san francisco

Nick, a friend of Paul's from Cape Town, whom I met in London, now lives in San Francisco. With the bustle of the holidays over, Paul contacted him. We didn't turn down his invitation and promptly used Dad's United companion passes for a four night stay with Nick in his lovely Pacific Heights apartment. The springlike weather in Colorado was on its way out, replaced by a winter storm, so the timing was perfect. We enjoyed the ocean air: cool, but fresh and balmy compared to Colorado. We got to see San Francisco covered in its gray mantle but also unveiled in its sunny glory of cobalt sky, deep green ocean, colorful Victorian houses bathed in sunlight and all of it accented by the unique red gold of the Golden Gate Bridge.

My first feelings after leaving the underground BART train and emerging in the middle of the business district's skyscrapers was that I missed London. I hadn't thought much about it until I was back in the atmosphere of the big city again.



This homesickness for London was further intensified as walked through charming neighborhoods of terraced and detached houses in some of the most beautiful examples of Victorian architecture I've seen.













We did as much sightseeing as time, Tim and our feet could stand. The main events are all in a relatively small area, and so we walked. We learned quickly to choose our route based on the streets that were on a similar altitude instead of sticking to the straightest line. The hills are not exaggerated. Our shins have muscles we didn't know existed. We went through Chinatown on our way to Coit Tower and were surprised by an excellent parade. Chinese New Year was Monday but we didn't expect to see celebrations early.






Coit Tower was built by an eccentric woman to celebrate fire fighters. It's supposed to look like the nozzle on the end of a fire hose. The paintings inside are impressive and a nice celebration of the worker.





We didn't see all the sights, so we'll have to go back, but we got in enough to feel like we've been to San Francisco. Including Chinatown, we got in the area frequented by the beatniks.











We made a trip on the cable car from near Union Square to Ghiardelli's Square and Fisherman's wharf, including a walk back up hill to Lombard Street, the curviest street in the world. I didn't know that cable cars are called this because they use a cable that runs under the ground to move them. A mechanism under the car grabs the cable and the operator controls how fast the thing moves.





While enjoying our lunch at Fisherman's wharf, a pro-life march began. We ate lunch and left before the end. It was peaceful and active. I may not agree with them, but I appreciated that they were doing something about what they believe in a place that encourages such action. This also reminded me of London.

Like the Eiffel Tower to Parisians, the Pyramid was not well received by San Franciscans. I like that this is a city with a building impressive enough to be disliked.



Alcatraz is so close that the prisoners must have felt they were being doubly punished to be imprisoned and so near to such a lovely place. Some of them had million dollar views. We didn't go out for a tour.



Reading over this entry, I realize that it sounds like I'm feeling a bit of the small town blues here in Fort Collins. That's not true. I like it here and seeing it through Paul's eyes is a great experience. It continually gets ranked in the top ten places in America to live. It's what we want for now, and I hope you'll come for a visit once we get our own place. I'm fortunate to be able to call London home as well, and this trip has just reminded me of that.

our time with jenny and neville

My in-laws left this morning. Paul drove them to DIA at 02:00 this morning. They had an eight hour lay-over in Philadelphia. Their flight to London is seven hours, and they have an eight hour lay-over in London. Their last flight to Cape Town is eleven hours. Horrible! And they are talking of doing it again in June. Timothy is one well-loved, absolutely adored grandchild.

After we spent their first week in Breckenridge enjoying loads of beautiful snow and very cold weather, we got them settled into Mom and Dad's basement with us. They wanted to be as close to Timothy as possible, and he loved all the attention this gave him.

the condo at breckenridge

behind mom and dad's house

We celebrated Christmas here. Tim was showered with gifts from all sides of the family except his parents. We didn't buy him anything. There just wasn't anything left to buy.

christmas morning

After putting Timothy to bed one night, I drove Jenny, Neville and Paul around Fort Collins to show them the Christmas lights. We went through the display at a local company called Woodward Governor. They have been putting this up on their grounds since I was a child.

i like these purple led lights so much that i want to get some for next year

a woodward governor display

Dad took Jenny and Neville down to Colorado Springs to visit some friends who immigrated from South Africa in the '80's. Paul went along and did most of the flying once Dad took off.

in the back seat of the bonanza

airborne and still smiling

When most of the snow melted and the sun was bright in the blue sky, we drove up Thompson Canyon to the tourist town of Estes Park and had lunch. It was windy and bitter cold, so we didn't spend much time walking around.

wild elk enjoying the park in the center of town

the stanley hotel:stephen king's inspiration for the shining

the view just as we left the canyon, this is where we lost Tim's shoe. loveland is around the bend

Horsetooth Rock is the most prominent peak in the Fort Collins area. It's about 1000 feet above the city and can be seen from almost anywhere in town. There is a large park up there with hiking and biking trails, but I'd never been there until Paul arrived and we went back in November. Neville hikes in the mountains outside Cape Town almost every day and enjoyed doing the same at horsetooth despite the cold. It will be much better when they are here in June.

jenny and neville just below horsetooth

neville with long's peak in the background

the view behind horsetooth

neville below horsetooth

We drove up the Poudre Canyon for about an hour and enjoyed the scenery. You can tell it was warmer because they don't have on their gloves.

the poudre canyon

jenny and neville

Neville and Jenny braved the cold and wind and went to Mom and Dad's cabin with us for two nights. The first night, they were so cold they slept in their clothes. Jenny even wore her scarf around her neck to bed. By the next day, the logs of the cabin had soaked up the heat, and it was comfortable. They slept much better the second night. They took some nice walks while Tim played and manned the fireplace. I can't wait to take them back in the summer when they can fish the lake instead of sliding across it.

our first night at the cabin

the water system in the cabin was frozen but with water, we could use the toilet. paul and neville found us water

neville chopped through the ice

jenny and neville on a walk

Cabela's is an outdoor supply shop in Sidney, Nebraska, just a forty minute flight from Fort Collins. En route, Dad took them over Pawnee Buttes, made famous as Rattlesnake Buttes by James Michener in Centennial.

the shop has a huge taxidermy display along with lots of goods to buy

dad and jenny in front of the store

pawnee buttes

We drove the 45 miles north to Cheyenne so they could see some of Wyoming. It turned cold and started to snow, so we just drove around a little and ate lunch at the restored train depot.

the capital building

the depot

downtown

I can't wait for them to return in June, and not just because it will be warm and green. They are fun and interesting, and I really enjoy spending time with them. Timothy adores them. He managed today without his Gran to play with him and his Grand-da to show him how to shave with an electric shavor, but he missed them.

green card

Paul’s social security card and green card arrived, finally. When he filled out his paperwork in London, one of the questions was if he wanted them to sort out his social security card. He ticked ‘yes.’. With his immigration packet came a page stating that it would arrive within three weeks of his immigration. When that time came and went, he started making calls. No one seemed to know what he was talking about, so he made an appointment to see someone at the local office. She read this page and said she’d never heard of such a thing, that he had to come to his local office. His card arrived ten days later. While there, he had to give his details. When she tried to enter South Africa, she must have had some kind of character issue on the computer because she asked him if the ‘South’ was important. Later, she said she had to get out of here, meaning the US, because she didn’t know anything about the rest of the world.

Paul has started sending out his resume and has his first interview next Thursday. He has a lunch meeting with a friend of a friend who is in the business. He’s heard back from a place that he found on-line. This is encouraging even if it doesn’t lead to a job. It means that his resume is acceptable and his status hasn’t sent up any red flags.

We learned from our Realtor, a long time family friend, that it’s pretty easy to buy a home in the US, despite the housing crunch news. After meeting with him and a mortgage broker, we decided to make use of our free time now to look at homes. It’s been a great way for Paul to get to know the area. Jenny, Paul's mom, has come with us a couple of times and she enjoys seeing what the US has to offer. Colorado’s low water table means that almost all homes, and all the homes we are viewing, have full basements. Some are finished with bathrooms, a bedroom or office, and often a recreation room, but most of them are unfinished leaving the buyer free to complete them as he/she desires. The storage possibilities are enormous, a huge adjustment from our London flat. We won’t be buying anytime soon, maybe not for another year, but when we are ready, we’ll have most of the leg work done.

Living with Mom and Dad has been great. After being away for five years in Europe and living out of state for twenty years prior to that, it’s good to be with them again. They say they feel the same way. They aren’t pushing us out the door and we aren’t impatient to go, but our desire to make our own nest is ever present.

Paul’s parents arrived on 13 December and will return to South Africa on 11 January. We spent the first week of their visit in Breckenridge and have since been showing them around Fort Collins. Mom and Dad’s next door neighbors, Bob and Sue Pawlak, invited us to their Christmas party and made us dinner on New Year’s day. They know how to feed people, and we ate like kings both nights. I've got to go through pictures from three cameras, so it might be a little while before I post shots of what we've been doing.

tucson

Now that I’m finally done with the Europe trip, I need to catch up on what we’ve been doing since. Paul immigrated on 26 October 2008. We made two trips to the cabin for two nights each, and a trip to Tucson where my dear friends Roger and Cheryl graciously hosted us.

sabino canyon

the yetman trail near cheryl and roger's house

cheryl's butterfly and hummingbird garden (remember this is november)

roger and cheryl's great, great room

cheryl and roger's house and surrounding area

While we were there, we did a day trip across the border to Nogales, Mexico.

shopping

street signs

you can see the border fence on the hill on the far left

We stopped at San Xavier mission on the way home.


san xavier

france

We don't have any photos of our time in France because we hadn't backed them onto the memory stick before we were robbed. We stayed two nights beside a lovely lake near Chambery. This is a mountainous region and beautiful. It was such a relief to get to France where Paul and I both feel the most at home. We each came to love France before we met. As a couple it became dear to us as one setting for our romance, and Paris, in front of the Eiffel Tower, is the place where Paul proposed. Besides this, the roads are wide and rarely congested. The food is glorious. Paul speaks better than emergency French, so things are easier. Also, I find the French more like Americans than any other Europeans. They smile, make eye contact, and say hello. They are kind to people in need. In Paris years ago, a French couple helped me and my friends buy train tickets and get on the right train. We didn't ask for their help. They went so far as to purchase the tickets with their credit card because ours didn't work in the machine. We gave them our cash, of course. Like Americans, the French are patriots. They think France is the best country in the world. They don't apologize for being French. There are many other ways that the French remind me of Americans, but they are also uniquely themselves. They dress with such taste and ease. I used to be intimidated by it but now I find it inspiring. Outside of Paris they are provincial to the point of being nearly backwards. They welcome you warmly until they find out you plan to relocate nearby. Enough sweeping generalities. I hope that you will go to France and learn for yourself what these people are like. It's worth the trip.

The camp site wasn't really for travelers, but consisted mostly of long term caravans with established gardens and permanent foundations. Most of the people there were pensioners. They greeted us warmly with smiles and pets for Tim as we set up camp and they made their way to visit their neighbors for drinks, or card games, or dinner. I heard no English. Our spot was grassy with a view of the lake and mountains, and we enjoyed our dinner while watching the intermittent traverse of the people and the change of colors as the sun set. It began raining in the first night on the lake and rained the whole of the following day. It rained so hard that we stayed in the tent most of the day. It seems there was some concern about Tim being in this situation as the camp director stopped by in the late afternoon and offered to let us stay in his small trailer, one that he uses to take his son to the races. We didn't say no and quickly moved into the dry spot. Tim was happy to get out of the confines of the tent, even if it meant switching to the confines of the trailer. The area was beautiful despite the rain and when it let up, we walked to the shore and enjoyed the views of mountain and water. It was startlingly green. We stayed in a lot of camp sites in the rain, and never received such a gracious offer.

As we were settling into our new warm, dry spot, a young German couple arrived looking for a place to pitch their tent. They were on bicycles with two boys: ages one and three. They had a carriage for their boys and saddlebags for their gear. All of them were dressed in high tech clothes, comfortable in the rain. The mother spoke excellent English and we compared out trips. They traveled two hours each day, all that their boys would tolerate and usually camped for two nights. They were making their way to northern Italy before they would turn around and return home. The camp director offered them a caravan of a friend of his which they accepted, but I think they would have been happy staying in their tent in the rain. Before we'd left on our trip, we'd encountered our share of nay sayers telling us that we were crazy or ignorant to think we could make such a trip with a 6 month old. We'd turn around after the first week. By this time in our trip, we were feeling quite proud of ourselves and discussing a future extended camping trip in America with a second child in our future. We may have been feeling arrogant even. Meeting this couple certainly humbled us. It also inspired us. So don't be surprised if you hear that we're taking Tim and his younger sibling on a tour of the US or Canada or Mexico or all of them. No, I'm not pregnant.

The rain stopped in the night and by the time we packed up camp, our things were relatively dry. Our next stop was the Loire valley, a place full of chateaus, wine and soft green countryside. Every guidebook I've ever read makes this place sound magical. Our plan was to visit 2-3 chateaus (including the one used as a model for the captain's home in Tin Tin) and some villages and then turn for home. We found a sprawling camp site on the banks of the Loire River near the city of Blois, pronounced Blwuh, sort of. The city has a charming center, something we've come to expect from Western Europe. The first chateau we viewed, Chateau de Chambord, turned out to be the only one because we were robbed that night, but it was extraordinary. Inside is the double helix stairway, a da Vinci creation. I gather he designed such a staircase but didn't actually build this one. The place was cavernous, a white stone lady, dressed to the nines, with a grey slate roof. Wikipedia has some nice photos of the place.

You know most of the rest of the story. We encountered more kindness after the robbery. The camp director bought our tent, chairs, cooler, and other camping supplies. We had decided to sell them before the robbery as we knew they wouldn't do for our next planned trip and we didn't want to pay to have them shipped to the US. When we approached her about it, she didn't flinch and would have paid more, I believe. We stayed at a hotel in Versailles, a short train commute to Paris and the embassies where we had to sort out new passports. We didn't want to drive into Paris. They woman at the desk learned of our misfortune when she asked for our passports. She proclaimed that we wouldn't be charged breakfast. It seems a small thing, but it came at a time when we needed some comfort.

I got my passport the day that I went to the embassy. Paul and Tim got theirs the following day. We enjoyed a typically wonderful lunch near The Notre Dame before returning to Versailles. The robbery had exhausted our interest in sightseeing, even our favorite city.

The last event of our trip was the chunnel train back to England. While we were in the tunnel, there was a fire on the truck on the train in front of us. We were reduced to traveling 10 kilometers an hour. What should have been a twenty-five minute trip turned into a three hour chug, and it was hot. We chatted with our carriage mates, an English couple and a Romanian man with his family. The employees gave us a card to fill out with our address and the details of our journey. A few weeks later our bank account was credited for the trip. It seems our train was the last to go that night. The tunnel was closed for a day while they sorted out the smoke and did safety checks. So we got lucky and got to come home. For a change, the traffic was light and we made a very quick journey on the M25 to the safety and warmth of 'Smalldrinks.' Thanks again, Tara and John.

We've got our trip mapped out on Google Earth thanks to our GPS and Paul's diligence and marking all the spots we spent the night. It's impressive to look at. We're already talking about where we want to return and all the places we didn't go that we want to see like Spain and the Baltic nations and Germany. At the end of the trip, I felt that we had 'done' Europe. Now, I think we have a long way to go. I look forward to our return, and I look forward to another long camping trip, wherever that may be. We'd love to have you join us.