Well last night a bit of Dublin had a taste of some Jim Croce music. I’m not sure where it came from but we were enjoying the musical pub crawl that started in Tower Square. Our two guides for the night were Eugene, who played the Irish banjo, and Steve who was a guitar player. After a couple of pubs and a lot of good Irish Jigs and Reels, and some history of Irish music and instruments were were walking between pubs and I started up a conversation with Steve. Steve also plays a Taylor guitar and it is the same model I have at home. That was the kiss of death. “What is your name?” asks Eugene. Brad, I say. “Now we’ve got you” says Eugene, at this next stop you’ll have to play a little for us. Uh, I don’t think thats a very good idea I said. We talk a little more about what kind of music I like to play and where we are visiting in Ireland and where we have already been. Steve mentions that he is a fan of Prairie Home Companion and how some of the things that Keillor talks about on the show remind him of Ireland and I’m thinking I’m safe and the whole sing for us thing was simply a fun idle threat.

After we get to the next pub and the duo works through a couple more songs Eugene starts in on a long story about how its an Irish tradition to join in on a session and it doesn’t matter how good you are or if you even just sing one verse or whatever, its all in good fun. The next thing I know Steve is handing me the Taylor and a pick I’m I’m thinking what the heck am I going to play!? Roller Derby Queen is Jane’s suggestion and I think I can probably remember the chords and the words, so I start to strum a little bit to see if I can recall the right chords and pretty soon I’m singing. I make it through a couple of versus without too many mistakes and finish up to the applause of the rest of the pub crawlers. Thankfully they all had had a few pints of Guinness by now so they were not an overly discriminating audience. Anyway, it was great fun.

So now that its the next morning and I’m thinking about it, I realize that I really have quite an international performance background. I’ve played in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. I’ve played with a group of Tahitians sitting in a plastic lawn chair in the South Seas. And now I’ve played on an Irish pub crawl in Dublin. It makes me wonder where I could go if I practiced some more!

After the pub crawl was over, we found a little Italian place that was still serving pasta at 10:30 at night and finished off our first day in Dublin. The day had started out very early, in Stockholm with a train ride to the Arlanda airport. We flew SAS from Stockholm to Dublin and then took a bus from the airport to the city center of Dublin. Here in Dublin we are staying in one of the StayDublin.com apartments. Its a bit sketchy and in need of paint and a good cleaning but the apartment has two bedrooms a living room a kitchen with one of those funky european washer/dryer units. If anyone can tell me out to operate one of those things properly please send me an email. We cannot get the dryer to work for anything.

After unloading our stuff at the apartment we started to explore the area a little. We found a restaurant called Boojum, right by our apartment that is operated by a man from Philadelphia. If you are looking for your fix of Chipotle right here in the heart of Dublin then Boojum is for you. It was a nice lunch, and I think Josh was really happy with the food. We took a tour of Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells. This is an amazingly old illuminated version of the four gospels that has been preserved by the Trinity library, its a really interesting exhibit, and we had a great guide who is a student at Trinity and works for Ark.com, Ark sells clothing and the idea is that every time you wear an article of Ark clothing you perform An Act of Random Kindness. Thats where the Ark name comes from. The library at Trinity was also extremely interesting to me for two reasons. First it is the largest single room library in Europe. Its just beautiful to see books and bookshelves stretched out for a city block. But the second reason is interesting to my twisted computer science mind because of how the books are organized in the library. The books are sorted by SIZE! In order to find a book in this library you must know the exact dimensions of the book to get you to the proper shelf!

After the tour of Trinity we just walked around and enjoyed the street performers and the shops of Dublin. Josh wanted to go to the Leprechaun museum but he was out voted 3 to 1. So we went back to the apartment to rest our feet and find an internet cafe to catch up on email and Facebook before the pub crawl. Today we are doing a hop-on-hop-off tour of the city and plan to take the tour of the Guiness Brewery and the Dublin Gaol.

Location:Dublin, Ireland

Today we heard the name Gustavus Adophus quite a lot. With apologies to my friends in St. Peter I must say he didn’t know much about ship building. In all truth it really wasn’t his fault from a technical point of view, but he did pay the bill. I am talking about the Vasa of course. It is the largest ship to be recovered and salvaged and conserved in a museum. This is definitely a must see sight if you go to Stockholm. The Vasa was built in 1628 and was the largest ship in the Swedish fleet. Unfortunately she sunk on her maiden voyage out of the harbor! The reason she sank was because there was not enough ballast in the ship to counterbalance the forces on the sails in the heavy breeze. This seems like an incredibly dumb mistake for a ship builder to make, but there you have it.

The ship lay submerged for 333 years until an amazing recovery operation in the 1960’s brought the ship to the surface. The Vasa is amazingly well preserved due to the water conditions in the Baltic. The museum is just as interesting for the story of how the ship was raised to the surface and preserved as it was to learn about the building of the ship in 1628.

The Vasa Museum was our first stop today in Stockholm. Our day started early as we had to debark from the vision of the seas by 7:40. The sailing in to Stockholm was once again beautiful and very reminiscent of Wisconsin and Northern Minnesota. We are all very lonely for our cabin at the sight of water, boats, rave trampolines and all the pine trees. The rest of the morning we wandered around stockholm enjoying the shops and the old town. We did a little shopping. I got an official USA soccer jersey to wear for the game today.



After walking around all morning we returned to our hotel to check in and rest up a bit. We are staying in the Rica Hotel on Gamla Stan in a wonderful part of stockholm. The streets around here are narrow and cobbled and there are restaurants and bars and little shops everywhere. We hunted around a little bit to decide where to have a late afternoon dinner and watch the USA versus Algeria match. We found O’Leary’s, a boston themed restaurant owned by a swede who spent time in Boston. They had the England match on upstairs and the USA match on down. The American fans were many and much louder than the brits. In a funny small world moment I recognized one of the other fans in the restaurant as the same person we had watched football with when we were in Balestrand! They were originally from Minnesota but had moved to Boston.

To catch up on our activities, yesterday we were in Tallin Estonia, and the day before was a day at sea. Tallin was a really nice city, it has the oldest medieval walled city in Europe. The city reminded us a little of Italy and of some of the walled cities we had visited in Tuscany. The city is an interesting mix of scandinavian and Russian influences.



Jane had a walking tour of the city that we got on the internet and we followed that plan around the city for several hours. After that we returned to the ship for our last night on board.

We are having a great time, but we are all very tired today. We just didn’t have a lot of energy for many touring activities. And the USA victory took a lot of energy as well. Early to bed tonight, but up again early tomorrow morning for our flight to Dublin.

Location:Stockholm, Sweden

After days and days of using our feet to get around european cities it was time for a change, and what better city to try two wheeled touring in than Copenhagen. Copenhagen has more bikes than anywhere else in the world. They make the people of Portland look like a bunch of slackers. There are literally bikes everywhere. At the train stations there are bike racks two stories high, there are bike racks everywhere and people riding their bikes everywhere.

Jane found Biking with Mike on the internet, he is a lifelong resident of Copenhagen who left his job as a director at a large company to do what he loves – bike and tell people about his city. There is no fancy signup procedure as each days tours are first come first served. If the weather is horrible there won’t be a tour.

We left the ship at 9:30 and headed straight for Mike’s bike shop. We knew the tour was not until 10:30 but we wanted to make sure we got a spot on the tour. We arrived by taxi 5 minutes later, but the shop did not even open until 10:00. So we walked around the area a little bit and decided to get a coffee at the cafe up the block from Mike’s. One minor problem was that we hadn’t taken the time to find a cash machine and get some Danish Kroners. After preparing our coffee we discovered that the credit card reader in the coffee shop was not working properly, and so we were unable to pay. In Decorah, this would not really be a problem, go find some money and pay me later. Who would have guessed that we would find the same attitude in a big city? This appears to be the Danish way. The proprietor of the coffee shop was perfectly happy to have us go on our bike tour, get some cash, and pay him later in the day.

Shortly after 10 Mike arrived. Bright green stocking hat, bright green shoes, a yellow and black livestrong vest and fashionable glasses. His bike matched his cycling outfit. Mike took us on a tour for a little over 3 hours. We saw the palace, the castle, the parliament buildings, the house where Hans Christian Anderson was born, the new opera house, a couple of parks, and a little lawless place called Christiana. We would bike for a while and then stop and mike would give us a short lecture on what were were looking at, Danish politics, Danish culture, local gossip, you name it and MIke knew about it. He is an excellent story teller. As we were riding there was no talking, the idea is to absorb the local feeling of the place as you are riding rather than chatting. It worked. It was fun, we saw a lot of the city.

Christiana was the most interesting stop on the tour. We had coffee in the moonshine cafe. It is the safest coffee house in Copenhagen. Why? The sign on the door tells the story. More than 6000 police inspections since 2004. Christiana is the counter culture area of Copenhagen, Mike discouraged us from taking any pictures in the area because you never know when you might accidentally capture a deal going down, and they don’t like that.

We learned one word of Danish that really sums up our Copenhagen experience. The word is Hygglite, it is difficult to describe exactly what it means, cozy is one possible translation while fantastic is another. Internet people might translate it as “A Good Thing.” Its a word they use in Denmark to describe when something is just right and good. Our bike tour of Copenhagen with mike was definitely Hygglite.



At the conclusion of our tour we paid mike and headed, on foot, back through the park on the way to the ship. When we emerged from the park, there was Mike on his bike. Hello he said, I wonder if you might have a few minute to talk to a reporter from the paper Politik? Its the largest Danish paper and they are doing a story about touring copenhagen on bike. It seems that the reporter for the paper was planning to go on Mike’s afternoon tour, but because of the oncoming rain Mike had cancelled the afternoon tour. So, we agreed to spend a few minutes talking to the reporter and then we got our picture taken by one of the photographers from the paper. So, if you speak Danish you can read about the Miller family and our bike fun in the city of Copenhagen!

Location:Copenhagen, Denmark

This morning we got to sleep in, have a relaxing breakfast, catch up on some email and reading, and then we started our long day’s journey. As I’m writing this its 10:45 and we are still an hour out of Oslo. Of course it is also still full daylight outside, and we are hopeful that it will still be light for our short walk to the hotel when we arrive.

The first leg of our trip today started with the same Sognefjorden ferry that we arrived in Balestrand on yesterday. Only this time we rode it for only 45 minutes. When made a mid-fjord transfer to another ferry, this one was actually a passenger and car ferry, which took us down the “Narrow Fjord” This is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is the narrowest fjord with boat traffic on it. It is spectacular! We stopped counting waterfalls because there were simply too many. The steepness of the cliffs coming down to the water was just beautiful. We passed three tiny villages that have no roads leading to them, the only way in or out is by boat. The natural scenic beauty of this part of the world really is stunning. Along the way in the fjord I had a quick glimpse of two porpoises as well!

Our final destination for this ferry was Gudvangen, this is a tiny little town on the other side of two very long tunnels from Fløm. There is not much here except for some souvenir shops, a small restaurant, and the ferry landing. We had about an hour and half to wait for our bus to Fløm. The bus stop was literally a wide spot in the highway from Bergen, but our bus was right on time to take us to Fløm. Right outside of town was the first tunnel, it was 11.4 kilometers long. We had a short break and then another 5 kilometer tunnel. After this tunnel we were in Fløm, and the railway station.



The final legs of the journey are by train, we started off on the Fløm railway. Which goes up into the mountains 20km, at about a 55 degree slope! It is the steepest non-cogwheel railway anywhere. Again the scenery and waterfalls were marvelous. We spent the entire trip looking out the windows of the train and snapping pictures as fast as we could. We were not quite sure about this train trip when we first boarded as a hoard of toga clad norwegians got onto the same train car as us. They were quite loud and all carrying a can of the local brew. They were on the train for less than 1 km before they all got off the train, in the middle of nowhere. For all we know they are still wandering around the hills near Fløm celebrating some strange holiday we don’t know about.


The final stop of the Fløm railway is at Myrdral which basically consists of a train station up in the mountains. When we got off the train it was actually snowing! We had a short wait for the Bergen to Oslo train to come along and we jumped on. We have been riding in Coach 2, which looks to be the student car on the train. It seems that many students from Bergen must be returned home to Oslo for the summer.

Tonight we will check into the Thon hotel in Oslo, and I suspect we will all sleep in again tomorrow morning.

Location:Norway

After the late night heavy metal concert in Bergen, we were all very ready for some peace and quiet. We found it in Balestrand Norway. To get to Balestrand we took the early morning Ferry out of Bergen, and came up through the Fjords to get here. The Beauty of the Fjords is beyond describing in words, so here are a few pictures. First, leaving Bergen on the Ferry:

From Bergen, we travelled North, between the coast, and all the little islands that protect the coast from the North sea. After about two hours we turned inland into Sognefjord, The longest and deepest fjord in Norway. From here on, it was just one beautiful sight after another. Here’s a typical picture from the back of the ferry:




All along the fjords you see these nice houses either up on the hillside, or tucked down near the water. Sometimes there is a boathouse right over the water as in the picture above. Notice how still the water is, and the contrast of the green of the trees on the shore with this stunning blue water is just great.

When we arrived in Balestrand we were met by our host, one member of the family that owns and runs the Balestrand Hotel, which is in my mind the nicest and friendliest place we have stayed yet. The rooms have an amazing view out over the fjord, as you can see from this shot out off the deck of our hotel room. If you go to Balestrand, you should definitely stay here, and don’t be afraid to upgrade to the fjord view, it is worth it.



The rooms here, have no TV in them, but who needs a TV when you have a view like this? We did go downstairs to the lobby area where they have a breakfast room, a reading room, with computer, and a TV area. We enjoyed watching some football with a very international crowd. Its interesting hearing the perspectives of the other people on the games, and of course its different to watch the football match when the announcers are speaking in Norwegian. The truth is its kind of a welcome relief from the English announcers. All they do is talk about England this and England that… I suppose the American announcers are the same way, and they probably talk way too much. The truth is you don’t need an announcer telling you much when you watch football.

Balestrand is not a very large town, we were able to walk everywhere from our hotel, and see just about everything. There is a small aquarium that shows you some of the sea life living in the fjords, a couple of small lunch places and one other hotel called the Kviknes. Hotel Kviknes is the largest wooden structure in Scandanavia. We ended up having supper there last night and it was quite good. I had a wonderful veal, Jane had risotto, Kaia pasta, and josh had a triple decker club sandwich. While were were seated we struck up a conversation with an older british couple and had a very nice chat. It is interesting to hear the English perspective on what is going on with the BP oil spill in the gulf of mexico. It is clear that although the british people have been supportive of Obama in the past many are taking his anger at BP somewhat personally. Of course football is alway another good topic to take up with the Brits, luckily this couple were very sportsmanlike about our competition.

This morning we were able to sleep in and have a nice breakfast in the hotel. At noon we board the ferry again, and head for Oslo. Today is a travel Odyssey, we’ll be on two ferries, a bus, and two trains to take us to Oslo. We won’t get in until after 11:00 tonight, but of course it will still be broad daylight so we aren’t particularly worried. I’ll leave you with one more image of the fjords and beautiful Balestrand.

Location:Balestrand, Norway

Last night after we ate our dinner at the Ship Inn we came out to this sight.

The tide had gone out and left all of the boats stranded on the sand.







This morning we flew from Aberdeen Scotland to Bergen Norway, the landing was absolutely spectacular. I’ve never seen so many small islands in my life. Plus, the sky was perfectly blue for the first time in many days, and so the whole scene was amazing. Getting through customs and the rest of the airport went just as smoothly as you would expect from a scandinavian country.

We immediately found our SAS Airbus to take us downtown to our hotel. We are at the Hotel Thon, it is on the end of Byrggen Street, right across the road from the harbor. Its a very nice location, except that it is next to a huge city park. What is wrong with that you may ask. Well, it turns out that we picked the wrong night to stay at the Thon hotel next to the park, as tonight is the night of the Rammstein concert. Who are Rammstein you may ask? After a little internet searching I quickly learned that Rammstein are a German industrial metal band.

We are actually on the opposite side of the hotel from the concert but at the moment it is making no difference. We are trying to watch the world cup, but the sound from the concert is so loud it is drowning out the Brazilian national anthem. I would much prefer the sounds of those dumb world cup horns to the sound of a german industrial metal band. We can only hope that the concert will wrap up at a respectable time. Josh just found a view of the concert and said it looks like a bunch of black ants (yes all the concert goers are dressed in black T-shirts) streaming toward a rotting apple.

OK, enough grousing, Bergen really is a nice city. We started our tour of Bergen by meeting one of Kaia’s facebook friends named Thomas at our hotel. Thomas had visited Decorah with a group of Norwegian students a couple of years ago, and volunteered to get us oriented to the city when he saw Kaia’s Facebook status. He showed us around the area including the wharf and the fish market and the central park of Bergen.

Jane and Kaia spent some time shopping around the city for a sweater for Kaia. They were successful, and so Kaia can proudly celebrate her heritage at concord, and at Christmas time.

We took the Funicular up high above the city this afternoon and the view is amazing. We took Thomas’ recommendation for a restaurant for supper tonight and went to Egon’s. It is a Norwegian chain restaurant and the food was OK. I think we have officially reached the point of vacation where choosing a place to eat for supper and dinner in a new strange city has become somewhat of a chore. We miss the home cooking.





Tomorrow morning we have another fairly early morning, as we must be on board our ferry boat at 8 AM for the trip to Balestrand, of course early morning takes on a whole new connotation at this time of the year at this latitude. We are now far enough north that there is only a couple hours of darkness at this time of the year. Darkness is only from midnight until a little after 2 AM. The Ferry trip tomorrow promises to be a beautiful trip through the fjords, we are all looking forward to it very much.

For now we are resting and watching Brazil and the People’s Republic of Korea play some football.

Location:Bergen, Norway

Can you possibly imagine a better way to top off a trip to St. Andrews than with a hole in one? Well thats what I did!! Josh and I were playing this morning, and it was on the 16th hole. I hit my drive perfectly straight, just a little left of the pin, right where I had aimed it. It rolled, broke to the right and dropped straight into the cup. Here’s where the story gets really weird, two holes later, Josh also got a hole in one. Thats right, on number 18 at St. Andrews. He hit his drive past the hole, up the hill, and it rolled straight back down into the cup. A truly amazing shot. You may be wondering which course we were on. Well unfortunately it was not the old course. It was a course called the Himalayas and it is the official putting green of the old course. They have 18 holes laid out, and you can rent a putter and balls. No, silly clowns mouths or windmills allowed, this is just a very challenging, and highly rolling putting green. In fact we had to wait until 11:00 this morning to tee off because they have a ladies putting league that plays before that. It is complete with its own clubhouse and everything. Here I am in my fashionable St. Andrews argyle sweater, getting ready to tee it up!

We arrived in St. Andrews yesterday afternoon, after visiting Castle Edinburgh in the morning. The castle was very interesting, and we again learned some interesting Scottish history. We stayed in the hotel Rusacks’ which looks right out over the 18th Fairway on the old course. We could sit in our room and look out at both number 1 and 18 fairways. They have already done a lot of work getting ready for the Open. This is the last week that the public can play on the course until afterwards. So there are lots of grandstands under construction. The great thing is that the course is closed on sunday so the public can walk the course. So we did.

We’ve talked a lot these last few days about walking where other famous people have walked. We’ve walked the same rooms and stairways as Mary Queen of Scots, King Henry the VIII, Oliver Cromwell, and many others. Now we can add to our list Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklas, Old Tom Murray, and even Tiger. The room that we stayed in at Rusacks is the same room used by Arnold Palmer, and other golfers. In addition Mick Jagger also stayed in our room. I don’t know that Mick cares about golf but he was on the list. I’m sure they will be adding the Miller family to the list any day now.

Back to walking the course, it was really fun to walk along and remember seeing some of our golfing hero’s and where they hit great shots and where they got in trouble. We found lots of deep bunkers to take our picture in too. Here is one of me on the Swilcan Bridge:


This blog entry would not be complete without a little culinary update. Last night we ate at Nahm-Jim a Thai restaurant right in the heart of St. Andrews. We had some delicious curry, and Josh claims he had the best Pad-Thai of his life there. Very good stuff. After dinner the tide had gone way out, so Josh and I hiked out on the beach, we got a great look back at St. Andrews. You can see the Golf museum lit up on the far right, and some of the temporary construction they have stared for the open, also on the far right.




After a very light lunch in St. Andrews today, we finally gave in to Josh’s urge to have a Subway Sandwich, we drove to Stonehaven. Stonehaven is a small town outside Aberdeen, its probably about the same size as Decorah, but its right on the North Sea. Our Bed and Breakfast overlooks the town harbor and is really beautiful. We took an Awesome hike out to Donnotter castle. This castle is all in ruins but it is such a great setting, its was really amazing. This is the site where they filmed Mel Gibson’s version of Hamlet. This picture gives you a sense for how isolated the castle is.


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Location:St. Andrews, Scotland

One week after watching our Decorah Vikings take third in the state soccer tournament we were back watching futbol again. This time we were in Edinburgh Scotland watching USA play England. Now before you get too worried about us cheering for our side on the home turf of our opponent let me just clarify that when England is playing the Scottish will cheer very loudly for the other team! As soon as we arrived in Edinburgh Josh. Changed into his USA jersey, and as we were waking around Edinburgh he got lots of comments from the locals. “nice top there son”

So it came to pass that we found ourselves in a hotel bar with lots of support for USA. On one side was a group of about 20 younger scottish men, and on the other were some additional tourists like ourselves. We had hoped to experience the game in a pub, but unfortunately they do not allow minors after 8pm. It was great fun to watch the game here, but I must say that I have grown used to the expert commentary of my friend Jim, who is leading a group of Luther alumni on a trip through Germany at the moment. I am sure Jim found a good place to watch the game there with some German support. You see all kinds of people when you watch the game in a hotel bar. At one point an Asian man came in, and stared at the screen for a couple of minutes before asking “what half is it?”. One of our scottish compatriots replied, well I don’t know where you’re from mate but when the clock says forty two minutes here you’re in the first half. It sounds even funnier when you hear it with the accent. Needless to say that particular fan did not stick around to watch much of the game.

When the Americans scored (yes it was an error on the English keeper) the whole bar erupted in cheers and then a chant of USA USA started up. The bar manager looked like he couldn’t decide what to do. He clearly wanted to calm everyone down and was obviously worried that a riot was going to break out in his bar. But he had no idea how what the right strategy was. In the end order was restored by some humor. After the cheers erupted and the chant had started one of the scottish fans came running back into the room to see what all of the commotion was about. As he had been in the toilet, he made a great show of zipping up his zipper which put everyone to laughing, including the manager. Although I was disappointed to settle for the draw, I think it is a good result for the American side.

Earlier in the day we did spend some time walking around Edinburgh, we walked the Royal Mile, and checked out Holyrood House. We have now seen all the royal residences except for Balmoral. The big story of Holyrood is that this is where Mary Queen of Scots spent a lot of time, and it is also where her young son was killed right before her eyes by her husband. Nice guy, who wanted the throne bad enough to kill his stepson. Here is a picture of the Abbey.

Our hotel here is great, we are right in the middle of a bustling area, and have a awesome view of Edinburgh castle out our hotel window. Here is a night shot I took after the world cup game was over.





Today we are going to visit the castle, then pick up our rental car and head for St. Andrews, birthplace of golf!

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Location:Edinburgh, Scotland

I am writing this on the train from London to Edinburgh where they have just announced the breakfast options. I don’t get the concept of “English breakfast.” I would like to meet the chef who came up with the idea of serving baked beans and eggs together! My guess is that if I did meet him I would learn that he was also the inventor of the “Pudding Menu.” At every hotel the included breakfast consists of eggs, bacon, and baked beans. I don’t like baked beans under the best of conditions, and certainly not first thing in the morning. I guess it must be one of those things you need to grow up with in order to appreciate. In the meantime I will just stick to having tea.


Anyway, now that I have addressed the breakfast issue I will praise the train system. This is really a the way to travel. We have four seats facing each other in coach, tons of legroom, a table in between us, great scenery, free wifi, and a very quiet ride. No long hassles of getting to the station 90 minutes ahead of time, and no long security lines. Just walk to the platform, get on your train, stow your luggage and take a seat. As we reevaluate travel the US I really wonder what it would take to get this kind of convenience. I, for one would travel this way whenever possible.

I also want to say how much I love traveling with my iPad! This thing is great. It’s small, light, the battery life is awesome, I have a bunch of books to read on it, a couple of movies to watch, the current season of Merlin, and games to entertain me when I am tired of all of the above. Other than if I really needed to write a program I can not imagine why I would ever need to travel with a laptop. In fact I think this is really the start of something new. I don’t see myself needing a laptop. My setup would be a nice big desktop machine for programming and writing in LaTeX, and my iPad for the times I am not at my desk.

Finally, as long as I’m rambling on about products and travel I have to say that I love my ScotteVest. (www.scottevest.com). Its a vest designed for travel, that includes zip pockets for just about everything. I can carry camera lenses, glasses, iPod, phone, and all kinds of things. I think it has 20 pockets in total, so there is a pocket for just about everything. It keeps me warm at the temperatures we are traveling in at the moment, and with all the zippers and inner pockets I feel pretty secure.

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Today’s travel adventure involved the Tower of London. No, we were not arrested and tortured by the English royalty. We were on a tour of the tower of london. We had just finished the guided tour with one of the Yoman Warders (cool title eh?) and we decided to go in and check out the Armoury. (yep I’m converting to british spelling) Just after we got in the door an alarm started to go off, and a woman steward came hurrying buy and told us that we had to evacuate the tower. We were never able to to find out why we had to evacuate but Jane overheard a couple of them talking about a fire alarm. The tower of London is also the site where Henry VIII beheaded several of his wives, including Anne Boleyn.

We started our day by taking the tube to St. Paul’s Cathedral. After walking around the sanctuary we resumed our european stair climbing tradition. We first walked 257 stairs to the whispering gallery. This is a cool balcony where you can face the wall and whisper. The person standing directly opposite you across the circle, over 100 feet away, can hear you perfectly clearly. I’d like to explain the physics of this but I’m told that my readership will decline if I include any equations. I guess all three of you are safe and will remain loyal readers. After the whispering gallery we continued another 266 stairs up to the gold gallery. From here we had a very good, but slightly foggy view of all of London.

Next we walked across the Millennium bridge and toured Shakespeare’s Globe theater. This is a slightly modernized version of the original, but still true to the spirit of performing plays in daylight where the actors and audience are face to face. It would have been really fun to try to watch a show there, but Macbeth is being performed at the moment and it seemed a bit dark, and long given our schedule for the day.

Now we are chilling at our hotel, the Luna Simone, watching Mexico and South Africa play futbol. South Africa just scored and are up one nil. Very exciting for the South African side. We have been researching whether or not we dare show the american colors during the game tomorrow. Research has indicated that the scottish people will cheer for ANY opponent of England, so we feel pretty comfortable about watching the game in a pub in Ediburgh tomorrow. Maybe some nice scottish people will buy us a pint if we win! (darn, Mexico just scored)

Kaia is waiting patiently for her phone call from her Concordia advisor to do her registration! Then we’ll grab a quick dinner and head out to see Billy Elliot at the Victoria Palace Theater. We had three shows that we wanted to see while we were in London and this one won out since we walked right by the box office last night. We also wanted to see Stomp, and We Will Rock You. Yes, a Queen musical, featuring Bohemian Rhapsody and of course We Will Rock You.

Location:London, England

Do you remember Sir John Gielgud from the movie Arthur? Jeeves maybe? Imagine the most proper british gentleman you can, and you will have our guide for the tour of Blenheim Palace we had today. This guy was much shorter than Sir Gielgud but he was a pretty good guide. He told us about fine china and tapestries the architects of the Palace along with many of the priceless artifacts that have been collected by the Spencer Churchill family over the years. As we finished each room of the palace our guide would say very politely, well if there are no questions I think that just covers it.

After our tour with Jeeves, we decided to see the Untold Story of Blenheim. This is part Disney animatronics and part history lesson. All in all it did not work for us. The animated dummies they had playing the parts of members of the royal households were all placed in front of ‘mirrors’ which were really computer screens, so although we looked at the dummy’s back we saw a real person’s face projected on the screen as if it was a reflection. These characters tried to tell us the back story behind how the Palace was constructed. One can only take so much royal sex scandal before it gets old.

Blenheim Palace is the home of the family of the Duke of Marlborough, although once a year they have to send a flag to BUCKingham, yes you must say that with a British accent with all of the emphasis on the BUCK and you will have it just about right. The purpose of the flags is to avoid paying what must be an incredible amount of rent. As long as the flag is delivered on time the family gets another year rent free.

Blenheim was actually our second castle of the day today. We started the morning by visiting Sudeley castle in the Cotswolds. This is one of the castles where Henry VIII and his wives hung out. Much of the castle is in ruins now, but it really is interesting, especially after watching several episodes of The Tudors on HBO. Other highlights of Sudeley were the Gardens and the Peacocks that were running around and in captivity in the Pheasantry. Yes, how many of you have been to a Pheasantry??







Lunch today was at Noel Arms in Chipping Camden. Jane had a Ploughman’s lunch, Josh had ice cream, and Kaia and I tried a burger. It was a nice English pub and we had to try some of the local brews, also quite good.

We stayed in Woodstock at The Bear, It is a hotel in a building that was built in the late 1600’s! The rooms are everywhere with no two alike. While Kaia went for a run I had a real english G&T although I really did not appreciate the use of the slice of cucumber in place of the lime. Dinner was at a small family run italian restaurant (Branca) across the street from the hotel. I had a great bolognese, Jane had Arrabiata, and Josh and Kaia had Pizza. All in all this was a great birthday!

Location:Woodstock, England

Yesterday we flew from Chicago to London. We tried a day flight instead of an overnight flight and it worked very well. We left Chicago at 9:05AM and arrived at Heathrow at 10:30PM. The flight was very easy an non-eventful, it worked perfect for someone who cannot fall asleep on an airplane. We got into Heathrow and did the customs thing and by the time we got to our hotel it was after midnight. To our bodies it was still early evening but by 1:30 we all had lights out and were working on sleep.

We did sleep in until 8:45 this morning. From there we took off for Bath by way of Stonehenge. For those of you who don’t know, Stonehenge is a big circle of rocks. Merlin the magician moved them down from Ireland sometime in the distant past. This was well before King Uther died, because he is apparently buried in Stonehenge. Here’s Kaia and Josh at Stonehenge.

At lunchtime we at at a local establishment called Jacqueline’s Bistro. Jane and Kaia had fresh baked baguettes with goat cheese, Josh had a ham and cheese omelet with salad and I had fish and chips.

From there we moved on to our final destination for today, Bath. When you arrive in downtown Bath you are “in a twisty turny maze” Its hard to know where you are, and the gps was equally unenlightened at several points. When we finally did find the parking lot where we were supposed to leave our car, it was closed for re-surfacing! So we had to go back to find a different lot that we had passed along the way.

After parking the car it was a very short walk to our Bed & Breakfast at Three Abbey Green. We have a beautiful two room suite, so we have to room to spread out tonight. Josh and Kaia both have their own beds and Kaia gets a separate bedroom. Breakfast is included as part of the deal in the morning. Here’s a nice view of the courtyard and our place for the night. The entrance is to the left of the giant tree in this photo:






We went out to view the sites of Bath, its a great downtown area once you are on foot. We visited the Roman Baths - from whence Bath got its name - and looked at the Abbey. Went shopping to replace the shorts that I left hanging on the back of the bathroom door at the Super 8 in Chicago. On the recommendation of our hotelier we went to the Eye of India for some great Indian food for dinner. We had Tikki Takka Tak, (I’m not making that up) Garlic Chili Masala, and Chicken Khorma, along with rice and nan. Here’s Kaia and Jane at the Baths.





The highlight of the day was definitely the after dinner show, called Bazaar Bath. Its a comedy/magic show that roams around downtown. The host entertains by poking fun of the people on the tour and doing tricks. As advertised, you do not learn anything about the history or culture of Bath, but it is a lot of laughs and I highly recommend this show if you come to Bath.

Unfortunately our string of injuries continues as Jane seems to have slipped a disc as we were walking around for the show tonight. Hopefully ibuprofen and heat will have her back as good as new in the morning.

Location:Bath, England

In preparation for the big upcoming trip to Europe I wanted to try out a couple of blogging apps for my iPad. I will be on the road for almost a month without my laptop.

Since I am writing this from home here is a picture of the sunset from a couple days ago.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Here is a great summary put together by the students after we returned. I think it does a wonderful job of capturing the lessons learned on the trip.

Silicon Valley Final Presentation

The second ‘Understanding Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley’ started this week. Yesterday was our first full day of meetings.

We started out with Steve Larson at Callspark. Then had lunch at Suriya Thai with Alison Johnston from Aardvark, beers with Matt Van Horn at Digg, and a great experience at sfnewtech.

Here’s the gang at Lunch. It was fun, everyone was trying new stuff that was a little out of the comfort zone for a bunch of midwesterners.

The words of the day are “stalking” and “audacious.” This seemed to be a theme from many people in terms of both job hiring and job seeking.

I’ll update this initial post to include the blogs the students are writing:

• Drew Baumann


• Megan Hallberg


• Kiflu Arega


• Bryan Uhlenhake


• Jeni Arbuckle


• Kaitlin Showalter


• Aaron Gauthier


• Adam Pyzdrowski


• Jacob Otte

This morning started out like any other morning. The alarm went off at 6:15 so that we could get up and get on our way to the everglades. We left the Embassy Suites and walked down 17th Avenue toward the intercostal waterway where we were picking up our rental car. On the way we split our forces with half of us going to Einstein’s Bagel Shop and half to Starbucks for Tea, Chai Latte and Cocoa.

We beat the traffic heading out of town easily on our way to the Sawgrass recreation park. It is part of the Everglades national park. We had an appointment with Captain Randy and his airboat at 8:00. Our instructions were to meet him ½ mile past mile marker 38 on highway 27. We got there early, the sun was still pretty low in the sky and finished our breakfast in the small parking lot. A few minutes later a pickup truck pulling an airboat with seating for nine pulled into the lot. We watched as the captain fired up the 500 horsepower Corvette engine hooked up to a four blade airline propellor. After the short checkout period he backed the boat and trailor into the water and brought the boat around to the ground.

We greeted Captain Randy, who showed us onto the boat and gave us a short intro to our safety equipment, which consisted of headphones to protect our eardrums from the sound of the engine and airplane prop. He invited one of us to join him in the topmost pair of seats as the co-pilot. We took off, and after a short lesson in steering the airboat, push forward for right and pull back for left, he turned the steering over to me. Driving an airboat takes a lot more anticipation than driving a ski boat. When you want to turn a corner on one of the trails in the everglades you need to start doing so a few seconds in advance. Luckily if you cut the corner to sharp, or too late you really don’t run into any problems. You make the trail a little wider as you mow down the Sawgrass and cattail, but there seems to be enough of both to go around.

Taking the early morning trip was a great idea as the angle of the sun was just beautiful, and we saw hundreds of birds as we cruised through the trails. We saw hawks, and herons, and vultures and birds of all different colors and varieties. In addition to the birds we were always on the lookout for gators.

Captain Randy seems to have come from a long line of Everglades boat captains that have been involved with all kinds of dubious activities. Pappy was an alligator poacher, and Randy and his brother kept small alligators as pets when they were younger. As Captain Randy fed one of the gators along the way hotdogs and marshmallows he informed us that feeding the gators was strictly against the law. That didn’t stop him, and we got some great pictures of Randy feeding his Mi Amoure Catalyna.

Shortly after our gator feeding experience, we reached the farthest point on our tour. By this point we were all pretty comfortable with the boat and so I was sitting in the bow taking pictures and the rest of the family was comfortably spread around. Randy headed the boat down a narrow trail and suddenly I noticed that we were boating in mud instead of water. As the mud got thicker and drier the boat went slower and slower until we finally came to a halt. Stuck in the mud!

After trying to gun the giant engine on our airboat for many minutes Randy finally admitted that we were stuck and going to need some help getting out. At this point we learned a couple of things about Randy’s friend Lyle. First, Lyle had an extremely long message on his business phone, and his cell phone. Second we learned that Randy had helped Lyle out of a similar situation just a couple of days ago. After failing to reach Lyle by phone we resorted to the old fashioned VHF radio. “Laxahatchie, Laxahatcie, Laxahatchie, Lyle this is Randy are you there, over….” With those words our 3-hour tour became a rescue mission.

Our airboat was partway down a trail that had been drained of water. We were about 150 feet onto the mud and it looked like the mud continued for another 300 before it rounded a bend. The trick was to turn the airboat around and pull it out the short way. Unfortunately in the Everglades walking on mud is not so easy. When Randy got out of the boat to try and use a rope to turn us around he sunk up nearly to his waist. To get back to the edge of the water required him to crawl on hands and knees to distribute his weight.

The four of us stayed in the boat feeling somewhat amused at our situation. Clearly we were not in any sort of life threatening emergency but for Randy this was clearly a pain in the butt and probably somewhat of an embarrasment. We were not dressed to jump in the mud and help him, although Kaia seemed very willing to do so. Josh was protecting his new green and white Nikes that Grandpa Miller bought him for Christmas but other than that I think he would have helped too. I had on a brand new pair of Tommy Bahama shorts that I was definitely not interested in getting covered in Everglades mud.

The rescuue mission was long and tedious as Lyle’s big boat could not turn around at the end of our trail. This required the help of a third airboat driven by a kind stranger. The third boat acted as a tug boat getting Lyle in the proper position and ferrying the rope into Randy when necessary.

The procedure that Randy and Lyle determined for getting us out involved tieing a line to the bow of the boat and then pulling with Lyle’s larger airboat. To a physicist this seemed like a dumb idea as the angles involved were all wrong, but neither Randy or Lyle were physicists so this was not an issue. After breaking Randy’s bowline there was some thought that the way to resolve the issue would be to bring a couple of pieces of plywood so that the tourists would be able to walk out of the trail but going from plank to plank and moving the planks as we made progress.

Walking the tourists out was not an acceptable plan to Captain Randy. It was clear that Lyle’s larger rope needed to be connected directly to the bow of our airboat and then threaded through the side of the boat about halfway back. Randy decided that he would get to the side with a second rope and pull to try and provide the needed force vector to get the boat to turn to the side. After several long pulls we finally had the boat turned at a ninty degree angle to our original course. (This only took about three hours to get us to this position).

We repositioned the rope to the bow of Randy’s ship and he got in his captains chair. At this point the plan was to have one last pull by Lyle with Randy ready to “Give her Hell” as soon as we were headed in roughly the right direction. With this plan in mind and one last pull we were finally free!

Once free of the mud we followed Lyle back to his docking area where hugs were exchanged and many thumbs up were given to our kind helpers. By this time Captain Randy had completely missed his 11:30 trip and was wanting to make sure we got back to the landing in time to meet his 2:30. So we took off for home base at high speed. After a while he slowed down so that Jane or Josh could drive. Josh wanted to have nothing to do with driving as by this time he was convinced that he would do something even worse than get us stuck in the mud. So Jane took her turn and did a great job of driving the boat.

Just before we got back to the landing we made one last stop with captain Randy to make sure that we had our stories straight. Clearly he was a little nervous that his muddy appearance might be offputting to his next group. Particularly if we were unhappy and complaining about the trip. He really had no reason to worry, all of us thought the trip was a great adventure.

After our exciting airboat trip we planned to stop at the Sawgrass Mill, an enormous shopping center. It took us almost a half hour of driving around to find the Ron Jon outlet store. Even after we found it it took forever to get in because the parking lot was so busy and full. The plan was for us to stop there to get Kaia a swimming suit. Since I had discovered that my old suit was too big for me I decided to get one too. Josh also found himself a nice suit and a football for using in the water.

The next big surprise of the night came when we walked over to Pazzo’s for an italian dinner. We walked in the door and talked to the hostess who told us to wait just a minute as she checked the tables. As we stood waiting for a minute a familiar figure came across the bar headed toward us. Sasan Mokhtari and his family were in the restaurant! they were in town for the soccer tournament. It was really fun to reconnect with Sasan after several years. We had a great talk with Sasan and Mary and their kids Tara, Eva, and Daniel. Tara is a first year at MIT and Eva and Daniel have transferred to Breck. It took Sasan only about 3 minutes to ask me if I would be interested in doing some consulting for him!

We had a great meal, although Josh was feeling a little sick and didn’t eat very much.

After all of our hiking and rafting adventure we are ending the trip with 3 days of rest and relaxation in Sedona. Our major activities here are a Pink Jeep tour, Golfing, and a massage for the women in the family. Otherwise we are doing lots of pool time and have even played a hand or two of 500. Sedona is known for its red rock and beautiful scenery, along with crystal shops and the Ye Olde UFO Shoppe.

We did the Broken Arrow tour with Pink Jeep, which was fun. I think we would have appreciated it even more if we had not already done all the hiking through Zion, Bryce, and the Grand Canyon. Nevertheless it was a good excursion. While we were out there the kids decided to do some rock climbing. Don’t let the pictures fool you this was dangerous stuff:





This morning Josh and I played a round of golf at the Sedona Country Club which is part of the Hilton complex. It was a very nice course and Josh and I both played well. It was a great morning to go as there was nobody in front of us and we were able to play at our own pace and move around the course pretty quickly.

Josh got a new shirt and hat out of the deal as the club had a dress code and Josh did not have any clean shirts that would get him on the tee. I played so well that I had to buy a new shirt to commemorate the occasion. It was 25% off for fathers day so happy fathers day to me.

Jane and Kaia both had facials and hot stone massages. I can’t go into any more detail about that. :-) But they were both glowing and relaxed when they got back.

Tonight we are going to go out for some barbeque and then come back to the room and get packed for the final leg of our journey. Its been a great trip!

The call for “Hooaaahhht Coffeeeeee” went out at 4:30AM. It was already twilight in the East and it was time to pack up camp and get on the rafts for the final ¾ mile of our journey. We had all come a long way on this trip. From the first night where everyone managed to find a place to sleep in private, this last night looked like a refugee camp. We didn’t have much room and everyone slept right next to everyone else. Here you can see everyone’s gear and a corner of what we at first called the “Miller plot” and then renamed to Miller Estate.

Here you can see the bridge that connects the Kaibab trail from the North to the South wall. We went a little further downstream to Phantom Ranch and crossed our own bridge.



The facts of the Phantom Ranch trail are as follows: Its a 10 mile hike from the river to the rim. It is a 1 mile vertical difference from the river to the rim. Now the mathematically inclined will say that is only a 10% grade. Not a problem… It was a challenge. They tell you to have two one liter water bottles and to fill them full at the bottom. there is a halfway stop called Indian Gardens with a water station and a 3 mile (from the top) stop with a water station and a 1.5 mile stop with a water station. We filled our water at every stop. You do drink a LOT of water on this hike. You are also advised to rest for 30 minutes at each stop if you are having difficulty.

We left the river at 7AM and were to Indian Gardens by 10:30. This is going well we thought. Unfortunately when you get to Indian Gardens you have only gone ¼ of the vertical distance. We finally arrived at the rim at 3:30. We made a lot of extra stops on the last half of the hike. Jane did not drink enough water during the first half and was struggling a bit during the second part of the hike.



In fact with half a mile remaining she was completely pooped. We asked one of our fellow hikers to send Josh back to carry Jane’s pack the last half mile. Josh wins the good sport award for the day.



Now you might wonder is the hike worth it for all that work? Yes, absolutely you get to see the Canyon in a way that you just can’t imagine by looking down from the rim. Here you can see some of the trail we came up. But not all the way to the river that is hidden in the distance.




Pictures don’t do justice to the amazing beauty of this corner of the world. We are all really glad we did this trip. As I’m writing this from the comfort of the Sedona Hilton, I’m inspired by the message on my plastic Gin and Tonic glass which says that “Travel is not about getting from point A to B, Travel should renew your zest for life.” This trip has certainly done that.

For three days we had a great raft trip with Wilderness River Adventures. The trip was amazing! For three days we saw the Grand Canyon in a way that few are lucky enough to see, from the bottom up. As we rafted along we literally saw the history of the world from today to 2 billion years ago. The beauty of this place is just awe inspiring.

We began our trip at Lee’s Ferry, just south of Page Arizona and ended up at Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We shared the trip with another small group (Rocky, Joe, and Denise) and one large group from Lafayette College.

The Lafeyette group really made the trip for us. The group of Geology students was led by Dr. Larry Malinconico (Dr. M) and Dr. Dave Sunderlin. In my slightly biased opinion I thought that Luther students were the friendliest students anywhere. The group from Lafeyette taught me that there are other colleges with really great students. Not only did we learn a lot from lurking in the back of the impromptu lectures but we had a great time getting to know them all.

Here are a couple of examples of how beautiful the canyon is. Here we are in calm water:

Here was one of our short day hikes. You can see our rafts to the right.



Of course no rafting trip would be complete without the opportunity to get wet, which we are about to do here:




And no trip report from me would be complete without a review of the food. In a word, awesome. Here are the two swampers (Kari and Everett) preparing our last dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs, or Alfredo Sauce. We had Salmon and rice one night, grilled New York Strips and Baby Red Potatoes another night. It was all “good eats”.



The leaders of the trip were Richard and Matt. Two excellent raft drivers. Not sure what the proper term is for the captain of a giant rubber raft. But they got us safely through some really “fun” rapids. At one point the Miller family did experience a collective flashback to being stranded in the Everglades when our raft got hung up on Whale Rock. This was right in the middle of the biggest rapids of the trip and we were just starting to wonder how we were going to get rescued when the raft freed itself and we were on our way.

The sleeping accomodations were better than expected by my standards. For three nights we just slept on our mats under the stars. No tents, just sleeping bags, tarps and mats. It was great. Since Arizona does not observe daylight savings time, it was dark by 8:30PM and light by 5:00 AM. So it was an early to bed early to rise kind of trip. One night I woke up at midnight and got out the camera. This picture doesn’t really do justice to the beauty of the night sky in Arizona but it gives you some idea of what we saw from our sleeping bags:



The last day of our trip we got up at 4:30AM and went about half a mile downstream to Phantom Ranch. From there we hiked 10 miles linearly and 1 mile vertically to get out of the Grand Canyon. I’ll cover that experience in another post.

It was an early morning today. The alarm went off at 5:30 and we were out of the hotel by 5:43. We made a short drive up to Bryce Point in twilight. The temperature was only 37 degrees but it did not seem too cold. We waited a few minutes for the sun to come up over the distant horizon. When it did we were rewarded with some amazing colors in the canyon:

After sunrise we had breakfast at the hotel and then headed south toward Page. We had a slot canyon tour booked for 10:30 Arizona time so we thought we had plenty of time. Unfortunately we ran into an accident that closed highway 89. We had a nice chat with an over-the-road truck driver as we waited for the ambulance and fire crew to clear the road.

We still made it in time for our Antelope Canyon tour. This was an amazing photographic experience. I took way to many pictures but I’m going to have a hard time picking out 10 favorites from the 200 I took. Here’s one as a sample.


After checking out the view of the Colorado River we relaxed at the hotel around the pool. We just got back from our orientation meeting tonight. We got our waterproof bags to pack all our luggage in. We are all looking forward to the raft trip starting at 8:15 tomorrow morning. This will be my last entry until we hike out of the Grand Canyon four days from now.

Our first day of hiking in Zion National Park was great! Here is our goal for the day:

From the bus stop known as “The Grotto” we hiked 2 miles and 1,800 feet up to the top of Angel’s Landing. The hike to the saddle point in the middle of the picture was a fairly easy hike on nice wide switchbacks. The rest of the hike was more exciting. The park service has helpfully installed chain handrails to help you climb over any rough spots or to help pull yourself up the steep bits.

Here’s a picture of the Miller’s at the saddle point:


Here you can see an example of what the last part of Angel’s landing hike looks like:



Here’s a picture of Kaia and I at the top

Long day of traveling today. Left Minneapolis at 9:05 this morning and just got into our room in Springdale UT at 11:00 Mountain time, or midnight back home. Actually we checked in a while ago but went straight to the Bit and Spur to have some dinner since our last meal was at Schlotzky’s in Phoenix.

The GPS said it would be a 7 hour drive. it turned out to be longer than that because we took a side trip to the Desert View overlook in the Grand Canyon. Here is a view from the Desert View of the Colorado River. We’ll be rafting down that river and into the canyon in just a few days. We will be able to see the watchtower from the river on our way into the canyon!

It was still quite a drive from the Grand Canyon to Springdale UT. Along the way we crossed the colorado river just south of where we will get on the raft.



We drove through Zion National Park in the dark. We are all looking forward to a great day of hiking in Zion tomorrow.

A Long Long Day

Not much to report today. We got up and rode the shuttle to the airport, we checked in, our flight was on time, we sat on the plane for 8 hours. Now we are sitting in the O’hare terminal hoping that everything will continue to be on-time for today.

We told the kids this morning that they were essentially getting up at midnight back in Iowa. So by the time we get hope tonight (hopefully by 7pm) they will have been up 19 hours. Josh of course immediately volunteered to stay up until midnight just so he could say he had stayed up 24 hours.

Summary Report:

Favorite City of the Trip:

Zermatt and the Matterhorn - Dad Venice - Mom Rome - Josh Rome - Kaia

Favorite Meal

Casa Masi -- Dad The Pici pasta really did it for me. breakfasts and fruit in Paris -- Kaia Pesto Ravioli at Grampis -- Kaia Barbeque night in Zermatt -- Josh

Worst Meal

The venice meal with Ulrings -- Dad

Souveniers Purchased:

Josh:

- Totti Shirt

• Roma baseball hat
• Italia Sweatshirt
• Swiss army knife

Kaia:

• Swatch

• Mirror
• New dress
• Ciao Bella shirt
• Shirt
• purse
• necklace

Mom:

• purse

• necklace
• swatch

Dad:

• Italia warmup suit

• Capri pants

A Day in Brussels

We got up early this morning so we could have our breakfast and catch a cab to the Leonardo DaVinci airport. We had ordered a cab the night before so it was waiting for us right at 7:30. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time and got our first taste of how they allocate checkin space in a european airport. The trick is that all the checkin desks are common and the airlines are just assigned a desk or two for their flights for the day. After some looking we finally figured this out and found a display board that told us the number of the desk that Brussels Airline was working from.

After some initial difficulties with their computers we finally moved to a new desk and got checked in. Three security checkpoints later we were waiting at our gate for our flight to be called. The Brussels Air plane was an old 737 that was a 3 and 3 configuration with about 6 inches of legroom.

We arrived at the Brussels airport and were reminded how nice and new and clean it seems. After all the initial security in rome we were surprised that we did not need to go through customs or passport control after arriving in Brussels. In order to get our luggage we had to walk a very long way, after getting our luggage it was a very short walk to the hotel shuttles and our holiday inn van had just arrived.

The Holiday Inn was quite nice. The lobby was clean and nice and they had Internet! We were initially disappointed with our non-smoking room that smelled like an all night poker game had just wrapped up, but after opening the window and putting the air conditioner on vent it didn’t take very long to get things aired out to the point where it was OK.

In addition to the swimming pool the pool area also had a hot tub. This was a great way to relax a bit and any thoughts of catching a train to downtown for more site seeing vanished. We ate at the hotel bar for supper as we didn’t really feel like paying 40 euros for the evening buffet. Josh and I had a bacon cheeseburger, Kaia had pureed vegetable soup and pasta, Jane had shrimp skewers. The kids were very excited because they could get chocolate milk! Their first milk in many days. Jane and I had draft beers of the local Leffe variety. I had ‘Leffe brune’ and Jane had ‘Leffe Blonde.’

After dinner we retired to the room for a final night of 500. Josh and I were victorious again! We won two games quite convincingly with Josh carrying me on his back most of the way.

Ancient Rome

We could subtitle today Information Overload. We spent today with our guide Tony and learned so much it is almost impossible to describe.

The major sites on our itinerary for today included: - Church of San Clemente - Flavian Amphitheater (Colloseum) - Roman Forum - Lunch on the Apian Antica - The Catacombes

Things we learned today:

• Christmas and the Saturnalia. At the temple of Saturn we learned that christmas

• Spaghetti Westerns
• San Clemente
• San Lorenzo (patron saint of cooks)
• The founding of Rome and the vestal virgins
• Story of San Sebastian

After our long day of touring we finally walked next door to the hotel to see the pantheon. It was cool but after a full day of interesting stories and explanations from tony it was a bit of a letdown. Kaia really wanted to visit some of the exclusive shops along the street near the Spanish Steps. We had also decided that Kaia needed something to replace the green duffle that had been causing troubles the whole trip. So we found a relatively inexpensive piece that was larger than her carryon size at a shop along the way.

Josh and I were charged with bringing the luggage back to the hotel while Jane and Kaia continued on their shopping quest. I told Jane to buy me a new pen at the Mont Blanc store, but with prices starting at over 300 euros she and Kaia were too intimidated to even go in the store!

After our day of touring and shopping we headed for our dinner reservation at Alfredos Originale. The home of Fettucine Alfredo! Kaia was so excited she could hardly stand it, for her it was like a religious pilgrimage. I was also excited to see how my recipe compared with Alfredo’s. Alfredo’s was good but very different from mine. It was very light on the cream, but heavier on the butter and Parmiagano Reggiano.