3/27/2006 4:31 PM Sicily time (6:31 AM Seattle?)
Daylight savings time supposedly has occurred here in Italy (Europe overall?). I'm not sure if the US had the same, I'll check that out some time later.
Anyway, we're here in Sicily. It seems when people refer to Sicily, they never actually specify any part of it. I'm not sure why that is, but I'll refrain from telling you what city we're in to make sure I conform with the masses. It's not that we seem to be in anything one would consider a city, but boy is it beautiful. Shelby thinks it may be her new favorite place in Europe ahead of Monaco. Of course, maybe it's the 5-star hotel we're staying at that had a massage and lunch included in the deal.
The view from this place is simply amazing. The splendor of the Mediterranean Sea combined with the view of a magnificent volcano. Toss in a castle sitting atop a nearby mountain, blue sky and palm trees sitting in a 5-acre garden with hundreds of chirping birds just outside our room and it's easy to see why people like visiting Sicily.
As it turns out, and to our surprise, there's no bridge from southern Italy to Sicily. The train we took actually boarded a ferry, crossed the water and dropped us back on some tracks before continuing on. We actually heard a Scotsman in Rome who basically sells bridges (such as the new Tacoma Narrows bridge) mention this fact, but we didn't realize that applied to train and car bridges.
Now a bit about Rome... or perhaps what's fresh on my mind as we were leaving Rome. We were just coming through the ticket area in the tram station and were asked by an employee and a security guy to do 2 things so we could bring our dogs in. Those 2 things being to muzzle them and carry them with us. We did both and they had no issues with us. For whatever reason, another tram employee comes out as we're going down the escalator and starts yelling at Shelby about us bringing the dogs down after we'd already been approved by his fellow co-workers.
The only thing I remember hearing him say before he started to walk down the escalator is, "but you see, I hate dogs." This seemed to be his perfect reasoning for trying to disallow us to use the trams, and of course this is the same tram station in which we saw 2 previous dogs enter without anything being said to them.
An upset Shelby obviously wasn't in his cards and as he got to the bottom with us and was done stating his opinion, he walked the other way. He didn't seem too interested in dealing with us at that point, but his idiotic words of hatred will stick with me for a while I'm sure.
Then there was the train ride. As it turns out, simply asking for 2 tickets from Rome to Sicily wasn't enough, the guy at the ticket office didn't sell me a "globalpass". How was I supposed to know I needed one? What the heck is this Europass (Eurorail? Eurail?) for anyway if not to cover this extra expense that most everyone else didn't even pay?
Anyway, back to Rome, which was fun for the most part. We saw it all, the Pope selecting new Cardinals, the Colloseum, the Pantheon, a castle, the massively crowded Sistine Chapel, rain, hail, thunder and lightning. We even saw some gladiators, someone dressed up as the Statue of Liberty and another as King Tut's Tomb. The peddlers went from entertaining to annoying within a day. Sure it's genius to sell an umbrella when it's raining, but do all 1,000 of you need to do that every time a drop of rain falls from the sky?
We did get to hang out with Eric and Lisette for a day. They made the trip around Rome seeing the sights an enjoyable one.
As for the rest of the vacation, we're still trying to figure it all out. We're pretty sure that Naples, Athens and Venice are all next, but we're not quite sure when we want to leave Sicily now that we got here. We were planning to leave tomorrow when we arrived, but this place has made it hard to pack up and go.
Arrivaderci!
3/20/2006 6:38 PM Rome time (9:38 AM Seattle)
Buon Giorno from Roma! We had a rough, but quite entertaining weekend. While attempting to travel from Barcelona to Nice on Saturday, France, we arrived at Montpillier to find that the trains between there and Nice weren't running on Saturday and Sunday. While Shelby was in line, she encountered another couple who was having the same problem we were.
Eric and Lisette are a newlywed couple from Phoenix, Arizona who had been married the previous weekend and were travelling from southern Spain through Barcelona to Nice, and then on to Rome. Oddly enough, that itinerary was very similar to ours where we came from Sevilla through Barcelona and were heading through Nice for a couple nights before spending a week in Rome.
Seeing as how we were both in the same predicament, we stepped out of line and began looking for a car rental place. After taking a while to find the car rental companies, we picked out a vehicle and began our journey to Nice. We enjoyed the trip as there was a lot to talk about with how our journeys both led us to our meeting point.
We got to Nice without any major issues, returned the car and paid 30 Euros for a 10 minute ride to back to our hotels. The weather in Nice wasn't nice, but given the time of year, it was somewhat expected. We ate dinner last night with them at a place they had eaten at the previous day and they showed us the nice 5-star hotel they were in.
This morning we woke up at 4:30 AM Rome time and got on a train heading here. That went by without any problems thankfully and we arrived at our hotel, this time with free internet access to log in and do some work. The place in Nice wanted to charge us 9.50 Euros for every 2 hours use of their Wi-fi.
Anyway, off to do work. Shelby will be updating stuff later.
3/16/2006 Late Barcelona time (Not sure in Seattle)
Hola
We're back in Barcelona for a couple of nights. Went to Granada to see Alhambra. I guess it's neat inside, but we didn't have time nor really care to go in given the amount of driving to do. Looking at stuff from the outside was cool enough. More later. Bed time soon or something.
3/12/2006 11:30 PM Sevilla time (2:30 PM Seattle)
Hola from Sevilla. We're here for about 4 nights in the High Tech Hotel. They're High Tech, but their internet connection restricts me from using port 1723 which allows me to access VPN for work. How's that for fun? Hopefully by tomorrow their service provider will have it available for use so I can get work done.
In other news, after I finished my last update, we walked down the street and saw the President arrive at his palace for the first time. They had a nice procession with horses, a band and a band on horses among other things. It was pretty cool to see, what nice timing and location we had.
Yesterday we drove to Sintra, a small town near Lisbon. We parked the car in the middle of town thinking the Castle and Palace they had there was close, then proceeded to walk up to the top of a mountain to finally see the Castle and Palace. Man what a walk, but quite a beautiful one. We weren't the only ones that walked up, so we weren't completely delirious, but upon arriving at the entrance to the Palace, we were told dogs weren't allowed. We decided to head back and were told the dogs weren't allowed on the bus.
So to make a long story short, I took the bus down, grabbed the car, drove up, grabbed Shelby and the dogs, parked in a parking lot, got tickets to see the Palace, walked around, ran to the car and drove back to Lisbon.
The night before that we went to the Castle of Lisbon with the dogs. These people had no problems with dogs entering the grounds despite the presence of cats and peacocks. The peacocks took particular interest in the dogs and tended to follow us around and get within 10 feet of the dogs.
As we were making our way towards the exit, we stopped to grab a sunset picture. In doing so, we met Neal (originally from Dallas) and Tania (originally from Alberta), and their son Kaden. We hung out with them talking for a while and enjoying the beautiful view from the Castle's terrace.
After saying goodbye and hurrying on down to catch a tram, Shelby almost literally ran into another couple (Kelvin and Therese). This time, they were from Seattle of all places, and Kelvin actually works at Microsoft too. Such an odd coincidence, especially since the only way we'd have met them is by leaving at the exact time we did. We stopped for a bit and chatted with them also, exchanging info about each other's stay in Lisbon and what our vacation plans are.
When all was said and done there, we headed down to the tram, hopped on and got back home without issue.
Today we drove to Sevilla, stopping along the way in Isla de Cristina because we saw signs for "Playas". I had taught Shelby "Donde esta la playa" so much that she instantly recognized where the beaches were from the signs we saw on the road. The dogs loved the beach, especially having the freedom to roam up and down off-leash. Some kids enjoyed seeing them run around and bugged us with questions, most of which went completely uncomprehended. Another couple made their way down the beach with their dog, so Boone and Kenzie had a chance to visit with someone before we took off for Sevilla.
Anyway, we've arrived here in Sevilla. We did dinner across the river in an Italian restaurant. Neither of us liked what we ate much, but walking back to the car gave us a chance to see a nice view of the river with a Castle turret on the other side. So far we're impressed with Sevilla. (Let it be known that we did like Lisbon quite a bit, I think we'd say moreso than Milan or Madrid, simply because there seems to be so much history there comparatively.) The place we're staying at is on a road muddled within a bunch of one-way streets that are barely and rarely labeled, certainly not somewhere that'd help you know when a street you want to turn at is near.
In any case, we look forward to our stay, here's hoping the issue with the port is resolved tomorrow. Shelby and the dogs will be updating their journals tomorrow, so look for that.
Adios
3/9/2006 4:07 PM Lisbon time (8:07 AM Seattle)
Hello again from Lisbon. Just checking in to say that Shelby and the dogs won't be able to update their journals this week because we're limited to only my work computer being able to get onto the internet for whatever reason. Hopefully this changes when we move on to the next place.
Lisbon has been pretty fun, we got to visit the castle in the middle of downtown yesterday and ate at a restaurant close by that was recommended to us. This weekend we hope to go see the rest of the downtown area as we've been pretty limited from that area based on our location and my having to get work done.
I just noticed on TV that the dollar has gotten a bit stronger since we arrived a month ago. I believe when we left it was around 1.25 dollars to 1 Euro. Now we saw on TV that it's about 1.17. Given the cost of everything around here, I can imagine that the US dollar should get a lot stronger as we go along. Inflation in everywhere we've been except Portugal has seemingly run rampant. The cost of a 500 square foot apartment tends to average somewhere between 300k to 400k in Euros in the larger cities like Barcelona, Madrid and Milan. Monaco was more like 1 million for such condos, but they're an entirely different situation.
The President of Portugal was inaugerated today as far as we can tell. They're making a big deal about it on TV. That's about all for now!
3/6/2006 12:28 PM Lisbon time (4:28 AM Seattle)
We're in Lisbon, Portugal this week. We arrived yesterday afternoon, walked around a little and saw a couple of sights we'll need to get pictures of. Last night we had a wonderful cheap dinner at none other than McDonalds. Shelby couldn't find any food at the local restuarants and when we saw McDonalds, we decided to do what any American with picky tastes would do.
Small tid-bits of where we're at. A couple blocks down is the equivalent to the US's White House. We're not far off from the President of Portugal's home, it's not white though, it's pink. And we're told that the President has to pay rent during his term in office. Oddly we didn't see any security outside the place, I guess they may take Sundays off?
Anyway, we'll snag some pics and throw them up later. Just next to that place is beautiful building, I believe it's a Cathedral, but we'll get more info later. Off we go to get brunch, we'll write again soon.
3/4/2006 2:11 PM Madrid time (5:11 AM Seattle)
Hola
The weather is quite terrible here in Madrid today. We were hoping to head out to Toledo where we hear there are some pretty cool things to look at, but when we got to the train station, we were unable to find where the correct train was, and we didn't have tickets anyway... which turns out cost more than I was willing to pay, (Europass was no use) plus the fact they said dogs needed to be in bags.
This is all odd to us considering Toledo is only a half hour away from Madrid while Segovia was an hour further. Going to Segovia, we didn't need anything for the dogs, and the people just handed us the tickets once they saw our Europasses.
In any case, it wouldn't have been too fun in Toledo with all the rain pouring down. It was bad enough walking back to our apartment. At least we got a couple of cool pics of the dogs, and of course had a few people take a picture of them too. A group of 5 women just stood and watched us take pictures of them. Then another woman with her significant other asked me (in Spanish, didn't understand a word she said) if we'd mind letting her husband get a shot of her with Boone and Kenzie.
We're happy to oblige of course.
So tomorrow we're getting a rental car and heading off to Lisbon. The drive will probably be at least 5 hours. While I'm not looking forward to it, it'll be nice to be in a new town. It's just too bad the weather is supposed to get into the low 70's here in Madrid next week, while Lisbon is predicted to be in the low 60's. I'm a fiend for warm weather right now and Spain isn't helping us out.
Ah well, at least by the time we get down to Greece and Sicily (itinerary), it should be at least in the 70's there.
As for Madrid, it has some nice qualities to it, and it's central to places like Toledo, Segovia, Sevilla and Granada if you're doing the tourist thing. Catching a train from the Atocha to one of those to do a day trip should be easy if you're not travelling with dogs. There's a bunch of places to see around here, but the fact that we aren't really taking the time to look at art and check out the insides of museums means we're likely not taking full advantage of what Madrid has to offer.
We'll have to figure out a way to get out to Toledo... perhaps tomorrow morning to just drive through or something. As it sounds like a cool place to check out.
Anyway, adios for now, back to work.
2/28/2006 5:42 PM Madrid time (8:42 AM Seattle)
Hola
Still in Madrid, no daytrip today. We walked around a little bit, stopped in a park where the dogs could run around, then went to the train station to waste time there. Our trip to Lisbon is looking like it'll be very expensive if we either take the train (has to be an overnighter) or rent a car and drop it off while in Lisbon. It turns out that renting a car and returning it in another country can be quite expensive. At least, for Hertz and supposedly Avis, this is the case.
This all puts a kink in our plans. If we take the overnighter, we'll end up wasting a paid night's stay in either Lisbon or Madrid. If we drive a car, we're better off keeping it all week and returning it upon our arrival back to Spain. Of course, it sounds like the parking in Lisbon is nightmarish. If it's anything like here in Madrid (2 hours max, then you need to leave the district for at least 4 hours before you can return to park in that district again), we definitely don't want to have a car.
In other news, supposedly today is Fat Tuesday. I haven't seen any carnival stuff happening, but I'm told it's all supposed to be going on. I believe I found a location of a concert being held here in Madrid, so we'll have to try and get out to finally experience a bit of night life in Europe. Hopefully we're not too tired to do that.
2/27/2006 7:18 PM Madrid time (10:18 AM Seattle)
Hello from Madrid!
So last week was the slow week for updates to the journals as we didn't have any places planned to stay, we should be doing better this week. I'm sure you can read all about it from Shelby's journal. The dogs should have their journal updated sometime within the next day for all of the wonderful places they've been.
Anyway, back to me. I'm now back to work, gotta do my minimum 40 hours a week to make this trip possible. Shelby's currently working on planning how we're going to get to Lisbon from Madrid. If you haven't read by now, Spain isn't as dog-friendly as Italy and France have been. This goes for both paying more for their rides on the train and for all of the restaurants that we've been to. We were able to go inside one place in Barcelona and ate outside one place in Valencia as the dogs weren't allowed in. The hotel we stayed at though I was able to take Boone down to the buffet for breakfast, so that was fun.
There's a lot to talk about and I need to eat soon, so I'll get as much in as possible. Sorry if it's a repeat of Shelby's journal.
No offense to Spanish people, but in Spain, they all talk like they have a lisp. I didn't realize this was the case until we got here and I found out that the C's are pronounced as a TH when not at the beginning of a word. I was previously taught back in school that D's were pronounced with the TH. Darn Mrs. Rooney, I'll never forgive you for this!
Anyway, this has caused me to struggle with understanding everyone trying to talk to me. Not only do they speak too fast, but now the transition of hearing/saying "Barsuhloanuh" to "Barthuhloanuh" is killing me. Oh well, I'll get over it and continue to say, "no hablo bien, mas despacio por favor".
Next up, people seem to love our dogs. We've been out in Europe for about 20 days and in those 20 days, we've had about 20 different people take a picture of our dogs. Some see us setting them up to take a photo and decide to snap a shot. One walked up that said he was from Germany and had lost his pet within the past few years(also a Scottie) and wanted to grab a shot of ours. One lady wanted to be photo'd with the dogs next to her. And lastly in Valencia, one couple wanted a picture of our dogs with their children.
Quite often we'll see someone's face light up when walking past us. It's nice that Boone and Kenzie have that affect on people. Boone has taken to actually letting people pet him these days also, while Kenzie of course is dying for affection when she hasn't gotten it recently enough. Sadly though Kenzie has started to lash out at other female dogs when we've introduced them on leashes. I'm not sure how or if we'll get past that hurdle any time soon, so we tend to ask and then avoid female dogs.
Castles... we still haven't seen enough of them, nor large enough to make us appreciate what we've anticipated. It was cool driving between Valencia and Madrid and seeing a small castle or sometimes a cathedral up on a hill surrounded by a town.
Madrid is currently colder than I had hoped for. I guess a cold-front flew in as we were travelling into Spain, which seems fitting considering we had hoped to avoid any more cold weather. Oh well, I can't wait for a day-trip to Segovia and Sevilla regardless of the weather. I hear there are some magnificent things to see. I also heard we should hit Granada, so I guess we'll need to figure out how to fit that in.
Also, I found out that Mardi Gras is supposedly tomorrow here in Madrid. We'll have to see what that's all about here in Spain. Hopefully it's good fun. We'll see how dog-friendly the event is. I assume the may need to come home and sleep for a good portion of the event.
Anyway, off for food. We haven't done much of the Spanish food quite yet. Iberian Ham is quite expensive here, I'll have to try a dish of that and see what it's all about. As Shelby would tell you, I'm quite the ham and bacon fanatic, so I look forward to this. I did have a pancake with strawberry syrup and cream last night. The pancake tasted quite different than I'm used to.
Adios! 2/20/2006 5:24 PM Monaco time (8:24 AM Seattle)
Hello from Monaco!
Okay, if I told you we were going to take a trip around France outside of Paris and the French Riviera, I lied. Our time at the Winter Olympics waiting for the spectator buses to arrive and take us from one place to another was the cause of this. We spent one and a half hours one time waiting for a bus that's supposed to come either after 15 or 30 minutes.
Needless to say, we were pretty upset with the bus system and we only tried to use it 5 times. There was no organization to it, the buses for volunteers ran more often and skipped picking up spectators even when they were empty and had no other stops to make before the next destination.
So we sat there in the freezing cold and decided that France may not be warm enough at this time of the year and we should probably head south and get some sun.
So here we are in Monaco, where the weather is AWESOME. The water looks great, the hotel is VERY luxurious for our standards. Of course, for the amount we're paying for the 2 nights we're staying here, it better be nice.
We all love the 5th floor view and it's right on the waterfront where all the huge yatchs are. I think the dogs will be updating their journal with pictures sometime soon.
This whole week of vacationing is on the fly, so we're not always sure what train we're taking or what hotel we're staying at. I think we're going to Barcelona next, and from there somewhere down south where we can hit the warm beaches hopefully.
I'm working on trying to get a place to stay in Lisbon, hopefully near the train station and the water. We'll see how that goes.
We'll update with pictures later!
2/14/2006 4:23 PM Italy time (7:23 AM Seattle)
We spent yesterday on a day trip to Genova and Torino after finally deciding to get a Eurorail pass. The 2-month unlimited pass will be a hard purchase to regret as travelling via train is nice and relaxing, unless of course you're waiting outdoors in 30 degree weather.
Genova is south of Milan by the sea. Christopher Columbus place of birth is their claim to fame. It's a very nice city, quite a lot of hills compared to Milan, which causes everything to be stacked onto each other. Through one area we walked, there was only a sidewalk that took 15 minutes to go from a road at the top to the road at the bottom. Moving in and out can't be easy there, we actually did see a group of movers hauling stuff down the steps.
In Torino we took in the sights and sounds as the place was packed from the Olympics going on. It's really a nice clean city compared to Milano, and so was Genova. It looked like they did a lot of cleaning up in Torino though as the place simply sparkled. There were no spray-painted signs (tags) all over that exist on every wall in Milan.
The dogs seemed to enjoy the trip, especially getting to see all the sights and meet plenty of other dogs, some quite happy to see them. We get plenty of comments, especially from the 50+ crowd who tend to absolutely adore them. Usually we hear, "Che bella", "Belli", "Black and white" and "Whiskey". At Charlie Brown's restaurant here in Milan, where we've eaten with the dogs twice now, one guy actually showed us a bottle of Whiskey with a picture of the Scottie and Westie on it. "Black & White" seems to be quite a recognizable brand in Italy as I assume that's why people who speak very little English tend to say it when passing by.
In any case, here's a link to Boone and Kenzie's journal as they've decided to start their own.
2/12/2006 2:00 AM Italy time (5:00 PM Seattle)
We took the dogs out this morning and decided to walk some from there. We ended up finding a dog park about 5-7 blocks from where we're staying. It's a relatively small dirt area between roads, but perfect to let the dogs get out and do some running. They got some play time in and other people showed up with their dogs, so Boone and Kenzie got to make some new foreign-speaking friends.
We went to a couple of cafes after that, one for me to get some "toast", and the other to get a couple of croissants, one chocolate filled for Shelby and the other filled with fruit for me. One thing to note, the pastry shops around here look delicious. We haven't really stopped in a fancy one to try stuff out yet, but we definitely will need to sometime soon.
As you'll notice by the time I'm posting this, our hours are still a little messed up. I think to fix the problem, we need to avoid napping during the day. Maybe we'll get to that. One more week until we're at the Olympics, should be fun.
2/11/2006 8:45 AM Italy time (11:45 PM Seattle)
So we've had a few days to actually experience Italy, and there tends to be some noticeable differences. The average size car here is a Mini Cooper, the small Smart car is very popular here. People ride their bikes and there are tons of motorcycles and scooters.
People here are thinner... I'm not sure what the secret is, but they're all skinny. There are also quite a few shorter women walking around than I'm used to seeing.
Dogs are allowed in most places. We took them shopping yesterday along with eating in a Cafe and a Restaurant.
They don't tend to serve breakfast. There's no such thing as pancakes, waffles or french toast. Of course, they do have "toast", which is a ham and cheese toasted sandwich, so I'm set for breakfast in that case.
Shelby can ask for a "hot chocolate" and she gets the equivalent of a Chantico at Starbucks. They provide you with a couple of sugar packets to dump in and make it sweeter.
They park everywhere. The sidewalks tend to be used for driving on to find parking between the sidewalk and the street. They don't enforce "no parking" 30 feet from the lights, and people tend to gladly bump into cars around them while parallel parking. Also, I haven't noticed a speed limit sign. Some motorcyclists go as fast as they can until the next stoplight.
On Thursday we went to see Duomo and looked around downtown. It's amazingly huge, tons of large paintings lining the inside of the Cathedral, and a huge area out front that people gather around and just hang out. Below are some pics from the trip. We decided to walk to the top of Duomo instead of taking the lift. It wasn't too bad of a walk and maybe worth the 2 Euros we saved.
Here are some pics from that adventure:
2/7/2006 8 PM Italy time (11 AM Seattle)
Bon Giorno!
We're in the apartment and took a nice 4 hour nap to recover slightly from the time differences. Shelby's already unpacked her bags and now she's cutting her farmicia stuff in half. After hitting the internet cafe, we walked a little ways down the street and found a pizza place that let us bring in all of our luggage and the dogs on their leash. We were able to purchase a couple slices of pizza.
I tried to use their pop machine to get an Orange Fanta, which you wouldn't think would be a problem, but it ate my 1 dollar Euro coin. Yeah, $1.25 for a can of pop... I was thirsty. Luckily the guy had one of them behind the counter he could give me.
After pizza we walked with our luggage to the park a couple of blocks down the road. The dogs seemed pretty happy to be out in the open space for a while. We sat on a park bench in the freezing cold (30 degrees farenheit when we arrived) until it was about time to go see the lady, Benedetta, for getting into the apartment.
Once we got into the apartment, we found our bags had been soaked, likely from the huge rain storm we encountered in Atlanta. Our airplane took off an hour late from Atlanta, as they said they were waiting for some bags to be transferred from another plane. It now seems likely it was our 2 bags and they sat outside the whole time.
We called Delta, thanks to Skype (more on that in a minute) and let them know about the drenched bags. They told us they'd reimburse us for drycleaning with a receipt, and to bring anything permanently damaged in to them for inspection. Of course... they don't cover electronics.
Speaking of Skype, mom pointed me in their direction about a week ago for being able to talk with people via the internet. For computer to computer conversations, all "calls" are free. For calling to actual phones in the US or Europe from the computer, it's 2.3 cents (US). So I paid 10 dollars and got 8 hours of call time. All it takes is a headset. My username if you need to add me is "dobbsb"
My T-Mobile phone is saying that it doesn't receive service anywhere here in Milan. I just barely switched it to find networks automatically and it still isn't getting a signal. Since the cost of using the phone is pretty prohibitive here anyway, we'll find some pay-as-you-go phone service as those get free incoming minutes I've read, and that way we don't pay the dollar per minute minimum to call from Europe to the US.
We're about to take the dogs to the park again for a bit, and then go eat at "Charlie Brown's", a pizzeria that was recommended to us by the renter of this apartment. She said, "The name may not be so good, but it's great Italian food." Thankfully she speaks good English. She lived in America for some amount of time, so there's no problem communicating at all. Below is a picture of our apartment while I'm writing this. We'll write again soon.
2/7/2006 about 10 AM Italy time (1 AM Seattle):
I have no idea where the apostrophe is on this keyboard...
We arrived a bit earlier than we were able to get into the apartment, so I stopped in this little internet cafe down the street. Nobody speaks English of course, and I still dont know a word of Italian. Well need to start studying up on the phrase book Greg gave us.
Boone and Kenzie did great on the airplane. No problem at all with them, they had their heads stuck out the top of the bag so we could pet and feed them. Only issue there was with seating on the flight to Milan. The middle seats all had heater vents, so the dogs couldnt sit in seats next to each other.
Anyway, Ill write again sometime soon after we get settled in. The traffic in this town is crazy. Id really like to get a car for travelling around, but the way people drive here is scary. And pedestrians dont hesitate to step out into the middle of the street with oncoming traffic. Even when theyre about to be ran over, they dont try to get across the street any quicker.
Talk soon.
1/20/2006:
We found a contractor to come out and help with finishing the house last Sunday. He came out and made a huge difference in how fast things were getting done for finishing the house. He was nice enough to help get some drywallers out for quotes and timelines on getting our basement done with hanging and mud/taping of the family room included. Considering the whole job will take them 5 days, I think it'll be well worth what we're paying them.
One cool thing to see was that both groups that came in saw the tiling in the tub and immediately asked who did the tile work, as they thought it looked great. They were even more amazed to find out that Shelby did it herself.
Inspections for framing and electrical were passed today. We're still a ways off from being done, but we're getting there. I'm hoping to finish by 2/3/2006. Jeff, our contractor, said he'd put it into overdrive after the drywallers are done a week from today.
I've still got to do insulation tomorrow while Shelby will be doing tile this weekend in the master bathroom. I'm not totally sure when she'll be doing the granite tile in the powder room, that may wait until the wood floors are being done during the final week.
Shelby had the worst time today handling electrical problems. She's still unsure what the problem is with one of the circuits, but hopefully it gets settled soon so we can continue with the rest of the work.
Tonight I'm updating the website a bit to hopefully make it easier to deal with it during our trip. I added the nice little header image to the journals and main page. Assuming I have time, I'll be adding our itinerary. It's certainly not going to be set in stone, but it's the basis from which will work to travel throughout Europe. We still haven't figured out how precisely we'll be travelling through Europe. The thought right now may be to buy a car rather than lease or go by train. The other thing I've been trying to look into is wireless internet. It looks like we're still a few years off from international mobile internet for cheap prices. So far the best and I believe only unlimited internet plan I've found costs 20 dollars per day.
Anyway, off to do stuff.
Ben