Test of publishing a slide show-Istanbul

Sitting Around in O'Hare Airport

We're back in the heartland, and what a relief to be in O'Hare rather than the zoo that is JFK in New York.  We've been up for 24 hours now, so really dragging. 

We're sorry we didn't have very good luck with wifi all the time, so you'll just have to come see the pictures. 

Glad to be back and looking forward to seeing our friends (after we get some sleep!).

Ingrid and Missy

Last Afternoon on the Azmara Journey

We're busy packing so we can put our suitcases out at 11:00 this evening, not to see them again until 2:30 tomorrow afternoon at the hotel.  (Well, OK, we have to identiy them in the cruise terminal tomorrow morning, but you get the idea.)

Lovely cruise.  So sorry we couldn't keep up with the blog, partly because it helps us organize our memories.  Santorini is a beautiful island.  Ephesus is very amazing.  We'll try to put up a few pictures from our hotel in Athens tomorrow. 

We miss you all and hope you are well.  Have a great day!

Missy and Ingrid

Onboard the Azmara Journey

Dear Freinds,
Having a few technical problems here, so this will be very short.  We had a few fascinating days in Instanbul, but it would have been good to have more time there. 
Yesterday we saiiled from Istanbul and are now passing Lesbos.  The captain says it's good to return to our roots. 
We hope to do more posting later. 
We heard the Badgers lost and the Packers won.  Still waiting to find out if Tiger Woods will drag down Steve Stricker at the Ryder Cup.
It's beautiful weather on the ship, and the food is great.
Hope your are all well.
Ingrid and Missy. 

Last Day in Paris

We had a marvelous day today, spent mostly at a huge new Monet exhibit at the Grande Palais.  The exhibit contains more than 200 of Monet's paintings reassembled from all over the world (including a few we have seen at the Chicago Art Institute).  It was so amazing to see some of his series of paintings all together so that you can see how the light changed over the day and the seasons and how he painted it.  Of course, one of his most famous paintings, "Impressions," which ultimately gave the painting movement the name "Impressionism" was not there because of a feud between the curators of this exhibit and Impressions' permanent home, also here in Paris.  Ah well.   A gorgeous exhibit (sorry, no pictures allowed) and we were really tired afterward. 

So went off to a good (late) lunch, including a wonderful profiterole.  We are adjusting to the Paris fashion of 2-hour lunches. 

We walked around a little near the Grand Palais.  Here are a few gold plated pictures, especially of the Pont Alexandre III, one of the most beautiful of the many bridges in Paris.  The dome in the background is over the Hotel des Invalides, which holds a military museum and Napolon's tombe.  Actually, there are about seven caskets inside, each one smaller than the other.  No fear that he'll get out.

Then we walked around our new neighborhood, near Gare St. Lazare.  We went to the top of Galeries Lafayette (one of the great department stores in the world) to see the panormic view. 

Now we're getting ready to fly to Istanbul tomorrow morning.  We leave our hotel at 6:30 a.m.  We're looking foward to seeing the Marys, Betty, Mary Kay and Claire, Bev and Mary when we get there.  Safe travels to us all!

Paris, Again (Wednesday)--The prodigal notebook

Here we are, safely back in Paris.  It almost seems like coming home, except that we can also foresee coming home to Madison.  But first, on to Turkey and Greece. 

When we left Paris 9 days ago, we were warned to make a hotel reservation before we left because there is a big international auto show that opens tomorrow in Paris.  And, indeed, the hotels we checked were either full or near full, but fortunately we landed here at Hotel Britannia, which has wi-fi.

No pictures from today (but keep checking earlier posts--we'll keep adding some) but here is a wonderful story.  When we took the train to Giverny (where we visited Monet's house and saw the waterlily pond), on the way back, Melissa left her little notebook on a bench at the Vernon Gare (train station).  We assumed it was lost, which was sort of a problem because it was the only place in which we had written the phone number of our friend, Jacqueline, with whom we planned to stay in Rennes.  Fortunately, we were able to retrieve her phone number from the apartment telephone we had used to call her.  And then, just before we left the apartment permanently, Jacqueline called us, saying she had been called by the train company at Vernon to ask if she knew whose notebook it might be, since her telephone number was in it.  She was told that the name Olivia was repeated often, and at first she said that she didn't know anyone named Olivia.  BUT THEN, she realized that it must be Melissa's notebook with telephone numbers related to our cruise with Olivia..  So she called the train company back and told them she knew the owner of the notebook.  They said they could not send the notebook to her, but they would send it to the lost and found at Gare St. Lazarre in Paris.  Amazing!  In turns out that the Hotel Britannia is near the Gare St. Lazarre, so after we got here, we strolled over to the lost and found, asked for Melissa's notebook, AND ,,, they handed it to her.  Incredible!  Ten days later!

We are looking forward to seeing our Madison friends, our Maine friends and our Illinois friends when we get to Turkey. 

Hope you are all enjoying yourselves!

Driving to Evreux (Tuesday)

We're back on line!  Good to be here, after some very frustrating attempts to get on line.  We stayed in some hotels with secure wi-fi (pronounced wee-fee over here), but the WEP security code was too many digits for this computer and we could not get on-line.  We've been having a very good time and will try to fill you in (on the earlier placeholder posts) at little later. 

Not too much happened today, since we were mostly traveling.  However, we did manage to make a great find--an actual chocolate factory!

  It also has a museum on the history of chocolate and tours of making chocolate.  We discovered that we don't really care about the history or the process--just the eating:

This is REALLY goood chocolate!

We found the facteory as we were leaving the city of Bayeux, which we really liked.  Tonight we're staying in Evreux, a city newly-built after being almost destroyed during WW II.  We're about 120 kilometres from Paris. 

Tomorrow (Wednesday) we go back to Paris.  We'll try to upload some more of our pictures while we're there. 

Hope you are all doing well and having as much fun as we are!