baby potatoes and green beans that we bought on Rue Cler yesterday afternoon. The apple tart was served afterwards and the next thing I realized, everyone crashed. I'm sitting in the dark as I type, looking forward to another busy day tomorrow. An even hotter one than today. Who knew we'd have to leave home to actually enjoy the summer.

So, the post title. Right. Well, we only walked 13,000 steps today. Two reasons for that. 1) We didn't get temporarily "misplaced" like yesterday and 2) you do a lot of standing in one place in a museum. Especially when you are trying to translate the placards from French to English. :)

20,000 steps across Paris

2011-06-25T16:32:00.000-07:00

We just finished our first full day in Paris. Flight over was uneventful for the most part...that's a story for another day.

We're all bushed. We made it to the Eiffel Tower by 9:30 this morning and the lines already snaked across the pavillion under the tower. We stood in one of the long lines to purchase the tickets and then took the first elevator to the 2nd level platform. From there you stand in line to catch the elevator to the top. As the day started out overcast and cool, it was a little chilly up there but mainly on the western side. The Japanese have been replaced as the country providing the highest numbers of tourists by the Swedes, Poles and Russians. The place was absolutely packed with these denominations of tourist.

Lots of nice architectural shots to be had here...

The usual suspects...

The long lines seen from the second level.

After we descended from the first level platform via the stairs, we walked through the Rue Cler neighborhood so touted and beloved by Rick Steves totally by chance. We purchased some lovely fruit, sliced lunch meats, bread and a ripe and runny camembert which we ate back at our apartment.

After a nap (all of us!) we headed back out and spent the early evening at Sacre Coeur, just missing the chance to go up into the dome. Below is some odd artwork found on a wall.

We walked back down the hill and caught the Metro to the Latin Quarter where we proceeded to locate and devour a very nice dinner. By dessert we all realized how tired we were and no wonder. It was almost 11 by the time we left the restaurant. The Latin Quarter was still hopping at that hour.

Quick trip home on the Metro and then ready for bed. The kids crashed about 50 minutes ago, Bob 30 minutes ago and I am pushing the edge of the envelope to get this entry in. Unlike other trips, we've simply been too busy to work on this blog. Hopefully, the pace will slow down or we'll drop!

Which brings me to the title of this post! Back home, Boeing is doing another fitness program this year with it's employees. This means that Bob is wearing a pedometer at work as well as on vacation. Today he/we logged over 20,000 steps; a lot of those up and down towers, through Metro stations and of course Montmartre. No wonder we're all tired!

Bonsoir!

How to Shine (and make the world a better place to live)

2011-03-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, Andrew gave us the word "SHINE" for our blogging assignment. As usual, I am late due to stewing over what this word meant to me. Interestingly, since I don't believe in concidence, I have had several epiphanies these past two weeks that have led me back to this word.

Originally, I thought about a time in my past where there was this extremely intelligent but unpleasant woman that I worked with. I focused way too much time complaining about her various traits and habits that annoyed me until one day I realized that her path in life was the same as mine - to love and be loved in return. To be understood and to understand in return. Realizing this allowed me to let go of the dissonance I felt towards her. Oddly enough, the man I was seeing at the time noticed this shift in my demeanor that day. While I can't say that this lesson stayed with me for very long, I still remember that day and had planned to share that story here but didn't get to it right away...

Then yesterday occurred. I was driving to Issaquah to run errands and was listening to a story on NPR about an Iraqi woman who went by the name of Sarah. She worked for the U.S. to gather intelligence on the Iraqi militia and had a real gift for people wanting to open up to her and talk. As she told her story, the listener followed her growth from the role of an Iraqi housewife to an empowered woman working against the repression of Sadam Hussein's regime. She was well known by the opposition and had been given the name "The Lion". The pride in her voice was inspiring to hear at that point of the story. The story took a turn soon enough as she told about a local woman whose home was at a very strategic point in the city. She began to be in daily contact with this woman, they became friends and she met and came to care about the woman's familiy. One day, the husband called to tell her that his wife had been taken away by the militia. Sarah begged for assistance from the U.S. military and tried to negotiate with the Iraqi militia for her release, but a couple of weeks later she heard from the husband once more. His wife had been killed. I started to cry at this point as it seemed so crazy and futile. The story went on from there and became even more sad. I didn't hear the end of it as I arrived at the store and left the car. However, in the short time between starting to cry and pulling off of the freeway, I made a resolution. This world needs to change and today it will start with me. Going back to that day long ago, it is time to once more realize that we are all here to love and be loved...to be understood and understand in return. It is time to throw aside thoughts about others that are non-productive. Really, in the scheme of things, does it matter if someone wears too much perfume or hairspray? If they are rude and insinuating? Unless someone's actions might cause you personal harm, let it go. In your heart and mind, send them the thought that there are kinder, gentler ways to achieve one's needs.

Another item I came across yesterday that reinforced my thoughts were the words written on the bottom of a Nature's Path cereal box. "Always leave the Earth better than you found it" ~ Rupert Stevens. He was talking about organic farming, but I really think it applies to everything that we do in life. A few minutes later, the sun blasted a hole through the overcast and rain that permeated our pre-spring Saturday. It felt warm on our faces and hit the thermometer outside the kitchen window driving it up to almost 60 degrees. A coincidence? I think not.

So leave a legacy of kindness, tolerance, love and understanding. Be a shining example of humanity in your life.

So may I introduce to you?

2011-03-03T20:01:00.000-08:00

Hello. I am Ellen's A630 Powershot.

Although I live in Bellevue, Washington, I have been all over the world. I have taken a bicycle trip along the Elbe River from the Czech Republic towards Berlin. I have sailed on the Aegean Sea off the coast of Greece and even been to Japan. Last summer, Ellen and I took a photography class together and most recently, we attended a photography and blogging workshop in Tucson with Kate and Andrew.
Over the years, I have recorded many family events and taken some awful pictures. (Don't tell Ellen it wasn't my fault.) So now that you know who I am, I'd like to introduce to you my new big brother.

Yep, he's the latest Canon G12. He is absolutely the coolest thing that has happened to Ellen's photography since I was given to her for Christmas many years back. He makes all of her pictures look good (and she needs all the help she can get.) He has many of the features I have, but they're new and improved. He's even got this cool fisheye lens effect that he may show you someday in another post.

Ellen has been carrying him with her everywhere this week. Here's his first shot. Ellen must have looked pretty silly squatting at the curb out front of the Safeway store to take this picture. Did I mention that it was beginning to drizzle?

Ellen is finding it easier to focus macro shots and thinks that he does a great job taking pictures without flash in various light levels. Here's a very simple one taken from the chair in which you can usually find Ellen working on her laptop.

This photo was also taken from Ellen's "throne". Do you see the little Flapper Girl faces?

And finally, here's a picture of my new owner Bob. He's eating a cookie and working on the other family laptop.

So, from now on, Ellen and the G12 will be working on this blog together. I know that they are going to get some really good photos together and I want to go on record as saying that I am not jealous in the least. Bob and I will be great together too...and Bob won't drop me a lot like Ellen did.

Boundless - another in a series of word assignments from Andrew

2011-03-01T19:38:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking on this one all week and I keep coming back to one point of time in my life where I felt absolutely limitless for a brief moment.

I don't remember what year it was or even which state I lived in at the time. I simply remember having a wonderful flying dream. I don't remember the details other than it was a lucid dream - one where I knew that I was having a flying dream. I remember feeling absolutely and incredibly bouyant and filled to the brim with light, joy and serenity. I remember telling myself that I wanted to remember the dream and feelings once I awoke.

The next morning, I woke up and the memory of the dream quickly rose back up in me and I carried those lovely feelings with me into my day. I can't say how long they stayed with me, but thinking back on them now calls up a stirring of that goodness.

I shared this with Bob while we cleaned up dishes after dinner and he told me that as a kid, he had flying dreams all of the time. He said that all he needed to do was jump in the air and he'd be off. He never flew too high, but he stayed up there for quite awhile. I know that many people have never had one of these dreams and I know that I haven't had one for quite a long time. Bob says that he can't recall having a flying dream since he became an adult, but then he doesn't often remember his dreams if he does have one.

I know dreaming has something to do with the length and the quality of the sleep also. I have only recently begun to sleep soundly through the night after a long spell of many sleepless nights in a row and I notice that the dreams are starting to come back. Maybe I'll have another wonderful flying dream soon. This time I'm going to write it down or better yet, try to recreate it in photos. Then I'll be able to take it out and enjoy any time I wish to do so.

Winter Redux

2011-02-24T19:52:00.000-08:00

Somewhere this last week, our progress toward Spring was derailed and a low pressure system off the Pacific literally collided with some arctic air out of the Frazier Valley in British Columbia to create what the local TV news station is calling "Winter Blast". They seem to like to name any weather phenomena that colors outside the box of our normal weather patterns. As I waited for my car pool buddy to arrive this morning, I marked the snowfall in my yard by walking around and taking some photos.

In this storm, which started yesterday about rush hour, we have seen many different types of snow. Corn snow, hail, fine light flakes and fat, wet flakes measuring almost 2" across. It piled up to about 5" total overnight. This is the view out the back deck (built by Bob).

Our ornamental Cherry tree in the back yard was covered.

As was the sweet gum at the top of the stairs.

The snow also bestowed jaunty little winter hats on the dead Sedum blossoms in the garden.

This photo came from the very margin of the deep eave on our house just outside the front door. It reminds me of a map of an archipelago.

The last surprise that I found was out front in our cul de sac.

These were created by my husband leaving for work and the newspaperman as he swung through our neighborhood delivering our newspaper. I can't decide which orientation I like better.

I have lots more photos, but I am experiencing photo rotation difficulties tonight. That means that every single one of these shots had to be rotated several times and uploaded several times before they actually uploaded with the correct orientation.

This quickly curtails the joy and desire to post more pictures, but I will post one more photo to show you all why I am so willing to give up on this tonight and run downstairs to sew. One of my recent efforts since my return from Tucson. Sweet, It posted with the correct orientation the first time.

Passion

2011-02-20T11:43:00.000-08:00

Ongoing blog work assigned by Andrew Thornton this week was a word. Passion.

(I think that my nature rebels against assignments since I left school. Bla.)

I started mulling thos one over in my brain a couple of days ago and started jotting down notes that I have quite simply lost. I looked up the definition of passion just to make sure I was on the right page since I don't feel good about only looking at passion as love; passion has an ugly side to it also. Boiled down to its essence it means "a strong emotion". My interpretation of the assignment was to evaluate the different ways that passion manifests itself.

Thinking that it would be hard to take photos that for this "essay", I will have to rely on images captured in words alone. In my mind I take the following "pictures".

Anger is a strong, ugly emotion as are hate and fear. All of these "virtual photos" could stem from any or all of these emotions.
...people arguing...Egyptians demonstrating...Suniis vs. Shi'ites...terrorists.

Compulsion can disguise itself as passion. I can show you a part of my bead collection or I can overwhelm you with the entire collection. Without knowing me well, it looks as though I have a passion for beads. However, that passion can quickly roll right over the edge into compulsively collecting. (Now that I use my camera, perhaps I can "collect" pictures of beads that I don't actually buy!)

Taking that one step further. When we call our hobbies passions, is that really the correct usage? If I think about the things that I enjoy doing: gardening, knitting, cooking, etc., do I really feel that those activities provoke strong emotions? Hmm. I think not. I feel a sense of pleasure and enjoyment. A satisfaction of my palate or sense of order or beauty, but not strong emotion. Passion implies the high highs and the low lows, not the simple homespun quality of my everyday life and activities.

I think that I'll need to think more about this word as it evokes strong feeling in me to make sure that I use the word correctly.

Howling at the moon

2011-02-17T20:56:00.000-08:00

I have been trying to carry my camera with me every day. I usually forget about it and wonder why the heck my purse is so heavy. I know that most days I won't find the time or mental energy to use it, but today was different. I was waiting for my car pool buddy to show up and it had just begun raining. Caught this picture just before the rain obliterated the pattern on the rocks.

There is something very pleasing to my eye with the roundness of the rocks and the random pattern they made just laying there.

Next I played around with taking pictures through the windshield on the drive home. That didn't generate anything interesting though.

After dinner I started to head downstairs (we have a daylight basement) and looked out into the front courtyard and noticed an almost full moon framed by the maple tree out front. (It's in front of the skimmia.) I rushed and got the camera and tried a few shots only to discover that to get things to show up as I wished, I needed to shoot in shutter priority and slow down the shutter speed. Way down. Which required the tripod.

After almost knocking out my front teeth in my rush to get the tripod out of it's box, I got the camera set up in the courtyard and managed to get some pictures before the moon was totally obscured by the rapidly moving clouds.

As I stood there waiting for the moon to reappear I looked around for anything else that might be interesting enough for a picture and turned and noticed our huge sweet gum that grows at the top of the stairs to the backyard. Years ago when Bob put in the landscaping lights, he put an uplight on this tree which makes it a somewhat creepy if spectacular focal point in the courtyard at night. I played with different shutter speeds for different effects.

Once I downloaded the pictures to my laptop I soon discovered that Microsoft Office Picture Manager is a cool little tool that packs a wallop for its price. (free) It not only lets me resize photos for the web, but it's got this fantastic low tech cropping tool that allows you to make the photos of the tree even more interesting.

Here's the original shot.

Here are two cropped shots.

At the same time as I was trying to select/resize these photos and write this post, I was making chocolate chip cookies to take to work tomorrow. They turned out beautifully in spite of my distraction. The good news is that I only burnt one batch!.

The lesson I learned today is this. Even though I didn't really use the camera that I had lugged in my purse all day as I traipsed back and forth between buildings on our corporate campus, I believe that the fact that I had taken it out to shoot the photo of the rocks caused me to be more aware of its existence today. When I saw the moon I thought of the camera and picked it up and used it. Well worth the extra weight in my purse.

What's in your yard?

2011-02-13T15:18:00.000-08:00

We had a high in the low 50's today and some sunshine and a big, blue spring-like sky. It sent me outside with my camera and a reason for a post!

First things first. I made a pineapple upside down cake to take to my in-laws tonight - can you tell I didn't have pineapple rings? Also made some gluten-free bread and hamburger buns before I headed outside with my camera.

Bought these yesterday at Costco. They had rolling carts of them up to at least 6' tall. I had to have some to brighten up the yard.

Now when we look outside, there is this big spuh-LASH of color to ward off any possible ho-hums. I wish I didn't have to plant them. They have such visual impact all clustered together.

We have seen alot of bird activity in the yard this weekend. We have a "remnant" water feature that we will redo when the front courtyard is landscaped (soon?). The birds are drawn to it for their daily bathing. Yesterday a rufous towhee and today a group of little dark-eyed junkos. Caught one in the act with the water still flying.

I've been watching the front flower bed for a week or so. It's got a five o'clock shadow consisting of daffodils and tulips. They seem to be a little early this year, but I think we said that last year too.

This is a contorted fig that the previous owner planted/jammed in the front corner years ago. It has gotten tall enough to hang out over the fence and when the year is wet enough, it puts on gorgeous hot pink 1/2" blossoms. The rest of the year it looks pretty much like this with its corkscrew limbs.

After I took that photo, I got to looking at the fence. It is made from cedar and over the years it has weathered to this lovely gray patina with a shimmery silky look.

Just inside the gate to the courtyard (and in front of the crowded contorted fig) we have a skimmia. It's already put on its buds that will bloom for one short week in May. What it lacks in duration it makes up for in impact. It has the most heavenly sweet smell. It's indescribable. Somewhere between lilac and honeysuckle. During this week, when we come back from getting the mail, we can begin to smell the skimmia the minute we hit the entry to the cul-de-sac. It is truly wonderful. Almost as wonderful, is the 2 to 2 1/2 weeks of the lilies of the valley that grow at its feet and then spill down the side stairs towards the backyard.

To the left of the skimmia, the Lenten Rose is in bloom. This yard is so challenged. There is about 5-6" of soil that can be dug (with great difficulty) and under that is hard pan. I must have planted these in the spring that year, because I unknowingly planted them in the middle of a hosta. When this plant is done, the hosta takes over and comes up around it. Somehow, they manage to co-exist in the same square foot.

This is the remains of some winter blooming kale that I planted last fall for some winter color. There were white and purple ones. The purple ones never recovered from a hard frost earlier this winter, but we have had the delicate tracery of the white ones to enjoy.

Heading around the north side of the house, I discovered this terra cotta pot bursting with more tulips and daffodils. It took me awhile to realize that the spanish moss-like fibers were the remains of the trailing Regatta Blue Lobelia that I planted there last summer. It was also filled with pink, coral and heliotrope Impatiens.

On the south side of the house, I found this pile of black plastic pipe. I had NO idea how they had arrived at this location. I sought out Bob for the answer. His puzzled reply was "those were from the temporary drain I put in when the downspouts were overflowing earlier this winter". I don't know why I didn't know this, but I do know that I will go weeks without actually seeing the yard in the winter. I leave for work in the dark and I come home in the dark. If it is nasty cold and raining, I only see what is visible through the windows on the weekend and we don't have any southern facing windows. I'd like one though...

Last year, we had to have an older birch removed from the back corner of our lot. Before the crew came to take it out, I moved all of the plants that were at it base. A yellow and a purple azalea, a pink single peony and four lovely Autumn Joy sedums. I had bought them as a 4-pack of 4" pots from Costco. They have asked for little over the years, are drought tolerant and have thrived. Each one has a 2 foot spread on it now. I lifted all these plants out and put them in the soft beds of our vegetable garden. They've stood there all winter looking dead. With my fingers crossed I approached them, pulled away a couple of dead leaves and lo and behold they are still thriving.

I actually had to go back out and rephotograph these as the first shots were out of focus. The air outside is cool and fresh, but walking back into the house I was hit by the smell of freshly baked hamburger buns. A truly round and enveloping smell as I had added a touch of Herbs de Provence to the dough.

I also found a sign of early summer's promise in my yard today. Inside the little wall in this photo is the winter kale having it lasts stand. There are also some miniature Delphiniums beginning to come forth. They grow in a mounding habit and put on a lovely, little star-shaped light blue flower. There is no scent, but it does provide a veritable carpet of flowers for a couple of weeks in late June or so. I have had these for 5-7 years and they come back each year. Last year I split them and spread them around. In this photo, the little roots are pushing through the retaining wall, so we shall have little blue flowers on the outside of the bed too.

The sun has now disappeared behind a high overcast, but it was out long enough to reassure me that spring is on it's way. Be still and wait. It comes.

Get 'er done and get on to the fun.

2011-02-10T19:12:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am guilty of taking a full week to make my next blog entry. I have been busy with getting the suicase unpacked and the contents put away or at least taken down to the vortex called my workshop. 10 hour days at work and then an hour or two trying to complete all of the booking for our European Vacation ( w/o Chevy Chase). Having trouble finding a place in Bavaria that doesn't require a full week's rental. Evening is spent sending off inquiries that have negative replies the next day. If it's long-winded and in German, it gets forwarded to my daughter in Germany for the terse translation: "nope".

Usual Seattle weather for this time of year. Chilly...but sunny which is forgivable and of course the usual curse of sunny weekdays and rainy weekends. Can't get my head wrapped around taking pictures, but the bright side is that once I get the vacation plans finished, I will be on the hunt for a new camera! Woohoo! Being married to Bob, that means that I have to do all of my homework to be able to explain WHY I want to buy the camera that I finally select. It's like having to show your work on a math problem.

The few minutes that I manage to steal before bed time are spent sewing a new purse. A(nother) interest recently picked up. I need to research ADD. Did someone say "squirrel"?

Back in the saddle in Seattle

2011-01-31T19:45:00.000-08:00

Arrived at Seatac airport at 8:45 this morning. Overcast and 38 degrees. While I was gone someone turned down the thermostat. Luckily, the sun did make a watery, wavering appearance later in the day and it warmed up to a balmy 42 degrees. A far cry from the bliss in the sun we all experienced over the long weekend in Tucson.

As I was driving from Tucson to Phoenix last night, I had a huge epiphany about the photography thing. Not only had I enjoyed the sun for its warmth, but I had truly revelled in the ability to capture it in my photographs. I love playing with light and shadow and it will be months until the sunlight is direct enough here in the Northwest to throw a shadow with as strong of a contrast as Tucson this past weekend. I consoled myself with the thought of turning to color and pattern and the activity that comes with spring for my future subjects.

I haven't taken a picture in a couple of days now and will struggle to find the time before the weekend as I pitch myself headlong into work as I did today. I have posted a picture from our trip downtown Tucson on Saturday afternoon. It's an interesting picture and as I sit looking at it now, I realize how I could have made it better by not centering the first little doorway in my lens. If I had stood a bit to the left, I would have a more asymmetrical picture and we would have been able to see further inside the second little door in the distance. That's what happens when you don't have/take the time to look past the obvious shot. It also would have removed the center iron pole that detracts from seeing the interior court as a tranquil sunny spot on a warm Saturday afternoon. A pure moment gone uncaptured, but a lesson learned.

Another day in the sun

2011-01-29T21:31:00.000-08:00

Today we spent a long day on our feet. We visited some of the show tents on the frontage road along I-10. It provided a bare bones look at this show that I didn't see the last time I came to Tucson in 2009.

These tents are set up in dirt lots so things are very dusty. Outside the tents, there are pallets loaded with heavy loads of rough stones and huge geodes. I was lucky enough to get Charlene and Meryl (Carol) to pose in front of this one to show the actual size. It really was impressive.

Another method for shipping the product to Tucson is in large metal drums. I can't even begin to fathom the cost of shipping what must be tons of stone to this show.

Here is a picture of a pallet that caught my eye. At first I thought it was a pallet of chunks of brightly colored foam. I walked up and tapped on one and was surprised to find that they were blocks of various stone. I'm wondering a couple things here. The first is how much does this pallet weigh and is that the natural color? I wouldn't think that the stone would be dyed in this form. I would think that it would be cut into beads before being dyed. I'm curious, I'll have to look that up or ask someone.

This final photo illustrates the draw of the Tucson shows. This crate came all the way from Auckland, New Zealand. Since coming by ship had to be the least expensive method of shipping it here, I wonder how long that crate spent getting here.

Only one more day here in Tucson. Tomorrow will be spent visiting some of the more "polished" shows. At the end of the day, I will have dinner with an ex-coworker who retired to Tucson several years ago before driving to Phoenix where I will catch an early morning flight. This has been a great experience and it isn't over yet!

Shadow Play

2011-01-29T21:04:00.000-08:00

Today's assignment from Andrew was to take a picture of shadows. I loved it.
This was my favorite for the day. We were at the Old Town Artisans Galleries in downtown Tucson. I walked out of one of the galleries into the court yard and was stunned by this metal Kokopelli statue and his "mini-me".

Another neat picture that I captured at the galleries wasn't exactly a shadow but some backlit wind chimes. It is so graphically stark. I have really enjoyed the chance that this trip has provided to work on my photography and the encouragement from Andrew and Kate to begin blogging.

This is a shadow picture that I took yesterday at Tohono Chul park. There was a rock with petroglyphs reproduced by a local artist. I tried to locate the whorl where my heart is. The sun, lower in the winter sky, cast a long shadow.

When you set out to look for shadows, you really are looking for things that are not there. An additional challenge is that for most of us, they are everyday and common place. That fact makes them easily overlooked. I like this type of exercise. It forces you to really open your eyes to a different way of seeing the world around you.

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose...

2011-01-29T08:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, one of our exercises was to be given a word to photograph. My word was given to me by Charlene and the word was FREEDOM.

At first glance, the fence in this photo seems like the antithesis of freedom. But look at the plant behind it. It is healthy and thriving. The fence is a limitation of which the plant is unaware.

We all have the choice to disregard the little fences in our life and thrive outright.

Tohono Chul and Thrift Stores

2011-01-28T22:02:00.000-08:00

Another fine, sunny day in Tucson. After a discussion about social media and the power of blogging, we sped off to our first stop; the Tohono Chul Park. This desert preserve is north of Tucson in the older section of Tucson. We were all excited about the photo op treat in store for us on the drive out there. On the way there were some very nice "low slung" adobe looking homes on the rolling foothills. It was quite pleasing to the eye to see how well they fit in to the landscape.

Once at the park we hit the ground running. If you can picture someone dumping a bucket of marbles out on a smooth floor you have a great visual for what happened after we all passed through the entry turnstile. Everyone was out of site within a minute! Although we ran into each other at different points, all of us were focused on exploring, enjoying the fine sunny day in a lovely setting AND getting some great photos.

I was especially wrapped up in the wide range of light I saw through my lens. In this one, the light is softened as it comes through the translucent peeling bark on this tree.

Then, I got wrapped up in shadows and strong geometrics.

The fence and its shadow.

Looking up through the "roof" of one of the shelters.

I believe this is a Century Cactus. Reminds me of Jaws.

In several of the shady areas, there were remnants of cactus making their way back into the garden's food chain.

As I was taking this picture of one of the Saguaro cactus, one of the park's docents walked by, looked up and said in a surprised tone "Oh, look, he's growing arms!".

Another of the docents had an exhibit with specimens of the various wildlife that inhabits the desert. She had bugs of all sizes in lucite and a turtle shell. She also had something I had never seen. They are called scutes and they have patterns of concentric rings that like tree rings can be used to determine the age of the turtle. Here is a close up of one.

At the left edge of the picture above was a hollow turtle shell. It made a great frame for a picture of Kathi.

Next I had some fun with the Organ Pipe cacti. This is looking down on a little one. So pretty and yet so dangerous looking.

And nestled amongst all the big ones, I noticed a baby sprouting up through the gravel.

I was listening to one of the docents as I happened to look down and noticed this cactus. Not only is the light and shadow interesting, but you can see a reptile like pattern running up some of the leaves. These were created by the inner layer of spines/leaves being pressed against the next layer's edges. You can see that not only do they have nasty looking spines, the edges are scalloped causing the pattern.

One more cactus shot. I reget I don't remember the name of this one. It has such a lovely color to it.

On the way back to Kate's for another fantastic lunch, we hit the best little Goodwill in Tucson. I found a perfectly smashing pair of faux snake skin pants that I think will add interest to one of my handmade purses that I will make in the future. Interesting thing is that they fit me. Perhaps I will loan them to Merle when she goes bar-hopping with Andrew tomorrow night! The're long enough Merle!

After lunch we worked on our blogs before going out to Savers. Kate had a definite gleam in her eye at the onset of that trip. I decided to have some fun with looking at things from a different perspective. I was impressed with how clean the floors were. I had one of the customers do a double take while I took the first picture.

We're visiting the Gem Shows tomorrow. Several in the group are apprehensive as they have heard how overwhelming it will be. With Kate and Andrew at the helm, I'm sure it will be a blast.

K.I.S.S.

2011-01-28T14:30:00.000-08:00

The beginning. That's right here. I'm not sure where I am headed, but I'll arrive eventually. So, off like a prom dress.

I'm here in Tucson in a workshop with some great people. The idea is to live in the moment, be aware at multiple levels and above all else, HAVE FUN. That's the message loud and clear.
Our first stop, a real treasure trove, was at the Copper Country Antiques Mall. Unlike the antique malls in Seattle, this one lacked the sham veneer of trying to be upscale. The good, the bad and the ugly was tucked, jammed and overflowing the space inside. Photos of the adventure follow.

This is a portion of a 16"x20" framed collection of butterfly wings mounted in a kaleidoscopic pattern. The lavendar-turquoise was actally iridescence. At a different angle, they were pearly gray.

A great example of something that leaves one speechless. This is one that I have to ask you "What would you do with this if you received it as a gift?"

In one of the locked cases there was a shelf filled with these little cuties. I liked the expressions on these two best.

This item, I cannot determine:

what happened?
why didn't they just throw it away?
should this have been in the thrift shop section?
who will buy it?

Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. I must be blind...

I'm thinking of calling this "Porthole to a Crowded Universe" (Sad to admit, this looks like my workshop at home).

At this point I realized that my watch was still on Seattle time and instead of having 1 hour and 25 minutes left, I only had 25 minutes left (Arizona doesn't follow daylight savings time). As I rushed through the remaining 2/3 of the store, I noticed ths ammonite lamp. I would have LOVED to take this home with me. It had a tidy price of $500 on it so I settled for a photo that doesn't do it justice. I really was drawn to the warm glow it cast.

After lunch, which was prepared by our hosts Kate and Andrew, we visited an eclectic used clothing store and Kate came up to me and suggested that I take several pictures of the antlers on the wall from different angles. She said that what I see looking at it with my naked eye is different than what the camera will see.

Here's where I started. I like the shadows in this one. You're most likely going to see more of them here.

Then, there was this cool thing in the front of the store that was fun to photograph. I sure wish I noticed what it was...

So endeth this post. I didn't think I'd be able to get this far and am quite pleased with myself!