One year ago today, on August 4, 2011, we finished our yearlong family journey and flew home from Amsterdam to Los Angeles. In the last post we were able to publish while traveling, we were in Malaysia, before heading to Paris to start a twelve-week adventure through Europe. A computer virus sadly felled our netbook and posting from the road was no longer possible. I thought I'd be able to resume the blog upon my return to the U.S., but - to use an old cliché - life got in the way (you know, finding a place to live, finding a job, working at said job, and so on). Well, it's actually taken me this long to find the time to go through all our European photos (there are thousands of them) and get the Bruner Family Blog up and running again. I really wanted to finish the task, mostly because this is essentially the daily log and the photo album of our trip - without it, years from now we wouldn't remember where we were or what we'd done. So, here goes, and - to use another cliché - better late that never.
To sum up the European leg of our trip, we spent about a month in France, one day in Spain (a day-trip from St. Jean de Luz, France to San Sebastian), three weeks in Italy (all the way down to the heel of the boot and then back up again!), one week in Austria visiting friends we'd met earlier on the trip in Sri Lanka, three weeks in Germany, and then our final week in the Netherlands. As a follow up to our earlier post on how we all were coping with life on the road, I must say that our time in Europe was quite fun and mostly very agreeable. Of course, day-to-day challenges did arise - ranging from homesickness, to cramped quarters, to sibling squabbles, to our children's incessant quest to break free from the yoke of their parents' oppression. But overall, I think we will all carry very fond memories with us from the European part of our journey.
Our first stop in Europe was Paris, where we stayed in a small but comfortable one-bedroom apartment near the Place de la République. We'd been to Paris with the kids in 2007, but they had little or no memory of it. Eden and I have actually been multiple times over the years and we've visited many of the city's fabled museums and monuments. This time, we decided to do our explorations outdoors and we had the fortune of some great sunny spring weather. We basically walked all over the city, stopping at various monuments along the way for a picnic or a picture or to enjoy a playground or a public garden. We also found a large park on the edge of the city, near the Chateau de Vincennes, to play soccer with some locals for an entire afternoon. And we enjoyed some delicious French culinary classics - including several versions of steak-frites, a perfectly roasted chicken, French onion soup, smoked duck, and plenty of croissants, baguettes and other delectable baked goods. Within minutes of our arrival in the apartment after flying from Asia, we were sitting at a local neighborhood bistro enjoying some fine fare (I'm pretty sure it involved french fries), when Jeremy blurted out, while chewing on some baguette, "I love France!"
For the kids, it was indeed a welcome change from Asia - no more hot and sticky weather, no more spicy foods to steer clear of, no more having to worry about whether you can drink the water, no more crazy traffic (well, southern Italy is a different story).
It's good to be back online after such a long hiatus. I'll try to post regularly from now on, until we've covered our last Belgian beer and filet of herring in Amsterdam.
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| Our apartment was on the fourth floor |
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