Day 8

The first thing we did on day 8 was take the Metro to the Ile de la Cite where Paris started. We went to the Saint Chapelle church first. This was a church built by a French king to be a jewelry box for the crown of thorns Jesus wore when he was crucified. It has amazing stained glass windows that reach up towards the sky. Each large panel has stories from a certain part of the Bible (ex. the Resurrection, the book of Joshua, etc.) We enjoyed gazing up at the windows and marveling at their beauty. Next, we walked to Notre Dame. One of the cardinals of the Catholic church had passed away so they had a memorial set up for him inside the cathedral; so it was very busy when we were there. We had just enough time to go in and have an hour inside. It is amazing how big it is, it took over one hundred years to build it.
After our quick tour of Notre Dame we walked to our lunch at a restaurant where we ate in the wine cellar. Afterwards we walked through the Latin Quarter to get to the Cluny Museum. It is a museum of things from the Middle Ages. We saw stained glass windows, beautiful tapestries and lots of weapons. This is where our tour ended and we had some free time. We decided to walk back to Notre Dame to go to the top. We stood in line for two hours to get the chance to walk up the 400 stairs to get to the amazing views. We even got to see the huge bell, gargoyles, and the long line to get into the cathedral.
That evening we went to a concert at Saint Chapelle (the same church we went to in the morning). It was a concert with two violins, two violas, one cello, one bass and one harpischord. They did Adagios, and they also did Canon in D. It was beautiful to listen to the music in such an amazing setting. The acoustics were really good, too. There were only about 40 people in attendance, it was a very intimate setting. This ended up being one of our favorite things we got to do on our trip.

Day 7-Paris

Today we leave for Paris! We were excited to take the Chunnel to Paris. We had to get to the train station early. While we were waiting there was also a train leaving for Disneyland Paris and they had a musical group play to get the Disney customers excited to go to the park. It was fun listening to them, and it made us wish we were going to Disneyland. But we are going to Paris, so we weren't too disappointed. The train ride was a couple of hours long and we were under the English Channel for only 20 minutes. Most of the trip is going through the north of France. During the trip we enjoyed talking to another couple from our tour group. When we arrived in Paris we got on a bus for a tour of the city. We went by the Opera house, the Louvre, stopped by the Eiffel tower to get pictures, and saw lots of great views of the beautiful city. The bus then took us to our hotel. We had an hour to get settled and then had a walking tour of our neighborhood. After our walk we had a couple of hours of free time. We spent our time looking for crepes, yum yum. We also explored our neighborhood some more. Then it was time to meet our group for a group dinner. We ate some wonderfully yummy food. After dinner we walked through the city to see the Eiffel Tower at night. It was neat to see Paris light up for the night. We also used one of the self cleaning toilets. We got to the tower a little before 10pm. At 10pm it sparkles for 10 minutes, it does the same thing at 11 and midnight. It was beautiful. I found a video on YouTube of the tower sparkling click on the link to check it out. Eiffel Tower lighting up at night. We thought of going up it, but the line was long and we wouldn't be able to get up until 11pm. So we just headed back to the hotel to rest for our first full day in Paris.

Day 6

Our last day in London. We went to the British Library where we saw a Gutenberg Bible, the Magna Carta, Beatles lyrics, Sheakesphere's signature on a bill of sale for his house, and they had a special exhibit on sacred texts (the Bible, Torah and Koran). It was so neat to be able to see these old manuscripts. Of course we especially enjoyed the Bible texts, one of which was a piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Kim also enjoyed seeing the Magna Carta and Gutenberg Bible since she taught her students about them last year.
Next, we went to the British Museum. We only spent two hours there, we want to go back just to spend some more time at the museum. They have so much to see there. There are lots of things from Egypt, Assyria and other old civilizations. We saw mummies, statues from the Parthenon in Athens, stone carvings from Assyria, shields from the Celts, and many other fun old things. We had a great guide who helped us see the highlights of the museum.
We had a full day's schedule so we had to leave the museum right after our tour. We ate lunch at a yummy pizza place and headed to Buckingham Palace. At first Micah and I were not going to go to the palace because it was so expensive, but we heard from others that they enjoyed it and they thought it was worth going. We decided to go and we are glad we did. It is only open in the summer because the queen is on vacation. We got an audioguide with our tour and it was fun listening to the commentary as we went through the beautiful rooms. It is amazing how elaborate the rooms are, they are gorgeous. I wish we could have taken pictures inside! It is also the 60th wedding anniversary of the queen and prince. We saw her wedding dress, jewelry, video of the wedding and some wedding presents. I enjoyed our tour there.
After the palace we had just enough time to go back to the hotel to get changed, catch a quick dinner at a Pret a Manger and then head to the theatre for Phantom of the Opera. Before we left for our trip we bought tickets online to go to Phantom. We have never seen it live and thought London would be the place to see it. It was a lot of fun seeing it, although we were way up in the nose bleed section. But it was still amazing!

Day 5

Today was our first full day of our tour. We went to Westminster Abbey where we had a guided tour with Tom. He gave us the history of the Abbey and showed us where some of famous graves are in the building. He was fun to listen to because he is very British and has a great sense of humor. Our favorite parts of the tour were seeing Queen Elizabeth I's grave and just looking at the amazing, beautiful architecture.
After Westminster, we took a walk down Whitehall. This is where the London government buildings are located. We walked by 10 Downing Street where the Prime minister lives, but didn't get to see much because they had police officers in the way. We had lunch at a nice pub. Kim ate a ploughman's lunch (bread, meat, fruit, and yummy goat cheese) and Micah had a large steak meat pie.
Then we hopped on a bus to head to the Tower of London. We took a tour with a Beefeater and heard about some of the famous people who were imprisoned and then executed at the Tower. After our tour we saw the British crown jewels. One crown had an amazing diamond on the top, it is the size of a tennis ball. Then we just walked around and looked in the buildings and enjoyed looking at the exhibits.
Then it was time to go back to the hotel for a quick rest. For dinner we went to a grocery store to get food for a picnic. They have great prepared foods at their grocery stores. We had pasta salads, great sandwiches and fruit. We took our picnic to the Buckingham Palace and ate on the Victoria monument right in front of the palace. What a great view!
We left the palace and walked to the London Eye. We thought it would be fun to go on the Eye at night to see London all lit up. We happened to buy tickets five minutes before closing (no lines, yeah!) and hopped on one of the last pods. There were only four other people in our same pod. London was beautiful at night. It is amazing how high up we got, Big Ben looked little. We almost didn't go on the London Eye because it is expensive. But we thought it would be fun to do at night, and also our friends Melissa and Bryan got engaged on it so we wanted to experience the Eye. We were glad we did do it. There were beautiful views!

Day 4

Sunday. Today we went to the Victoria Station to find out how to use the tube to get to Hillsong Church in London. We ended up getting a one day Travelpass. The tube is wonderful! I wish we had something like that in the Seattle area. We got to the church early, so we had some time to find an internet cafe and check emails. Hillsong was a lot of fun to go to. The worship was awesome. That day they had a guest speaker, Marilyn Hickey, from Colorado. She is an evangelist who travels the world. She was very inspiring.
After church we found a quick lunch and then headed back to the internet cafe to send out some emails. Then it was time to head back to the hotel to meet our tour group. First, we went to Al and Caroline's room to see them and see how their trip to the English countryside went. Then we went to the breakfast room to meet our group. We spent an hour introducing ourselves, going over what the tour involves and schedules. After our meeting we went on a walking tour of the St. James Park area. While we were on our walking tour we were not allowed to go down one of the streets because there was a film crew filming a scene for National Treasure 2.
It was a car chase scene with Nicolas Cage, and we saw three cars going around with their wheels squealing. On our walk we also walked through Leicester Square and the theatre district.
After our walk, we went to a restaurant by our hotel for our first group dinner. It was a nice three course dinner. We had smoked salmon, sausage, pasta, fish and wonderful desserts.

Day 3-London

On Saturday we woke up at 3:30am so we could make our 6am flight to London. We really needed some coffee this morning. Around 9am we arrived in London. We found the street our hotel is on, but had a hard time finding it. A British lady stopped and asked if we needed help and we told her we were lost. She ended up using her cell phone and called the hotel to ask for directions. She was very nice! We found the hotel, dropped off our bags, and went to explore London. Our hotel was close to Buckingham Palace so we walked there and looked around, walked to Westminster, Big Ben and the London Eye.
We found some fish and chips for lunch (we still like Ivar's best). By this time we were exhausted because we were up so early, so we went to St. James Park and sat down and relaxed for a bit. We looked through our Rick Steves book and looked for something to do later in the day. We decided to go back to the hotel to rest and freshen up and then we would walk to Harrod's and Hyde Park.

For dinner we went to Harrod's for tea, sandwiches and scones, mmmmmmmmmmm. We also had fun looking around the massive store. It is amazing how much stuff is in Harrod's, they even have Armani baby clothes. After window shopping we walked over to Hyde Park. Kim was excited to see swans swimming in the lake. We walked around for a little while, but our feet were hurting from all of our walking so we decided to walk back to the hotel. On our walk back we saw four Ferraris. We are looking forward to starting our tour tomorrow!

Day 2

Today was our only full day in Edinburgh, and Micah's birthday. In the morning we had a wonderful breakfast at our B&B; we had a hard time eating it all. After breakfast we decided to get to Edinburgh Castle right when it opened to beat the crowds. We were glad we did because when we left around lunchtime it was getting crazy. At the castle we went on the 20 minute tour and enjoyed listening to our guide's accent and information. One of the buildings in the castle is over 900 years old. All of the other old buildings from the same time period were destroyed by Robert the Bruce. We also saw the Scottish crown jewels, the prison, a military memorial, the Royal Scots Army exhibit, the great hall and lots of great views of the city.

When we left the castle we walked down the Royal Mile and enjoyed looking in shops and window browsing. We went in one shop and talked to the girl working there about tartan and asked her questions about it. Kim ended up buying a scarf as a souvenir. When we got to the end of the Royal Mile we saw the Holyrood Palace, the Queen's residence in Edinburgh. Across the street is the new parliment building. We just walked around and looked at the beautiful buildings. After our walk we went to the New Town and found a T-Mobile store for Micah to get a UK sim card for his phone. We then went to the National Gallery and looked at many beautiful paintings. They have some VanGogh, Monet and Sargents. My favorite was one that showed a visual representation of the Old Testament on the left and New Testament on the right, and Jesus in the middle. It had a lot of detail and symbolism. When we came out of the gallery there was a band of bagpipers playing. We really enjoyed listening to them. We left downtown and started looking for a place to have dinner for Micah's birthday. After looking for awhile we ended up going to the Blonde Restaurant. We shared an appetizer of fishcakes and entree of salmon with a glass of wine. It was an enjoyable dinner. After dinner we left to go back to our B&B to pack and try to get to bed early since we had to wake up at 3:30 am the next day for our early flight to London.

Day 1-Edinburgh

Our first day in Europe we flew into London, took a bus to Luton airport and then flew to Edinburgh--all on one hour of sleep in the last 24 hours. We arrived in Edinburgh around 2pm. When we got to our B&B (Belford Guest House) we went against the advice we heard to not take a nap, we were just so tired we couldn't stay awake. After we woke up and got ready we went to a pub for our first pub dinner. Micah had a Guiness, and it was better than one at home. And the dinner was pretty good.

After dinner we decided to walk the mile and a half into downtown. Edinburgh is an old city from the middle ages. The buildings are made of stone and all look old and quaint. When we arrived downtown we walked to the Royal Mile where there was a lot going on since their big Fringe Festival would be starting in just a few days. We watched a few magicians, dodged crowds and enjoyed the energy of the city. Then we turned a corner close to the castle and found some military men getting on horses. We stopped and watched for a while. The Tattoo Military show was set to happen the next day, and tonight was the dress rehearsal. So we got to see the horses and the men on top (who also had musical instruments). We would have enjoyed seeing the Tattoo; we tried to get tickets in February. We later heard they sold out in December. Later we walked back to our B&B. It is a nice walk since the closer we got to our place the quieter the streets became.

We're home from Europe

We made it back home after three weeks of adventures in Europe! We will be adding to the blog to give more details about our trip, so stay posted.

Christmas 2006 Vacation

Kim's family has been planning a vacation together for many years and they finally decided to go on a cruise. I am glad that they waited until I was a part of the family to go because it was a lot of fun. The short version is Seattle, Orlando, Disneyworld, Miami, Costa Maya-Mexico, Grand Cayman, Jamacia, Miami, Orlando, Seattle. But the details are much more interesting. Most of the family met in Orlando at a house near Disneyworld. It was a big house but pack 19 relatives in and it gets quite cozy.
It was there that we received a call from my brother-in-law, Justin (the only person who couldn't go on the vacation due to a scheduling conflict with his first Christmas Concert as an elementary music teacher.) He said that the worst wind storm on record blew through the Seattle area (60-80mph gusts.) There were people who didn't have power for a week or more. We were so sad to have to endure 70-90 degree sunny weather.

Well, back to the phone call from Justin, He said he had some good news and bad news. "Remember the tree in your backyard?" (This is the same tree from the blog post from last year when I was trying to destroy the ivy.) Justin continued, "The good news is that you can finally remove all of the ivy. All the way to the top of your 150ft tree." "However, the bad news is that the wind storm blew it over." I am glad he didn't stop there, he also said that it didn't fall on our house.

A side note: the wind storm postponed his concert until January 22nd which we did get to attend afterall. The bummer is that he didn't get to come on the vacation.

We went to Disneyworld's Magic Kingdom the day after we got there. It was fun, including getting shipwrecked. Which I will have to continue the next opportunity I have to blog.

Alaska Airlines here I come!

I have accepted an offer to work for Alaska Airlines. It has been wonderful working at the Simulator shop so far. One other piece of news. Kim and I turned off our internet at home to save money. So updates to my blog will be more difficult. I apologize in advance for not keeping it up to date.

Time Capsule October 2001 - Young Adult Retreat

 Here is one of the first pictures that Kim and I have together. Scott Ficker was the Youth Director at CBSR. He organized a retreat for the young adults to Deception Pass. Later on, Kim used this picture to make a present for me. She sent it to Jones Soda and had it put onto a case of Soda with a personalized note on each of the bottles. It was a really cool present. 

The Windy City (and no, its not Chicago)

We had a wind storm blow through the Puget Sound yesterday. It proved to be quite an experience. Saturday morning about 4am Kim and I woke up with a start. There was a huge crashing sound like thunder, but the loudest thunder I had ever heard. It had been blowing all night long and we figured that a thunderstorm had rolled in. The previous evening Kim and I said that if we didn't have electricity in the morning we would treat each other to breakfast at IHOP. About 8 we got up and showered without power. Then drove down to the SuperMall for breakfast. However, as we were leaving the house I noticed that there was a tree missing from our front yard. We drove over and checked it out. One of our smaller trees beside the road had blown over, crushing the fence. The root system had pulled totally out of the ground. Wow! We than proceded down for a wonderful breakfast of Pancakes, and a crab and shrimp omlette. Yum!

Home Sick

here I lay so forlorn
sick to my head and not wanting corn
lying in bed trying to rest
laptop blogging to recoup is best

Here is your answer to why I have had a chance to update my blog. I guess it just takes a good bug in my system to knock me out of commission.

Christmas with the Storers

Kim and I had the chance to visit my family in ND for Christmas. We flew out on Christmas day and spent 4 days at my brother, Troy's place just outside of Grand Forks. It was wonderful to see my new niece, Eden. Troy and LaRae were so nice to open their house for everyone to stay. We relaxed, played games, read books, ate great food and just hung out. We had a few extra special meals, like cha sha, Sushi, knephla soup, and strudla. It was so great. John Symonds came too and brought his poker table and chips. We had a few tournaments which was fun but it seemed like the girls were always winning; Kayla, Mom, and Kim each won at least once. Another game that we really enjoyed was Settlers of Catan.

Time Capsule July 2002 - Our ND road trip

This is the first in a series of "Historical Pieces" They will always be labeled "Time Capsule" It gives me a chance to share some of my life pre-blog. I hope you enjoy it.
 

This is a picture of Kim and I a few years ago when we drove to ND. It was the summer before we got married. It was a whirlwind trip of driving. Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Then back to Washington. This picture was near the end of the trip. In the background is my grandparent's home. Some days I miss the wide openness of ND. 

Snow and Heating the Crawl Space

Snow in Seatlle! It is fun when we get snow here. The whole city shuts down. Earlier this month we got 4 inches. Cooler weather prompted an investigation of the efficiency in which our house was being heated. I noticed a lack of airflow in the bathroom and master bedroom. Upon bundling up, brandishing Maglite and "Spider Defense Tool" (a long stick) I ventured into the unknown (the crawl space underneath our house). While I was down there I noticed how hot it was; it was warmer than it was in the house. I crawled around looking at the duct work to see if I could find a hole. During my trek I collected a plethora of cobwebs on my "Spider Defense Tool." I then found the problem--there was a four foot section of the duct work that had fallen down. I proceeded to re-attach and patch up the ducts. Afterwards, our radiant floor heating wasn't as nice but the house heated up more efficiently. Note: This document was written and edited by Kim, because I have been remiss in my blogging duties.

Kim's Birthday

Kim's Birthday was on December 5th and we had a wonderful weekend together hanging out and catching a movie. We went to eat at Salty's at Redondo (a nice seafood restuarant). We also went to see the latest Jane Austen book made into a movie, Pride and Predjudice and did some Christmas shopping. It was a lot of fun. On Sunday, we went downtown with Kim's family to celebrate with them too. We ate at another seafood restaurant on Lake Union called Rock Salt. Then we all walked around downtown looking at the Christmas decorations and doing some window shopping. All in all it was a wonderful weekend.

Thanksgiving and other fun stuff

Thanksgiving was really nice. Kim and I spent it with her Dad's side of the family. Grandma made too much wonderful food as is always the case. Yesterday, we did the crazy "Day After Thanksgiving Shopping Thing." It was insane. We got up at 4:30am and got to the Fred Meyer by the 5am opening. There were hundreds of people there already. I was driving the cart and Kim was leading. Unfortunately, we got separated because it was so hard to navigate the shopping cart with all of the people. I thought she went through the "Sock" isle when she actually was going to the Christmas decoration area. They had 1/2 price socks and needless to say I didn't make it out of that area in a short amount of time, nor unscathed. Finally, we made it back together and checked out. By that time it was almost 6am, the time when Target opens. So that is where we headed next and got our tree and some decorations. Following that I dropped Kim off at Jo-Ann Craft Store, while I went to Best Buy. She met me afterwards and we waited in the checkout line at Best Buy for 45 minutes as it wove through the store. Woo Hoo! Although, how often do you get to REALLY check out the vaccuum cleaners, refrigerators, washers, dryers and other large appliances there.

The remainder of the morning and afternoon was spent at home decorating for Christmas listening to Christmas music. It was really quite a lot of fun. This was the first year we have had a tree so it was kind of exciting putting it up and decorating. When we got it we didn't realize that it was pre-lit. That was a nice surprise. We also did some finishing touches on the house as well. The front closet didn't have flooring yet so I cut some linoleum to fit and installed some molding in there and in the bathroom that had gotten "put off."

This morning we met Kim's family at Yuen Lui (pronounced Yen Loo E) for a family portriate. While the pictures were getting ready to view on the computers, we went to Starbucks for a snack, Yum! When Kim and I were comming home she said that I should update my blog. So I am.

Oh, and one more thing, Sons of Dust is playing for church this Sunday and for special music we are playing "In the Light" by DC Talk. It is a great song and I really enjoy playing it.

One Down - 1 year 11 months to go

I did it! I finished my first class, and if I am not mistaken, I think I did quite well. I will find out my grade is this comming Tuesday. Class is really quite fun. It is much more time consuming than I though it was going to be. I have a hard time doing anything in my free time that isn't homework or else I end up feeling guilty. (including blogging) I have a break here between Thanksgiving and Newyears in which I only have 1 evening class. I am switching from Tuesdays to Thursday nights so I am actually getting off with a nice break that I won't get in the future.