As I posted before, I was very impressed with the city of Nantes. Of all the cool things in the city, my favorite was Les Machines de l’île. The biggest attraction is The Grand Éléphant.
It is a free attraction to look at, and wanders around the industrial park. It costs to ride the elephant, and for the carousels, and the indoor park with many other mechanical animals.
The conference I was attending hosted their Gala dinner here and it was very nice. First, they opened up the inside part up for us to explore, then The Grand Éléphant made a dramatic entrance. Then we were seated, where a 20 piece jazz band played for us while we ate with the elephant in the background. Luckily, I was able to get a ticket for Emily to join us for the dinner. Over the top nice…
They have big plans for expansion and we have talked about definitely trying to get back…
Having never heard of Nantes, France before, I was not sure what to expect when I was to be there for three weeks for a short course and conference. Wow was I surprised. It is a great city with lots of fun things to do. I somehow managed to get by despite not knowing any French at all. The hotel I stayed at was nothing special, but was on the river and had a pretty nice view.
Lots of nice old buildings and sculptures
I even found a sculpture by an American artist who also did a sculpture at Oregon State University that was just taken down http://www.stickwork.net/
There is also a great park with a great arboretum and some other pretty cool living sculptures.
Emily had a slightly embarrassing run in with a goat in the park…
There was also an amazing jazz festival while I was there and during my short course we got to go to the beach and see a little of the French coast.
In between the course and conference we got to go wine tasting in the Loire valley with Belinda from Oregon State University.
The highlight, however, was the Machines of the Isle of Nantes which I will post about in the near future.
We have been pretty busy lately despite trying to lay low before our European adventure. We headed up to Portland for the weekend, last weekend. On Friday, we went to a Timbers game and stayed with my Aunt and Uncle. They have a very nice place right on the river which was very convenient. We also had a very nice visit with them. On Saturday we briefly caught up with Kas and Peter, then headed to Chris and Channa’s. We stayed with them, then headed to the Bridge pedal Sunday morning. The bridge pedal is a 35 mile bike ride where you get to ride over 11 bridges in Portland. It was very crowded, but fun for the most part. We made it over 10 but skipped the most popular one because it was so crowded. This picture was from the first and southern most bridge.
This next picture was from the Fremont bridge which is normally closed to bicycles. Aunt Sharon and Uncle Jim’s condo is just above Emily’s left ear.
Mid-week last we had a plumbing problem and an abscess show up on Oval about the same time. A few hours of work got the plumbing problem fixed and a couple of trips to the vet took care of the abscess.
On Thursday night, we bottled our second beer, Mok’s Porter, named after our second favourite pub in Ireland. Hope it turns out good!
Emily headed to the coast on Friday and bought some Tuna, fresh off a fishing boat, at the dock. We BBQ’d some Friday night, made tacos Saturday, and canned the rest. Today we harvested some roma, cherry, and pear tomatoes. We dried the small ones and made sauce with the romas.
We then took some squash from the garden and made delicious stuffed squash.Oval has had a buddy over for the last few days, Opie, which has been fun. Emily got them to play tug-a-war for a while which I’m pretty sure ended in a draw.A great couple of weeks!
My Dad came to visit and had a pretty busy schedule visiting my Aunts, Grandmother, and us. I went to pick him up at Grandmas and we got a game of cribbage in.
We had a project to work on as we needed a new hammock stand. It kept us busy and was a great project for his visit.
Thanks Dad!
On Sunday we we had a barbeque which was a lot of fun and we had a nice visit.
Oval had a buddy named Tonka come over yesterday to hang out. Good times.
Made some fridge pickles today. Garden is starting to really produce!
We had a really nice weekend this past week where we started off by going to see the Decemberists which is one of our favorite bands.
On Saturday we found a campsite at the base of Mt Hood and hung out in Hood River where there happened to be a kite boarding charity event going on where they were kite boarding for 6 hours straight (in teams). It was pretty fun watching them and we went for a photo op with oval with mixed results. We had dinner at probably our favorite brewery in Oregon, Double Mountain Brewery! Their pizza might have been better than the pizza in Italy…
The garden has been going pretty good. Starting to reap the benefits of mostly Emily’s hard work!
My Mom and Rich came to visit over the 4th of July weekend. We had an action packed fun weekend. To start off, we toured the college and went to a Corvallis Knights baseball game. The game started at 7:15 and there was a fireworks show billed after the game and we came ready. The game went into extra inning and we were still psyched! Around the 14th inning we got weary, and left after the 15th inning around midnight! It turns out the game lasted 17 innings and we heard the fireworks go off as we were going to sleep. A little bummed we missed the end of the game but had a really good time anyway.
We went to a pretty cool antique store in Albany and then went up to Portland to go to Powell’s books and to see Grandma Bosma and Aunt Sharon. We had a very nice lunch at Grandma’s. Thanks Grandma!
Next, we went to the coast and had a very nice day on the beach in Waldport, and got to see a bit of the coastline. We stopped at the Devil’s Churn and also got to eat at our favorite seafood place on the coast, Luna Sea.
It was a very nice visit and we all had a great time!
I went to southern Italy for the INORE symposium at the end of May. It was held at a hotel in the mountains just above Vico Equense with a pretty nice view of Mount Vesuvius best known for its burial of the Roman city of Pompeii in AD 79.
The symposium was great. Learned a lot and had fun too. Fortunately, I got to take a few extra days to travel around the region after the symposium. First stop was Sorrento.
