European Vacation

Annie and I enjoyed a week long trip to Europe. We visited France, England and Holland in a hurried eight days. I had a couple of days of business meeting in the London area and I talked Annie into joining me for the trip. We had a great time. I found out that luggage was over rated. Air France lost my luggage the first day and finally returned it to me in Amsterdam one week later - the night before we flew home. I was able to buy a few items and then spent many evenings doing laundry in either the sink or the tub of our hotel room. Such fun. Annie's suitcase was also lost for our stay in France but was waiting for us at Charles De Gaul before our flight to London. We were both very disappointed that I didn't have my suitcase. I was quite impressive at my meetings in London wearing jeans, a complimentary Air France t-shirt and my thin golf jacket (which I kept on for my meetings).
An early start in Paris. After staying for one night at the Paris Hilton, we are off to Hertz to pick up a car for the drive to Normandy - the highlight of the trip for me. It was so awesome, I'm going to put up another post on that part of the trip.

Out for an evening walk in London. Here we are on the pedestrian bridge over the River Thames between Embankment and Waterloo stations. If you look close you can see Big Ben over my left shoulder and the London Eye (aka Millennium Wheel) over Annie's right shoulder

Next Stop was Amsterdam. Here is Anne Frank's house viewed from our canal cruise. From her secret room in the attic, Anne listened to the radio with news of the Allied landing at Normandy on June 6, 1944. Her hopes of returning to school in the fall were soon crushed as she and her family were found and sent to concentration camps.

Venice of the North

I think I may have worked with these brick layers....

The Van Gogh museum was closed when we got there so the best we could do was have me poise in front of this nearby shop selling prints. You may recognize my outfit from the photo in London three days earlier.....

Tulips everywhere - Here is Annie inside the greenhouse at Keukenhof. Normally tulips can be found in bloom from mid-April through the end of May. This year due to global warming, winter lasted longer than normal so the tulips are a little late, but we found plenty in bloom during our visit on April 17.

Wind mills were not every where. We spent most of an afternoon looking for windmills and castles but with limited success. We were not very happy with the Avis GPS (tom tom). The Hertz 'Neverlost' GPS we used in France was far superior.