Mom, Berkshires and John

For those of you that have never seen my house in the Berkshires here it is. As for a health update...Mom is doing great. She is home and the Dr thinks they removed all of the cancer. John is having his surgery next Tuesday. So, please keep your fingers crossed.

International Phone

Here is all the info you need for my international phone.

The phone is a British based phone and the number is:

011 447924455509 (calling from a cell phone - drop the 011 and start with +)

If your phone plan is not a good one (Meaning cell phones or a bad international rate), or if you are just cheap, you can call an 800 number. That is:

866-305-6462
you will then be prompted to put in my number which is:
447924455509

The phone will not be on until May 20th, just trying to stay on top of things.

Austria, Budapest and my Mom and Dad

I am up on the Cape tonight, Mom is having surgery tomorrow, so send prayers and thoughts her way. I'm spending a nice evening with my Dad and we talked a lot about music. I'm copying a few CD's now from his collection. He is very excited that I am going to Bela Bartok museum, as well as see the graves of Beethoven, Brahms and Shubert.

Practicing adding pictures, for those of you that have not had the pleasure...here is Dad...

I also wanted to say a special thanks to Jacques. He took time out of his day to give me some great ideas for Brussels. His information is only surpassed by his wit....

Planning, planning, planning

Most mornings I'm busy doing planning for the trip. Now that the flights, trains and hotels are all decided (except Austria---hurry up John) and where I'm staying in Hawaii, I'm working on Day Tours.

I've found some great tours for Salzburg, Rome, and Beijing. It is the Beijing tour that is prompting me to post today. I have 3 options to see the wall and am looking for input.

Option 1 - Standard Day tour, 1/2 day at wall with trip to see the emperors tombs and a Jade Factory.

Option 2 - Full day 6 hour hike of wall. Much more remote, but I love hiking and this could be a great treat.

Option 3 - 2 day hike of wall where you SLEEP on The Wall!!! Tour provides sleeping bags and matts and you sleep on the wall looking at the stars.

So folks, let me know your thoughts.

Happy Easter, bought my Train Tickets

Testing the site to see if I can put a link to my run today. Thought this would be a cool thing to check out.

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/dashboard.mb?episodePk.pkValue=7983215

Bought my train tickets yesterday. Found out that they are really smart regarding the Eurail pass. Unless you are doing ALL your travel by train, it is cheaper to buy station to station.

Fittingly, after planning a day trip to Salzburg Austria yesterday "The Sound of Music" was on last night!!! The hills are alive. John and I also watched "The Counterfitters". Very poignant, since I will be going to Aushvits (sp)

Hope everyone is having a good Easter.

Stephen

Trip is a GO!!! Updates below!!!

My employer (Aon Corporation) has given me the official ok. I am very fortunate to have a boss and a company that will let me take 7 weeks and travel around the world. Although, if they did not, I probably would have quit, so I guess we each get something out of the deal.

I have spent a great deal of time arranging all my flights and most hotels. Here is the current Itinerary: Netherlands (Blokker and Amsterdam) , Belgium (Brugge and Brussels), Germany (Berlin and Munich - with day trip to Salzburg Austria), Poland (Krakow with day trip to Aushvitz), Hungary (Budapest), Austria (Vienna), Czech Republic (Prague), Greece (Athens, Mykonos and 3 day cruise that also stops in Turkey, Italy (Florence and Rome), China (Beijing), and Hawaii

Everyday I make more plans and get more excited. Today I'm focused on going tandem paragliding in Austria. See this link, scroll all the way to the bottom:

http://www.mikesbiketours.com/Neuschwanstein.82.0.html

The next thing I'll be working on will be setting up links so that you can see where I've been running and where you can see all my pictures. Talk to you soon!!!