WEEK THREE: Germany
In Week Three we broke from the one city per week pattern. After landing in Frankfurt, we rented a car and drove 3 hours (a trip the Autobahn Audis would do in 2) northeast to the little village of Osterode where my company has a factory and R&D facility. We spent half the week there (again, I worked, and Emily and Galen explored). But we met for lunch and discovered great donut thingies and Nutella ice cream. The Mom and Galen team played soccer, swam in the super-clear hotel spa-pool, and Galen even got to go horseback riding on a local farm (plus a tractor ride thrown in for good measure). And many more small village treats . . .Next stop was back to the Frankfurt area where I had another business meeting. The only noteworthy highlight there was the most amazing hotel pool we had ever seen this side of Las Vegas . More like a collection of lagoons and river rapids, it also had waterfalls and waterspouts, plus ocean wave sound effects. Then finally last Friday we checked in to our hotel in Frankfurt proper, with a 7th floor view of the river Main . Frankfurt is a financial and industrial city, but it also has some charms and is frankly more interesting than I had given it credit for. One thing that has been hard to come by on this trip has been our date night. But with the help of one of the hotel staff moonlighting as a babysitter, we left Galen in her good hands and went out to celebrate one of our anniversaries with a Rhine River cruise. I will leave you with two little quirks we have noticed about our time here in Germany . First of all, except for the hotels, they don’t seem to like credit cards much here. We are at the cash machine every two days trying to keep up. Secondly, we haven’t figured out how to order regular water. Its always some super special Euro-per-mouthful mineral variety (often more dear than beer), and none of our many attempts of the usual descriptions of normal water (such as "still" "natural", "tap" or "no gas") gets us wasser without bubbles in it.
That’s where I will leave you for now. Kelsey and Tyler arrived Sunday for our weeklong vacation. We move on to Venice on Tuesday and expect to have more to share soon after!Love, Phil and Emily, Galen, Kelsey, and Tyler
WEEK TWO: London
Week Two found us in London, in an expensive but run-down hotel located in Kennsington near Hyde Park . We had days of brilliant sunshine, and days of rain. This was the toughest week for Emily since I was out and about in the country side every day, and away for two nights, including a side trip to Ireland . But it was during this week that Emily mastered the art of going out the door in the morning with no particular agenda and finding once in a life time experiences by the end of the day. These included play time at the Princess Diana playground (complete with pirate ship!), feeding the swans at Round Lake, seeing the magical play "The Sound of Music", riding up top in double decker buses to the end of the line and finding a great park there with a petting zoo, pagoda, kid adventure park. All this with the bonus that our exuberantly extroverted son found that people would respond to his inquires in ENGLISH again! (as an aside Galen's extroversion has brought him a free bouquet of flowers, new friends everywhere we have gone, an extra serving of cake on the house, an inviation to a birthday party for a dog in Hyde Park, and a cigarette rolling lesson to name just a few . . .) A highlight for me was a day I returned from an overnight trip, Emily and Galen surprised me with a candle-riden birthday tort (39 and holding if you are wondering!). London is a fantastic city with endless things to do and see. Just make sure to bring the college fund your kids had hoped to use some day.
Week 1: MILAN
Hello all!
It is true we have not been very communicative over the last 3 weeks while we have been away. Although we had promised regular entries into a blog, with my business meetings and Emily being a 110% ubermom-one-on-one-24-7 with no support network and no preschool break, we have both been pretty exhausted by the end of the day. But now we have collected a few 
photos to share some of the fantastic experiences we have had so far on our European Adventure.We started our trip on Feb 23 by flying to Milan . On the plane Galen says to the flight attendant "I love Italy! Its so noodlely!” Landing in a fog so thick the wingtips were barely visible from my window seat, the plane had to go around for an unnerving second try. But in short order we adjusted to the 9 hour time change (Galen has been the champion sleeper on this trip!) and we both learned how to drive in crazy Milan traffic without ending up with a scooter permanently embedded in our bumper. Highlights in Milan included Galen helping construction workers at a building site, making up stories to the pictures of Italian children’s books in the library, and most especially an evening out in nearby Gorgonzola (yes the place that invented the cheese) on a double date with a colleague and his wife to a great little place in their town (plus they had a baby sitter for their kids AND Galen!). But given that Italy is known for good food, it was odd that many of our challenges were about meals. Restaurants in Italy open at 8:00, ie, Galen's bed time, ie, Emily’s hypoglycemic crisis time, meaning it wasn’t exactly happy hour waiting to go out to dinner. So we found ourselves eating super-expensive but always available hotel fare (and doesn’t everyone know that the menu price listed for beef means by the GRAM!? nope. $90 bucks) or down at the very popular local McDonalds with other families with kids from the neighborhood. But on the whole Milan was a good place to visit. I even got to see the town center on the weekend and Emily and Galen showed me around. The middle of Milan has some old-world charm, including a cathedral complete with a pigeon-packed square, a old castle, and best of all, carnival with bumpercars and other rides! By the way if you ever visit Milan , bring your Italian phrase book since English is not well known there. Luckily you can order a big mac in a pinch.
photos to share some of the fantastic experiences we have had so far on our European Adventure.We started our trip on Feb 23 by flying to Milan . On the plane Galen says to the flight attendant "I love Italy! Its so noodlely!” Landing in a fog so thick the wingtips were barely visible from my window seat, the plane had to go around for an unnerving second try. But in short order we adjusted to the 9 hour time change (Galen has been the champion sleeper on this trip!) and we both learned how to drive in crazy Milan traffic without ending up with a scooter permanently embedded in our bumper. Highlights in Milan included Galen helping construction workers at a building site, making up stories to the pictures of Italian children’s books in the library, and most especially an evening out in nearby Gorgonzola (yes the place that invented the cheese) on a double date with a colleague and his wife to a great little place in their town (plus they had a baby sitter for their kids AND Galen!). But given that Italy is known for good food, it was odd that many of our challenges were about meals. Restaurants in Italy open at 8:00, ie, Galen's bed time, ie, Emily’s hypoglycemic crisis time, meaning it wasn’t exactly happy hour waiting to go out to dinner. So we found ourselves eating super-expensive but always available hotel fare (and doesn’t everyone know that the menu price listed for beef means by the GRAM!? nope. $90 bucks) or down at the very popular local McDonalds with other families with kids from the neighborhood. But on the whole Milan was a good place to visit. I even got to see the town center on the weekend and Emily and Galen showed me around. The middle of Milan has some old-world charm, including a cathedral complete with a pigeon-packed square, a old castle, and best of all, carnival with bumpercars and other rides! By the way if you ever visit Milan , bring your Italian phrase book since English is not well known there. Luckily you can order a big mac in a pinch.
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