Team EPPE Adventures: WEEK FIVE

Bonjour!

It is on travel days when we change hotels, cities, countries, time zones and languages, using a boat, bus, train, plane, and taxi to get there, plus stand in lines for security, passport control, and customs that we feel like packing up and coming home! But once we settle into our new home for the week these feelings subside and the magic of what we are doing kicks back in.

Getting to Paris from Venice was a long haul requiring a flight and overnight stay in Frankfurt to put Kelsey and Tyler on a non-stop back to San Carlos to resume high school after their spring break, then another flight for us to Paris late Easter evening.

In the midst of all these logistics, we got something we can never even imagine in sunny California: a white Easter! We woke up to a dusting of snow Easter morning contrasted against blooming trees of pink and yellow in the meadow surrounding our Frankfurt Airport hotel; a magically odd marriage of winter holding on and spring pushing forth.

This week we were also honored with the visit of Grandma and Grandpa! It was wonderful to see them because at this point in our trip we are really missing home. They stayed in our hotel and in the evenings that we didnt go out to dinner, we ate together our little apartment. We were sooo grateful for their visit and they even gave us a few hours babysitting time so Emily and I could get away for an romantic Paris date!

Speaking of food, it comes as no surprise that the cuisine here in France has been the best in Europe! Cheese fondue, chocolate crepes, onion soup, crème brulee, and cappuccinos smothered with chantilly (whipped cream) topped our list.

Although the weather did not cooperate as often this week, we got out to see the sights as much as we could. On our one sunny day we took a great open-air bus tour of the city but most of the rest of the time we needed to be indoors away from the weather.

So instead of climbing the Eiffel Tower (the top level being closed due to winds) we found a great place to lunch (with wine naturally). And if you haven't seen it yet, check out Mr. Galen cutting it up at the Trocodero. And it was quite glorious to walk into the Notre Dame cathedral to hear a recital from a group of girls from Santa Barbara. When I was away on work for a couple of days, Emily, Galen, Grandma and Grandpa found a science museum pour les enfants de 3-7 ans. Although everything in this museum had been perfectly tailored to the needs of a 4-year old boy, Galen's favorite exhibit was the large model construction site complete with hard hats and vests for all the children, wheelbarrows to push, moveable traincars, operating cranes, conveyer belts to crank, and foam-cement blocks to move and build with endlessly. They had to leave only because they turned out the lights! They also wandered to the nearby Père-Lachaise Cemetery (the final resting place of Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, and Oscar Wilde among many other notables).

Travel always has its little surprises and this week was no exception. We were met at the front door of our Paris hotel by a very nice young man who offered to help us with our luggage. Very quickly we found that he did not work here, but was part of a large boisterous group of art students from a small Catholic college near Victoria, Australia. The really cool part was that his school uniform had the name Galen! It turned out to be the name of the school, not his (which was Isaac, the same as one of Galen's good buddies from back home). Anyway they said they would try to send us small sized school uniform for our own namesake. Naturally Galen made friends with them immediately. And they were nice enough to give us their extra food when the left to travel to Florence.

This just in! The sun finally shined on our last day in Paris! It was glorious! Just as we were laughing with some German tourists at lunch about how even more was rain falling, the skies

parted, the sun broke through and practically saved the whole Paris experience! Three hours before our cab to the airport we were walking in the Jardin des Tuileries near the Louvre getting hot. Galen found a man who was renting little sailboats and after a quick lesson spent the next two hours happily pushing two boats around the reflecting pond. Those little boats really caught the wind and sailed right across! A perfect Paris moment. (And I will never tell the folks on the other end of that business telecon the exact location where I was calling in from).

So believe it or not we are down to our final two weeks! Next its another travel day to Munich where I have a trade-show and meetings, then on to Madrid (with a side biz trip to Zurich for me), and finally back to Milan for our flight home. See you soon!