And We're Back

Ok – so where were we?  Not entirely sure myself but spending this weekend at home after travelling somewhere around 13,000 miles over the past three weeks is a very good thing.  But not complaining, it’s been a non-stop adventure.

We last left you in Munich for Oktoberfest which was of course a blast as previously noted by Cleaver.  From there a few days of work then off for a long weekend in Washington DC for the wedding of our close friends Ehren and Julie ShortridgeHill.  But wait – there’s more!   Well, not really that was pretty much the focus of the weekend though did get some sightseeing in too as I had never been to DC. 

After a short 9 hour flight we arrived at probably the worst airport ever (Dulles) beginning with a short shuttle ride across the runway in some sort of vehicle designed by the Snorks.  Honestly, it was just a weird space looking thing that dropped us off at immigration where we waited in line for 45 minutes before we even got to baggage claim.  But once we got that disaster out of the way, into our rental car and off to the hotel, the weekend finally got started.

BBQ that night at Ehren’s house, then spent the next morning with friends walking through the POURING rain to see the White house, Capital Hill and a few other monuments along the way which was really neat to see.  While I’m doing this Cleaver took the morning to go have brunch with an old friend of hers that she worked with who now lives in the DC area.  We definitely had to make good use of our time and not waste a minute.

After all that was out of the way we piled into the car and headed for Luray, VA which was about 2 hours away and the location of the wedding.  Rehearsal, a nice dinner / cocktail hour hosted by Ehren’s Dad and then off to a local bar.  And by local I mean real “local”.  The name of the place was Uncle Bucks.  I forgot that in Virginia they grow tobacco which means they still smoke in bars – a lot.  And when about 30 city slickers roll in on the local turf I’m not so sure they were down with our crowd but I’m also pretty sure with the amount of beer we all drank we doubled their revenue for the past 6 months.  So it worked out.

Next morning was Saturday, went to breakfast at Uncle Bucks.  Yup you read that right, hey it was a small town.  Enjoyed a very lovely wedding in a beautiful country setting and kept the party going until someone found a dentist asleep on top of our car.  Lots of fun and Congrats again to the happy couple!

Sunday we made our way back to the airport and got on our flight home which landed Monday morning in Zurich.  Tried to get some sleep, squeezed in a few days of work before off to our next destination - Madrid!

Cleaver had actual work to do in Madrid, so we took advantage of that and stayed for the weekend.  We had been there for one short night a few years back and were excited to go back.  We were not disappointed.   Spain has such a great culture of eating, drinking, staying out late and having fun that I’m certain that I need to spend even more time there than I have.  Such a great place.

Aside from staying out too late we did take time on Saturday to walk around and see the city, parks, palaces, shopping areas, etc…, there really is a lot to see and we didn’t even go into any of the museums.  Did I mention that I ♥ Spain?

  

Finally on Sunday I went back to Zurich to get ready for another week of work, Cleaver stayed for work she had still in Madrid on Monday.

Now we’re spending a few weekends at home before Cleaver’s cousin comes to visit and we hit the road (well rail in this case) again for Paris.  Good times!