Kallen Chatter

Cole and Morgan

Kallen Passed Out

Morris-Elder Wedding

Lora's cousin, Elizabeth, got married a couple weeks ago to Christopher. It was a beautiful ceremony spent with family and friends to great a wonderful memory. I've compiled some pictures to commemorate the event in a slide show. Follow the link to view the wedding and growing up slide shows.

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewalbum.html?alb=0&bm=170652

More Pics Added

I added the Germany to Switzerland pictures which include Bensheim, Rothenburg and Switzerland.

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewalbum.html?alb=0&bm=170652

Germany

I finished the slideshow for the first set of Germany pictures. The pictures are from the Mosel and Rhine river valleys.

Enjoy :-)

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewalbum.html?alb=0&bm=170652

You can look at the last post for help if you run into problems viewing the slideshow.

Slideshow

We've been home a few days and I've spent the last few days sorting through pictures and learning the new slideshow software. I've published the first set of pictures from Paris and will need to work on the rest of the trip later this week.

Thought I'd share with everyone the Paris slideshow. Haven't tried this before but you might be asked to install something in order to view the show.

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewalbum.html?bm=170652

(Note: There are some problems when trying to connect to the slideshow within a firewall.)

If you are unable to view the slideshow you can try a couple of things:
1) Use the Mozilla Firefox browser instead of Internet Explorer

or

2) Download and install the presenter plug-in http://www.photodex.com/downloads/go_presenter.html

We made it home

After 25 hours of travelling we made it back to San Jose. We left the hotel in Paris at 8am to catch our 10:30 am flight to Amsterdam. When we checked into the flight the lady had trouble issuing us boarding passes for the Minneapolis-San Jose leg of the trip. She said she was able to check our baggage all the way through but that we'd have to check in at Amsterdam to pick up our boarding passes for Minneapolis-San Jose. I thought that was a little weird but didn't put too much thought into it at the time.

We made it to Amsterdam and check at the desk for out boarding passes. The lady in Amsterdam was also unable to issue boarding passes and looked confused and said it is weird but you'll have to get your boarding passes when you get to Minneapolis. I was starting to get nervous because I knew we had less than 1.5 hours to arrive to Minneapolis, clear customs and catch our flight to San Jose. If our flight was delayed at all that time window was going to collapse further.

We made it to Minneapolis and it took forever to get off the plane. Cleared customs quickly and without issue and rechecked our bags for the flight to San Jose. When we made it back through security and into the terminal we checked the screen for our flight...and there was no flight 195 to San Jose.

We went to the Northwest ticket desk and asked about the flight. Turned out our Flight was at 5:15 pm the NEXT DAY! I guess we had a full day layover instead of 1.5 hours to clear through customs. Funny that we never noticed the date...nor did any of the personnel for Northwest that were trying to assign us boarding passes. They ended up getting us on a flight to Minneapolis-Portland-San Jose getting in at 10:30 pm. Could have been much worse and the fact we were travelling on a Wednesday helped out a lot.

Lora's back at work today and I got up to grab Starbucks with her this morning. Something tells me there won't be too many mornings she'll let me sleep in :-)

Coming Home!

We are ready to head home after an awesome time throughout Europe. 3 weeks is about the right amount of time where you start to miss the comforts of home. We've had an incredible journey and wouldn't change a single thing we did the entire trip. Kevin is certainly done with the French and German breakfasts and will not be seeking out a croissant any time soon. Lora has had enough castles, cathedrals and historic sites and will be anticipating the next beach vacation. (A.B.C.- Another Bloody Castle/Cathedral/Croissant)




Vezelay was our stop last night where we enjoyed a quiet night of relaxation on a hillside village in the middle of France. We stopped in at the Cathedral and had a decent meal in a nearby restaurant for dinner.





Today we drove back to Paris, near the airport, in order to catch our morning flight home. Along the way we stopped at a French Chateau, Vaux Le Vicomte, that was built by a French Minister of Finance that was caught embezelling money. It's not a good idea to build a House more opulent than the King as the owner was imprisioned for the rest of his life after the King came for dinner one night.


We've really come to rely on our GPS to get us around Europe and pinpoint each location we've traveled along the way. It just so happened that the specific location of the Chateau was not in the GPS. We had to rely on maps and intuition in order to find the Chateau. Eventually we found it after navigating to the general area.





Needless to say the grounds were spectacular and certainly nothing of this magnitude exists in the States. The closest thing we've seen are the mansions near Newport, Rhode Island. At the end of the tour we are walking through the gift shop and saw a display of famous people who have visited the Mansion. Turns out this is where Tony Parker and Eva Longoria were married. Lora said, "If I had known this during the tour I would have paid MUCH more attention!"


Can't wait to get home and see everyone and share our experience.





Au Revior Europe, 'til next time!


Love,


Kevin and Lora




















P.S. - What the hell happened to our economy since I went on Sabbatical?

Older and Wiser?????

We went to a wine shop in Beaune that provides a good overview off all the Cote de Beaune region Burdundy wines. They let you walk down into the caves and taste 15 different wines with each wine representative of a different wine region. It was a fun experience especially at the end of the tasting.



After finishing the tasting you can sit down and talk with a salesman and taste other wines that are representative of the wines you enjoyed along the tasting. So, Mom and I, sat down and started talking with the salesman. We learned that if you ship wine to the US you can remove the French taxes of 19%...which almost covers the shipping cost. The salesman pulled out some more wines that "Shockingly" were more expensive than the ones tasting down in the cave. WE found wines that we really liked and were wililng to buy and ship. He then told us that the minimum amount to ship was a case. So we discussed it and decided we'd split a case. We started tasting more...and discussing more and then the salesman disclosed that we could only have at most 3 different wines in the shipment.















This put a wrench into the plans. However...George and Marty stepped up to the plate and took one for the team when it was determined that Kevin and Lora only enjoyed one wine. That meant they would purchase 9 wines and we'd purchase 3. The only way this deal worked was that we'd tasted....Drank....15 different wines before we sat down. George had already decided he was done tasting and had paid 10 Euros and was going to get his value!

In the end everyone walked out happy excpet the salesman who could not take his break and smoke the well deserved cigarette.