It’s been almost a month since my last post and we’ve been all over the place. In a nutshell, we went home Chapel Hill NC and spent two days. We grabbed John, our eldest son, and flew to Denver for my nephew Peter’s wedding to Beth. It was held at Keystone Ski Resort and the aspens were in their full Autumn color. I had only been to the Rockies during summer or ski season and enjoying them in the Autumn was a real treat.
On the way home, we visited Roman’s niece, Beatrice, and her family in Denver and had a lovely time. It’s always good to catch up with family. We were back in Chapel Hill for about 8 hours when we departed for Pennsylvania to visit my mother. We had left our nearly 20 year old minivan in the care of friends so that we would have wheels when we returned. Since leaving in April, my mother has moved from her house of 20+ years into a two-bedroom apartment in a retirement community about half a mile from where she used to live. I owe my sisters and brothers a debt of gratitude for helping her downsize and move.
We had a lovely visit with my mom. As we arrived, we bumped into my mother’s former neighbor whose own mother recently moved into the apartment next to my mom. All 5 of us hung out on my mom’s apartment drinking Manhattans and catching up. Our visit lasted only a few days and we promised a longer one when we are back in the US over the holidays. We spent our final weekend in Chapel Hill, visiting friends and preparing for two months of travel on land through Europe.
After only two weeks, we were back on a plane to London where we spent a few days, then headed to Gosport to check in on Flight. We have hired several companies to work on Flight’s systems and were happy to see progress. On the downside, we found out that we need to replace the exhaust elbow and heat exchanger to the tune of $5K. We would prefer to deal proactively with issues now rather than breakdown later. Southern England is full of marine engineers and parts are readily available so it is a great place to get work done.
We hopped the ferry then the train to London to catch the EuroStar to Paris where we settled into our Air B&B near the Pasteur Institute in the 15th Arrondissement for the next week. I’ll show you some of the highlights.
We had a fantastic time in Paris and are off to Brugge, Belgium. We had dinner at Cafe Cambrinus including a tasting flight of Belgium beers and mussels provinçal. Yum!
Leave a Reply