Azores Collage

So I was in a funk today and needed a way to get out. I decided that what I needed was some creativity. The idea occurred to me that a collage of some Azores pictures would be great. So...below is my creative work. Click on the image and it will get much bigger for you. I hope you enjoy it. I had fun doing it and it brought me back.

In the Azores, I became acquainted with a Portuguese word "saudades", which has special meaning for Azorean-Americans. It means homesickness, a yearning, a deep regard. It's the perfect word for what we feel as we desire to go to the "homeland".

Europe Slideshows

I've posted the Europe Slideshows condensed from the nearly 1,500 pictures we took in Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzdACppIkux0symWDGDyu5pQBI5YQ3x9q

Azores Slideshows

Here's a playlist for the Azores Slideshow that I worked up from all the 1,500 pictures that were taken by everyone in the Azores.

Azores Playlist

Leaving Europe

Friday - 26 Sep

Another early day saw us up around 3 am and leaving for the airport by 4. The rental car place was not open, so I found where to deposit the keys and we all checked in for our flight to Lisbon. The flight was uneventful. We had a 4+ hour layover in Lisbon but because of our earlier experience and the fact that no one had the energy, we just stayed in the airport and caught our flight to Boston, with a brief stopover in Ponta Delgada. Unfortunately, they didn’t print boarding passes to take us to Boston, so we had to go out through passport control, to the ticket counter and back through security. It was a real hassle. 

But at least the flight from the Azores arrived almost on time. So Jenny could catch her flight to Medford, by way of Seattle. Other than the flight being really “animado” or excited with lots of Portuguese chatter and banter, we had a good flight.

Driving from Paris to Heidelberg

Thursday - 25 Sep

We left around 7:00 am for the return trip back to Frankfurt by way of Heidelberg. We got ahead of most of the traffic and our apartment was on the edge of Paris, so we had an easy commute out of the city. But we encountered intermittent heavy fog for a couple of hours. It made Spencer’s driving job stressful.

We had a brief stop over in KaiserLauten near Spencer’s to grab a bite to each and to look at coo coo clocks. Both the Cooks and Gayle got one. This was a real highlight of the trip.

We arrived in Heidelberg and dropped Spencer at the train station so he could go and pick up his vehicle at the airport. The rest went to the  Church of the Holy Spirit, where Theron’s grandfather had been baptized. Its a marvelous structure, in and out. But they have vendor kiosks all around the perimeter of the building.

There enjoyed being in such an important place in his family history. He and I walked up to the tower, which turned out not to be to the top of the tower. 

We divided into couples, with Jenny and Camille going together. Each couple explored on their own the interesting street that starts in the square by the church and goes about a mile. There are many interesting shops and eateries that are the unique spirit of Heidelberg. 

Spence's M-Wagon

We got back into the van and started to find our way our of the city. For some reason, I ignored the navigation system and just went in the direction that I thought best, which ended up back at the train station. There we found Spencer, who had forgotten his car keys, so had to come back to Heidelberg after going all the way to Frankfurt. It was a miracle that we stumbled upon him at the exact moment he was there and Jenny checked her data to see his text messages from him.

We realized that if we took Spencer back to Frankfurt, that we wouldn’t get back to his area until 10 pm or so. And we would have to leave to go back to Frankfurt at around 2 pm. So we decided to just stay in Frankfurt. Jenny got on the Internet and found us a reasonable place to stay for the night and we were at the hotel around 9:30 pm.

Arch de Triompe and the Orsay Museum

  Wednesday - 24 Sep

Our day started out slow. Though most were up early, we didn’t get things going until 9:30 am. We divided into two groups again. This time Spencer, Jenny, Camille and Gayle set out before Theron, Cindy and I. We were going to the Arch de Triompe and the Champs de Eleysees strew. The first group spent quite a bit of time at the Arch while the latter took photos and moved on down the street. It’s lined with  expensive shops and souvenir kiosks. It didn't take long for us to have our fill of that. 

We met up at 1 pm and changed our groups. Gayle, Camille, Jenny and I went into the Orsay Museum and Spencer, Cindy and Theron went for a walk. The museum was a much different experience from the Lourve. It was not overwhelming. They had the collections organized into groups of the style of art. I spent most of my time in the Impressionist and Post-impressionist periods. Many of us really liked some of the art of Van Gogh, Monet and Renior. There was a particular painting that impressed me of Monet called the Tempest of the Beautiful Isle because it reminded me of the Azores. The art had a real calming affect on me. 

We had lunch about 3 pm at a crepes restaurant. We had crepes as sandwiches with ham, egg and cheese. Then we had a crepe with Nutella for dessert. It was delicious.

Then we divided into different groups, this time the men and the women. The ladies wanted to do more souvenir shopping while the men wanted to go back to the apartment to rest. Spencer detoured to take some more pictures.

While going through the metro station, Theron was accosted by a team of 2 young pick pockets. One young man distracted us by pointing to the bottom of his pant so we would look down. Then the other reached into Theron’s shirt pocket for his phone. Fortunately, he also had his glasses in that pocket and the glasses came flying out and hit the ground. They missed his phone and had got the glasses instead. They apologized and picked up Theron’s glasses and quickly went on their way empty handed.

After resting for a while, we had some miscellaneous snacks from the market. Jenny, celebrating her birthday, and Camille went out to dinner at a nearby restaurant. Then we all got packed and moved the furniture back where it had been.

Normandy and the Eiffel Tower

 Tuesday - 23 Sep

We broke into two groups for the day, the older 2 couples to Normandy and the younger 3 to make a “gastronomical tour” of Paris.

The drive from Paris to the Normandy coast was about 3 hours. We used the navigation in the car to make our way through the horrendous Paris morning traffic. It finally led us to what we thought was a really good museum but turned out to be a very minor one and the 5 euro entry fee was a rip-off. 

But we did get to the  right museum at Utah beach. We had lunch in the Le Roosevelt cafe and bought a book and some postcards in the gift shop.

The museum was fantastic. It had a good mixture of artifacts from both sides of the war along with vehicles and even a bomber. Theron and I toured quickly while Gayle and Cindy went on the guided tour, which took about an hour. I lost my patience with the whole experience and was grumpy for a while but eventually got over it.  

We visited the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc where Rangers lost over 50% of their group trying to scale the cliffs and take the bunkers, where ultimately they were successful. Then we went to Omaha beach but didn’t take in the museum there. So it was just a big, wide beach that we took a few photos of. We stopped at a store for a lite dinner and then tried to go to the American Cemetery but it was closed.

So we got on the road for Paris about 7  pm and the trip computer showed us arriving at 9:45 pm at the Eiffel Tower. But there was one problem, we would arrive with only 50 km left in fuel. We debated but ultimately felt like we had to get diesel. That put us down to 5 minutes before the hour. We tried any ways and arrived in time for everyone but me to go up the tower. I had to drive around and for a while and eventually picked them up a little after 11:00 pm.

The Paris traffic is quite difficult because they have stoplights on crosswalks as well as for the roads. So I didn’t know where to stop and when to go. It was quite taking. But we made our way back to the apartment only having run a few traffic lights. But it all came out well.  

Everyone that went up the Eiffel Tower had a really good time. They enjoyed the views from the second level but some express fear of heights. It’s a good thing we didn’t get tickets for the top floor.