Paris

From Homborg to Paris it took about 4hrs but the last hour was just
trying to get through the city, especially on the round-abouts it is about
4-6lanes of traffic merging into 2.... basically a free for all...and the
object of the game is not to get hit. I was the one that decided to take
on this driving challenge otherwise I think Frank would of lost his
marbles. The hotel we booked was nice but are two bed room was a
two twin bed room which for a family of five would of been a little cozy..
so they moved us to a new room....we walked in to find they have given
us an upgrade..ONE double bed...so again we moved to another room
with two double beds but this room smelled horribly of smoke..so we moved
again...each time with four suit cases bags and a stroller....finally we got a
room...no smoke, two double beds..clean..with a very old (non renovated)
orange bathroom watered damaged wall...but a newer room....but after
2hrs it was good enough. We found a restaurant to eat at about 10:00pm
Moroccan food....first time for all of us....very interesting tasty...well off
to bed...off to see the Eiffel tower....part 2 of Paris coming up

Homburg, Germany to visit Frank's cousin

Homburg is a very cute little European town with a population of about 40,000.
We arrived later than planned, therefore ended up having dinner at Romualdo's
house. For a bit before a traditional Italian mean of pasta, bread, meat, then salad and
Because that still wasnt enough salami,prosciutto, cheese and fruit....oh and of
course wine. But as usual I am the only one drinking it. It was lovely to meet Frank's
cousin Romualdo his wife Ervira which are in their
70's and the kids Batista and Massimo who are around Frank's age. Massino
brought his two children over Emily 12 and Diego 10 the kids speech German
and English so they were able to communicate with Nicholas and Juliana. The
Kids played football (soccer) in the backyard and had a fabulous time. After
dinner we headed to the town center to watch the world cup and it was
even more exciting because Germany was playing. We stayed at Frank's cousins
House for the night. Again Marcelo wanted to party at 4am so it woke Juliana up
we ended up having 4 of us in bed and me trying to sleep at the bottom of the
bed.......SLEEP is over rated I say! In the morning they served us breakfast
CAKE....yes CAKE for breakfast with some fruit....,well Marcelo was in heaven
all I keep hearing was " more cake, more cake" well of course who wouldn't
want more cake for breakfast. We set off from there we a bag full of chocolate
from them after our CAKE breakfast off to Paris for 3 nights....and another

Frankfurt

Frankfurt is a very modern city it is like being downtown Vancouver near Robson with
a bit of Yaletown mixed in. Except everyone in this city rides bikes and speaks German
and the taxi cabs are Mercedes and BMW's not Toyota corollas. The one thing we loved about
Frankfurt is that is so clean and it is so nice to wander around and not to see garage littered
everywhere. I must say it is very interesting grocery shopping in German, although the food looks
the same you are not so sure what is in the food you are buying. We didn't do to much in Frankfurt
except shop a little, eat and sleep. Ohh and speaking of sleeping the last day when we were
suppose to be checking out out 1pm we ended up sleeping past our checking out time and scrabbling
to get packed and out of our room, they want to charge us 25euros luckily we talked our way out of
the extra charge especially when they were already charging us 28 Euros to park. It makes paying
for parking at Whistler when you stay look like a steal. Well that was Frankfurt in a nutshell off
to Homburg to see Frank's cousin and his family.....all of us our five bags and a stroller in a Skoda
Staton wagon...luckily it is only a two to three hour drive.

Flight to Frankfurt

Our flight left Vancouver at 2245pm we were lucky enough that there was empty seats at the front of the plane so Juliana got a whole seat to herself. She was off to sleep within the hour. Nick found a seat at the bulk head and the iPad kept him amused. As for Marcelo because I know you are all wondering how he did well........he had a seat of his very own which we did not have to pay the $1000 dollars that they would of charged us and he played till about 0100, with only a little bit of screaming,until the Tylenol kicked in and then we laid him on the floor below Juliana and he slept the rest of the flight. As for Frank and I well he slept on and off and I maybe slept two hours...it was just like pulling a night shift without the pay.

Finally in Frankfurt...woo hoo we made it all five of us and a ten hour flight. We ended up spending the next four hours trying to get vehicle that fit us, between the 7foot tall German volleyball team and the mini-bus they tried to get us to take it was an adventure. And yes a mini-bus in Europe!! We arrived at our hotel around nineish....but it took till 0300 in the morning and a lot of screaming and yelling (it was a wild party in our room, that I bet all the our guests were impressed) for everyone to get to bed and try to adjust to the nine hour time change.

Well that is just the start, we will update soon.