2008.05.20 Relaxing in Brussels

After spending the night with Al, Mindy, Amanda, and Sophie on May 20, we left our car at their house and took the “El” to O'Hare for our non-stop flight to Brussels. We're always glad when we can get reasonable tickets on American flight 88 because it's the only carrier that gets us there without a layover somewhere. Pamela picked us up at the airport the following morning and we began a relaxing week at her home.

We took Henry to and from school every day and enjoyed spending time with him. We saw his concert at school and watched his Saturday Judo lesson. His school ends at noon on Wednesdays, so we used that opportunity to take him to the The Belgian Center for Comic Strip Art (http://www.trabel.com/brussel/brussels-museums-comicstrip.htm), which is housed in a building that is, in itself, a museum piece. The Waucquez Warehouse is considered to be one of the masterpieces of the most famous Belgian Art Nouveau architect, Victor Horta, who built the house in 1906. The Waucquez family used the house for a wholesale cloth business. Now it celebrates the Belgian comic strip art tradition represented by many different artists. Henry’s favorite character is Herge’s Tintin (http://www.tintin.com/#home/une.swf&lang=fr/).

On Saturday night we ate at Krishna in Overijse, which Pamela says has the best Indian food she's had outside of India. Having lived in London and worked as a consultant in India for a year and a half, she's eaten a lot of Indian food.

On Wednesday, we had dinner at the home of some of Pamela's friends, Maggie and Ken, who happened to have Ken’s sister, niece, and grandniece visiting from Ripon, Yorkshire.

The weather was nice enough to allow us several good days to work in the garden, though we did have periods of rain throughout our stay. Pamela claims there are hot, dry periods in Belgium, but I've never experienced one.

On Sunday we spent the day at Walibi in Wavre. For a report on that adventure, go to http://www.henrygswoolley.blogspot.com/. Here's a preview--Grandpa checking a map of the park and Henry eager to get started.

2008 March Events

Bill called me in Colorado every day. One day he reported that he’d had chest pains and his doctor wanted him to see a cardiologist in Appleton. I called Loomers and Schangs in tears. Loomers went with him to the appointment. After I got home, Henry and I took him for a heart catheterization at Theda Clark Hospital in Neenah. The surgeon removed a lot of old, calcified plaque from a major artery that was 90% blocked. Since he continued to have chest pain after the procedure, we decided not to take our scheduled trip to Brussels to take Henry home and to Dubai to visit Steve, Maria, Anna, and Kate. I took him to the ER in Ripon Sunday night and they sent him to Appleton Medical Center by ambulance, which he declared to be the bumpiest most uncomfortable ride he'd ever had. Monday he had another catheterization in which they determined that his two stents were functioning well and that his heart was fine. They attributed the chest pain to acid reflux.

Since we were unable to travel, we had to make other arrangements for Henry to go home. Several friends volunteered to take him, and we had him packed to go when we realized we didn't have the legal paperwork for someone outside the family to take him out of the country. Finally Pamela arranged for Emilie Latrielle, a close friend from France with whom he was supposed to spend a week of his Easter break, to come for him. Pamela got the legal permission documents for Emilie and we thought we were all set, only to discover that her passport had to be replaced with one that could be read electronically--even though it was valid until 2012. We bought the ticket for her to come March 27. The passport, which was supposed to arrive March 21, was finally in her hands on March 26.

We picked Emilie up in Chicago on March 27 and spent the weekend with Al and Mindy. We took in the Field Museum, the Nature Museum in Lincoln Park, some nice restaurants, and, of course, Michigan Avenue and Millennium Park. Mindy's a great tour guide and the view of the city from her office is spectacular.

We left Chicago Sunday evening and arrived home about 9:15. The next morning Henry announced that his glasses were broken. Sure enough, the metal had broken on one side of the nose piece. We went to Lens Crafters in Fond du Lac, where we got great service. Henry had new glasses the next day. Emilie was able to use the trips to Fond du Lac to shop for scrapbooking supplies. Wednesday was a nice day, so Emilie got to experience sledding on Kiwanis Hill behind our house, where there was still plenty of snow to get a good ride, kite flying, woods exploring, and watching Henry ride his little bike.

On Thursday, April 3, we took them to Appleton to fly home. They flew NWA from Appleton to Detroit to Amsterdam to Toulouse. After a night in Toulouse, Emilie's mother, Michele, took over for the last leg of Henry’s journey to Brussels.

Pamela missed her little boy a lot, so we posted pictures and video clips on a blog for her. The child is a real character, and some of the videos are quite entertaining. Click here to see them www.henrywoolley.blogspot.com.

2008 February Events

Cary fell in their newly-surfaced driveway in Hawaii on January 30, hurt her shoulder again, and broke her hip. She had surgery on the hip in Honolulu on the 31st. I wish we weren't so far away.

Bill and I went to Chicago on February 15 to celebrate birthdays with Allen at Think and Amanda at a tumbling party at their gym. Bill returned to Ripon on Monday with their Highlander, leaving our larger Odyssey for Mindy and me to drive to Beaver Creek the next Friday. Monday Mindy got the flu and was down with a fever for the week.

I met Henry at O’Hare on Thursday. Pamela flew on to Denver and stayed with Cousins Michelle and Brent until Saturday. She had a round trip plane ticket that would connect her with a business meeting directly after the ski trip, but we arranged for Henry to drive to Colorado with Mindy and me and then stay with us in Ripon for a week after the ski trip. We would then drop him off in Brussels on the way to Dubai.

Friday morning Allen packed up Mindy’s ski gear and some of the kids’ stuff. Mindy finished packing after she got up, still not feeling well. We left Friday at 2:15PM. I thought it was amazing that Mindy made it at all. All three kids were great on the trip to Colorado.

Henry went to ski school for six days and was at the top of the mountain for the last two. Mindy and I didn’t ski for the first two days, but we enrolled Amanda and Sophie in Small World day care for the last four days so that we could both ski. The weather was perfect on those days. Allen joined us on Friday. Bill, Judy, and Rob were in Park Plaza with us. Penny, Mike, Matt, Eileen, and Don and Nancy Corts were at Mihalys.

2008 January Events

Mindy declined a tempting job offer from a new firm and accepted more responsibility at Much Schelist. Allen accepted an offer from Wildman, Harrold, Allen, and Dixon and started there January 28.

After having a lot of snow and a White Christmas in December, we got a warmer weather and rain in early January, followed by freezing temperatures and a wet snow on January 11. Then the sub-zero temperatures returned, and for the rest of the month we had a lot more snow and very cold weather. I took advantage of being inside to dig into the family archives, inspired by the new scanner I got for Christmas from Bill.

The City Council approved a December bow hunt within the city limits to reduce the deer herd. One died on our property while our grandchildren were here to see all the blood in the snow (but fortunately not the body). We haven’t seen one since, though there are a few hoof prints in the snow. The January 10 paper reported that "Team Ripon" bagged 1 buck, 12 mature does, and 12 yearlings.

2007 12 13-14 Bill and Jean in Milwaukee

Our 2006 Christmas gift from Eric and Jenn, Al and Mindy, and Steve and Maria was two Museum Packages at the Pfister Hotel, one of Milwaukee's 19th Century landmarks. We used one of them for a winter get-away just before Christmas 2007. It was a wonderful night and two days, and we're looking forward to using the other package soon.

This is the entrance of the Pfister where the valet parking and greeting personnel took care of the car and luggage for us.

After checking in we bundled up and walked the three blocks to the Milwaukee Art Museum, where we saw the traveling Martin Ramirez exhibit as well as quite a bit of the museum's own collection.

Across the street from the Pfister are other interesting examples of 19th Century Milwaukee architecture. The building above is the Federal Building-US Court House. Below is Milwaukee's oldest and most exclusive club, The Milwaukee Club, which is unmarked. We had to ask the concierge what it was.

Bill had once had the lunch buffet at the Pfister's Cafe Rouge and had wanted to share the experience with Jean. This was our opportunity. It was delicious!

When we got home, the first thing Bill did was write an email to the people who gave us the gift and inspired us to do this. It describes the activities we packed into two days while still finding time to relax and enjoy the ambiance of this elegant historic hotel. I used Bill's email for the rest of this post. Here it is:

We just got back from our two-day mini-break in Milwaukee that we got from you as a Christmas present last year. It was a really wonderful little trip. We got to Milwaukee about noon yesterday after stopping to do some shopping on the way. The Pfister Hotel was wonderful. We stopped the car in valet parking and they did the rest. We were disappointed in the fact that the Cafe Rouge was no longer serving lunch. I had been there a year ago and thought that their lunch buffet was the best I had ever had. However, Peter, the friendly concierge, said that the Cafe was opening for a special group today and that he would get us in.

One of several nice things about the Pfister was that it was central to everything. After a nice lunch at the Mason Street Café in the hotel we went to the Milwaukee Art Museum. It was only three blocks from the Pfister, which was a pleasant surprise. They had an interesting traveling exhibit by a Mexican artist, Martin Ramirez, who created most of his work while in a mental hospital in California. Their regular collection was good, with representative pieces from all periods. The pre-19th century artists were generally unfamiliar to us, but we did see one by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, who is so prominent in the Brussels art museum collection that we recognized his style. Among the Impressionists we saw one by Alfred Sisley. The modern and contemporary collection included works by Joan Miro, Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Leger, Alexej Von Jawlensky, Roy Lichtenstein, Wayne Thiebaud, and Andy Warhol (Campbell Soup). They had about two dozen works by Georgia O'Keeffe, who was a Wisconsin native.

On returning to the Pfister, we opened the bottle of wine that came with the package and rested and read for an hour. We then walked five blocks to the Pabst Theater to see The Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s production of Dickens’ Christmas Carol. It was a real delight. Even though the scene with the Cratchit family wheeling a tiny coffin to the cemetery had half the theater in tears, it was a fun production and very family oriented. I hope that we can take grandchildren sometime.

Today we slept in and had a late breakfast at the hotel. We then did a walk in the neighborhood (lots of 19th century buildings), and then had the long-awaited lunch at the Cafe Rouge. It was as good as I remembered. After lunch we checked out and drove a short distance to the Milwaukee Public Museum, where he saw an Imax film on the Alps, a planetarium presentation on theories related to the Christmas Star of Bethlehem, and an exhibit on global warming. We left the museum about 4:30 and were back in Ripon in time for supper.

Overall, it was a truly wonderful trip which was made even more wonderful by the discovery that you had provided us with two overnights so that we can go back again. The Pfister was really delightful. Staying in a four-star is always nice. The central location was appreciated. In addition, the staff was really friendly and outgoing. We had such a good time that I think we will plan to take such mini-breaks more often. Milwaukee is small enough to be manageable yet it still has a number of attractions that will justify return trips.

2007 October 11-18 San Francisco and the Napa Valley

The Ripon College Alumni Association sponsored a tour to San Francisco and the Napa Valley and asked Bill to host it. I went along for the ride, and we had a lovely trip seeing new sites and revisiting places associated with family. Bill’s mother grew up in Marin County across the Bay from San Francisco and his parents lived in San Francisco as newlyweds. More recently, Steve and Maria lived in Napa for three years and Kate was born there.

We were on a Collette Vacations Smithsonian tour with Ripon Alums Greg and Kathy Dunn, whose daughter Jennifer was a Ripon Alpha Delta Pi during one of my terms as chapter advisor. This was only a six day tour, but we saw a lot. We did a walking tour of Chinatown in pouring rain, a bus tour of the city in bright sunshine,

and a trip across the Golden Gate in complete fog.

Napa showed us the same variety of weather conditions, but our luncheon trip on the Wine Train happened on a glorious fall day. We thought of little Anna as we rode by Taylor's Refresher, her favorite restaurant.

Among the highlights of the trip were visits to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco; the Ma-Tsu Temple of America in Chinatown;

a tour and barrel tasting at Silverado Vinyards;

various art galleries, including several in Yountville and the museum and gallery at Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food & the Arts; dinner at the Culinary Institute of America; several classes--dim sum cooking in Chinatown, and food and wine pairings and blending and bottling our own wine at Copia;

drinks at the Pacific Union Club and dinner at a tiny French restaurant on Nob Hill as guests of Ripon College alumni Guy and Susan Henshaw (Left to Right: Greg, Kathy, Bill, Jean, Guy, Susan);

lunch at John’s Grill (opened in 1908) and a backstage tour of the San Francisco Opera with my Colorado University friend Meg Franklin, who also got us opening night tickets to the Magic Flute;

and my birthday dinner on the 46th floor of the San Francisco Hilton.

No trip seems complete these days without an airline story. We got a whole extra day of vacation courtesy of Northwest Airlines, since it took 27 hours to make the trip home. Time on the tarmac, time in a holding pattern, rescheduled flights taking us to extra cities, and a night on mats in the Minneapolis airport still failed to dampen our spirits about a trip that was altogether good fun with fifteen great travel companions and an outstanding tour manager.

2007 08 25 Our Italian Adventure

We took an Insight tour of Italy from August 25-September 8. We got a good overview of the history and culture of the country, saw a variety of sights, and climbed a lot of hills to partially offset our daily consumption of gelato, the luscious Italian ice cream that is readily available. Our 27 traveling companions from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the US were pleasant, compatible, and fun.

The map shows the general scope of the tour and our base locations for one to three nights, but we took many excursions to other places as well. Follow the arrows, starting and ending in Rome. It was a country roads tour, so most of the ride was on narrow mountain roads with steep drop-offs and hairpin curves. Our driver, Dino, handled them beautifully. The hill towns were our favorite places, but we’re glad to have spent some time in Rome, Venice, and Florence as well. I’ve chosen a few representative pictures to show the variety of our activities. Bill will follow up later with a more complete set of reflections, which will be posted on our website.

This is the Commonwealth Cemetery at Cassino, one of several cemeteries honoring the allied dead from the World War II Battle of Monte Cassino.

We were in the Abbey of Monte Casino during Sunday mass. At the time I took this picture we were listening to Gregorian chants. The building is a reconstruction as the Allies bombed the entire monastery to bits during the war, thinking that German troops were hiding in it. St. Benedict’s original room is still intact down below, and we were able to see it. The original abbey was founded by St. Benedict about 529 on the remnants of a pre-existing Roman fortification.

We visited Pompeii on a hot afternoon—45 degrees Celsius or over 100 Fahrenheit. People who were sensitive to heat had a tough time of it. We were warned to bring umbrellas to use for shade. The heat didn’t bother me, and I thought the tour was fascinating. That’s Mt. Vesuvius in the background.

This is the Sorrento Coast, one of the many lovely views we enjoyed along the coast.

Just outside our hotel in Sorrento a village festival was going on. This one happened to be the festival celebrating the eggplant. Following the parade there was singing and general merriment that went on into the night

One of my favorite lunches was at the ancient farm of Rosa and Maria, where we ate and drank only what had been produced at the farm. Rosa greeted us and explained how they make the wine and then she interpreted while Maria, who spoke no English, made mozzarella before our very eyes. We ate fresh caprese salad and drank limoncello on a patio in a shady arbor.

Our friends Norm and Sue Loomer, newly retired and celebrating, accompanied us on the trip. On a night of poking round Sorrento with them, Bill found Ristorante Bagni Delfino (thanks to the Rick Steves guidebook) on the waterfront and we had a delicious seafood dinner.

We visited Santa Maria degli Angeli, which is built around St Francis’ original church that still sits intact in the middle. St Francis worshipped and died here, so it’s a very big attraction for pilgrims. A congregation from Sicily, complete with their church banner, were chanting and doing a sort of circular line dance at several holy sites we visited that day.

This street in Assisi is typical of the streets in the many hill towns we visited, though it’s wider than most and the light is better. Our hill town street pictures are generally pretty dark.

Our tour director, Anna Targett from Birmingham, UK, did an excellent job of giving historical and cultural background information as well as being very capable of keeping us happy and attending to details. In addition to Anna, we had local guides in most of the places we stopped. This is Giovanni, our Cortona guide, explaining some Etruscan ruins.

Cortona was “put on the map” by Frances Mayes in Under the Tuscan Sun. This is the home where she and her husband still live.

The pigeons in St. Mark’s Square in Venice are cute, but heaven help us if avian flu ever hits here.

It had to be done. Doesn’t every tourist in Pisa have to stand for a picture in front of the campanile? That’s Norm and Sue with us. We are still sporting happy smiles because the thunder, lightning, heavy wind, and sheets of rain hadn’t hit yet. Minutes after this picture was taken we sought refuge in the Composanto, the cloister-like building that houses the tombs.

Is this gorgeous or what? It’s a view over Tuscany from outside San Gimignano.

Bagno Di Vignolo is a spa, with a spring bubbling into a huge pool at 55 degrees Celsius—that’s hot. The run-off down a rocky channel is a good place to stick your feet in the thermal mineral water after it cools off a bit. While we were relaxing here, Anna and Dino, our tour director and driver, were laying out our picnic feast of local meats, cheeses, and wines they’d picked up at the grocery store.

At Tarquinia we entered Etruscan tombs, excavations, and museum. This is a family tomb that contains frescoes and places for both cremated and uncremated remains.

Back in Rome at the end of the trip we did the usual sites—Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Vatican, Coliseum, Catacombs—that just have to be done in Rome. I’m glad I did it, but I don’t need to do it again. The crowds in the Vatican were downright oppressive. It was body to body in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve all seen pictures of those other places, so I’m including the Baths of Caracalla here.

We plan a return visit to Tuscany the first week of June 2008 with all our children and grandchildren. We've rented a 500-year-old vila with eight bedrooms and three bathrooms for fourteen people. Now that we've done the overview, we're ready for some time to savor the beauty of Tuscany.