Home Sweet Home

Well, we made it home, after the world's longest Mother's Day. We got up at 5:30am on Sunday, ate breakfast and headed to the airport. We flew 10.5 hours to Los Angeles, trekked through luggage, customs and immigration, then headed off to a different terminal and caught our flight to Portland. More waiting then finally home to Eugene at 10pm. Midnight before we crashed. For those of you keeping track, you subtract 8 hours from the time in Britian, so we were up basically from 9:30pm Saturday night until midnight Sunday. Harsh.
I think overall the trip was a success, although it sure is hard traveling with the little people.
Looking back, I have the following highlights to share...
In London, the Courtland Gallery. Its such a little gem at Sommerset House on the Thames. Being able to stand up and really look at great art is amazing. So often in the bigger museums you are forced to stand miles from the art and you just can't see how it is put together. While I was there, the kids had a great time playing in the fountains outside.
In Paris, my best memory is kind of a fluke. We took a boat tour on the Seinne one evenning, which took off from the far end of Isle de la Cite' We were walking back to Isle St. Louis where we lived for the week, and we went by Notre Dame. In the courtyard outside there were performers in the dark. We have a movie of it, I'll try to load it this weekend. They juggled fire to rock music and it was simply magnificent.
In Wales the castles all were lovely, but I guess my nicest time was probably not at a castle. We had tried to see Manorbier, and we were hungry. I saw a town called Saundersfoot on the coast, and we drove to it as the newspaper had a lot of restaurants listed there. Saundersfoot has a little harbor and we parked. Dinner was eaten in a restaurant called 'Mermaid's Quay' overlooking the water. The fish had been caught in the harbor that day and cooked that evening, it was magnificent! After dinner we walked along the path and watched a local woman use a 2 liter coca cola bottle to play fetch with her labrador in the surf. We walked by lots of tiny ships, and it was just wonderful.
My other good memory is really of those rides through the countryside down paved sheep trails. It was fun, felt like an adventure and although stressful it was always great to actually arrive somewhere at the other end. DH did a great job on some scary roads!
We are slowly getting back on the schedule here. More when we hae time.