Third Anniverary Of Embarcation

Three years ago we departed Missoula in a flurry--no, an avalanche--of activity, packing, storing, donating, selling just about everything we owned that would not fit into a checked bag and a carry-on each. A day later we were in Tokyo, and a day after that we were in Beijing. Our three years of travel have had their respites, sometimes months long. And, not surprisingly, the most important and memorable events of those three years have not been about travel: rather, the engagements and weddings of our daughters and the birth of our grand-daughter. Now we are back into an extended respite, grand-parenting Penelope by day while Rebecca and Jeremy work, in Menlo Park, Middle California. Not a bad place for a respite!

I am not sure what to do with a travel blog when one is not traveling. It is also a retirement blog, certainly, but mostly about our travels. The coming months will bring opportunities for reflection, editing of photos and blog, and website, and planning of our next travels. Some of those things will appear in these posts.

Daddy's girl: Penelope shows Grandma a coding error in

line 14...

Return To Reality

By Monday, all the guests were gone, our dentist and optometrist and doctors' appointments were done, good-byes said to the Sehestedts, and we returned to our storage unit, to finish the latest round of re-sorting, re-packing, and re-organizing. Things change, plans change, needs change. But we left the place in probably the best shape it's been in since August, 2008, when we headed off to Asia.

By Wednesday evening we were back in Sandpoint with Bob and Beth and stayed another day to see Norm and Marie (back from touring Alberta and BC) and to enjoy yet a second of Bob's wonderful filet mignon dinners. Hey, at this point we were no longer dieting for the wedding!

Our thanks as always to the friends and family that hosted us. We always wish we could have stayed longer in Missoula and seen more people. But duty called in California, and we were back in Menlo Park very late Friday night.

In our unit, Hellgate Canyon Storage Center;

home is where your stuff is; plus, it's a gated
community, great views of Mt. Dumbo, and
has water features too

Rachel's Wedding (And Will's)

The big day was Saturday, August 6th, but it was preceded by a variety of dinners, float-trip, baseball game (Will throwing out the first pitch at the Osprey game), pedicures, rehearsal, rehearsal dinner at Fort Missoula, preparations, decorations, and much more. The bride's parents' headquarters was the Babs, near the Hip Strip, although Vicki and I stayed at Dave and Kim's, house- and dog-sitting and addressing a minor flood in the basement. All in all, it was a great week, finishing with our second perfect wedding and reception...due very largely to Rachel, who put all her abundant planning and coordinating skills to work, with some help from a wedding coordinator and numerous family and friends. Vicki, whose involvment from Europe was difficult, nonetheless saved the day with her seamstress work on the wedding gown. And, for the second summer in a row, for us, it was a joyous occasion with family and friends, seeing a wonderful daughter married.

Ceremony at Washington Park, UM campus, beneath the M; I had a front row seat 
and so couldn't get the entire wedding party in the picture...

Wife and Husband

Get-away car

Pre-reception at the Florence

Groom and Bride

Seated, for just a minute, at the dinner

Me in a more spiritual moment (there was an open bar)

Vicki with my sister Carole, Pat and Jim Mitchell,

and Beth McCoy (Bob's wife)

Vicki and I set a personal best for dancing, and but for our

friends the Mitchells, nearly won the anniversary dance; the

partying went on well after the 11PM close and departure of

the elders; Will updated his Facebook page to "married" at
5:30AM

Of course there were professional photographers and many others taking pictures (and video), and I'll post a few more or link to Rachel and Will's site, when they return from their honeymoon.

Road Trip!

After Vicki's rejoining me, we spent a few days moving into and setting up our new temporary quarters, a small one-bedroom "cottage" in Menlo Park, just a few blocks from Rebecca, Jeremy, and Penelope. But then it was time for a road trip, to Missoula, via Sandpoint, for the big occasion of the year...

Laden with a cargo of bar stools and library card catalog

furniture (true; revealing), and a few personal items and

souvenirs from Europe, we drove the Saturn up through

California and across the middle of Oregon, finally hitting I90

in WA and then 95 in Idaho to Sandpoint; 19 hours of driving;

and then, a day later, 200 and I90 to Missoula; that's

Mt. Shasta above, in northern-most CA; all the volcanoes

were similarly snow-draped, even in early August

Return to America

From Boston we divided forces, Vicki heading to Orlando for a few days of sun and fun (and heat and humidity and insects) at Disneyworld with Marie and Norm and Stacey and the boys, I directly to Middle California, where we will be for a few months, helping Rebecca and Jeremy care for Penelope.

On her third month-day, shortly after I arrived

Looking properly skeptical at her mother; she has given Vicki
and me the same look as we learn her ways and try to imagine
that we understand infant cognitive development

A Very Brief Visit To Iceland

Last spring, as we were making plans for the summer and beyond, Vicki found one of her usual screaming deals on airfares from London to the US: Iceland Express. We booked. Then we discovered that Iceland Express is not Iceland Air, and that comments in TripAdvisor and elsewhere on Iceland Express were not uniformly favorable (enforcement of weight limits, surcharges, seat sizes, food pricing, lateness, cancellations, etc). So, for some months, we were not looking forward to the return trip.

Iceland Express turned out to be just fine for us. Pretty much on time, despite weather issues in London, comfortable, and it got us where we wanted to go. It's a budget airline, so everything is for sale; or you can bring your own, as we did (cleaning out the cupboards...sausage from Colmar, pistachios from Gaziantep, cheese from Amsterdam, gingerbread cookies from Aachen, etc). Iceland Express jets you first to Rekjavik, Iceland, in three or so hours, and then, after an hour or less in Rekjavik (enough to visit the duty-free stores and sample Icelandic vodka), five hours to Boston, where we are presently. We give Iceland Express 4 stars; 5 when you factor in the price. Plus our passports now sport Iceland stamps.

First sight of Iceland; had I been sitting on
the port side, I would have seen Surtsey;
but not Iceland

Bombardier view

Mostly pretty barren, with lots of volcanic

features...crater lake

A mini caldera

Approaching Rekjavik

Landing

Taking-off

Temporarily well-behaved volcano

Farewell, Britland

We were in the UK largely through a change in plans. Of course, any reason for being there is good enough. But we had planned on shipping the Grey Wanderer back to the States from Southampton, concluding our European travels. At length, last May, after having already made the flight reservations from London, we couldn't bring ourselves to conclude our European travels, and, especially, our RV mode of travel in Europe. It has been too good to bring to an end. So we put the camper in storage in Amsterdam and have had these four days in familiar London to decompress and reflect before returning Stateside.

The breakfast view from Blenheim Lodge, a B&B in East

Finchley, where we stayed; Roger and Agri are superb hosts

Outside the National Gallery, George

Washington helps us focus our thoughts

Trafalgar Square and, look kids, it's Big Ben!

Lord Nelson

Our Dutch host in Amsterdam had recently returned from

his first visit to the UK, observing that every time an

Englishman learns how to ride a horse, they put up a  statue

of him

Olympic countdown clock; London is only slightly abuzz

about it all; transportation, I think, will be an issue

Departure from Gatwick

Two Days At The National Gallery, 2011

Monday and Tuesday, both days of rain, we took the Tube into town and stayed in the National Gallery, one of our favorite museums. It is not huge--the collection has somewhat over 2,000 items--but nearly everything in the world of European painting from the 13th to the 20th centuries is represented, sometimes very well represented, and the Gallery has its own surpassing masterpieces too. For us it was also a great review of much of what we have seen in Europe in the past two years. Indeed we spent the first three hours in the Medieval/Renaissance wing, looking at the now-familiar Cimabuies, Massacios, Corregios, Leonardos, Domenichinos, Lippis, Renis, Michaelangelos, Botticellis, Rafaels, et al. Getting to see Botticelli's Venus and Mars up close was a special thrill.

One of the things we like about the Gallery is its very effective display of virtually all the paintings. Sadly, in many of the greatest museums, there are issues of glare, glass, shadow, poor placement and lighting, that really dampen the experience. (E.g., the big Botticellis at the Uffizi). On the other hand, the Gallery has a no fotos policy, and, unlike many of the greatest museums, really enforces it, with a vigilant guard for every room. I didn't even try (except once). And the website, although exemplary in many ways, doesn't make it easy to download any items of the collection. The excellent audioguide costs a mere 2.50L for us concessionaires and, not least, the whole thing, like the British Museum, is free and open to the public. Admission and audioguides at the Uffizi or Prado or Louvre would have been $30-$50.

Botticelli's Venus and Mars

And, of course, there are half a dozen of the most famous

Turners, including The Fighting Temeraire, regarded by

Britons, according to the BBC, as the nation's most

important painting

Renoir's Gladiolus, a favorite of Vicki's

Return To The British Museum, Again

Our first full day in London, after the B&B breakfast of scones and clotted cream and other goodies, we set forth for another return visit to the British Museum, still our overall favorite here. Our real purpose was to look at all the things--vases, reliefs, metopes, marbles, busts, statues, entire temples--that were strangely missing when we visited Turkey and Greece last fall. Indeed we found many and were gratified to know we had "been there" and could well imagine how the removed object might have looked. I do hope the Brits someday will give a few of the Elgin Marbles back to the Greeks. France, as I recall, gave theirs back on the occasion of the most recent Athens Olympics. But I doubt France ever will give the Mona Lisa back to Italy.

It was the height of the the high season, a Sunday, and a rainy day in London as well, so the Museum was more mobbed than we have ever seen it. It's still always a pleasure and a bit of a thrill. In addition to looking for favorites and random exploration, we did tours on the Enlightenment Room--the first items the Museum collected, now together in what used to be the British Library--as well as on early Medieval artifacts.

The Nereid Temple from Xanthos

Reliefs from the Tomb of Kybernis, King of Xanthus

Stupid satyr tricks... (do not try this at home, kids)

Elgin Marbles

Mob scene at the Rosetta Stone

An old friend, the Queen of Lewis Chess

And always much new to learn; here a display on the survival

of glass-making in Europe after the fall of the western Roman

empire

It was the height of the the high season, a Sunday, and a rainy day in London as well, so the Museum was more mobbed than we have ever seen it. It's still always a pleasure and a bit of a thrill. In addition to looking for favorites and random exploration, we did tours on the Enlightenment Room--the first items the Museum collected, now together in what used to be the British Library--as well as on early Medieval artifacts.

Amsterdam

We don't have much to show for our nearly five days in Amsterdam. We were there principally to put the Grey Wanderer in storage before our return to the States, to get it ready for storage, effect a variety of repairs, give it a good cleaning, and to sort through things and pack, with one eye on the coming year in California and the other on returning to Europe in 2012. Three days of sheets of rain didn't help with our sightseeing program either.

We'll do Amsterdam more properly, especially the Rijksmuseum, one of our favorites, when we're back in June of 2012. We EasyJet'd to Britland on Saturday afternoon, the16th, carefully weighing in both checked and unchecked baggage so as to avoid the various surcharges. It was a mercifully short 45 minute flight. From Gatwick we took the National Express bus into town (5.50L for us seniors) and then the Underground to our B&B in East Finchley, north of the city. The bus ride took 90 minutes, but was comfortable and a great opportunity to visually re-acquaint ourselves with beloved Britland, leaving the driving to someone else. Our stay here will be relatively short, with no opportunity to re-visit Beastleigh Dorking on-the-Bum or other favorite country sites.

We stayed at a place called Droompark Sparnwoude,

outside Amsterdam, beyond the port; apparently a state or

national park, there were several campgrounds, very

popular, not so many campers, but many, many static

trailers and rental units; they honored our ACSI card which

made the cost relatively reasonable; and good bus service

into the city

But our first two days were spent not in camping or cleaning,

but in having some work done: the BBQ regulator (something

we never and never have used) failed, causing a serious

propane leak; we finally had it removed and the line capped at

a Volvo truck center in Amsterdam, the third referral

And then there was the partial failure of the Go Charge

dual battery charger, which took another day to analyze,

and (partially) work around; sheesh! the thing is two months

old and probably hadn't two weeks of usage

So, anyway, we appear to be in Holland (this

is from Friday, the one day it didn't rain)

And took the bus into Amsterdam, not to see anything in

particular, but just to walk around and do the ambience thing

A major part of which is drinking in the streets

and the consequent effluence, relieved, as it

were, by these strategically but not discreetly
located outdoor pissoirs

A street scene or two

Two

Vicki in line for the world-famous "vegetarian" pommes frites

at VleminckX (since 1887); they were decadently good,

especially with the curry sauce

Cologne

Cologne is only an hour's drive or less from Aachen and we arrived about 2:30 in the afternoon. We parked a few miles out in the suburbs and took the tram into the centrum and back. We visited Cologne in 1979, then as now, mostly for the great cathedral.

Monster cathedral; I don't know where it ranks on the
Vatican's "mine's bigger than yours" list, but it is a bit
overwhelming both outside and inside

Chapel of the 3 Magi in the ambulatory; windows are the
oldest in the cathedral, 13th century

The center two windows date from 1265 and
depict corresponding scenes from the Old
Testament (prophecies) and the New
(realizations)

The Gero Cross, donated by Archbishop Gero
in 976; it is the oldest remaining monumental
crucifixion

Shrine of the 3 Magi; Fred Barbarossa donated
the bones of the 3 Magi, which became the
major relics of the cathedral and made it a major
pilgrimage site; late 12th, early 13th, actually
antedate the present cathedral

Beautiful mosaic floor throughout

North side windows, 1507-1509

Notable for the coats of arms of their donors; this one notable
for its elephants; or possibly a contribution of a political
action committee of the current Party of Greed and Hate

Ever popular crucifixion of St. Peter

Extremely rare fully rotated view

From the stern to the bow: immensity, yet light and lightness

We skipped the German-Roman museum this time; we think

we have seen our fair share of Roman stuff

The twin towers; Vicki poses for scale; they

are each 505 feet high--fifty stories

Cologne in 1945; it was the target for some 262 Allied

bombing raids; most were nuisance or diversionary raids, but

also included the first "thousand bomber" raid and other

major attacks; Germans nowadays joke that the Brits and

Americans were trying to hit the cathedral...which suffered

no major damage

We cross the Rhine and head for Holland