Chesapeake Bay Bridge We started our long travel day(s) with an Uber from Ashburn, Virginia, to Dulles. I was lucky enough to have TSA precheck and sailed through. Laura and I, Laura being one of my high school friends and a many-times-over travel companion (Ireland, South America, Bahamas…), had a nice meal on the B Concourse. We left IAD on time, on Lufthansa. Such a … Continue reading To Frankfurt and Beyond
I went back to Virginia for a long weekend with the Crows, our name for ourselves, four of us who’ve been friends since high school. Ah, the beloved James Madison High School, Class of 1976. We’ve been through our lives together: the boyfriends, the breakups, the weddings, the babies, the divorces, and everything in between. We all met up at Lake Anna, an 18-mile-long manmade … Continue reading Lakes and Hungry Hungry Hippos
I’m fortunate; this wasn’t my first trip to France. In fact, it was my third. Each trip was very different: the first in 1993 when I was visiting a friend in Germany and I took a 2-day bus tour from Germany to France. The second in 1999 with two friends when we did the “if this is Paris, it must be Tuesday” type of tour. … Continue reading The Gardens and the Gold
We checked into the Hotel Johannes Vermeer, which is right in the middle of Delft on the Molslaan Canal, and the perfect location for us. We didn’t get into the car again until Sunday, which was also a nice break! Had dinner at Le Mariage, which, as is usual in Europe, was an unrushed, leisurely (and delicious) affair. The next day, Saturday,our first stop was … Continue reading A Perfect Day in Delft
Traveled up to Delft, the Netherlands, today. On the way, we stopped at the Kinderdijk windmills, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is also the largest grouping of working mills in the world. It is incredibly picturesque! The Netherlands is, in general, about 20 feet below sea level; the windmills are an ingenious — and intricate — method of controlling water levels. It’s important to … Continue reading Kinderdijk
A somber day to be sure. We set out early to meet up with Henri, our Belgian guide, of Far West Tours, for a full day of touring World War I battlefields around Ieper (“ee-pra”; called Ypres during WWI, but now known by its Flemish name; commonly called Wipers by the British troops in WWI), Belgium. For me, it was a day of learning; I … Continue reading Cross of Sacrifice, Stone of Remembrance
Many of you may know that my brother Tim and I have worked for many years on our family’s genealogy. We started with our Mum’s side, the Atyeos, because it’s such an unusual name and we felt we might have more success tracking an unusual name. Keep in mind that we started all this before the Internet (gasp) and sites such as ancestry.com existed. We … Continue reading Royal Welsh Fusiliers, World War I
Rhodio 