Now this is something I had never heard of before - a small pyramid that could help a baby sleep! Amazing!!! We dropped by to see Lorenza's cousin Liesbeth, plus Michel and their absolutely gorgeous daughter - Fleur. I thought it was nice of Michel to point out that they had named their daughter after me. Mmm, perhaps not? Ok, my surname does have something to do with flowers but Michel was stretching it a bit with his explanation of how they arrived at their daughters name. The pyramid was suggested to Liesbeth as a way to help Fleur sleep better, she had been having trouble sleeping and obviously this was having a flow on affect on the sleep of the whole household. So, the suggestion was to place the pyramid under Fleur's bed and she ... read more

It took about 5 hours to get from Paris to Deurne. It could have taken a lot longer if I had not realised that I had initially entered "Duerne" into the GPS, which is a town in France. Luckily I noticed my mistake, oh I also noticed there is a Deurne in Belgium - we found the one in the Netherlands with no problems. We got to spend a few days with Lorenza's cousin, Guido and his family. Lorenza really enjoyed catching up with Guido and her Aunties and Uncle. It was the first time we had spent much time with Guido's dad and it was good to get to know him a bit. He had some interesting stories about growing up during the war around Deurne and also in Indonesia and some funny tales about ... read more

We took a drive about 80kms outside Paris to Visit the house and gardens of Claude Monet. This was suggested by my cousins Jean and Beatrice, who came along also. You get get full information about this place here ... Giverny and Vernon - In the Heart of Impressionism This was a beautiful place to visit, it was a little crowded, but you still got a very good idea where Claude Monet got his inspiration from. Hopefully, my few photos give a hint of how lovely this place was. (PS: I am still trying to forget that on the way back to Paris I managed to loose the passenger side mirror off the car. Well, loose is probably not the right word considering I collided with the mirror of an illegally parked van and the mirror ... read more

Venice is probably on all the "50 places to visit before you die" lists. Lorenza insisted we visit, I was curious and wanted to see what this famous city was about. In his book "The City of Falling Angels", John Berendt wrote that ... "Venice could be a disorienting place, even for people who lived there and thought they knew it well. The narrow winding streets, together with the serpentine course of the Grand Canal and the absence of any landmarks visible from a distance, made it difficult to keep one's bearings." Ernest Hemingway described Venice as ... "a strange, tricky town". From the beginning of our stay in Venice I felt a bit disoriented. Perhaps it was because of our aborted ferry trip from Rovinj? Or perhaps it was the affect of the narrow streets ... read more

We took up an invitation from Tone (our CS contact in Ljubljana) to attend a picnic for his name day (i.e. June 13 = Saint Anthony day). So we drove about 70k's from Ljubljana and found our way thanks to GPS to a small village where we stopped and called Tone for more directions. Within a few moments we found ourselves in a field, with views to some mountains and out over the surrounding farm land. We were greeted by Tone, plus a lot of his family and friends. Also, some other CS folks from Chicago. The weather was so perfect and we had a great time playing volley ball, talking, eating and drinking. It was so nice to be amongst such friendly and accepting people. Everyone made us so welcome - this was such a ... read more