Endeavor Rises Again

Steve has decided to restart Endeavor Plumbing up here in Portland. Check out his new website. www.endeavorplumbing.com and spread the word to people you know in Portland :)

Back to work tomorrow

It feels like I've been off work for a month. Oh wait, that's pretty much true. I head back tomorrow and I'm already tired, just thinking about it. Steve is sick (thanks a lot, Matt!) and so we've been taking it pretty easy today. We were both disappointed that we had to miss church again, this week, because Steve was just too ill to go - not only would his coughing and sniffling be distracting, we just couldn't subject the others to his illness. I hope he's better soon because he's miserable and I feel bad for him.

We had a good Christmas, although I could have done without the 4 episodes of Married With Children that my dad was so excited to share with the rest of us.

August is growing like a weed, and my sister was excited to learn that I had learned to knit so that I could make him fun things, even if I had to add onto the hat I made him. Twice. Because he has a huge noggin. OK... it's bed time.

Oh the weather outside is frightful

But, the company is delightful. As most of you have probably heard, Portland is snowed in... and that means that Matt & Brielle's flight (which was supposed to leave Sat. evening) was canceled and they are stuck here until at least Christmas Eve. Although that is a bummer for them, and they wish they could be with Matt's family in Michigan, it is fun with them here. We're having Age of Empires games together, and taking the dogs out into the snow for fun play time. I've been able to walk to work, and that is working well... Here is a photo to show you what is going on here:

Starting Saturday morning, through tonight:

I win! I win!

I just want you all to know that I won my fantasy football league tonight. Heck ya, I did. HOOOORAY.

The Vatican on a rainy day

This is the wall surrounding the Vatican














And inside the museum.














And St. Peter's Basilica, from the outside.













And finally, the purported tomb of St. Peter, on which the whole church was built. Apparently, Peter was the first pope, according to Catholic tradition.

A few more from Rome

Here we are at the Colosseum,



































and on our way to Pompei, on the coast
south of Rome and from the train.

Let's try the Rome pics again

Steve and I are currently baking cookies because work was slow for me today. While some bake, I thought I'd try to post the Rome pics again.


The first is the staircase that surrounded the elevator, pictured in the second photo. It was tiny - there was room for me and two bags... and I couldn't turn around so Steve pushed the buttons and then ran up 4 flights of stairs to meet me at the top and let me out again!











The third picture is me in front of a fancy hotel. Not ours. :)

Ugh - Technology

I've been trying to post more pictures this morning, but for some reason the computer isn't letting me do it. How irritating.

A few photos from Pompei

I'll add some more pictures of various parts of the trip, but I'll start with these, since they're the first ones on the particular memory card that I've got on the computer right now... so, here you go (the last one is a little bit morbid, but I also think it's incredibly fascinating, the futility of the struggle, and the timeless preservation... so I've included it):

Whirlwind Trip!

Wow - since last we wrote, we have traveled to Normandie, spent time in Paris, went south of Paris to Claire's house for supper, arrived in London, spent time with Michael and Bronwyn, then went to Rik's pirate party. We saw Les Mis on the West End, and this morning, we're getting ready to fly back to Frankfurt. We plan to go to a Christmas market tonight and then get ready to fly home tomorrow. We're having a good trip, but we're ready to get home and sleep in our own bed!

Barcelona and Paris

We traveled from Nice to Barcelona on Thursday and met a young couple from South Africa: Cameron and Johanna, who we ended up spending our time with in Barcelona. When we arrived, we went to the ocean and walked around, then took a taxi (at the advice of a Frenchman, who spoke English, and had moved to Spain to work in the hotel industry) to the Olympic stadiums. It was really beautiful and fun to see something that is a part of modern history. We took a cable car/gondola type thing up to the top of the hill and toured around an old castle with cannons and a moat and whatnot. It would have been great fun except that I had to go to the bathroom very badly so it was hard to concentrate on much else. We have not had the best of luck finding public toilets, and particularly ones that are useable... I am awestruck at how dirty things are, generally, when it comes to bathrooms here.

We tried to catch the overnight train immediately to Paris that night, but it did not work out and, so, we stayed at the same hotel as our new friends and then caught the morning train to Paris. When we arrived, we were able to meet up with Anne and her parents, who are wonderful! We just missed Claire and Fabrice and their children, which was disappointing, but it is how things go when you do last-minute plans.

Being back here reminds both Steve and I of how much we love Paris. We went to the Champs-Elysees tonight, where they're having a big Christmas market and had mulled hot wine and waffles with chocolate and this wonderful garlic cheese potato dish that was kind of sticky - it was delicious. It's great to be here and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, but must go to sleep now.

Yay for France

Well, we lost big at Montecarlo - I lost 20 in the slots (video poker) and 10 at the craps table. I went and changed my money into chips and then they told me the table had a 10 minimum! I only played one round. All the signs at the other tables had a 2 minimum so I assumed craps was the same, but it was not! I felt pretty stupid. Steve lost 20 also in the video poker - we were not at the big famous casino because it's only for fancy people, apparently and it cost 10/person just to go inside! And it had a dresscode, so we decided it was too rich for our blood.

We stayed in Nice last night at a pretty cool little hotel for less than we expected to pay here in Southern France - and today, we're doing a load of laundry and then going to head to Barcelona. From there, we may go to Paris or up to Normandie. We're not sure yet, exactly.

We're having a good time and we have decided that of all the places we've been so far, on both our trips, France is by far our favorite. It is clean and the people are friendly - I'm not sure why it gets such a bad rap for being rude - we haven't found that to be the case at all.

Our electrical converter was faulty and has fried our laptop power cord, so now we're stuck using internet cafes - i don't know how often we'll have time to get to one between now and when we come home, so i'm not sure when i will have the chance to write again.

Nice is Nice!

Well, we arrived in Nice today - we weren't going to stay here, but when we got off in Monte-Carlo, they told us that Monaco forbids luggage lockers (what the damn?!) so we had to go to Nice to drop our luggage - and we got here and decided it was BEAUTIFUL so we decided to stay. We're going to head back to Monte-Carlo tonight to rub elbows with the elite of our species, and then either tomorrow or the next day, we'll move on to Barcelona - depends on how much we like Nice tomorrow. It's sunny and brisk weather - my favorite - and right on the Mediteranean. Can it get better?

We are glad to be out of Italy. We were strangely surprised at how dirty it was there - it was not our favorite and we probably wouldn't choose to go back, at least not to Rome. We did go to the Vatican, though, and that was pretty cool. I'm keeping a travel journal and I think I will re-create my posts online when we get home so people can read more details about our trip, but our power converter is fritzy and I don't want to use too much of the battery at this point, so I'm going to sign off.

We'll check in again later.