So, while I was on my road trip (almost 6 months ago now) I took some video (mostly while I was driving). Maybe not the safest thing in the world, but I had some time to kill. I figured I would edit it all together when I get home. Put it to the tune of Mr Space Man. The hi-light of course, being the shuttle launch. Alas, no shuttle launch, at least while I was there, so I kinda lost some of my motivation to finish putting the movie together. …

We had to get up early to get our flight home. I got to see Clair in the morning during breakfast. Eric told her I did not cry this time when I rode the Metro. Eric gave us a ride to airport. They have a pretty sweet ‘84 BMW (that’s 2 years older then Carol, but in a lot better shape). The plane ride home turned out to be a lot better then the one to London. …

I surprised myself, and woke up just enough to mumble “goodbye” to Elysia as she was going out the door (didn’t manage to get out of bed right then though). Then me and Heather slept in longer then we wanted to. We were planning to actually go inside the Louvre today, and considering it was Sunday there might be long lines. We did manage to find time to stop for a croissant before we got on the Metro though (always a good decision). …

We slept a little later than usual (that’s usual for this trip, not usual for me), then we headed over to one of Paris’s premier art Museum’s the Musée d’Orsay. On our walk to the Metro we stopped at a fruit stand and a bakery for breakfast. After that I decided I would try to eat at least one croissant a day. The Musée d’Orsay was awesome. It’s an enormous converted train station with a huge glass roof. …

Got up early to catch our train to Paris. One last breakfast at the hotel before checking out. I kinda like Netherland’s breakfasts. It’s mostly just bread, meat and cheese. At first it did not really feel like breakfast food, but after a few days I started looking forward to it. We got on the tram and headed to central station (fortunately no strike that day or if they did strike again it was later in the day). …

One of our main reasons for making Amsterdam on of the stops on our trip was that it was the height of Tulip season. Heather had done some research and apparently a good place to go to look a tulips is the Keukenhof gardens. They are only open for two months every year (during tulip season). They have thousands of varieties of tulips and people come from all over the world. …

This turned out to be our first really nice day on our trip. We had, had some sun in England, but the days had been mostly cloudy and always a little chilly. It was sunny and got up to about 65 F. We had been keeping an eye on the weather so we had planning to spend the day outside. First we head out of the city to see some windmills. …

The day began with a song, through my morning haze it sounded familiar, Heather later told me it was “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. I was a long way from figuring that out, when the song ended a calm voice started speaking loudly in Dutch from what sounded like just a few feet above my bed. My initial thought was that we had all slept in for way too long and the “ferry people” were in our room, telling us it was time for us to leave to boat. …

After another good night sleep and kind of a slow morning we went for a walk around Eliot and Kristine’s house. They live near a sort of Park/Nature preserve thing. It is an all open area, apparently rabbits really like it. We mostly saw people with their dogs though. We also spent some time visiting Eliot and Kristine’s very quite neighbors in a cemetery, some folks had been there since the early 1800s. …

At last, I got a chance to sleep in. Eliot and Kristine’s couch was very comfortable. We took our time getting started. We had done a lot of stuff the last 3 days and we were pretty tired. We had been warned to watch out for some of the neighborhood cats. In England, Eliot and Kristine explained to us, the rules/customs about how animals are handled are a lot different. Cats can not be de-clawed and are basically given free reign. …