WE'RE HOME!!!

Hello All!

Well.......WE'RE HOME!

After 5 1/2 months of adventures/misadventures/experiences, we flew into Toronto yesterday and into the welcoming arms of our families. We thought that for old times sake and to get the feeling of completion, we would send out one more mass email/blog update to let you know about our last week in Paris and our flight home.

Here's the skinny on what we were up to in Paris since our last update.

November 13 - Today being Sunday, we decided to take in another free service at a beautiful landmark. Because we were in Paris, the best place to go was to Notre Dame Cathedral of course. We were awed by the music from the organ, the 4 person choir, the beauty of the building and the service in a completely foreign language!! Although one of the readings was in English. After church, we wandered around the area, taking pics and visited St. Sulpice of 'Da Vinci Code' fame. St. Sulpice is also the church in which C-M Widor spent 60 years of his musical career! He has composed amazing works for organ and it was a huge thrill to see the organ that he once used.

November 14 - DISNEY DAY! Today, although we awoke to cloudy skies and thought it might rain, was a beautiful day. So, we bundled ourselves up and headed off to Disneyland Park here in Paris. What an experience! Katie, of course, is a Disney freak and dragged Dan all over the place. Dan was brave though and went on his very first (not one, not two, but three!) loopety doopety roller coasters! We saw the Lion King (shortened version) show, the infamous 'It's a Small World' ride, braved the Phantom Manor, escaped from The Pirates of the Carribean, were amazed at the Stunt Demonstration, and last but not least enjoyed all the characters and their parades, including the Electrical Illumination display.

November 15 - Relaxed from the busy day of the 14th! Dan moved rooms in the hostel and we enjoyed some quality time together.


November 16 - Le Bourget day! We paid a visit to the famous museum at Paris' Le Bourget airport. It hosts the famous Paris Airshow every 2nd year. The museum has hundreds of planes on display including 2 Concordes! Dan has always wanted to go onboard a Concorde... and here he boarded two of them! Prototype 001, the very first Concorde and Production #13 are in the great Concorde Hall. There is also a Boeing 747-100 on display outside the museum which you are able to walk through, when it's open ;) A small security breach occurred when Dan opened the 747's forward door, although his excuse was 'well the gate was open and the lock wasn't on!'. Security quickly came and informed us that it was lunchtime and the plane was closed for an hour....we returned when the 747 was re-opened and enjoyed our stay.

November 17 - Another relaxing day as we recuperated from the busy day of the 16th! We moved rooms in the hostel and we enjoyed some more quality time together.

November 18 - Last day in Europe! We searched for dead people, as it is free to do so! We visited Pere Lachaise cemetery where Frederic Chopin, Georges Bizet, Jim Morrison and Isadora Duncan (among others) are buried. Then off to downtown to walk around the Eiffel Tower and visit the Montparesse cemetery where Cesar Franck and Camille Saint-Saens are buried. We paid our respects and then returned to the hostel for a well deserved pizza treat!

November 19 - Never fly with Dan on commercial airlines!! He's cursed! Our flight was originally delayed 2 hours and 50 minutes but extended to 5 hours thanks to the ongoing labour dispute with the bus crews at Paris airports. The flight was smooth and we enjoyed 3 movies enroute. When we arrived in Toronto, and strapped on our bags, Katie's family and Dan's parents were there to greet us, with a great huge sign! Hugs and kisses all around, and we enjoyed a feast at Tucker's Marketplace with stories, photos and laughter galore.

It's great to back in Ontario! We are spending a few days in London before a busy weekend and then some time with Katie's family. Thanks to everyone for keeping in touch and all of your support through this adventure!

Pics from Paris

Letter from Barcelona & Paris

Hello All!

This is a french keyboard today, so some words might look weird.

Our last overseas update! We can't believe how quickly the time has gone, at times, especially since we've begun travelling around Europe!

Here's a quick update on what we did this past week:

November 4-8 - we hung out around Barcelona visiting the Cathedral; the beach; La Rambla; the Olympic Grounds 1992; Parc Guell (Look that one up online.....it was awesome!); and L'Aquarium. At the Aquarium, our favourites were the sharks, rays, seahorses, seadragons, PENGUINS, and a nemo fish :) We also learned a new card game from some Aussie and American friends at the hostel and enjoyed having a kitchen to cook in again!

November 9 - We left Barcelona and the heat for Paris and the cold! The temperature in Paris is about 10-15 degrees cooler than Barcelona, so it was a little shocking......it will be fun to come home to Canada and feel what real cold feels like again! Dan isn't cold and calls Katie a wimp for thinking it is here! We found our hostel and checked in no problem and found out that there are free movies in a movie theatre every night! Katie is in heaven!

November 10 - After looking at a map of our area, we thought we'd try to walk to Walt Disney Land.....unfortunately after 1 hour of walking, we realized that it is quite a bit further away than we originally thought.....but ze had a lovely ti,e walking around St Mandé and discovering our area.

November 11 - Today, being Remembrance Day, we had wanted to be at Vimy Ridge.....unfortunately finances were tight and this was not possible. So we stayed in the city and went to the service downtown at the Arc D'Triomphe. It was okay with a band playing while they rode their horses (and we thought it was difficult to march and play!), but it lacked the emotional effect that the Ottawa service has always had for us. Afterwards we walked along the Champs Elèyseés, found some cool car dealerships and Dan even sat in a F1 racecar!!! He looked cool!

That's pretty much it....we bought our tickets for Disnleyland Park yesterday and are hoping for better weather next week to go have a nice day there. We're also going to Le Bourget, near Charles de Gaulle airport where we can go onboard an actual Concorde! Dan is very excited about that!

Here's a few pics for you to look at....don't worry? we'll have lots more to share when we get home next week!

Love to you all,
Dan & Katie

Some more photos

Letter from London and Barcelona

Hello All:

So a week has passed and we´ve only visited two cities.....it feels so weird not to be moving around as much!!

Here´s the highlights from this past week!

October 29 - Today was the day for the British Museum. Katie has been looking forward to this visit for quite some time as this Museum is the home of the Rosetta Stone. It was great to see it and read the deciphering story of how they figured out how to read heiroglyphs. There are stories that go along with that, but this costs money, so we have to keep it short :) After our visit to the Museum, we headed off to Leicester Square to meet up with Heather and Kiel from our Trafalgar Tour. We found them amidst the throng of people trying to buy last minute half price tickets for shows and headed over to the Maple Leaf Pub for lunch! Dan was sadly disappointed at the pub as being Canadian, you would think that there would be some Canadian beer. The only one to be found was Molson and ew.....who drinks Molson! He was very sad that there was no Keith´s.....guess he´ll have to wait until we´re home! Then we were going to try and visit the London Dungeon, but as it was two days before Halloween, the lines were extremely long and we decided not to wait. Heather and Kiel said that they would come back another day and we all headed off to Tower Bridge. Dan and Kiel enjoyed walking around on a map of the world, pointing out places that they´d been or wanted to go. Then we said goodbye as Heather and Kiel were off to see the Phantom of the Opera, and we went to see a movie. We saw the new Zorro movie in a MASSIVE movie theatre with 3 levels of seating! The movie was excellent and after, we hopped onto the Tube and headed back to our hostel - interesting place by the way.

October 30 - Today was Sunday, so we decided that we would visit St. Paul´s Cathedral for church. It was the only way to get in for free and being the cheapos that we are, decided it was a good idea! We attended two services and loved the organ there! After the service, we rushed over to Leicester Square to grab tickets for STOMP that afternoon. We were redirected to the theatre and got our tickets. We met up with Heather and Kiel after lunch and we all went to see the show. Absolutely incredible! Of course, we´d already seen some of this type of action from our good friend Nicole Jeffrey in Ottawa and her Stomp-like group, OFFBEAT. They did this one routine with lighters and it was just really cool. After the show, it was time to say our last goodbye to Heather and Kiel as they are off to Egypt the following day. It was sad as we had spent a lot of time with them on the tour and really enjoyed their company. We hope that they are having lots of fun in the heat! Then we had dinner and headed back to the hostel.

October 31 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAREN! HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Today was Dan´s favourite day in London so far. We caught the tube and headed to Heathrow airport. Seeing as how we weren´t able to get to the aviation museum in Edinburgh, this was the best alternative so far. We arrived at the tube stop and as we left the station, the planes were using the runway right overtop of us to take off! A huge British Airways 747 took off right over our heads and it was extremely loud! Then we walked to the Green Man Pub, where Dan has always wanted to visit. We had a Pepsi and met Jules, the owner, and had a great chat. She even gave us a number/email address for somebody in Toulouse who might be able to get us onto the Concorde! We´ll see about that. She also gave us a CD Rom loaded with heaps of information and pics about the Concorde prototype that she and others are restoring at the nearby Brooklands Museum! Dan was so excited! Then we left the pub and walked around to the visitor centre. On our way, we passed the Concorde (BA G-BOAB) on old runway 23, which is no longer used. It was sad to see it just sitting there watching all of the other planes flying around :( . The visitor centre was excellent with a great plane watching platform. As we headed back to the Tube station, they were pulling a British Airways 747 across the road! Dan has always wanted to see this happen, so we stood and watched and it was great! When Dan finally picked up his lower jaw, we headed to the tube station and went back to the hostel.

November 1 - Today we headed into the city to see the Changing of the Guard. It was neat and all the guards were in their winter uniforms. We also had hopes of seeing the Queen as she was heading to a special 7/7 ceremony for the victim´s families, but she must have left before we arrived or taken the secret way out, because we didn´t see her at all! After the Changing of the Guard, we walked up to Hamley´s Toy Store. Katie was so excited! It is 6 floors of straight toys! We spent a good 1 1/2 hours there just playing! Then we headed back to the hostel and used the internet to do some post travel planning.

November 2 - Today we flew to Barcelona. This means that we spent almost the whole day at another airport. Dan hasn´t been so happy since he proposed. We took the easyBus to the airport from Baker Street (where Sherlock Holmes ´resided´) and the driver of the bus was CRAZY! Maybe it´s because it´s been so long since we were in a car, but it seemed to us that she liked to swerve and speed A LOT! We arrived at the airport in record time and we were too early to check in. So we killed time in the lounge, checked in, and after we got through security, found out that our flight was delayed for 45 mins. We finally left about 2 hours later than we were supposed to due to a crew delay. When we got on the plane, lots of people were super pissed off, but the crew did a great job of handling them all. Even the captain came out and told people to just sit down as his crew was doing their best to get the plane off the ground. We got to Barcelona and finally found our hostel (after a bit of wandering around :).

November 3 - Today was beach day. It was a beautiful day with temps around 22 degrees. We had some breakfast down on the harbour/marina and then changed into our swimsuits to go swimming. The water seemed a little bit cooler than when we were here 2 weeks ago, but we both braved the cold and enjoyed a quick dunk. Then we relaxed on the beach, just soaking up the sun! After a long walk, including checking out some big cruise ships (Dan´s first) we returned to the hostel to have dinner and some crib. Early night tonight as we were both quite tired out.....too much sun?

November 4 - This morning we got up, had some great breakfast from the nearby grocery store and then headed off to La Sagrada Familia, a cathedral that has been in the works for almost 200 years! The main architect was Anton Gaudi who loved nature in his architecture. That is the main theme for the building with the main columns inside the cathedral representing palm trees and there is fruit all over the cathedral! We really enjoyed climbing all the stairs up into one of the towers and the views were awesome! Though a lot has been completed on the cathedral, there is still much to do and it probably won´t be finished for another 50-75 years! Based upon the designs that we´ve seen, it will be incredible and HUGE when it is finally finished.

Anyway, that is our week in a nutshell....we´re certainly looking forward to getting home and back to ´normal´. Miss you all and hope that everybody is doing well.