October 27th, 2009 by 
Michael in Raleigh, NC
This has probably been the craziest two trips of my life over the past two weeks. I was first on the west coast attending a wedding for my Cali cousin Michelle at this amazing place in Healdsburg, California. We met with friends and family over this extended weekend and saw much of the Sonoma Country Wineries. It was great to attend such a great event with such good company even though the room Will and I shared had scary porcelain cats that where placed by the fireplace to glare at you. Getting back to the San Fran airport was even pretty cool since we took the Oakland bridge which gave a totally different prospective coming into the city rather than taking big red across the bay. As for my family getting back to North Carolina, it was pretty easy but as for me and Jen it would be a total different experience. Getting delayed at the SFO airport for almost 5 hours then arriving in Atlanta too late for a connection flight, Delta ended up paying for us to stay at a hotel to catch the first flight out the next morning.
Hoping to start off the next trip on a better note, we had arrived at the RDU airport (not a university as someone on the airplane asking me confusingly) not even 48 hours from the flight back in from San Fran. Our flight path would be to first depart Raleigh to Dulles to Frankfurt then into Basel. Frankfurt was a freaking huge airport, we had to get bused both arriving at the airport and debarking the airport. When we left during our long journey along the airport tarmac, an old man leaned over to me and stated that they might as well just drive down to Basel seeming how long its taking us to just get to the airplane.
Flying Lufthansa was very nice and clean although the small child in front of me was not feeling well. His mom placed a open barf bag next to him in the event he did, Jen at this point left me know too that she would do the same if he barfed…super. When we got to the Basel airport it was nice to know that things looked familiar. We walked outside the airport being careful once again not to walk out into the wrong country. Not a minute went by until we saw this frantic women running to us. It was Gina come to greet us into her hometown! I was again comforted by family in a foreign place but on the bigger picture this was Jen’s first time out of the country. Staying with the Colleluori’s would be the best break-in for her to get familiar with an foreign country.
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Tags: Europe, San Francisco, Switzerland, traveling
May 14th, 2007 by Michael in Basel, Switzerland
Saturday was our final day in Holland so our host friends decided to take us north of Amsterdam to visit a small cheese shop and a clog museum. We packed all our things and the four of us crammed into a mini Daewoo large enough to fix two kegs of Heineken beer. On the way I was pretty excited to see the arena where the national team of Holland plays futbol but I would have to leave seeing a game for the next trip.
Going through the cheese room, the tour guide was very impressive as she kept changing languages on the fly to accommodate for all the people. She also reprimanded anyone who tried to come through the door into our showing. She just shooed them off and told them to wait until the next tour, one man kinda seemed insulted but she just carried on with her multilingual lines. The clog museum had a Dutchman explaining how it would take 3-4 hours to make one clog out of wood the old way but by using today’s machines it can be done in 5 minutes…wow. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Europe, family, Switzerland, traveling
May 12th, 2007 by Michael in Leiden, Netherlands
Ahhh…so my craving for some travel has been fixed once again. On Wednesday I left with my sister bound for Europe. We both left from our respective homes, me from Greenboro and her from Raleigh where we would rendezvous in Newark, New Jersey. It was a stunning sight seeing the skyline of New York while on approach to the airport but at the same time the absence of the World Trade buildings reminded me of 9/11. Here in New Jersey we had about five hours to kill but as my sister manages our time well, we already had a challenge waiting before us… to find a Post office in the airport. Simple enough you think?? We scoured every corner of the airport asking five different people who worked there for a post office boxes. The answers we got were: go to the continental mail service which really was for employees, go to the Fedex station which you can’t get there by walking and lastly we heard that two weeks ago they just removed the post office throughout the airport so that really didn’t help us out much at all. Before I knew, it was time to board the plane. Now keep in mind this plane departed at 5:15PM and arrived in Amsterdam at 7:00am the next day. So sleeping on the plane was preferred but to my dismay I don’t sleep very well on planes especially when I’m too excited to get to my destination. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Europe, Holland, traveling
This has probably been the craziest two trips of my life over the past two weeks. I was first on the west coast attending a wedding for my Cali cousin Michelle at this amazing place in Healdsburg, California. We met with friends and family over this extended weekend and saw much of the Sonoma Country Wineries. It was great to attend such a great event with such good company even though the room Will and I shared had scary porcelain cats that where placed by the fireplace to glare at you. Getting back to the San Fran airport was even pretty cool since we took the Oakland bridge which gave a totally different prospective coming into the city rather than taking big red across the bay. As for my family getting back to North Carolina, it was pretty easy but as for me and Jen it would be a total different experience. Getting delayed at the SFO airport for almost 5 hours then arriving in Atlanta too late for a connection flight, Delta ended up paying for us to stay at a hotel to catch the first flight out the next morning.
