Tis the season...

Wow, is it mid-February already? Here's what we've been up to since Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving:
Jen and I headed south to Paris to visit our friends Tim and Meaghan and have a good ol' American Thanksgiving complete with turkey, stuffing, and Christmas sugar cookies. It was an amazing meal with amazing company, and we loved seeing Paris again, since the last time we'd been there together was about 8 years ago.


We came back from Paris, finished up our last french class before the holidays, threw a party at our place with a bunch of our friends from language class (thanks for coming, guys!) and then left town again just before Christmas. The chances of our flight leaving Brussels seemed drastically reduced due to the 8 inches of snow on the ground, but miraculously we left on time!


Our first stop was a few days in Lucerne, Switzerland. Jen and I had been here in '02 while she was studying in Italy, and we wanted to stop by again since we love the town so much. While we were there we hopped on the train to check out the city of Basel and it's well-known Christmas market, and really loved this medieval town at the intersection of Switzerland, Germany and France.

Since there was knee-high snow on the ground in Brussels, we expected Switzerland to be a winter wonderland. We were wrong. We had planned to go to a nearby mountain for a romantic two day stay in a ski lodge near a small ski area; just big enough to do some snowshoeing and hit the slopes for a day (for the first time in 7 years). Since there was no snow there, and the ski lifts were closed, we had to change our plans last minute and go to a different mountain, in a tiny town called Engelberg. The ski lodge was run by a Swedish famly, so we had a Swedish Christmas dinner in Switzerland, complete with all you can eat herring! I was still worried about the snow situation, but Jen and I went cross country skiing the first day (Jen is not bad, I'm not so good), and the second day it dumped snow all morning and we finally hit the slopes with great conditions. It was good to be back on a board again!


After Engelberg we boarded the train for Lausanne to meet up with a Swiss family we'd met at Oktoberfest. Over probably our 4th or 5th steins of the day at Oktoberfest, we promised our new friends that we would come visit them in Lausanne. I don't know whether they planned on us following through or not, but follow through we did. The visit was amazing. Our friend Axel (I swear, that's really his name) and his girlfriend Fanny were great tour guides. They took us all around Lausanne, to Montreux to see the Castle of Chillon and to Fribourg, which was really picturesque. We went out for a real Swiss fondue (I love cheese) and even invited us to his parents' house for dinner where we had raclette (did I mention the cheese?). We got a chance to practice our French, and an opportunity to sample real Swiss hospitality. What an awesome visit. We loved Lausanne, and it's definitely high on my list of most beautiful places in the world.


We wanted to spend as much time as possible in Lausanne, but our train to Paris was leaving from Geneva, so we left for Geneva the day before our departure and only spent about a half a day in that famous city. It was very nice, and the old town was incredible, but we really didn't have a chance to explore it as much as we would have liked.


The train to Paris was uneventful and it was good to be back in the city of lights and to see our friends again. Tim and Meaghan had two other couples in town as well, so for the next few days we hung out with them and had a ball. On New Year's Day we went to the Eiffel Tower and had a glass of champagne that Tim got from one of his French friends (we call his friend "French Tim" and the vineyard is next door to his parents house in Champagne). While we were in town Jen and I visited St. Sulpice church (as seen in "The Da Vinci Code"), the Musee D'Orsay, and we rode the Big Wheel by the Tuilerie Gardens. It was a great trip, but we nearly repeated our mistake of 7 years ago by visiting the D'Orsay and missing our train. Unlike our last trip, we made our train this time. But only by 5 minutes. I was sweating.


Since we had last week off before we start language training again, and since we finally have a car, we took a day trip to Bouillon castle. The castle was built some time before the 9th century, and then in the 11th century Mr. Godefroid de Bouillon decided to lead the 1st Crusade and mortgaged his castle to pay for it. If you've seen "Kingdom of Heaven" with Orlando Bloom (I liked him better as an elf who didn't talk much), that's the guy. The castle was perfect. It was a gray, rainy day, and the atmosphere was ideal. This was no fancy-pants, well kept castle, this thing really looked like it was 1000 years old, and had seen its fair share of bruising and brawling. I loved every second of it, especially the little nooks and crannies I could crawl around in in the wet (I was wearing my new Gore-Tex boots so I took every opportunity to see how much water I could get in without getting wet). The castle had a breathtaking view of the rivers in the valleys below, which were ready to burst their banks and were already threatening the town around the castle. In the pictures you can see that a soccer field by the river had already been converted into a water polo court. Genius!

Next adventures on the horizon: Dan and Patty come to visit, boys' ski weekend with Tim and Paul in Chamonix, France(all in French, I swear) and maybe a marathon or two? We'll have to wait and see...