Allez Lance!!!
Ok – after several death threats, I figured I should probably hop online and update the good ol’ blog ;-).
Not that this is probably news to any of you – but LANCE WON #6 :-)!!! Much to the chagrin of my co-workers, I’ve had a need to keep everyone up-to-date on Lance’s progress…so why spare you? It was an exciting race this year – and we actually got to see part of it live (more below)! Unfortunately – the television coverage of the race here in the UK was pathetic (not on the news, not on primary channels – note to self: get cable before July 2005) – but we were able to follow it online pretty well. In addition to Lance’s overall win – Robbie McEwen, an Aussie, took 1st place in the points classification…so that made Penny happy.
So what’s new with us…
As I mentioned above – we traveled to the beautiful town of Carcassonne for stage 14 of the Tour, which was an absolute blast. The fun part, I think, was that neither of us had heard of Carcassonne before, went there without any expectations, and ended up having an awesome time. The town itself is great – just outside of the modern city center lies the largest walled city in Europe (La Cite), which has been renovated a fair bit to cater to the tourists – but is still great to explore. The town also lies on le Canal du Midi – a tree lined canal built in the 17th century that connects the Atlantic and Mediterranean (recently named a world heritage site). We didn’t get to see as much of that as we would have liked – but the houseboats that you can rent to cruise the canal looked pretty tempting…so we may get back there at some point :-).
The food was also extremely tasty – we were able to sample some excellent produce, great bread, good wines, and we also enjoyed some Cassoulet…a Languedoc regional specialty which is basically a duck, sausage, and bean stew. Good stuff.
The actual watching of the tour was a pretty funny experience. We lined up along the street in what we thought was a good spot in town about 1.5k from the start, and waited for several hours until the start time (during that time – the promotional caravan went through and gave out gear, and the young riders also went through). When the tour finally started – the actual time where we were watching Tour riders only lasted about 20 seconds – and then we were done. It was cool to see them, but there was definitely a “was that it??” moment afterwards :-). That said – once they had passed (and the rest of the support crew rolled through) – we headed up to a local pub to watch the rest of the race with the other Tour junkies and had a great time. When all was said and done – going to see the Tour was a lot of fun, and are already planning next year’s visit (definitely going to go to some of the mountain stages next year - the peloton is spread out further and you get to see more).
What else is new?
We’ve mainly just been hanging around London for most of this month, to recover after a pretty intense June – which I think has suited us just fine. Have been able to take care of some things around the house that we’ve been meaning to do – put up a map of Europe that we’re sticking “been there” and “going there” pins in; hung a curtain that we’ve had for about 6 months; cleaned up the patio – and have managed to fire up the BBQ several times as well.
Other than that – just trying to get everything sorted for our upcoming holidays, and starting to get things mapped out for the next six months or so. We’ve finally figured out our accommodation for the Olympics…which is a *HUGE* relief. We’ll be camping at a camp site on the beach about 20km south of Athens…so we’ll be able to get around on public transport easily, AND we’re only paying about one sixth of what we would have paid for a hostel in Athens. Another perk is that we’ll get to try out our new tent :-) (thanks to Danielle and Shaun for helping to import it from the States!). We’re heading to Prague for a weekend at the end of the month, and Oktoberfest is also on the planning docket – trying to figure out when exactly we want to go, and where else we’d like to travel to…expect more on this soon (if any of you are interested in going to Oktoberfest – let us know!).
We’ve also been doing some dreaming around our latest crazy idea :-). Spurred by seeing all of the people following the Tour in their camper vans and Winnebagos, we’ve decided that whenever we decide to move out of Europe – we want to spend 2-3-4 months driving around the continent in a camper or camper van :-). Not much to be done on that at this point…other than drool over campers online.
Have had a few visitors over the past few weeks as well (the first of many). My friends Greg and Bruce (Greg’s a rocket scientist…no, really…a rocket scientist…it’s just fun to say) came through town a few weeks back and we got to entertain them for a bit. Went out to one of our new favorite spots – a great Turkish restaurant near our house – with them and our friend Katie who’s moving over here in August with WaggEd.
Haven’t really done anything touristy or cultural for a while…I suppose we should get on that. We did go see Fahrenheit 9/11 the other week though…which was great...highly recommend it. It was very witty, and funny…but at the same time horribly depressing. It was definitely an interesting experience watching it as an American overseas…I could feel myself sinking lower and lower into my chair as the film went on (mental note: must vote in November). To be fair – it was nothing new, and Moore took the easy shots wherever he could (with GW…there’s lots of opportunity for that)…but I think Moore did an excellent job putting it all together in an informative, funny, smart way. Greg said someone is making a republican rebuttal to the film this fall that goes after Moore…should be interesting to see what they come up with.
Well – I guess that’s about it for now. Oh! It’s my Birthday in a few weeks (August 8th…also my Grandma’s) – might be going camping…or might be going to see the Gypsy Kings outdoors in Hampstead Heath…not sure at this point, but probably the latter.
I have this feeling that I’ve left lots out…so I’ll try to post again next week to catch anything I may have missed. Oh! Pictures! So – we WILL have more pictures up soon. I’m trying to upgrade our hosting space (a measly 50MB at this point) to make room for some more albums, and haven’t heard back from our ISP…but hopefully you should expect some more in the next few weeks.
Hope all is well with everyone in N.America, Oz, and elsewhere.
Best,Jeff & Penny
Ps – Congrats to Ian & Ailisa on their engagement!
Not that this is probably news to any of you – but LANCE WON #6 :-)!!! Much to the chagrin of my co-workers, I’ve had a need to keep everyone up-to-date on Lance’s progress…so why spare you? It was an exciting race this year – and we actually got to see part of it live (more below)! Unfortunately – the television coverage of the race here in the UK was pathetic (not on the news, not on primary channels – note to self: get cable before July 2005) – but we were able to follow it online pretty well. In addition to Lance’s overall win – Robbie McEwen, an Aussie, took 1st place in the points classification…so that made Penny happy.
So what’s new with us…
As I mentioned above – we traveled to the beautiful town of Carcassonne for stage 14 of the Tour, which was an absolute blast. The fun part, I think, was that neither of us had heard of Carcassonne before, went there without any expectations, and ended up having an awesome time. The town itself is great – just outside of the modern city center lies the largest walled city in Europe (La Cite), which has been renovated a fair bit to cater to the tourists – but is still great to explore. The town also lies on le Canal du Midi – a tree lined canal built in the 17th century that connects the Atlantic and Mediterranean (recently named a world heritage site). We didn’t get to see as much of that as we would have liked – but the houseboats that you can rent to cruise the canal looked pretty tempting…so we may get back there at some point :-).
The food was also extremely tasty – we were able to sample some excellent produce, great bread, good wines, and we also enjoyed some Cassoulet…a Languedoc regional specialty which is basically a duck, sausage, and bean stew. Good stuff.
The actual watching of the tour was a pretty funny experience. We lined up along the street in what we thought was a good spot in town about 1.5k from the start, and waited for several hours until the start time (during that time – the promotional caravan went through and gave out gear, and the young riders also went through). When the tour finally started – the actual time where we were watching Tour riders only lasted about 20 seconds – and then we were done. It was cool to see them, but there was definitely a “was that it??” moment afterwards :-). That said – once they had passed (and the rest of the support crew rolled through) – we headed up to a local pub to watch the rest of the race with the other Tour junkies and had a great time. When all was said and done – going to see the Tour was a lot of fun, and are already planning next year’s visit (definitely going to go to some of the mountain stages next year - the peloton is spread out further and you get to see more).
What else is new?
We’ve mainly just been hanging around London for most of this month, to recover after a pretty intense June – which I think has suited us just fine. Have been able to take care of some things around the house that we’ve been meaning to do – put up a map of Europe that we’re sticking “been there” and “going there” pins in; hung a curtain that we’ve had for about 6 months; cleaned up the patio – and have managed to fire up the BBQ several times as well.
Other than that – just trying to get everything sorted for our upcoming holidays, and starting to get things mapped out for the next six months or so. We’ve finally figured out our accommodation for the Olympics…which is a *HUGE* relief. We’ll be camping at a camp site on the beach about 20km south of Athens…so we’ll be able to get around on public transport easily, AND we’re only paying about one sixth of what we would have paid for a hostel in Athens. Another perk is that we’ll get to try out our new tent :-) (thanks to Danielle and Shaun for helping to import it from the States!). We’re heading to Prague for a weekend at the end of the month, and Oktoberfest is also on the planning docket – trying to figure out when exactly we want to go, and where else we’d like to travel to…expect more on this soon (if any of you are interested in going to Oktoberfest – let us know!).
We’ve also been doing some dreaming around our latest crazy idea :-). Spurred by seeing all of the people following the Tour in their camper vans and Winnebagos, we’ve decided that whenever we decide to move out of Europe – we want to spend 2-3-4 months driving around the continent in a camper or camper van :-). Not much to be done on that at this point…other than drool over campers online.
Have had a few visitors over the past few weeks as well (the first of many). My friends Greg and Bruce (Greg’s a rocket scientist…no, really…a rocket scientist…it’s just fun to say) came through town a few weeks back and we got to entertain them for a bit. Went out to one of our new favorite spots – a great Turkish restaurant near our house – with them and our friend Katie who’s moving over here in August with WaggEd.
Haven’t really done anything touristy or cultural for a while…I suppose we should get on that. We did go see Fahrenheit 9/11 the other week though…which was great...highly recommend it. It was very witty, and funny…but at the same time horribly depressing. It was definitely an interesting experience watching it as an American overseas…I could feel myself sinking lower and lower into my chair as the film went on (mental note: must vote in November). To be fair – it was nothing new, and Moore took the easy shots wherever he could (with GW…there’s lots of opportunity for that)…but I think Moore did an excellent job putting it all together in an informative, funny, smart way. Greg said someone is making a republican rebuttal to the film this fall that goes after Moore…should be interesting to see what they come up with.
Well – I guess that’s about it for now. Oh! It’s my Birthday in a few weeks (August 8th…also my Grandma’s) – might be going camping…or might be going to see the Gypsy Kings outdoors in Hampstead Heath…not sure at this point, but probably the latter.
I have this feeling that I’ve left lots out…so I’ll try to post again next week to catch anything I may have missed. Oh! Pictures! So – we WILL have more pictures up soon. I’m trying to upgrade our hosting space (a measly 50MB at this point) to make room for some more albums, and haven’t heard back from our ISP…but hopefully you should expect some more in the next few weeks.
Hope all is well with everyone in N.America, Oz, and elsewhere.
Best,Jeff & Penny
Ps – Congrats to Ian & Ailisa on their engagement!
posted by Jeff at
2:46 PM
|
0 comments
