Several thoughts

I have a million different things I have been meaning to write about lately but just haven't had a chance. Work has finally been busy and challenging so have kept the posts to a minimum. I sit right now in a Cafe on Rue de Rivoli in Paris. It is 9 pm. I have been in and out of Paris for the past 8 weeks or so working on a project and been here since Sunday night (Friday night now). I plan on being here for another 5 days or so before heading to Munich for a few days. But, luckily, the kids had a few days off school and Rebecca jumped on the train and brought the family on Wednesday night. I took Thursday off and we saw the eiffel tower, notre dame and walked alot. Walking Paris with a 4 and 2 year old is not ideal so we have been quite realistic. I worked all day today and Rebecca and the girls were beat when I got back to the hotel so I came out for dinner.
I find Paris to be one of the most fascinating cities. The history, the building and (most of all) the people. This city is alive at all hours and there are hundreds of people streaming by. A great place for people watching. I learned today that France and Paris are the number one tourist destinations in the world.
Tomorrow we head out again - perhaps to Versailles palace or just to wander - before the family heads back Sunday morning. Kate has 5 days of school left and we head to the US in 2 weeks - me for 2 weeks and the rest of the family for a month. We can't wait, though there is some trepidation. There are so many things we ask people to bring and send from the US that we can't get here and we are trying to plan as well as possible how to fit mac and cheese, bisquick and all the next year's clothes we want to buy into our suitcases. Quite alot of logistical planning but Rebecca is a master at it so I am sure we will be fine. The other concern (more from Rebecca than me though I understand perfectly) is that now we have come to enjoy and live life here comfortably, a month home with comforts and family will make leaving again hard. We shall see...I can do with missing the food and many other things. The hardest part is leaving family.
So I wanted to write a few weeks ago and didn't have time so hope I don't forget it all. And, as requested by Jenny, I do plan on posting pictures of the tulips from our visit to Holland (as soon as Rebecca sends them to me).
But what I wanted to write about was a mixture of fun (a day at a German amusement park geared towards kids) and frustration (the lack of German etiquette when it comes to getting in lines and not cutting). However, now that I have spent time in Paris, I realize that Germans are fantastic about getting in lines and it is the French who are very challenged.
So we went to this amusement park about 30 minutes from our house. Mini sized and geared toward kids 12 and under or so but with some good rides - a roller coaster, sky lifts, ferris wheel, etc. It was a relatively small park with much of the park geared towards little shelters and barbecue sites for families coming to spend the day, have fun as well as eat. There is a petting zoo and much of it is geared around the life of farming. But what amazed me is that almost all of the rides were human powered. The kids got on a ferris wheel and there was another kid riding a bike powering the wheel. The "sky ride" was a pedal ride that took you around the park. The chair lift ride that shoots you across the park is essentially 100% gravity based. And on all but one ride, there was no attendant. Lines were not managed by attendants, attendants did not ensure you put your belt on or didn't hang out of the ride. Nothing. And while that ran relatively well...the one ride where there were lines (for the kids to drive actual small boats) and had an attendant, she did not pay attention at all to the mass chaos that was going on in the lines. She would pick the 5 kids who would go next and then parents would push and pull and force their kids in front of those 5 and she would just take the first 5. And this is acceptable behavior! (See my post in December about the carousel and this was quite similar). It was really quite overwhelming that even I, who has never been in a fight that I recall, just wanted to start hitting people. Amazing....
And that was not topped until we stood in line for 2 hours at the Eiffel tower and the French were just pushing themselves in line near the front. We wait for 2 hours with kids and the couple in front of us decided they could just cut the line. Amazingly rude...though only rude by American standards I suppose. It is just the culture here...Just hard to explain to kids.

Sorry for my rambling...

What are they thinking?

In a response to increasing complaints from customers on only being able to take one bag, Air Jamaica came up with a brilliant new scheme. See the press release below.


Kingston, Jamaica May 8, 2009 –Air Jamaica will implement a new policy for checked baggage on flights between New York and Grenada and New York and Barbados. Passengers travelling on these routes in Lovebird Economy class may now check one bag free of charge, and pay US$25 to check a second bag. Lovebird Executive Class passengers may check two bags free of charge, with a US$25 fee for a third checked bag. The new policy comes into effect May 11, 2009 for New York/Grenada and July 2, 2009 for New York/Barbados, subject to the approval of the government of Barbados.
Passengers are guaranteed delivery of the free baggage allowance on the same flight on which they travel. All other bags will be transported within seven days, and must be collected from the airport. The status of these bags may be tracked online at www.AirJamaica.com/baggage to determine when they may be collected.

So, firstly, the name Lovebird Economy class cracks me up. Never having flown Air Jamaica, I can just imagine what the benefits of this upgraded class might be. Trying to keep my blog clean and kid friendly, I will not pass on my thoughts.

Second, what happens if you are only traveling for 6 days? Just pick up your free luggage at the airport for the return flight? Or what if you are traveling and not staying in one destination? Amazing that someone came up with this.

As an aside, I traveled through Charles de Gaulle airport twice in the past few weeks. One of the things I have noticed about european airports is that the security check is much more efficient than the US. The bins are returned on a conveyor so you don't have to wait for the brain surgeon manning the line to bring them to you. Typically no long lines at all. However, at CDG, in each security line I went through you had to pick up your packed bins not once, not twice, but three times to move them from table to table to conveyor belt as there were gaps between each one. And 3 times I have seen people dump their whole bins as they try to do all this quickly with hands full so as not to provide a delay to others. How hard would it be to push the tables together or put a connecting piece of sheet metal between them so people can just push their bins and heavy carry-ons? Good lord....Perhaps this is just meant to provide comic relief to the TSA agents

European Wanderings

I was working at a company north of Paris (20 miles) yesterday and made the decision to remain in Paris for the night and come back today to Frankfurt. While I usually travel alone, this time I was with two coworkers and one of them had never seen the Eiffel Tower. Normally I would have had dinner and gone back to the hotel room to work but he convinced me to go with him to the tower. And I am so glad he did. The tower was beautifully lit with sparkling lights all over it (like Cinderella's castle at Disney) and was a sight to behold.

However, coming into the city may not have been the best choice in the world. The traffic was miserable coming into the city at 6 pm yesterday and took us 90 minutes in a taxi from the hotel to the office. If I knew Paris a little bit better I would have taken the Metro. Oh well...

Tomorrow, Friday, the family and I are driving up to the Netherlands to the city of Keukenhof. This is apparently one of the most beautiful places in the world where the fields and fields of tulips bloom in April. There are flower parades and an amusement park all dedicated to the flowers blooming. While there we hope to spend some time in Amsterdam and a beach on the North Sea. We are staying with a family with two girls (7 and 5) - he's British and she is Dutch - that we met while sitting waiting for the Main Street Parade in Euro Disney in November.

And lastly, the company I worked at yesterday is 300 meters from where the Concorde crashed in 2000 upon take off from Charles de Gaull, killing all 113 people on board. There is still a huge hole and field, cordoned off by razor and barbed wire and small monument in the parking lot of the restaurant/hotel next door where we ate lunch. Awfully eerie to be eating lunch looking out at a field where a major airline disaster occurred.

Ode to Kate

This morning Rebecca and I got the opportunity to go to Kate's class for a conference with the teacher (and Kate) and to view Kate's portfolio - all the pictures, projects she has worked on throughout the year. We are so proud of her! She then got to go out with Rebecca for a few hours alone as Lauren was in school (which rarely happens as whenever Lauren is in school, Kate is as well) and got a popsicle. You would think we were in Texas with the size of that thing! We love you Kate!

Rebecca and I went to dinner and a movie Saturday night. Dinner was at a Japanese restaurant where they cooked in front of you like Benihana (or Samurai for those long-time east-side Cleveland residents). Food was very good, pricey but not quite the fun atmosphere of Benihana. Movie was Marley and Me...not bad but certainly emotional. The pic is a picture of a "beer bike." There were 8 places on it, each place with pedals and kegs attached so people could climb up, drink beer and help pedal the bike as it roamed the streets of Frankfurt. There appeared to be one guy up front who did the steering. Not a bad way to get from place to place on summer evenings while taking in the local scene...

Thanks for the Memories Grandpa

My grandfather, Glenn Molyneaux (Gim), was one of the people I admired most and most enjoyed spending time with. He was a jack-of-all-trades and able to do and fix anything. He was a well-respected businessman (owner of a hardware store and mutiple other endeavours) who always made time (at least in my lifetime) for family and grandkids. He passed away Saturday after a rough last couple of years. He will be sorely missed by all those who had any contact with him. A list below of the wonderful memories, many of which I share with my cousins, sister and parents:

- Going for donuts with grandpa at the cottage every weekend morning while the parents slept

- Learning the etiquette of golf

- Boating in the Molycoddle in Florida

- A deep sea fishing charter he paid for in which my cousin Brad and I were very sick

- Working for and living with him one summer after sophomore year in high school at a construction site, learning what manual labor was all about

- Fishing and learning how to clean fish

- A 14 day cruise thru the Panama Canal in 1987

- Christmases in Shaker when they would drive the motor home in and park it in our driveway

- Going with him to flea markets where he would be selling products from the hardware store

- Playing in the 2nd floor (toy floor!) of the hardware store

- The corny little songs he used to sing ("He mourned for his life and shot his wife...")

- Riding his moped around Oberlin

- Being blamed for putting the cat down the clothes chute at 582 Beech Street

- Teaching me how to drive a car with a trailer

- His constant "jerry rigging" to get things to work (thankfully/surprisingly never causing a fire at the cottage)

- Buying lottery tickets with him and sitting in the motor home waiting for the nightly picks

- Never forgetting anybody. He remembered every friend I ever brought to the cottage

- Cruising around Ft Myers in his 80's Lincoln Continental (huge!)

I am sure there are a million more, so please add on if anybody has more. I will miss you and love you Grandpa Gim.

GERMany

We arrived in Germany on the 1st of August last year. The first 3 weeks we spent living in a hotel as we awaited the delivery of the furniture to our rented house. During that 3 weeks, we went from playground to playground, McDonalds to McDonalds, exploring cities. No one got sick. Since then, GERMany has taken its toll on the Molyneaux clan. Evidence below…This does not show all the hours spent filling out medical claim forms (as each doctor visit and prescription must have a claim form filled out and sent back to the US) nor the hours Rebecca has spent on the phone talking to the healthcare provider or reconciling what they should have paid to what was actually paid. Bless her heart…it has taken at least 5 hours a week since September to keep it all straight!

August 25 - Lauren - Bronchitis
September 1 - Lauren - Lung congestion
September 4 - Rebecca - family exposed to TB on plane, needed testing
September 5 - Kate - strep throat
September 5 - Lauren - strep throat
September 11 - Kate - test for TB exposure
September 11 - Lauren - test for TB exposure
September 15 - Kate - health test
September 15 - Lauren - nasal congestion
September 20 - Lauren - sinus and cough not improving
September 23 - Rebecca - kidney and bladder infection - ambulance and hospital for 2 days
October 1 - Kate - strep throat
October 1 - Lauren - sinus infection
October 3 - Lauren - hand, foot and mouth disease at Disney
October 9 - Lauren - sinus infection
October 20 - Kate - fever
October 28 - Kate - ankle injury
November 20 - Lauren - Upper Respiratory infection in Austria
November 27 - Kate - ear infection
November 27 - Lauren - Pneumonia
December 5 - Lauren - urinary tract infection
December 6 - Lauren - pneumonia
December 22 - Lauren - severe cough
December 22 - Kate - pink eye/conjunctivitis
December 31 - Kate - pink eye, severe cough
December 31 - Lauren - pink eye
January 1 - Miles - bronchitis
January 7 - Rebecca - sore throat/cough
January 14 - Miles - pneumonia
January 25 - Rebecca - broken foot
February 3 - Kate - Cold/severe milk anaphylactic reaction
February 3 - Lauren - cold
February 10 - Rebecca - broken hand
February 10 - Lauren - foot infection
February 16 - Lauren - Scarlett Fever