Blizzard

Thursday we spent a beautiful evening in downtown New Haven which was nicely decorated and local businesses were giving out free cider and hot chocolate. The town green was great. Friday I convinced Marie to watch "Hellboy 2, the Golden Army," which she kinda, slightly, liked. All weekend we had a nice blizzard. Two storms actually. Everything was shut down. Even church was cancelled. Marie spent a lot of time baking and we used breaks in the weather to drive around on the ice and deliver cookies and meals to friends and a couple of families with new babies. We only got the car stuck once, but I had it loaded with rock salt and a snow shovel so we were prepared.

Above is a picture taken from the balcony after the snow and one with Alyssa looking out at the snowfall. Below, is Sophia (who loves snow) running around. After the second storm, some areas are too deep (she falls in over her head) so she is less happy about that.

Merry Christmas

So we got this huge tree and all these decorations to make sure our apartment was fully in the Christmas spirit. Obviously, the tree is too big for our apartment so we had to take some off the top.

I'll post a picture of our real tree once we take one, probably Friday. This picture was taken in September (2 holidays ahead of time, crass commercialism) at a department store. Our real tree is smaller and Marie has designed it specifically to hide the I love New York pigeon. It is grey and blue and has a little red heart for "I (heart) New York." Now we have a tree decorated in grey and blue with little red accents. That little bobble-headed pigeon started another tradition. Now there is an ornament for each year, The pigeon, Kokopelli, A little Yale wreath, a baby ornament and, on its way for this year, a minotaur.

Catch-up: Halloween to Thanksgiving

So our little girl borrowed a lady bug costume and went to the church party for Halloween. Since then Marie had a performance downtown, we've had a few dinner parties, and spent a lot of time at the Peabody museum (its cold outside and the museum is free with Yale ID). We went over to some friends from the ward for thanksgiving. It was nice but we were also invited over to another thanksgiving at another friend's house and Marie would not let me double dip by going to both.

The way home: Farewell to Athens and Paris

We got off the Ikarus (a ship whose name does not really inspire confidence as you board her to cross the sea) and spent the day in Athens. We were able to see the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier, the national gardens, and the archeological museum. The Museum requires at least a full day without kids, more if you have a tired baby with you. We did find the mask of Agamemnon. Then it was off to Paris for the night. Beautiful city, but man that place has social problems and racial tensions beyond what I am used to seeing here. At least we got out of the hotel to see the Eiffel tower and grab some food. We left the next morning for New York and were home by dinner. It was a nice trip, and we did learn a few things about traveling with babies.

Knossos: Wall Street circa 1700BC

Knossos, capital of a commercial empire spanning 500 years, and our top priority on the trip. It stretches back from around 2000 BC until Santorini gave the eastern Mediterranean the world's largest recorded volcanic eruption and threw their civilization into chaos. It is the site of the story of Theseus and the minotaur in the labyrinth, but 2 civilizations older than the classical Greeks. While more of a ruin than the other sites I have seen while traveling, the artifacts and and frescoes were great.

It has been on my travel list since medical school. It is impressive for the how advanced they were and how old it is. It was fun to sit under the pillars and think about that. Older than any other civilized site in Europe. Older than anything in east Asia (China may have been forming a very primitive first dynasty but anything earlier than the Shang dynasty is kinda speculative, and they had nothing like this). Abraham was probably being born around this time. Only Egypt and the early Mesopotamian civilizations were older.

Below is Alyssa playing at the starting point of Europe's first road.

Iraklio

Lonely Planet was a bit too harsh on this city. Rather being a totally drab business city with little to see or do, there were the Venetian fortifications, pretty good Greek restaurants at low prices, and a lot of museums including a large one dedicated to Minoan artifacts. Plus there were nice beaches a few miles to either side of town.

By this time Alyssa had pretty much had it with her parents draging her around Greece with just two small backpacks and a stroller. We started taking more and more time out to do fun things for her. We've learned to plan more kid stuff into the next trip.

Of course none of the above is a compelling reason to visit Iraklio above some other, perhaps prettier Greek town. The real reason to visit Iraklio is that it is the best jumping off point to visit Knossos.

Hania

We took a ship to Crete overnight then a bus to Hania, an old Venetian town. Probably, asthetically the most interesting area on the trip. Below are shots from our restaurant (open air in venetian ruins) and our hotel entrance Hotel Nostos.

These are other pictures of town:

Acropolis

More pictures from Athens. Day 2 in Greece. These are from the Acropolis (well the last is the Temple of Hephaestus in the nearby ancient agora).

Athens

Athens was more fun than we expected. We got off the plane and took the subwat to the area near our hotel. After the subway, poor Marie who got no sleep while watching Baby girl on the flight, tried to make us go the wrong way. It was a big debate and I eventually had to use my very limited greek to ask someone where the hotel was to keep us from hiking off in the opposet direction, which goes to show that 3 hours of sleep beats no sleep by a lot.


The hotel was in a kinda shabby neighborhood (i.e. most of Athens looks um, not great). Once we figured out that it was only a few minutes from all the interesting sites and Plaka, the nicest area in town, it was great. A 4.5 star hotel we got cheap on Hotwire. The Hotel and good public transportation left over from the 2004 Olympics made Athens the easist part of the trip. So easy, in fact that it is the first time we saw lots of Americans on any of our trips (For whatever reason the more off the beaten path the higher the proportion of Europeans and Aussies, Americans don't seem to be quite as hardy travelers).

Pictures in order, Click to enlarge:
1&2 Temple of Olympian Zeus
3 Hot greek woman and cute baby in front of an othodox church (Marie says someday we need to go somewhere where people won't think she is a native)
4 Street in Plakas
5 View from the Acropolis

Greece

I have been meaning to blog about the trip for a few days but I have been tring to catch up with other things, and now that I try to blog, I have run into a couple of problems, namely my dog and my baby. Tonight I sat down and as I started to look through the pictures, my daughter demanded to see them so I put her on my lap and we went throught the slide show. Then I tried to distract her with the helium balloon that Marie got me for my birthday. Of course once our self appointed canine security chief saw the balloon move, the room exploded into a frienzy of jumping and barking. I have to give Sophia credit though, climbing to the top of the couch to leap off and try to get the balloon off of the ceiling shows real dedication.

Anyhow things I learned about traveling with a baby in Europe (some of which I already knew):

Its best if they already are eating normal food.

Bring baby tylenol etc, for teething.

Babies can't keep up with our usual backpacking, different-city-every-night schedual.

Even at 9 months, there are strong oppinions-its all about animals, bright colors, and fluffy things, not old stones and ruins.

It would be eisier to have a babysitter or something for those long "boring" times like museums.

The Greeks were reasonably good about us traveling with the baby.

The French were not.

2 Trips to Boston.

So in late September I went to Boston for a conference. I am holding up baby girl here in front of the window to the vendor exhibition.

The next weekend Marie's parents were out here and we all went to Cape Cod.