Finally, I have gotten everything together to start our blog. We arrived safely, but I thought I had brought the wrong transformer. I hadn't, they have just changed their electical outlets to take two-pronged or three-pronged. This is one of the joys of having a personal guide. They can tell you about these things. We are staying at a great hotel very close to The Forbidden City, Tianemen Square and other places. Yesterday, we met our guide, Qing Ye, at 9:30 am and she stayed with us and ran us all over until 8:30pm. Her rate is $37.00 US a day. Not much of an hourly rate compared to home. So, today was the last day for the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall to be opened before thay start restoration on it for The 2008 Olympics. They ... read more

Today was another beautiful day although it is raining now at 9:00pm. We just got back from the best restaurant that we have gone to yet. It was called Spinoza's and in the Jewish section not too far from the hotel. Most of the people here in the middle of the city live in apartments and there is not even a little bit of grass anywhere. About a block from the hotel is a little playground for the neighborhood children and it has a security guard to let people in and out. We have seen what looks like daycare teachers taking small children to play during the day. It gets really busy in the late afternoon until dark so the children can get outside. We haven't seen a private residence the whole time we were here. ... read more

We just had a beautiful day on the Buda side today. We didn't realize that the smog was so bad on working days until we got up on the hill at the Royal Palace and tried to take pictures. There seem to be more cars than people here and each taxi driver seems to have trained as a rally driver before becoming a taxi driver. I only took a few pictures and my batteries ran out on the camera and, of course, the extra ones were back in the room, so we decided we'd come back Saturday or Sunday and get more pictures. We did find an English paper yesterday and get BBC and CNN news in English on the TV. So, Jim did have his crosswrd fix for the week. Our dental work is progressing ... read more

We didn't realize until planning our trip that Budapest started as two cities divided by the Danube River. They were called Buda and Pest (pronounced Pesht). We are staying on the Pest side and did a little exploring. We took a three hour walk that seemed like about eight hours when we finally made it back to the hotel.Here are some pictures that we took on the way and NO, Chrissy was not allowed to go into the MacDonald's. The only American store we went into was Office Depot to get some paper and a pencil for Jim in case he finds a crossword puzzle in English. Big day planned for tomorrow. ... read more

Well, we arrived back home physically last Monday night at about 10:00 pm and are waiting to catch up mentally. We had a few hectic days but a nice Thanksgiving with Glenn at home. Our refrigerator died while we were gone and it was a challenge to get one delivered by Wednesday afternoon so we could go shopping and actually have some food inthe house. Our whole trip was wonderful. Last Saturday, we were on an hour's bush walk up in the foothills above Auckland called the Waitakere's. Chrissy did so well. We weren't walking quickly, but she was able to go the whole way. Our friend, Anne, took us and Chrissy did something that reminded her of when we were there and Anne just got all teary-eyed to think we were together again. Last Sunday, ... read more