World Traveling

Praise the Lord for a safe and magical trip! We're home safe from a whirlwhin trip to Paris, Rome, Greece and London.  Thank you Becky and Jens for including us in your amazing wedding.  We had the most wonderful time meeting your family and friends. 

Highlights from the trip:

Traveling with a 3 month old-
You'd think Sofia would have made the trip challenging and stressful.  Actually, she made the trip easier in a lot of ways.  In airports, they direct you to the family line, especially if their crying which happened once.  People are nice to you when you have a cute baby.  They give you their seat on the subway.  They talk you and ask you questions about the baby.  People smile at you.  Sofia made our trip such a happy one.  The hotel offers you a crib.  A person in an airport showed me to a "mother's room" to nurse. 

Paris (2 days) -
On our 2 days in Paris we took a boat tour on the Seine River to see sites like the Eiffle Tour and did a 4-hours walking tour of Paris.  My favorite thing about Paris seeing the famous sites like Louve, Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame.  The buildings were so beautiful, but the city smelled like urine.  We miss the free and clean American bathrooms.  The French in general are much shorter and thinner.  Nathan often had to duck in doorways.


Boat tour on the Seine





Notre Dame

Night Train to Rome- The train ride was not as romantic as we imagined.  The food car was broken and the train stopped a lot through the night. Luckily we had a sleeping car which had bunkbeds that come down.  Nathan and Sofia slept.  I layed there hour after hour listening to the skrieking, whistles and Sofia breathing.  I'm not use to sleeping in the same bed as her.  After 15 hours on the train I didn't feel so well.  It took half a day to get my land legs back. 

Rome (24 hours)-
We ate dinner at a typical pasta/pizzeria.  Yummy!  We were famished after the train ride since there was no food available.  We stayed in a beautiful, delightfully air conditioned hotel across the street from Vatican City.  It was nearly 100 degrees the day we were there.  The next morning we enjoyed a tour of Vatican City.  We saw the Sistine Chapel, Pieta and the Basilica.  We have to go back someday because a few hours just isn't enough time to see everything.  It brought tears to my eyes to see the Sistine Chapel. 

Pizzeria

Vatican City: Basilica

Pieta in the Basilica

Greece (6 days)-
We were so relieved to make it to Greece.  After all the traveling and sightseeing we were ready for relaxing.  The main reason we came to Europe was to be there to celebrate Becky and Jens' wedding.  I couldn't wait to see them and meet their family and friends.  By far the best part of Greece was meeting everyone.  Forty-four people came to Greece for the wedding, including 5 from Seattle (Becky's friends Greta and Jason).  Greece was beautiful of course.  The turquoise water was the most spectatuclar thing.  Unlike the Columbia River, it felt like bath water!  Sofia even had her first sea dip.  She didn't even cry.

Greece is VERY far away. The shortest route would be to take 2 planes to get to Athens, then a plane or ferry to the Island of Crete, then a 2 hour winding bus ride to Sfakia (yuck!) ,then a 20 minute ferry to Loutro (some guests stayed there) and a short speed boat ride to our accomodations named Pheonix.  Some guest stayed a little town past Pheonix called Likos.  Becky get her wish of having a remote, destination wedding.  It was really neat that the wedding guests were split up among three little towns, so we could visit each one, try the food and walk or boat between them.

Grazing goats

Loutro

Hike from Loutro to Pheonix

Beach at Pheonix



Leif, Becky, Siri, Helge and us
Becky's Norweigen Family




Pheonix, the little town we stayed at




Walking from Pheonix to Loutro



Turtle who visited every morning

On our way to Becky and Jens wedding

Look out from the wedding site
The wedding site was at old Venetian ruins

Becky and her dad, John

Becky and Jens' wedding



Party at Pheonix



Greta and Sofia



Congratulations Becky!

London (2 days)-
We broke up the trip home, since it's so much traveling by visiting London.  After being in humid, hot weather for over a week, I was freezing in London.  It was like normal Seattle weather- 60s.  The Brit were having a cool summer.  We loved our hotel room and the delicious French press coffee.  You know us, we're coffee snobs!  The Greeks had amazing food, but the coffee...not so good!  After carrying Sofia in the front pack for 2 weeks now, she was losing patience for it.  We were also so excited to see Linnea.  We'd missed her so much. 

Thank you Mom, Dad, Hailey, Sylvia, Tom and Philip for taking care of Linnea.  She had a great time with you! It was such a blessing to visit Europe, be there for Becky and Jens and spend lots of quality time with Nathan.  Sofia was a dream!  She slept great, ate great and made people happy!