The sun was shining last Saturday, and we took a short weekend trip to Cambridge. I don't know if it was simply because the sun was out and it was warm, but I loved Cambridge. It is a beautiful city with lots to see and do. We took advantage of the nice weather and hired bikes the moment we stepped off the train. We headed to the tourist office and booked a B&B for the night and then started off towards the B&B to leave our bags. This was a minor fiasco as the lady at the tourist office wrote the street address incorrectly - instead of 780 it was 80 .... Needless to say we went way, way out of our way. Ethan was not happy. We finally decided to call. Then we began the long ride back to nearly where we started. At this point, we were all hungry and Ethan was not a happy camper. After dropping our bags off, we headed for lunch at a great pub/cafe with an outdoor patio. After lunch, we decided to hire a punt ( a long flat boat - sort of like a canoe) to float down the river Cam. Ethan insisted we rent our own instead of doing the guided tour. It was lots of fun. William drove the punt, and Ethan and I assisted with a paddle as best we could. The river was quite crowded, and punting was pretty hard work for William since there were so many other punts to dodge.

The punting culture is sort of like preppy tubing culture. Most people drink wine and eat berries while punting instead of beer and chips and it is great fun to watch people punt and see if they fall in....luckily, we stayed dry. Here Ethan helps dad out.

The next day we headed towards a rural cycling route to a small town up the river for a picnic after stocking up at the farmer's market. We made it to the other town, but then it started pouring rain. We took shelter under an awning outside a pub and had our picnic there. Luckily the rest of the day was dry and beautiful, so we did not get too wet.

We stopped by the botanical gardens which were beautiful, and Ethan got to see and photograph some tropical rainforest plants for his school project.

Here we are outside of St. Johns College. One thing we did on this trip that was outstanding was to go hear the Kings College Choir sing evensong at Kings College Church.

Ethan is such a monkey! Here he is doing a headstand and then hanging from a tree.

Here are some shots of two weeks ago when we went to the London Aquarium and Ethan got some geckos painted on his cheek.

This post is actually not about Ethan, but since I wanted to document the trip - I am posting it here. William and I took a long weekend trip to Dubrovnik, Croatia while my mom stayed with Ethan in London. I know what you are thinking, but Dubrovnik has recovered quite nicely from the war in the early 90's. Even though 1/3 of the building in the old town sustained a direct hit from the bombing, the city is now totally restored to its former glory. It is a UNESCO world hertiage site, and they funded much of the rebuilding. The city is now a sea side resort and popular cruise ship port with ships seeming to arrive daily.

Dubrovnik is located on the Adriatic Sea and is surrounded by some of the most extensive and complete city walls in all of Europe. You can take a tour of the walls and walk around the entire city. Within the walls are a few palaces and fortresses. Here is a shot from atop one section of the city wall.

We stayed at a nice hotel directly across from the Lapad Bay called Hotel Uvala. Our room had a balcony overlooking the bay. Once in Dubrovnik, we walked and took the bus around the town. Here is our Hotel and another picture with the view of our hotel from across the bay.

One night we had dinner on our balcony. We took this picture with the camera timer!

One of the main things to do in Dubrovnik is to explore the old town - the part of the town that is contained within the city walls. Here is a picture of one of the entrances to the old town and the city walls.
Lunch in the old town....

Here is the main street in the old town and a shot of the old town at night.

Here is a little bar that we found down a small alley which turned out to sit right on a cliff side!!

One day we decided to take a boat out to one of the Islands. Without much prior information, we hopped on a boat to Sipan. It was about a 40 min ride by high speed motor boat. The day was a bit cloudy - it even looked like it might rain. When we stepped off the boat, the first thing we noticed was the lack of people and services for tourists. There was one coffee shop/bar with a few tables of locals and one restaurant that we noticed, but pretty much just houses and stray cats. Here are some shots of the boat we took and the boat dock.

The island was very beautiful.

We decided that maybe we needed to go to the town at the other side of the island figuring that we would find more stuff to do there. We saw a bus parked near the dock, and it seemed to be waiting for us. We got on and were at the other town in about 10 minutes. Here is what the other town looked like (equally deserted except for all the stray cats).

Here we are hiking around the island.

We realized that this was it, so we hiked around the island and explored. This did not take very long, and we were starting to get hungry. We headed back to the port area where we had seen what looked like a small bar/restaurant. It started raining on our way to the restaurant. When we stepped inside, the person running the place said they were "closing for lunch" and proceeded to lock up the restaurant. So we went to check the boat schedule. It was about 12:30 - the next boat out was at 3:30 .... The bus was supposed to be back, so we could go back to the other side of the island but was not. We took shelter from the rain under a bus stop. Luckily, William had suggested we stop at a fruit stand before we left the mainland. We snacked on almonds and dried fruit. Then the "cute" stray cats started a mating frenzy right in front of us - needless to say things were going from bad to worse. All we could do was wait. About 45 min later the rain let up. We had one unmbrella and decided to walk the 3.5 miles back to the other end of the island. Here is William at the bus stop. We walked down a road literally in the middle of nowhere. We did not see any people or any cars - except one which seemed to pass at an alarmingly fast speed. Then it started to rain again - hard, blowing rain. By the time we got back to the other side of the island, we were soaking wet! Luckily the bar/cafe looking place we first saw was open, so we stopped to have a beer. Then the owner said there was a restaurant down the way. We went to the restaurant which was great, and William got to watch a Davis cup match. The boat came, and we got off the island! It was a big adventure and a long day.

William at the bus stop.

Here are the famous cats.

Here we are on the boat back to Dubrovnik. Not to be deterred by the long day, we headed to the old town to see about the nightlife. We found some nightlife ... a flashy European pop concert complete with "solid gold" type dancers. It was a blast ... free - right there in the middle of the old town complete with strobe lights and smoke.

Europop extravaganza!

The area has some wonderful seafood dishes. Here is a lunch of pasta with "fruits of the sea."

One night we were walking back to our hotel, and I saw something move near the bushes out of the corner of my eye. It was this little guy - a hedgehog!

We found a nice pedestrian promenade near our hotel lined with cafes and shops. Here is a picture of the promenade.
We got better at taking pictures with the camera timer. This picture series acutally was much longer, because the camera kept taking the picture before William could clamber over the rocks to reach me. We finally moved closer to the camera. Good thing neither us nor the camera ended up in the ocean!

The bay has a long boardwalk that was not getting much use when we were there as it was too cold to swim. There was this cool looking cold war era metal slide into the ocean....

Here is the Dubrovnik port at night.

Me and mom took a trip to Paris the first weekend in April while the boys stayed back in London and played in the snow. Luckily it was not snowing in Paris! Of course the Eiffel Tower figured prominently in our trip (mom's first trip to Paris!) and in our pictures. At one point, we discussed whether or not we had too many pictures of the tower.... (we did, but got some good ones on the last day). Above we are standing on the second floor of the tower. We booked a tour which included tickets to the second floor - good idea, because we did not have to wait in line. The second floor is very, very high - plenty high for both of us.

We stayed in the Rue Cler (which is on the left bank near the Eiffel Tower) at a small cute hotel (Hotel de la Tulipe) . The Rue Cler is a great street which is closed to car traffic and is lined with several shops, restaurants, and markets (fruit, vegetable, fish, meat...). I had the best croissant at a patisserie on this street that I have ever had - hot, just made out of the oven - delicious. Here is our hotel....We arrived mid-morning on our first day and headed straight to pick up our museum passes. If you go to Paris, buy the museum pass - it is well worth it. With the museum pass, you don't have to pay admission to most museums and monuments, but most importantly - you don't have to wait in line. We were like celebs walking up to the special entrance passing all those standing in line (totally worth it)!!!

After picking up our passes, we jumped on our bus tour. I typically do not go for the bus tour, but we only had two and a half days and I wanted mom to get a feel for the city. The tour helped orient us and give us a better idea of what we wanted to spend time doing the next two days. After our tour and a long day of travel, we planned what we would do for the rest of our trip over an excellent meal of italian food in the Rue Cler. As is typical, I get up early. I was up at 7:00 am the next day. Mom was still sleeping. I slid on my running shoes and went to explore the city. I saw the sun rise over the Seine - excellent. I then ran to the start of the Paris Marathon to see all the excitement under the Arc de Triomphe. When I planned this trip, I had no idea this was marathon weekend. Anyhow - I considered trying to go bandit, but decided not to ... The marathon seemed well organized and fun - I might consider this one in the future if I decide to venture off the trails again. Here is a shot of the marathon in progress around mile 18.

After my run, we went to the Louvre. This was to be a whirlwind day, so we just hit the major works in the Louvre and moved on. After the Louvre, we walked to the Ile de la Cite for lunch and then on to Sainte Chapelle and Notre Dame.

The stained glass of Sainte Chapelle ...

Notre Dame....

From Notre Dame, we headed to the Musee de Orsay. On our way to the Orsay, my mom noticed that the streets were blocked off and a demonstration was taking place. The signs where referencing liberty in french and lots of people were wearing white. Mom decided to walk in the demonstration - I took her picture. We learned that the demonstration was for the release of a French woman (Ingrid Betancourt) who has been held hostage in Columbia by the FARC for six years.

We probably spent the most time in the Orsay (below) - in fact we stayed until closing. After the Orsay, we were on our way to take a boat cruise on the River Seine when a huge storm blew in (breaking my unmbrella).

We saved the boat tour for the next morning. The boat tour was a real highlight. The weather was beautiful and sunny, and it was nice to see everything from the water.

The final day of our trip the Olympic torch was to pass through Paris. We staked out a spot among the police (in full riot gear) and the protesters. It was an exciting time to be in the city. The protesters were well behaved. In fact, the most annoying protester was a man of about 80 who was blowing a piercingly loud whistle.

We waited and waited and waited. Finally at least 50 police vehicles came down the street. Then the olympic promoters came by, and then the olympic vehicles. We finally saw a group of runners - they ran right by - no torch. Everyone in the crowd was asking "did you see the torch?" Anyhow - it turns out the torch was in the van due to security concerns.

We had an awesome trip to Paris.