http://www.kelsch.com Our life and our familiy Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:57:14 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It seems only a week ago that I wrote a blog about the fall in California, where the tree in our backyard was turning to fall colors.  It is quite a different story today at out condo in Utah.  I got up when it was still dark outside but could ... http://www.kelsch.com/2008/12/snow-day/ While most of the country feels the effects of winter, it is more like fall in California.  Ann took the above picture of a tree in our backyard, which is just now starting to change colors. We went cycling today for about 60 miles.  It was cold when we started but ... http://www.kelsch.com/2008/12/fall-in-california/ Our flight from Barcelona arrived in Amsterdam at 5 pm.  Amsterdam has a beautiful airport, an indicaiton of the beautiful city we would be visiting.   We found our way to the train, which we took into the town.  From the Amsterdam South station, we took a 10 minute taxi ride ... http://www.kelsch.com/2008/11/amsterdam/ During the visit from port to port, we would stay closer to shore and the waters were calm.  We had commented how this was much smoother sailing than the previous cruise we had been on.  After visiting the last port, the ship made a beeline straight back to Barcelona that ... http://www.kelsch.com/2008/11/rough-sailing/ The last port for our Cruise was at Palermo. It seemed that as we moved from port to port each stop was a bit less interesting than the previous. We are not sure if that was because we were getting a bit worn out from all the cathedrals or ... http://www.kelsch.com/2008/11/last-port-polermo/ We awoke at the port of Naples, Italy.  We did not have a great deal of interest in visiting that city but we did want to go to Pompeii, which is located about 14 miles east of Naples.  Pompeii was destroyed, and completely buried, during a long catastrophic eruption of ... http://www.kelsch.com/2008/11/pompeii-and-naples/ Our second port in Italy was at Civitavecchia, a port where we were able to get a train into Rome. We always wanted to visit Rome and this was a great opportunity to do it. We had previously booked a tour of the Vatican so that was our first ... http://www.kelsch.com/2008/11/when-in-rome/ This was our first port in Italy.  Some of us had been to Florence before so the thought was to visit only Pisa.  Others wanted to go to Florence instead.  It was a train ride to each location from the port.  We heard the night before that there might be ... http://www.kelsch.com/2008/11/florence/ Our Mediterranean Cruise offered only a single port of call in France but it was a spectacular one, maybe the most beautiful of all the places we would visit.  As we we getting up in the morning we saw that the ship was  approaching Villefranche and the view was breathtaking. ... http://www.kelsch.com/2008/11/one-day-in-france/ We did not have a full day in Barcelona since we needed to be on the cruise ship before 6 pm.   After checking out of the hotel, we waited to meet everyone for a whirl wind tour of the second largest city in Spain. Before we left the US we had ... http://www.kelsch.com/2008/11/barcelona/