From El Paso to Van Horn

Driving into the storm

Intended stay in Fort Stockton

****New note below**** 

Our intention was initially a short visit with fam fam and then a stay in Fort Stockton. However, we decided to head to Tombstone first which stole a couple hours of daylight from us.  We made it to El Paso pretty late and hung out with the family who resides there.  It was wonderful and well worth it.  We left for Fort Stockton but with less than two hours of daylight left on a 3 hour drive.  We encountered, some thing common place for Texans but rare for city slickers like me and mom, a lighting storm.  So I put the very intense Beethoven Symphony No 9 the 2nd movement on and began to record the humongous lighting strikes in the distance.  It was fun.  Anyhow, before we knew it we were driving in it and it was dark too.  The moon looked huge and orange as it rose over the foothills that were once far away.  So we decided to call it quits and pulled off to Van Horn to the first hotel we spotted.  Tomorrow we continue to Austin, hopefully well rested and in good weather.


 ****When we finally arrived in Fort Stockton we stopped at a Subway and as we were leaving we noticed the remains of the hotel pictured above.  When we drove by it we realized it was our intended stay, the Swiss Clock Best Western. thanks thunderstorm for keeping us from this fate!

Tombstone, AZ

Doc Holiday

Stage Coach

Tombstone, AZ was a short pit stop on the way to El Paso, TX.  Melissa, Mom, and I arrived too early.  The only shop open was a jewelry store, it turned out to be a lot of fun trying on jewelry.  After that we went to another shop to try and kill more time until the Old Time Photo shop opened up.  But then we opted for the less expensive photo option and asked a cowboy we ran into to take a picture with him, the shop owner called us city slickers but we didn't mind since it's true.  The cowboy was authentic and yelped out accusingly, "Hey! That's not my wallet back there!"  It was fun, if we didn't have such a long drive ahead of us we would've stayed and continued harassing every cowboy we ran into.   Pictures to come, check back later.

We are off to...ELP!

OK perhaps not as sexy as let's say Italy or Amsterdam.  But the.important thing to remember is that family motivates us to visit the safest city in the USA. My niece is having a Sweet Sixteen celebration. A Whit and Black Masquerade party. How cool is that?! Never been to one.

So I will be wearing a Guy Fawkes mask. Think V for Vendetta or Anonymous (the outlaw hacker group of which I'm not a member of.).

Stephanie's is a feathery pretty mask. She makes everything look sexy.

Wish us luck!

History

Was made today. But....I can't tell you guys yet what that is or even means.

The Netherlands

I would put more stuff but I have not had ANY free time. NONE. ZERO. NUL. That's dutch for zero. I guess I should be grateful that I get fed but even that I have to insist!

North Holland

So I find myself in the north of The Netherlands for work. We are staying in a town called Medemblik. It's a nice quint little town. It's a town next to the Ijsselmeer. Largest lake in all of western Europe.  The land here is all reclaimed land from the sea. So we are 13th feet BELOW sea level!

People that don't live here might think all of The Netherlands is like Amsterdam but that isn't the case. It's very conservative outside of Amsterdam. Drug use is highly prohibited and isn't tolerated.

Work was nothing to involved. We are waiting for some materials to arrive before we can start the real efforts. So we went to Den Oever. A little fishing harbor at the western end of dam that helped the Dutch reclaim so much land.  We had lunch there then proceeded to drive about half way across the dam. Boy was it windy.

We turned around and then headed to Den Helder which turned out to be way way cool. It has a naval base so lots of war stuff. Went shopping there for a bit. Went to the sea wall that keeps the Atlantic ocean out. Basically the town's roof tops are at sea level which is evident from standing on the wall.

Headed back to work to check on the status of our stuff. Bought some work related supplies at a nearby hardware store before heading back to our hotel.

Gonna take a nap before heading out to dinner with the coworkers.

Last night in Rome

 After saying a goodbye to our Contiki friends in Venezia who weren't riding the bus back to Rome we headed out bright and early.  We stopped at our last two Autogrills and arrived in Rome after about 7 hours thanks to our driver, Gennaro's excellent driving skills.  We then said goodbye to the remaining group and walked to the main terminal to meet our Rome B&B hosts Nicole and Luca.  They came on foot and we walked together to their place.  My first B&B experience was amazing thanks to Luca and Nicole, they were incredible.  They gave us a map and pointed out Metro routes and areas to go to that evening. 

We took off for a night stroll to capture night images of the Colosseum, Forum and the Monumento a Vittorio Emmanuel (that's us in front of it).  It was fun trying to find the right spot for the night shots and on the way back we saw some excavations in progress that were pretty cool.  We were hungry and so on our way back we chose to eat at the Ristorante Le Tavernelle 
It was really great, we accidentally ordered a liter of wine, but it was worth it. The amazing thing was the dessert the waitress recommended to us turned out to be exactly like flan but white in color.  It was delicious, maybe even better than regular flan. 
I really enjoyed the leisurely part of get back to the B&B that night.  We really, really took our time the evening was perfect, not too cold or hot, just right.  We stopped and took pictures of the Santa Maria Maggiore Church a really huge and interestingly shaped church, more gothic than most we had seen.  When we got back to Luca and Nicole's they were in the kitchen with two other guests rooming there from Spain.  We sat up talking about the economy and lifestyle if Italians, we asked Luca some questions about the sites and then while Sergio and Luca planned out our route to the airport hotel I took a shower.  We slept very well that night due to it being a Saturday the morning was so very quite.  We tried to explain this to the Spanish guests and to Nicole, but there is no describing how loud all the other cities had been in comparison.  Our trip out of Rome wasn't over yet though, there was still some more to see.


To be continued...