So less than a week ago, I was still on vacation. Granted, I was flying between AZ and NJ, hoping the nor’easter coming into the East Coast would not mess up any of my flights, but I had yet to return to the UK. Allow me to give you a the nickel tour of my nice 10 days off in back in the homeland:

1. A trip to New Jersey – I got to spend some time with Carolyn and her family in New Jersey. It was also my first real chance to assist in the wedding planning. So I saw a lot of the malls of New Jersey and got to sample delicious cake and see where the wedding will be. I was happy to be a part of it, but I’m a terrible shopper, so it could be exhausting at times 🙂
2. Lots of flying. I flew from London -> Newark. Then four days later, I flew from Newark->Tucson via Phoenix. A short 5 days later, I was back on a plane from Tucson->Newark. 12 hours after that, it was back to London again. In a 24 hours period, I was on 4+ hour flights, 1.5 hours on a train and various time on buses and in cars. But it was alllll worth it.
3. Some fun in Arizona. There was still a wedding component to it, but I was able to take a little timeout and relax after a crazy year. I swam, hiked, took in the beauty of the desert, golfed and got to see this wonderful new home my parents built. And my sister came down for a visit as well which was nice since I hadn’t seen her in a year (sniffle).

There’s the quick tour. Here are some photos:

Since I missed Christmas with family this year (not to say that Dina and Adrian weren’t saints for helping me through a nasty flu), I got a nice welcome back to the US with lots of Christmas. Both the Hysons and Badanes’ kept their Christmas decorations up for me and I got a Christmas dinner from the Hysons. This is Linda and Jim wearing the crowns you get out of those Christmas popper things.

I’m very impressed with Tucson. It is obviously a very dry place, but the geography is diverse, rugged  and mountainous. My parents look out on an 8000 foot mountain, which gets snow in the winter. There are crazy passes that look out over canyons and go up into areas with skiing. And the saguaro’s are everywhere, creating a forest of cacti. This picture doesn’t quite capture that forest, but it is nice nonetheless. It was taken a wild 15 minute drive from my parents place on some cool-ass roads.

This is my parents new place. That long bank of windows in the middle is the kitchen and living room. To the left is the master bedroom area. To the right (out of this photo) are the guest rooms/lisa and my bedrooms. It’s a wonderful house. They built it from scratch (I was there about a year ago when it was in progress), but it was nice to see the mostly finished product. They did some really nice things to it and made it a high-quality, comfortable place to be.

I forgot how easy it is to eat like shit (and eat a lot of it) in the US. However, I couldn’t resist in some situations. Like the above meal I had with Lisa before she headed back home for Arizona. That’d be Jack’s Barbecue – a pork sandwich and fries. Yummy.

So, my parents are retired or in the process of retiring. They’ve moved to a lovely house in Arizona with magnificent views of the desert. Since this is Arizona, they have to play golf, right? Well, here’s a golf course about 10 minutes from their house:

As a fun family outing, we decided to give 18 holes a shot. Personally, I play golf once or twice every couple of years. And, while it’s probably not the best use of water in the desert, it can be a fun and relaxing way to spend a few hours. They’re usually very nicely laid out and you spend the time walking around or tooling around in a golf cart (which is fun). But I suck at golf. I can get a few decent shots off now and then, but I am completely inconsistent and have a nasty slice. I lost a crap-ton of balls into the desert on this course. Still, here’s evidence of me playing 🙂

(Oh jeez, that’s the same hole — and here I was hoping to give you a different view — here’s looking back at the 18th hole)

My dad is the best golfer in my family. But my mom is learning and now that they have the time, they should see their games improving. My sister is a hack like me although she should feel free to contest that description in the comments 😛

Well, let’s try to get things started back up with a view in my parents backyard.

I woke up nice and early and watched the sun coming up over that mountain range. They basically live in a forest of cacti. Very nice. I might need a number of posts to show off this really nice house.

Prior to that, I was in New Jersey having fun doing prep for my upcoming wedding. Carolyn and her mom have been doing an amazing amount of work on this, so I just showed up for some mall trips and tasting cakes (mmmm). I was able to make a quick trip into NYC to see some folks as well. Then I hopped a couple of planes to Arizona where I’m taking in the beauty that is the Arizona desert. More to come!

Much of what I previously posted ended up being moments while I was walking around the city. Cold or not, I wanted to use the downtime I had (mostly in darkness 🙂 ) to see a little more of Paris. I did manage to do a little sightseeing in the daytime too, though. I initially thought it would be possible to check out the Louvre, but I ended up working longer on Sunday than expected and figured I’d need a full day to see it. So I went for something a little smaller, but equally as nice, the Musee d’Orsay. It was originally built as a railroad station, but it now houses a great collection of late 19th and early 20th century paintings, sculpture and decorative art. I was impressed. First of all, it uses the space it occupies in an interesting way. Once you go through the absurd security and buy your ticket, you begin in a large hall:

They’ve lined this part with large sculptures from various periods. Off the hall are some smaller galleries to check out. The rest of the museum is laid out chronologically, but it’s hardly linear. You should start by heading up to the fifth floor and working your way through the proto-impressionists and then on to the impressionists themselves, which is what the museum is best known for. It was a good cross-section of artists from that time period and contains a decent number of master works from these artists. In this section, there are also places that provide nice views of Paris as well.
You then travel towards a nice hall (the museum got a big makeover in the 80s incorporating the station into a modern museum nicely) that has artists like Gauguin and Rousseau:

Now, if you wish to see the Naturalists and Symbolist art that came a little after the Impressionists, you go back down to the second floor. However, since the majority of the building is the main hall, there are many sub-floors to explore as well. Once you’re on the second floor, it provides a nice place to sit and soak in the atmosphere amongst the sculptures. That includes this cool bear which sits in view of the Great Clock of the station:

The clock is still working.

Also make sure to walk to the end of the main hall to see the inner workings of the Grand Opera (which I STILL haven’t been into yet) and a cool scale model of the area around the opera house.

Overall, it’s a lovely museum. The collection is excellent and it’s laid out in a meandering way which slows you down and allows you to appreciate the location as well as the art. They’ve kept the element of the old railway station intact so you also get to see a slice of French architectural history as well.

I reach the penultimate Paris post with a simple couple of photos:

Here’s the Champs-Elysees looking toward the Arc de Triomphe. I love the blue lights on all the trees that frame the Arc so nicely.

As far as I can tell, this Ferris Wheel was put up ‘temporarily’ in 2000 and has been in the Place De Concorde ever since, sitting halfway between the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe ever since. When IM Pei’s pyramid was built, people freaked out about it not fitting in with its surroundings. Meanwhile, this Ferris wheel breaks up one of the more famous stretches of city in the world, and I didn’t even know it was there until I was walking towards it. Still, I think this photo is pretty cool with the ferris wheel sitting in front of the obelisk.

Ok, I have a number of posts for Paris and I have no particular order. My time there was short and it was mostly spent in the basement of a building setting up the new network, but the free time I had I feel as though was well spent.

My last trip to Paris, which I still haven’t posted about (the film is still on 2 disposable cameras), I ate very well. Two or three of the meals I had were just amazingly satisfying. However, it was during these times that the stress of knowing very little French was overwhelming. It’s very hard to look at a menu and have no clue what 1/2 of it is. So there’s a little adventure involved. This time around, my first night was a late night (finished work around 9:30pm) and I let my French coworkers choose and they wanted Italian. Good pizza, but not French food. My second night, I wanted French food, but I was tottering around exhausted and didn’t want to stress too much about it. I found a review in a crappy guidebook I had about a place that pretty much did steak called Le Relais De l’Entrecote. So I braved the cold and trekked out to find it. I walked up to it, realizing it was a Saturday and worried it would be a little full. Well, it was packed to the gills. Being very tired, I ended up settling for a baguette, cheese, swiss cookies and some Belgian beer. Not bad, but not quite the same.

Sunday rolled around and I decided that this place seemed intriguing. It was in a posh section of the VIIe arrondissement but the street it was on was full of mostly quiet, relaxed restaurants and this one was teeming. I figured, Paris being a city of late, marathon dinners, I would go near there and see when they began seating people. I showed up around 6pm and the place is pitchblack. But there’s already 4 people waiting out front and a sign on the door shows they open for dinner at 7pm on Sundays. Still, it’s completely dark inside. It’s freezing, so i head down the street a ways to get a beer and warm up. I show up at a quarter to seven and the line has only increased to about 8-10 people in front of me but the restaurant is still empty and dark. It nears 7pm and the line is about 20 people. Suddenly, at almost exactly 7, I see a couple of people stirring inside (you knew it was 7pm because the Eiffel Tower was completely lit at the top of the hour). Then, the lights flip on, the doors open and they start seating us.

I didn’t have to worry about my crappy language skillz because there was no menu. I got a nice seat i a corner to take in all the action and a friendly waitress wearing some sensible version of a french maid outfit. She asked if I wanted wine (yes, a house red please), water (still) and how I wanted my steak (medium). Meanwhile, in 10 minutes, the place was full, a line for the second seating was forming already. They started with a nice simple salad of greens, walnuts and some sort of mustard-based dressing. They have a private label house red which was nice.

Then out came the steak and frites:

The frites were tasty and the steak was nicely cooked. The sauce was interesting. Apparently, it’s one of those ‘we’ll never tell you the secret ingredients’ kind of sauces. There was definitely olive oil and mustard in it (they like mustard), but beyond that, I have no idea. But it was all really really good. Even crazier, the portion seemed a little small, but I was feeling happy and mopping up the sauce with some bread when out comes my waitress with another portion. Seconds! Cool! I finished it off with a helping of Lemon Sorbet soaked in a shot of Vodka. The dessert was when it was revealed that they technically have a menu. It’s for wines (but everyone was having the house red) and desserts.

So basically, they march people in and they serve you one dish that they do very well. I’ve never been to a restaurant where people are waiting outside for it to open. They operated on their own schedule and they knew what they were doing. I walked out full and very content to find there was still a line standing out in the freezing cold. Another successful French meal! Here’s the inside which was nicely decked out and felt like a large French bistro:

Last night, after a late dinner preceeded by a long day at work, I was walking back to my hotel which is right off Boulevard Haussmann. This also happens to be conveniently where the very large department stores are located. And, for the holidays, they appear to go all out. The exteriors are decked out in many many lights and the displays are linked together in winter themes, all done very nicely. It might have been 11pm and the stores might have been closed, but the windows were crowded with people checking out what the offerings this season were. Allow me to demonstrate pictorally:

This store takes up a city block and the entire store is covered in lights. It’s very impressive to check out.

The next block is home to Au Printemps. Even without the lights, I think this would be an amazing 19th century building (just look at the sign on it). Their lights were a little more subtle but had strobes flashing as accents as well.

I mentioned the window displays. Here are a couple of samples from Au Printemps

Every other window contained scenes of automated marionettes. This is a chorus of owls which would raise their wings in unison. A band is playing to the right of the photo. There were also scenes of foxes and deer.

In between the whimsy were the more classic windows with maneqins but still fit with the white winter theme of the more lively windows.

Another month, another trip to a European city 🙂

Here’s  my standard ‘suitcase in front of hotel bed pic’

The trip had a very cool beginning. The Eurostar to Paris has moved stations from Waterloo to St Pancras. They’ve taken a classic old station and fixed it up very nicely. On top of that, they’ve built dedicated rail through South London, which is notoriously conngested which means you can get to Paris in 2hrs 15min. Even better, St Pancras is literally 15 minutes from my flat, which means I can get from London to Paris in about 2 1/2 hours. Very cool. Here’s a shot of the trainshed at the station (I believe it’s one of the biggest in the world):

I’m here for work which has gone very smoothly so far. Coming up, some damn cool shots of Paris at Christmastime.

It was a dark and stormy night. The fellowship of Froddo, Bilbo, myself, Dina and Adrian were in a tight spot. Do we take a hike in the woods, unprotected with no hope of a beer at the, or do we journey to the town of Adrian’s birth, where his kinsman still live and the pubs are a plentiful?

In this case, we chose to check out Shoreham-by-Sea, which happens to be where Adrian grew up and much of his family still lives. After my very very quick trip to Stockholm, I landed at Gatwick Airport which is about halfway to Brighton. So I decided to take a little overnight trip down to say hello. After a festive evening, we figured it was a lovely Saturday to take a little walk and get some exercise. Our choices were many, but the walk from Bramber to Shoreham sounded pretty and gave me a chance to see some English towns I’d not yet seen. The walk began in Bramber and meandered along the River Adur which, as Anne pointed out, sounds like it’s right out of Tolkien. The walk itself was about 5 miles and allowed us to see a number of cute villages, a gently flowing river, an old cement factory/chalk quarry and a few churches. Come hither and I shall show thee:

Bramber used to be home to a large Norman castle. During the English Civil War, Cromwell had a number of these castles torn down. Only the one wall you see in the distance remains (as well as some of the foundation). It must have been very impressive when it was in one piece.

After soaking in a little history, we decided to hit the local pub. It’s a cute old pub/inn.

Here is the River that traverses Middle Earth. At its widest, it was about double this length. Near Shoreham, we even got to cross the remnants of a very rickety bridge that apparently still had car traffic over it into the 1970s. After a nice walk along the river with a detour to Botolphs, we reached our destination.

No not the Red Lion Inn. Shoreham! This pub used to be where coaches would stop for the night. The wooden beams make the ceiling so low, I couldn’t stand up straight near the bar. Good selection ales, happy vibe.

Once we reached Shoreham, we met up with Adrian’s mum and made merry until it was time for me to return to the land of London and my cute kitties. As always, it was a pleasure to spend a little time out of the city and see the beauty that is the English countryside.

While taking a walk along the River Adur (not Ardur!) with Dina and Adrian, we came upon the Parish Church of St Botolph. Apparently, this parish now only numbers 50-60, but the church is significant because the main part of it is from about 950, making it one of the oldest churches still standing in England. It was always designed to service the nearby farming communities. St Botolph is pretty obscure but he’s apparently the patron saint of travelers. The church is situated in an isolated feeling section of southern England. It’s only about 3.5 miles from Shoreham, which has about 20,000 people living there, but you wouldn’t know to come walking upon it.

The tower part is somewhat newer (if you consider the 13th century to be new).

Apparently Anglo-Saxon churches tend to be of simple decorations and design, but it’s got a nice quiet contemplative feel to it. And the acoustics in all these old structures is always impressive.

Greetings once again from Stockholm. I had one of the weirdest flights here. I ended up flying a low cost Danish carrier called Sterling. Until I got on the plane, I didn’t actually see a single person directly employed by them. The ticket counter had some company called Servisair. The gate just had some Gatwick employee. And, until I was on the plane, I could have managed to have no idea who I was flying with. Zero branding. Very odd in this day and age. Even better, they left the gate early. They had everyone on the plane, so they left 10 mintues early. And Stockholm is so efficient, I was off the plane and on the train to the city centre in 15 minutes. That’s getting off the plane, passport control, baggage claim, buying a ticket and an elevator down to the train. And the train goes like 100mph. Sweet.

Anyway, here’s yet another shot of another hotel room. This is another 2 day trip in and out. But it’s freezing and there’s only like 5 hours of daylight this time of year anyways 🙂

A time honoured tradition in my part of the US is apple picking. This is where you go straight to the source and pick the apples yourselves. Or, you can at least go to the orchard and get some apples that are far superior to the store-bought crap and pick up some tasty donuts and cider as well (with that in mind, I’ll just plug Salinger’s Orchard as having some damn good apples).

Here in England, at least in the world I run in, they have the “Apple Festival” at Middle Farm just outside Lewes. There was no apple picking at this Farm on the day I went. Instead, there were rides, tasty food, some apples, but mostly cider and ales. Yummy! Dina and Adrian’s friend, Lou, plays in a country-type band and were part of the entertainment. I had the misfortune of coming down with a cold (which is still plaguing me two weeks later), but I refused to let it stop me from taking a trip to the country-side and enjoying myself. Probably a mistake since I’m only barely recovering now (and those of you who have been feeling sympathetic towards me for being sick might not be as inclined now).

One of the things I really appreciated about the day was being out of the city. I hadn’t left London in almost two months (since Paris), and it was really nice to be in a bus looking at the country go by and seeing some smaller locales around Lewes and Haywards Heath. Then, it was nice to just be outside in the not-too-chilly fall air and doing something that was just a little bit different. Some of the highlights:

This is Lou’s band. I’m blanking on their name now, but Dina can jump in and remind me. They were having fun, played a good set and it wasn’t totally surreal watching Brits play American bluegrass music 🙂

Yep, this is exactly what it looks like. It’s sheep racing. And yes, those are little jockey’s on their backs. Even better, Adrian and I picked the winning sheep and got some candy.

After a few drinks, we all figured it’d be a good idea to take one of the carnival rides that spin around a lot. This is our third time on the ride from my vantage-point.

This doesn’t help keep you sober. There’s a permanent store on the farm that has a very very large selection of ciders and ales. You get a small cup and are free to sample. And, inevitably, you buy some too. Very interesting to try so many ciders. I know so little about it and there really is a vast difference in all of these.

I’m certain this might be one of those pictures that’ll disqualify us from public office in the US, but we all look so happy here.

While my adventure in London didn’t offically start until January or February 2007, the fun really began on 13 October 2006. This was the first day of my sabbatical. Carolyn and I spent the first two weeks exploring southern Italy. However, we book-ended this part of the trip with a day or two in England. In a moment of irony, while visiting Dina and Adrian in Brighton during this original European trip, Dina asked Carolyn and I if we could see ourselves living in England. We laughed and said ‘sure’, but pointed out that it was more likely that they’d move to the US before we moved to Europe. Little did we know that would be very very untrue 🙂

Our last day of the sabbatical trip was spent in London. In honor of that (and in light of the fact that Carolyn is here right now), Dina came up to visit from Brighton and we did a little re-enactment of our fun there. We checked out the Tate Modern and wandered over the Millennium bridge again. Adrian wasn’t present, but it was a good time, nonetheless. I’ll post pictures and more fun about our day tomorrow.

In the meantime, if you feel like learning more about my sabbatical, check out my original blog.

Man, I’ve been bad. Well, this time, it was because of a last minute trip to Paris. Yep, I’m writing from Paris. I bought a ticket on Monday and hopped the eurostar on Tuesday night. Yes, the tough life. Hopefully, the work part won’t be as bad as I’m expecting. If so, then I get a day or two of free time to see the city. Alas, my digital camera died about 4 days ago, so I might not be able to post any pictures for a bit (I’m gonna look into getting some sort of single-use camera in the meantime). whee!