September, 2009 in Switzerland and France

Despite our best efforts we were unable to post to our blog while traveling during the fall. A v-e-r-y brief summary of our doings follows:

We flew to Zurich and took the train to Lucern. Meinrad met us at the bahnhoff and we walked over the bridge for a drink upstairs overlooking the Lucern Bridge. We went "home" to see Heidrun and the newest cats. Meinrad fixed a lovely dinner - per usual. Even had a huge penquin-shaped flan for dessert. The back garden has a new shed (bright yellow they call it the postoffice)and the wall has been rebuilt overlooking the gorge. Meinrad picked fresh celariac for our dinner veg.

Our room is much the same - the doors to the balcony open to beautiful roses growing up over the balustrade. However, the view has been compromised since we were last at the Fluelers. The house to the front left of their property has been expanded and modernized so it cuts off a bit more of the view of the lake and mountains than it did before. The biggest change is that there is a modern apartment building up the hill from our house - nicely done but still it cuts off the privacy that we've enjoyed in the past.

Meinrad took us for a drive the next day - showed us one of his rental properties that he has recently renovated. We shopped a bit for duvet covers and just to walk the streets of Lucerne again. In the evening we met Pavlo and Marina at the oldest restaurant in Lucerne - the last time we were there Meinrad had a calf's head -- and this time Pavlo had sweetbreads. It was fantastic to spend the evening talking and catching up. Heidi and I had delicious wierner schnitzel - truly a lovely evening.

The next day Tim & I caught an early train to Basel and spent the day with Arne Mehrkens and his family. Arne met us at the train station (bahnhoff) and took us for a walking tour of the city - even took a type of ferry boat (more of a row boat with a long guide wire that helps keep the boat in place while the current takes the boat across) on the Rhine. We met Arne's wife Camilla (we hadn't met her in person before)and her mother at a lovely old hotel for lunch. We celebrated Camilla's finalizing her general practitioner's licensing that day. Arne, an orthopedic surgeon also filled us in on his recent studies and conference presentations. Afterwards Camilla and her mother went to pick up the twins while we did a bit more walking about and then met them at the Mehrken's apartment.

Josiah and Emma are 3 yr old twins. They are slow in language development because Arne purposefully speaks German to them and Camilla uses her native Norwegian. The kids understand both languages but are not very verbal themselves yet, which their parents expected. We had a lovely couple of hours getting to know the kids and talking with everyone. Arne took us back to the tram and we made it back to the bahnhoff on our own.

Meinrad and Heidrun met us back in Lucern after the 2 hour train ride and we went to Pavlo & Marina's flat. They have moved again _ this is the 3rd home of theirs that we've visited. They are back in the city but in a very residential area - not right in the main part of the city as they were in the first place we visited them. We had apertifs and then starters of lox for me and muscles for the rest. Cornish hen followed with lots of veg and delicious bread. Neither Damien nor Bobian were home that evening - hard to believe they are 19 and 17 now. We've known Pavlo & Marina for 24 years now (since our year in England)and Meinrad and Heidrun for 20 years.

The next morning we said our goodbyes to Heidi and Meinrad drove us to the MeggenSchloss where we went geocaching. We walked a long way and had to have been in the right area but had to give up in order to catch our train for Zurich. We tried, but failed, to find a cache in Switzerland.

I'll post more about our 2 weeks in Paris in a day or two.

Outer Banks, North Carolina - June 22-27, 2009

We flew down to join Joni Starr and Bill Bock for their June 26th wedding on the beach. Lots of family together in an 11 bedroom house on the beach. Great weather, great time and lovely wedding. Tim played "A Kiss to Build A Dream On" as the processional and recessional.

We enjoyed the "Lost Colony" production on Roanoke Island one evening and took Madison and Jocelyn to the Wright Brothers National Monument.

Tim flew from Norfolk to Houston (met Jeff and Dennis & Brian Howe there) and on to Portland, OR for 4 rounds of golf at Bandon Dunes. They'll stay with our cousins Bev & George Drury the last night before flying home on July 2nd.

Tim to France for D-Day Commemoration

Tim left today with the Holland American Legion Band for Normandy, France where they will play 5 concerts on June 6th and 7th in commemoration of the 65th anniversary of D-Day. Besides France, the band will travel to Belgium, Luxemborg and The Netherlands where they'll join a Dutch band for several joint concerts. The band returns on June 13th.

FURTHER TRAVELS

Since we’re getting old and can no longer remember when we were where …..we’ll continue adding to the blog just to keep a record for ourselves. We’ll add more detail when taking major trips so we can continue to keep in touch.
March 2 – March 6, 2009 Springfield, Illinois – Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
Driving trip: Checked out Shipshewana, IN, the University of Illinois and the Sousa Archives in Champagne-Urbana on the way to Springfield. Home via Bloomington, IN and Indianapolis.
March 7 – March 12, 2009 Cocoa Beach, FloridaJoined Lyn & Don Johnson in their time-share condo. The guys golfed while the gals went to the pool. Spent a day touring the Kennedy Space Center.

Bon Jour (There is a very strong French connection in Morocco) Two business issues: 1. today is a momentous occasion. Our eldest granddaughter, Madison becomes a teenager. Happy birthday, Madi. We love you and look forward to seeing you this weekend. 2. We are going to attempt to post the video of Lynda’s star turn at elephant polo. Some of our family has all ready raised doubts as to the validity of this event. Marrakech has been an exciting last day for our adventure. We had a bit of a history/culture tour this morning. Because of the Moorish influence, which we had already seen on our trip to Spain last year, that part of the trip was a bit boring. However, this afternoon was very exciting. We went to the souks, we would call them markets, this afternoon. We wish there was some way to bring you the sounds and smells of the souk. The aroma from the shops selling spices was incredible. We spent a lot of time buying gifts for family and ourselves. We had a guide with us who helped us negotiate prices(actually he was one of the guards who has been with us since we got to Moraco). It was all very exciting and great fun. Tonight we have a farewell cocktail party and buffet and then a very early morning departure for home. We are ready. This will be our last blog posting. We hope that you have enjoyed reading our blog as much as we have enjoyed writing it. By writing for this blog, we have been forced to crystallize our feelings about each of the segments of our trips. The very nature of this trip has intensified our reactions to what we have seen. Many of the sights have been awe inspiring beyond our wildest imaginations. Unfortunately, there have also been sights along the way that have been heart wrenching. But that is the joy of travel and why we love it. We look forward to seeing all of you in person and sharing our experiences in as much detail as you would like. We definitely recommend an expedition with National Geographic and hope there is one in your future. Tim and Lynda

Petra and Egypt

Greetings-
We have just completed two grueling days of travel going to Petra, Jordon and Luxor and Cairo, Egypt. We are both exhausted, but, as with every other day on this trip we would not have missed these sights.
Petra, Jordan was a major trade and commerce center from 1000 B.C. to 1000 A.D. You may be able to tell from the pictures that Petra had natural defenses and the 30,000 inhabitants were more interested in making money than war. What a concept! Today, besides being one of the new 7 wonders of the world, Petra is famous for the movie Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Tim wanted to ride a horse down into Petra with his Indiana Jones hat and whip with the wonderful John Williams score soaring to a crescendo as Tim arrives at the Treasury. We actually walked in. Most of the tombs, etc. were carved out of the sandstone. Those buildings or tombs that were built rather than carved were destroyed by earthquakes over the years. The entire walk into Petra was three miles long. The only way out was the way we went in. Of course, it was uphill going back. We opted to do half of the return trip on camels. You get on the camel while it is kneeling down. The tricky part is hanging on as the camel gets up. It was a reasonably comfortable ride although neither of us would want to cross the desert on a camel. Our camels were very nice. Neither one spit at us although they did make some rude sounds.
We flew back to Luxor, Egypt last night and joined the rest of our group for our gala farewell dinner. Everyone rode in horse drawn carriages to the Luxor Temple for a very magical evening. We wandered around the grounds sipping champagne while a harpist played and then sat down in a gold lame lined tent for a sumptuous dinner accompanied by a string quartet.
This morning we were up bright and early (4:30 a.m.) to fly to Cairo. We had an hour long lecture by Zahri Hawass, the head of the Department of Antiquities in Egypt and also an explorer in residence with the National Geographic Society. He gave a fascinating lecture about all of the archeological work being done around the pyramids and the Sphinx. We then visited the Pyramids and the Sphinx. As with the other sites we visited, such as Machu Picchu and the Taj Mahal, the size of the Pyramids was overwhelming. It is awfully easy to think that with our modern technology we can do anything and everything better than anyone before us. Not true. These guys several thousand years ago were pretty smart. They did have one advantage over us. They did not have to deal with union contracts!
We are flying toward Marrakech, our last stop before coming home. We will try to get a final blog posting out tomorrow night.
Tim and Lynda

Africa

Jambo (hello in Massai, we think)
We are flying from Kilimanjaro to Luxor and then on to Jordon. Internet service in Tanzania was not good. We were fortunate to get out an e-mail to our blog master, Jilayne, explaining that we would not be able to post a blog until this weekend. We have no idea when you will get this blog but you will be getting two for the price of one. What a bargain!

Yesterday in Tanzania is probably in the top three experiences of this trip for both of us. We left our lodge at 8:00 in the morning and headed into the crater. Ngorongoro Crater is a volcanic crater that is 2.3 million years old. Our lodge was on the rim of the crater at 7800 feet altitude. The floor of the crater is 2000 feet below the rim and encompasses 125 square miles. It took us over 20 minutes to get to the crater floor. Tim, impatient as always, bugged the driver of our jeep that we had been on the road for 20 minutes and had not seen an animal. Within a couple of minutes we encountered a bunch of Zebra’s. For the next 4 hours we did not go 15 minutes without seeing new animals. Our first sightings were Zebra’s followed by Cape Buffalo, Thompson and Grant gazelles, Wildebeest and warthogs. Soon after we saw a hyena right next to the road eating it’s kill. Actually, it was probably some other animal’s kill. Nearby were two different kinds of Jackals hoping for leftovers! Next we drove through a troop of Baboons. These are actually quite dangerous members of the ape family and have been known to kill Leopards. Soon after we came up to several other jeeps parked on the road. There were two Lions in the brush next to a small river. We watched for 5 minutes or so as they pretty much just lay there, occasionally looking in our direction. All of the other jeeps moved on but we stayed put watching. Our patience was rewarded as both Lions got up and walked out onto the plain. We watched them for another 10 minutes until they finally disappeared back down in the brush. Before lunch we had three more encounter s with lions. One of them was exciting because a lioness and a cape buffalo were staring each other down. The cape buffalo is about the only animal in the crater that the lions will not tangle with. Another high point of the morning was going to a small spring fed pond where there must have been at least 50 hippopotamus. There were also 5 male elephants at the edge of the pond. In the crater the young male elephants and the females and baby elephants live on the edge of the crater where there is plenty of food. Only the old males live in the crater itself. These “retired” elephants, as our guide put it, were about 50 years old, had large tusks and were much larger than the Indian elephants we had ridden in Asia. We had a box lunch picnic in a wooded area in the crater where we had to constantly shoo away monkeys that were trying to steal our food. After lunch we had the two most impressive sightings of the day. First we came across two lionesses nursing five cubs. This was occurring no more than 20 feet from our jeep. We could literally reach out and touch them. The lions were oblivious to our presence. We must have spent 30 minutes watching. The next big sighting was a black rhinoceros with a baby rhino. The term baby rhino is used loosely. Unlike the baby panda and lion cubs, there was nothing cuddly about the baby rhino.

After an incredible seven hours on the floor of the crater we drove up to the rim and visited a Massai village. It was on one hand extremely interesting to see but on another level a bit disturbing. We felt that some of what we saw was staged and not really how the tribe lived. We actually had a chance to go into one of the huts. It was tiny, dark, no lights, and very cramped. We also visited their school for 3 & 4 year-olds. They recited our alphabet and numbers for us. Their teacher was a 15 year-old Massai girl. We would have loved to spend another day in Tanzania. There were other places we could go to see different animals than we saw in the crater.
Our next posting will have details about Egypt.
Tim and Lynda