The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

We spent 2 nights in Florence (Firenze) during the Easter weekend, which of course included some great Chianti wine (among others), cheese, olive oil, gelato, and a good amount of rain mixed with a little bit of sunshine. Lorie went shopping instead of joining us on the bicycle ride, which started and ended at a castle built in 1199 that is now a winery and olive oil "factory" (it’s pretty small). The winery has about 700 acres of vineyards around it and makes about 500,000 bottles of wine per year, so it is considered a small-to-medium sized winery. Thankfully the weather held out and we had sunshine all day! Oddly enough, of the 14 people on the bike tour, 2 were English and the rest were American with about half of them still in university. Half way through the ride we had lunch, which was a big meal of pasta, wine, and dessert – all of which was great, until we did the hill climb. I was only 1 of 3 that rode all the way up the "mountain" (that’s what the tour guy called it), which wasn’t that big of a hill, but enough to make me wish I hadn’t eat all of my pasta or finish my 3rd glass of wine.

Walking around the city and seeing Ponte Vecchio, the Duomo (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore), the markets, wine shops, meat shops, and the various meandering streets of Florence was fun. We are all looking forward to our next Italian holiday… whenever we can get there next.

I have posted a bunch of photos on the site too. 

UPDATE: Megan has posted a great summary of her and Alan’s trip, including our shared part of the trip. And she has posted some photos too, like the one below of me on the bike ride.

We just saw the Terracotta Army and learned a bit about China’s first emperor. There are a few terracotta warriors, other characters, horses, and artifacts at the British Museum in London and even though it has been there since September, it has been difficult to get tickets. I think I bought ours back in December and we just went tonight (March 20) at 9:30 at night. Apparently it has been a bit popular, but now we want to go see the entire army of them in China.

And for something completely different, in the morning we fly off to Florence, Italy for the weekend!

We went to the Borough Market today, a favourite of Megan and Alan. This is a farmers market only open on Friday and Saturday located in the heart of the city. It gets quite crowded by noon, so get there around 10am to avoid the crowds. In addition to the variety of cheese we always seem to purchase, this time we picked up some ginger wine and pot pies. Specifically a Heidi pie (vegetable) and Moo pie (beef). The ginger wine is a sweet white wine with ginger, so the colour is sort of brownish-red and it has a ginger bite to it. I like it (not love it), but Lorie thinks it tastes like cough syrup.

And yes, they have fresh seafood too, as indicated by the octopus dangling over a stick in front of the normal ice-bed of fish. Sorry, but I didn’t take a picture of the cider, mulled wine, sausages, cheeses, and wide selection of vegetables.

When Milo is on his best behaviour, this is what anyone visiting our flat will see…. right before he runs down the stairs and bounces all over the place, which is how he greets friends. I imagine an intruder would get the same greeting, but with more teeth. 

An hour north of Berkeley are the little beach towns of Stinson and Boninas. We spent the weekend there with our friends Fred and Nina, their two kids, and most importantly, Clifford their pudgy, fuzzy, and lovable dog. I just copied other photos online too.

We fly back to London on Monday, landing on Tuesday and can’t wait to get back home and to see Milo’s always smiling face.

We had 2 great days of skiing in Utah, complete with about 18 inches of fresh, light and fluffy powder snow on Sunday and a bright sunny day on Monday. It was certainly much better than the Alps last week.

I skied on Sunday with the family at Alta; snowboarded on Monday with dad at Solitude; then later in the day we picked up Michael and went to Snowbird, which is terrible for snowboards so I switched back to skis. Click the picture of me snowboarding for photos.

One weird thing I experienced at Snowbird was the tunnel at the top of the resort that lets you get from one side of the mountain to the other. The tunnel has a conveyer belt that you stand on. 

With still no new snow at Les Arcs, we avoided the icy morning conditions (with fog today) and took the Funiculaire down the hill into Bourg Saint-Maurice. It’s not a very big town, but good enough to wander around for a few hours and have lunch. Click for new photos.

We take off in the morning and in a few days we will be skiing in Utah, where there is fresh snow.

Today started out cold and icy, but the sun came out and warmed up everything so by about noon the snow had softened and I was happy I had suntan lotion on my nose.

We can ski down to our cabin, but it’s about a 5 minute drive up to to Arc 1600 (the base of one of the ski areas), which is about a 20 minute drive up from the town of Bourg Saint-Maurice.

Today, Megan, Alan, Daisy, Milo and I went on a 10 mile walk through Bishops Park, Wandsworth, Balham, and areas in between. Lorie stayed home sick. The dogs of course enjoyed Wandsworth Common and Clapham Common the most. You can see a map of our walk here.

One of the more interesting things we saw was a car being taken away. The guy operating the crane was standing on the sidewalk operating it all via remote control. At one point, it looked like it was tipping back a bit too far, but he recovered and got it loaded without dropping the car, which would have been much more interesting. 

I was out for a walk at lunchtime heading towards Embankment when I was stopped by two policemen for suspicious activity. I was attempting to cross the street from one park to the other since they’re nicer than walking along a busy road. Cars kept coming across the street, so I walked up to the corner to go across the cross walk. Apparently, the police saw me and when they would walk one way, I would walk the other. Since nobody was with me, I was wearing pretty much all black (shoes, trousers, trench coat, and stocking hat), and I was obviously trying avoid them, then decided to stop and question me when I crossed the street.

I of course had fun with it.

I explained that I was born in "the other Washington" (the state, not DC), that Fulham is a good neighbourhood to live in, and of course asked if they use Messenger since they now knew that I worked at Microsoft. One of them said "of course"! I forgot to get a photo, but they were dressed like the two guys pictured here. Below is an aerial photo of where I was crossing, which is right next to the Ministry of Defence so that might have had something to do with it. 

UPDATE: I forgot to add that they patted me down to check for weapons too. All they found was my Zune, which I had to explain is an MP3 player. Also, my only ID was my Microsoft badge, which thankfully does have my picture on it.