April in Paris

We're on the train from Paris to Amsterdam. Not Paris New York, but the Paris. It's one of those high speed trains (TGV) and it's packed. How come they can do it and we can't? That'll change when Bernie becomes President. Which means it won't change. We'll spend a couple of days with Henk and Marje who visited us years ago in Rhode Island and who came to Gabon with us last year.

Anyway, a week ago was the inauguration of the school we had renovated. Seems like a year ago. We left Sam the following morning and barely had time to catch our breath from the final full day of work to transition to Libreville and then red-eye flight to Paris.

We are working hard at the French bakeries to put back all the weight we had lost. We've done a few touristy things, like go to the Tuileries gardens, but we've also done a few new things and checked out some different quartiers. Oh and did we mention the ice cold Amstel and red wine and cheese?

And we're back on full Internet and catching up with Facebook. Most prominent was the Washington Post story on Johanna's illness. Mary gets a daily email from Amazon (which owns the Post) which highlights the most "trending" story, and it was on Johanna! I'm sure there's a story on how they learned of the story, but we'll save that one for face-to-face communication. Perhaps at Mt. Springs this summer, or even before. It was a good story, and relived a pretty scary time in her life.

We also saw that Oliver set a personal best for running the mile. I suspect it will not be his last personal best.

We were pleased/excited/thrilled to get an email from Joe and Leonore about September in Lisbon! We'll have lots of details to work out but we're looking forward to it already. Maybe we'll just stay here and meet you there. Maybe we'll win the lottery too.

Life back in the U.S. is inching back into our plans. Annie returns from her long trip to China and Malaysia tomorrow, and will finish her move to Boston this weekend, just in time to meet us when we return next Thursday! Mary has been keeping up with the two classes where she tutors with letters and photos. And my history activities are awaiting my return.

We expect to go down to DC the week after we get home, just in time to see Margaret before she takes off on a two week trip to Africa as part of her job. She and Andrew had been to Mexico for a friend's wedding while we were away.

We also just found out two more moves. John and Marilyn close on their new home near Daytona today, and we saw on Facebook that Kathleen is moving to New York City.

Lots of catching up when we get home, with the primaries, with baseball, with new movies, with spring! Speaking of which, spring here is glorious. April in Paris!

Love from across the pond. We close with a new motto we spotted in a bathroom here.

Good news!

First things first: Sean started his new job as a law clerk for the Presiding Judge in the Hudson County Superior Court, Chancery Division. Congratulations!

We enjoyed one of the longer spring break trips we've ever had – ten days in the Southwest. Some highlights and lowlights:

We flew first class both ways. When I booked the tickets, first class fares were only about eighty dollars higher each way, so we sprung for it. Our flight out left Newark at 8:00 and arrived in Las Vegas at 10:30 local time. Sean was kind enough to drive us and took Dasha for the duration. He and Johanna house sat the house the weekend we were gone. Our trip back was a red eye: departed LV at 11:00 and arrived at Newark at 7:00 am. Although there was a lot of turbulence, we mostly slept. Because there is no charge, we checked bags for the first time in many years.

I had booked a Toyota Corolla at Sixt, a big European company just getting started in the US. But they had no cars at all when we got there, because of the NCAA basketball games, they said. They gave us the next car that came in: a Mercedes small SUV. I mostly enjoyed driving it, although the controls were very confusing. I never figured out some of the heating controls. The transmission was electronic auto, and it took me a couple days to figure out how to put it in park (press a button at the end of the stalk.)

Gambling is everywhere in Nevada, starting with the airport itself and hotels, gas stations, convenience stores, many restaurants and more. It's pretty depressing. Casino hotel room rates mid week are very cheap, so we stayed at one south of the Strip. After you checked in, you had to walk the entire casino floor to get to the elevators. We had no interest in seeing Las Vegas, although we drove along the Strip a couple of times. On our first full day I tried to go fly fishing in a park north of the city, but high winds defeated me. Janet spent the day catching up with old friends from West Orange and high school.

We spent most of the trip in Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce Canyon. We planned things so that we would spend at least a day and a half in each park, to allow for real exploration and hiking. But even going to and from these national treasures is spectacular country.

Grand Canyon was very crowded and we didn't think the Park Service did a good job of managing the crowds. It's Spring Break, and so that accounts for the crowds, including hordes of Asians taking hordes of photos. We spent as much time waiting for and riding the shuttle buses as hiking.

Zion was our favorite and we did some prodigious hiking here, even to the point of getting lost one day and having to go back a re-ford a stream we'd had difficulty getting across.

Bryce had a surprise for us. The weather turned very cold – one day did not get above 24 and blustery winds made it worse, and it snowed. We had insulated jackets but no hats or gloves, and so we were not prepared. They closed the southern half of the park and the trails were icy and slippery. But it was magical seeing the park in snow.

We're so used to driving 45 minutes to the farthest reaches of New Jersey, we forget how big this country is. We drove 1300 miles and hiked 24 miles, and we still saw only a very small portion of the southwest and the parks we visited. We live in a very beautiful country.