5 Cities, 4 Weeks

It’s been an eventful few weeks. The three of us flew to San Francisco after which Carlos and the baby continued on the Reno while I stayed for work. They joined me at the end of the week so that we could all go to Monterey for Veronika’s wedding. It was so nice to be in California. The weather was amazing, the food was as good as I remember and we got to see friends/family. We stayed with our friends Robert and Monika who have a beautifully renovated house, two adorable kids and the most amazing play room. Charlie had a great time following them around and playing with all their toys.

Monterey was great too. Veronika and Tali had rented a beautiful house where we all stayed. I got to connect with an old friend of mine from Czech Republic after almost 15 years!! She has 3 darling boys, a trampoline in her backyard and lives 5 minutes from the beach. What a life! We used to have so many fun adventures in Czech including sneaking away from our host families to Budapest and sleeping on the Charles Bridge (not that comfortable). Veronika and Tali’s wedding was beautiful. It was at Holman Ranch and it was a gorgeous California day. Baby Charlie walked me half way down the aisle before realizing that everyone was looking at him and starting saying "up, up, up" and grabbing my dress. Seth and Carolyn did a fantastic job helping to take care of him. They had gotten him a bow-tie to go with his dress shirt and it was SO cute! He left it on the whole night! That bow-tie got a lot of miles as Seth wore it for his birthday too. You can decide who looks cuter.

The Halloween party before the wedding was great. Carlos was a cockroach, I was a flapper girl (though it was kindof a ghetto get-up), Veronika was a killer bee, Tali was Count Chocula and Seth and Carolyn were Princess Leia and Hans Solo. The best was the next day trying to recognize people - either I had no idea who they were or I was shocked that their costume wasn't really a costume - they really looked that way!!
After that I was back on the road to Istanbul and Brussels for work. I was only in Istanbul for 2 days and didn’t have time for sightseeing though I did manage to fit in a visit to the Blue Mosque, a ferry ride across the Bosphorus and walking around Taksin square. We had wonderful hosts there via the local Unilever staff who took us to dinners on both the Asian and European sides and who suffered through my litany of cultural questions. I did get to try a fish from the Bosphorus and was surprised by how tasty it was. From there I was off to Brussels where it was cold and rainy, but quite nice. After the meetings a few of us did a tour of the chocolate shops and loaded up - I spent 97 Euros on chocolate!! For the weekend I flew to Switzerland to see a friend and meet her new baby, Prahlad. I loaded up on smelly cheese which stunk up my whole bag, but I was glad that customs didn't sniff it out.