Dana Comes to Visit

     Meet Averil's way-cool cousin, Dana Rothrock:

     Dana is from Philadelphia.  Dana was an art teacher at a school in Philadelphia.  Then she decided she wanted to go and teach English in Spain for a year.  She's living in Madrid . . . the same year we happen to be living in France.  So she came to stay with us for the weekend!

     On Saturday we went to the outdoor market in Ste.-Cecile-Les-Vignes.  Here are some pictures:

     Dana is the daughter of Averil's dad's brother.  She's 28 years old.  She lives in an apartment in Madrid and takes the bus to the school where she teaches, in the mountains 45 minutes outside of Madrid.  

     Saturday afternoon she watched Ford and Asha do horsing:

     On Sunday we rented bikes and went for a fun and long bike ride on little-used roads behind Vaison.  We started off through vineyards and ended with a climb to the tiny town of Crestet.  When we stopped for a picnic, Averil accidentally ate part of the label she had included with everyone's sandwiches.  Everyone laughed.  Here are biking day photos:

     It was tiring, but lots of fun.  We're sad that Dana has to go back to Madrid on Monday.  But we'll see her again in May when we pass through Spain on a trip of our own!

     Ivy the still-conehead says, "Bye!"

    

Miscellaneous . . . .and go to "The Gerald!"

     On Saturday, Asha's friend Kimberly came over to play and rollerskate.  They had fun.  Here's a photo:

    
     On Sunday, Averil served a fantastic meal to our Dutch neighbors:  quiche, chicken marbella, green salad, cheese course, and apple pie.  It was muy bueno!  Here is a photo:

     On Monday, Ed hurt his back.  It did not happen in the gym, which Ed regularly visits for the purpose of picking weights off the ground and putting them down again, over and over, for days, weeks, months and years on end in an interminable process . . . . rather, it happened when Ed was putting on his left sock.  The "back tweak" required several meals in bed.  These meals were prepared by Averil and served by "Alice the Skating Nurse" (Asha in her roller blades).  Thanks Asha!

     Speaking of Asha, she had been looking a little asymetrical lately -- with a big gap on one side of her mouth where she recently lost a tooth.  Fortunately this was cured last night with the loss of a matching tooth on the other side:

     Ford has been tearing through the books we recently received from Amazon.uk.  Here, he has taken up a position on the windowsill:

     Did you ever watch the BBC series All Creatures Great and Small?  We've been watching the episodes (on DVD).  They're very funny.  We weren't sure the kids would like them, but they do! Last night Siegfried got drunk when he was supposed to be impressing some important people -- he ended up trying to wash the car window with a dead chicken, thinking it was a rag.

The big news of the week is that Averil's brother Kevin is opening a bar/restaurant in Ballard in Seattle.  Here is the link to the restaurant site:  http://www.thegeraldseattle.com/.  Opening this weekend!  If you live in Seattle, you should check it out.  Good luck, Kevin!!

Uneventful events of the week . . . .

     We took Ivy in to the vet to be 'sterilized.'  They kept her for the day and returned her to us in the late afternoon with a cone on her head and a bunch of stitches in her belly.  Now she is a Conehead from France.  Get it?  The vet gave us many directions about post-sterilization care.  We think we understood many of them.

     Ford slept with Ivy the night before her operation:

She felt pretty bad when we picked her up.  The vet said she was exaggerating.  But he was wrong.  She felt really bad for a day or two.  Here's what she was like when we picked her up:

She's doing better now -- can't you tell?

     Spring is coming.  During the week there were several days in the high 60s.  The fruit trees are starting to bloom.  We saw a grasshopper and a lizard and several red and black bugs.  These creatures have not been around since summer, so we take their reappearance as a sign of spring.

     Rick Santorum says that 10% of all deaths in The Netherlands happen from euthanasia and that half of all such deaths are involuntary and that people wear bracelets that say "Don't Euthanize Me!"  

 

We saw our Dutch neighbors on the street.  They alerted us to these claims. They countered that he is totally full of onzin, which is word which, in English, would start with a C and rhyme with "snap."  We looked at their wrists and saw no such bracelets . . . .

     The school lunch menu is out.  Fortunately, there is no pink slime on it.

Bye for now . . . . it's bingo tonight at the Espace Cultural.

    

Ski/Road Trip: Days 11-14 (Venice to Alba to Barcellonette to Vaison)

     Wednesday was our last full day in Venice.  We went back to the St. Mark's Basilica and saw some treasures that we hadn't seen during our first visit.  Then we went across the square to the Correr Museum where we saw various objects on display (it wasn't that interesting but our St. Marks' tickets got us in for free).  After that, we retrieved Ivy from our hotel and went with her by water bus (they're fun to ride!) to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum.  The water buses work exactly like the city buses in Seattle except they are boats.  They travel the two large canals in and around Venice and the neighboring islands, stopping every 5-10 minutes to pick up and drop off passengers at stops along the way (docks).  We bought a 24 hour pass (which we probably didn't need because no one ever checked).  We went into the Guggenheim in shifts (no dogs allowed) and saw a few Picassos, two Dalis, a number of Jackson Pollacks, a Chagall and other famous paintings and sculptures by people who we did not know who they were.  We attempted to explain to Ford why the abstract art is considered art.  He made some good points in rebuttal.  Later that afternoon, we went out (again by water bus) to Murano Island where they have the famous Venice glass blowing.  It was a long "bus" ride (about 40 minutes) and we arrived too late to see the glass blowing.  Everyone had stopped blowing about an hour before we arrived, so we wandered around and looked in the windows of the countless shops selling genuine Venetian glass ("not from China!").  We saw great sunset views from the water bus on the way back.  And that evening we had another nice meal -- Ed had spaghetti with squid ink sauce.  This is said to be a specialty of Venice.  It was very black in appearance but mild tasting. 

     Here are some pictures of our last day in Venice:

Roof of St. Marks

Averil enjoying Peggy G.'s terrace

Outside Guggenheim

Guess who in her Souvenir Carnival Mask?!

On the Water Bus

View from Water Bus

Murano Island

Sunset from the Water Bus (Vaperetto)

From Water Bus Looking at Another Passing Water Bus

Spaghetti With Squid Ink

    
     The next morning (Thursday) we did some last minute souvenir shopping (Ford purchased a solar-powered rocking Venetian gondola -- "Made in Italy, Not China!").  Then we got all our stuff, dog and dog bed included, and rode our final water bus 30 minutes back to the parking garage where we had left our car three days earlier.  We found a bathroom that charged 50 centimes to get in . . . Ford, Asha and Averil cheated and ran in at the same time.  An alarm went off!  But no one came to punish us.  Anyway, we found our way, and we found our car.  Our car was not broken into, and it started up when we turned the key!  What more could we ask for?  We were a little sad to be leaving Venice.  And, unfortunately, it had to be a driving day.  We decided to drive about 4-5 hours west to a logical stopping point for the night -- Alba, Italy.  On the way, we stopped and had an excellent meal at the Autogrill.  The Autogrills are positioned about once every 50 kilometers along the Italian autoroute.  They're much nicer than anything you'd expect to find along the U.S. Interstates.  You get a tray and pick any kind of food you want.  Some of the food is pre-made, and other food, such as the pasta, is made while you wait.  And sometimes (as with the one we stopped at) the restaurant goes right out over the highway so you can watch the cars pass under you as you eat.  That's kind of weird.  We arrived in Alba about 6:00 p.m.  We got a great hotel (again -- we lucked out on all our hotels, post ski trip).  For dinner we walked across the road to "Turkiye Kebab."  Asha lost a tooth in Turkiye Kebab that had been driving us bonkers (don't worry Grandma, it was a very loose baby tooth and more than ready to come out!).  Here are some photos from the day:

On Water Bus

On Water Bus- Sad to be Leaving the Town where Italians and Japanese Oogled and Caressed Her

This Is What the Autogrill Looks Like

Hotel in Alba

Alba

 

 

The Kebab That Did the Job!

     On Friday we had a nice breakfast at the hotel (in Italy the breakfast was always included with the room and it was all good).  Then we looked around Alba a little bit.  Alba was a convenient stop because it is a medium sized town about halfway between Venice and France.  But Ed also recalled that Alba happens to be the sister city of his home town, Medford, Oregon.  There is an Alba Park in downtown Medford, and the towns exchange student-visitors.  But we doubted that in a city the size of Alba we would find any mention of Medford without going well out of our way to look for it.  Turns out we were wrong!  Within 10 minutes on Friday morning we had found "Piazza Medford" in downtown Alba, complete with a nice metal sign showing the location of Alba's sister city!

In Piazza Medford

 There was even a street named for a former mayor of Medford:

Alba is home to the Ferrero corporation - the company that makes Nutella:

After Alba, we drove south and west.  We were off the big roads.  We went through lots of little towns.  Then, after a while, we started to see snow on the ground.  Then we started to go uphill and we knew that we were climbing into the Alps.  We went up and up windy roads past and through little towns, some of which had signs protesting things, and Averil entertained herself with the camera:

These signs (above) may be protesting a new high speed train.  Earlier when we drove into Italy, there were protests of this train that were blocking the entrances to the autoroute.  

 

 

After a while, we were way up high in the snow.  Then we were on top of the pass and we came to the border.  This time there was a sign, so we got out and did the one-foot-in-Italy-one-foot-in-France thing:

We started going downhill into France.  The sun came out and we came to little towns.  We came down into the town of Barcellonette.  It was very nice, but we kept going because we had made a reservation at a country B&B a few miles past Barcellonette.  Here are some of Averil's photos of the descent into France:

Here's where we stayed:

It was good to get there, because we had been driving for a while and listening to Michael Jackson's Greatest Hits for many kilometers and certain individuals within the family were beginning to manifest early signs of insanity.  But it was nothing a long country walk couldn't cure:

For dinner we went across the highway to an auberge where the meal was served family style to about 10 guests.  After a night's sleep and another yummy breakfast, we headed off on the backroads to Vaison, through fruit-tree country, windy-road gorges, and finally into olive groves with a view of Mont Ventoux -- sure signs that we were home.

     We had a great trip!  The fridge is empty, but we still had an avocado and kiwi that made the 1,693 km trip with us -- from Vaison to Venice and back again (and still good to eat):