Week 31 Summary - Tori's Here!!!

For work this week Sam and I headed to London.  It was our first follow-up trip since the tradeshow in the London financial district.  We had lots of good meetings with Asset Managers and potential partners.  The trade part of the UK government also met with us to convince us to put an office in the UK vs. Ireland.  We’re not to that point yet, but it gave us a good idea of the pros and the cons.

The heat is still on.  London was VERY warm especially in a suit.  The tube was almost unbearable.  London is such an amazing city, but I definitely like it as a place to visit vs. living there.  It is too crowded for me!!!  We got back into Luxembourg after a short an hour on Thursday night.

This week Kim’s cousin Andrew Averett and his family visited from Saudi Arabia.  He’s an accountant that took a position at a Saudi university.  We enjoyed listening to all of their adventures in Saudi.  The biggest surprise was that it costs about 13 cents a gallon for gas.  We’re thinking that is pretty good vs. our $6.24 a gallon gas.  That is one weird thing about Luxembourg – everything is expensive except the gas.  It is $1.50 a liter cheaper than everywhere else in Europe.

The kids went hiking, down to the center of Luxembourg, etc. with the Averetts.  They have 4 little kids, the oldest is 7.  So they are pretty adventurous to be traveling so much with 4 little ones. 

They left early morning Saturday as we were leaving to go pick up Tori Rydalch in Paris.  Tori’s Dad works for Delta so he arranged for her to fly over as an unaccompanied minor direct from SLC.  Emilee has been soooooo excited to see her.  We got to the airport about the same time her plane landed.  Being 3.5 hours from Paris is pretty nice!

However, we were still waiting for her an hour and a half later!  It turns out that one of the other unaccompanied minors lost their passport so they couldn’t bring her through.  Eventually they brought her out and we headed for Paris!

The plan was to stop at all of the big stops, snap a picture and then spend a few hours at Versailles.  We hit most of the big things, but ran out of time for Sacre Coere.  I would park on the street and stay with the car while everyone would run out and get a picture!

First we hit Chipotle, which was our #1 destination!  We miss Mexican food something fierce!

While we were gobbling down our burritos we drove down the Champs E’ylsee and saw all of the preparations for the final day of the Tour de France.  We drove around the Arc d’Triomph, which was quite a feat to do while eating a burrito.  It is one of the craziest round abouts you’ve ever seen.

Then we drove back through the city past the Louvre to Notre Dame and the lock bridge.  They couldn’t find the special lock as it was buried in even more locks!  Back in the car we headed towards the Eiffel tower.  After going the wrong way for a bit, through some nasty traffic we got back on the right path and found the Eiffel tower.

After some pics there we headed towards Versailles which is about 20 minutes outside of the main city.

The kids were pretty impressed with Versailles.  It is amazing to think how much privilege and opulence surrounded their lives in the castle.  The marble, paintings, fireplaces, furniture, beds, etc. were all over the top.  After going through Versailles and seeing where Marie Antoinette escaped you understand why the French revolution happened and why she got her head lopped off!

We spent a couple hours in Versaille.  Going later in the day turned out to be great!  There were a lot of people, but not ridiculous.  We didn’t have to wait in a line because we purchased tickets online the night before.  That was a good move as the line to purchase tickets was HUGE!

While leaving Versailles and heading to the new Paris temple site, which is right around the corner. We got pulled over by some French police.  They asked us for the usual stuff and about ¾ of the way through the stop I asked if I’d done anything wrong.  They said no, gave me our papers back and let us go. 

We got some crepes, sandwiches, drove past the temple site and headed for home.  We were on the far side of Paris so it took about 3 ½ hours to get home.  It went pretty quick as we talked to Tori the whole time about everything that has changed back home!

We got home just before mid-night, exhausted and ready for bed!

Sunday we got up early and let Tori experience church in Luxembourg.  Everything went well.  There are a couple new families in the ward.  Summertime is interesting because there are so many visitors it is hard to tell who is visiting vs. moving in.

After church we made some chicken curry, took a quick nap and headed out towards Trier.  Trier is the oldest city in Germany and one of the places where my Dad served his mission.  It is only about 35 minutes from Luxembourg.

We walked through the city and saw some cool street performers.  We got Trier Brats, ice cream and walked through the Porta Nigra.  It is still amazing to think that the Romans were this far north in 186-300 AD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porta_Nigra

The Porta Nigra is big and would have been seen by Constantine and Napolean much later on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aula_Palatina

The Basilica of Constantine is pretty impressive.  It is a huge brick building that dates back to 300 and was actually built for Constantine.  I didn’t realize the Constantine actually made it this far north as well.  The basilica was built for him and he would hold court there.

One website actually said it was the place where he had his “light vision” and started his conversion to Christianity. 

We’ve been to Trier three times now and the church in the town center was finally open.  It was started in around 900.  We wanted to see the relics, but they were getting mass ready to start, so we couldn’t ask many questions.

Finally, we walked around, saw the roman baths and then walked by Karl Marx’s house.  I was telling Jake that if he was Chinese he would for sure stop by this place as Marx was the father of communism.  We stopped by, took some pictures and then were literally swarmed by Chinese tourists!  Classic!

On the way home we stopped in Echternach and saw more Roman ruins.  It is amazing how much they built, everywhere they went.  We had fun on a little park that had a fun zip line and a beautiful lake.  There was also a really, really nice hostel with nice sand volleyball courts, trampolines, climbing wall, etc.  We’ll definitely be going back there!

It has been super fun showing Tori around.  Emilee and Tori have been good friends for a long time, so we’re very, very glad she was able to come out for a trip!

Week 31 Pictures