Joie de Vivre

For our first international excursion, we felt we had to head to the City of Lights. Armed with two additional helpers, Eurostar tickets and what we felt was the bare minimum amount of baby gear, we hit the road....er, tracks.

The journey from London to Paris takes just over two hours by train, with the highlight being the passage through the famed "chunnel."  Unfortunately, we were so excited about the existence of the bar car, that we didn't even notice the passage through the chunnel on the outbound voyage.  A bit anti-climatic but we were unphased.

We arrived into Paris on a beautiful spring day and were able to perceive an apparent difference in work ethic between Londoners and their Gallic cousins.  The parks were packed almost to capacity with people of all ages doing nothing other than sitting in chairs facing the sun.  On a Thursday. At 2 pm.  Clearly this was not a city where something as trivial as a traditional work day would get in the way of  excellent weather.

We quickly caught on to the local mentality and bought a bottle of Bordeaux for our sunset stroll around the Eiffel Tower (luckily no one in the group had any interest in waiting in a seemingly interminable line to actually go up into the tower).

For the next two days, we spent our time strolling around the city, eating and drinking well, and doing our best to get the Parisians to understand our incredibly basic French (i.e. about 7 words).  

I could tell you all of the wonderful things we ate, saw, and drank on our trip, but lets be honest--it would be better if you just booked a trip yourself. Overall, it was a great start to our, hopefully, many Eurotrips to come and gave us a taste of the famed joie de vivre just south of our new border. 

Just one instance of a member of the group witnessed skipping in delight

Look Who's Here!

Libby, looked in a cell in Alcatraz

..and Tara, rocking an unknown 21 year old Californian's ID

Crawl to Walk

This weekend, I held down the fort in SF while Jared continued his tour-de-Phish in Colorado and continued onto Dallas for his 10th high school reunion.  Although I am sure that I would have enjoyed the awkward moments that Jared certainly encountered reuniting with the Class of 2000, I had important work to do: drink and dress up in a ridiculous outfit- all for a great cause.  Last Halloween weekend, a friend from high school, Kendell Hall (pictured above, right), was in a terrible car accident that left her paralyzed from the chest down.  Since that time, she has made an amazing and incredibly inspirational recovery that has allowed her to regain full arm movement and progress toward walking again!  Her determination and hard work has led to features on CNN news and Anderson Cooper.  Learn more about Kendell and contribute to her recovery fund at www.help-a-fwend.com .

 

To help cover the costs of Kendell's rehab program, her family organized a pub crawl, "Crawl to Walk" in SF this weekend.  The pub crawl was jazzercise/workout themed as a tribute to her intense daily physical therapy sessions.  High school friends Whitney Ashley and Nicole Zaccanelli traveled up from LA for the weekend, happy to embarrass themselves and practice drinking endurance in support of Kendell. 

I am not sure how much we raised from our cut of the bar tabs, but from the amount of silliness going on, I would guess it was pretty substantial.  So here's a big cheers to Kendell, the Hall family, and to the purple stretchy pants that are now a part of my wardrobe!

The Finer Things in Life

A recent excursion to the De Young fine arts museum allowed me to showcase the impressive cultural offerings of our new city and the importance that fine arts play in our lives here.  

OK, I can't continue any longer with this charade.... it was free day at the museum and I thought it would be more fun to view the impressive collections with others that were sure to be as equally clueless as I.  In actuality, with our artistic knowledge combined (my "mastery" of Latin America + Addie's obsession with colonial America + 2 kids with cultural parents + Michael's eclectic college coursework), we could follow along fairly well.

The actual structure of the de Young is equally impressive as its collections and we braved the crowds to check out the viewing tower, which overlooks Golden Gate park and part of city.  If I had to describe the structure, I might say that it is, "Constructed of warm, natural materials including copper, stone, wood and glass, the new de Young blends with and complements its natural surroundings. Ribbons of windows erase the boundary between the museum interior and the lush natural environment outside, and four public entrances segue naturally from the park’s pathways, welcoming visitors from all directions."  What is really crazy is that the museum's website describes it in exactly the same way!

Never ones to rush the finer things in life, we took the opportunity to stroll the rose gardens after leaving the museum and were moderately impressed with the array of varietals and some of the clever hybrids the gardeners had engineered.

After a tranquil day viewing lovely specimens of natural and human creation, we looked forward in anticipation to the beer, fast food, and jam band music fueled weekend that was to come.

Southern Visitors

Look who's here!

Two of our favorite zany characters from Cape Town, Paul and Addie, are visiting the Bay Area on "business."  Between lectures at Ivy League schools and making human DNA a less mysterious world, Paul has managed to squeeze in no fewer than five Phish shows out here on the West coast.  Good thing Jared requested a week off from work for musical reasons.  In the meantime, Addie and I will be filling our time with Cape Town non-profit gossip, comparing SA and CA wines, and losing at Pictionary.  Stay tuned for post-concert pictures and adventures....

Cuttin Loose in Fog City

Well fortunately the 'Ol City by the Bay treated our second visitor to some beautiful summer weather, a supposed rarity in these parts.  Kelly Galvin, who in an alternate universe is also known as America Galvin jumped on a plane to join her sister and new brother-in-law for some California shenanigans.  We took her out and treated her to the works.  Some of the classic city sites, including:

Neighborhood graffiti in the Mission

Some weekday tight-wearing hipsters kickin it in Dolores Park

After seeing the sites we decided to get involved in the action.

Boozin out with friends

Point Break Live (a live performance of the Keanu Reeves classic where on this particular night the audience voted a Korean born attendee to play Johnny Utah and pure awesomeness ensued...)

Finally, we thought that Kelly may be interested in meeting a man and taking a chance on love.

1st try was a complete flop.  Turns out this stud from the Annual Peru Street Festival wasn't her type.

Well where man boobs failed, a strapping man of the law succeeded.  Faithful readers, meet Kelly's new dreamboat.  The one, the only, Mr. Paul Blart.

What a weekend.  And the romantic in me was reassured that true love is always possible and sometimes when you least expect it.  On this weekend, Cupid's arrow treated one special Kindergarten teacher to the Mall Cop of her dreams.

Frisky Fourth

4th of July weekend: A celebration of America's birthday and... our first visitors!  Conor and Natalie, who usually only travel for the 35+ weddings that they have attended this year, made the trip out west to see what all of the hubbub is about. 

Between the 20-30 bars that we absolutely had to to take them to, a Jazz festival, a disastrous road trip to the beach, and many a dance party, we managed to show them a good time.

We were even able to arrange for Conor to try his namesake burger: the McCarthy burger (verdict: a little saucy, much like its namesake).

Despite Jared's personal form of torture via Huey Lewis and the News on repeat, I think there is a chance that they just might visit us again.

South Africa, Drakeley Style

 

As soon as the Drakeley family booked their trip to Cape Town, Jared and I began researching.  We knew the only the finest would do for this group and we were eager to show off all that the Western Cape had to offer.  Not suprisingly, it did not dissappoint.  As we played the "name your favorite moment" game on the Drakeley's last day, we had to circle the table three times to include all of the highlights from the past week and a half.  From the excellent dinners to the fantastic wine to the impressive wildlife, the Drakeleys were able to see first hand just how tragic it is that we have had to spend the last 5 months in such a dreadful place....

Luckily, the group persevered through the hardships and we were able to get in some wine tasting (ok, lots of wine tasting), a visit to the botanical gardens, a weekend trip to the garden route, golf, fishing, a safari game drive, and much, much more... Having visitors during our stay has given us the excuse to get out and enjoy all that this awesome country has to offer and sharing it with our friends and family makes it all the more meaningful.   And there really isn't any beating a visit to a winery with the namesake of the Jimmy Cup and watching him in his element....

Ringing in 2010

For me, New Year's Eve was truly a celebration as I was given a break from my planning duties and the only thing I had to organize was transportation for our party of 10 to and from John and Liz's house in Camp's Bay.  Our ever-gracious hosts had organized a lovely soiree to bring in the New Year and were happy to include my entourage of 9 in the festivities.  Not wanting to be ungrateful guests, we arrived with no fewer than 9 regular-sized and 3 magnum-sized bottles of champagne.  Tack on a bit of white wine, some vodka, a bottle of bourbon and 10 good-timin' Americans and I think that pretty much any party would have been happy to have us. 

The evening started out pretty normally but later devolved into a strange hybrid of costumes (see Modern George Washington and Kim Jong Il, left) and blooper-filled dance routines.  But then again, I guess that is actually kind of normal for our group....

Happy New Years to all that were not able to join us and if these pictures are not enough to convice you of the fun times that await when visiting us, I am not sure what will.

Champagne Sunset "Cruise"

Champagne? Check.

Sunset? Check.

Enormous waves soaking all passengers in freezing sea water? Check.
Prayers to return to shore ASAP? Check.
Experience that is funnier once it is over and the anger and trauma have died down? Check.

To me, the champagne sunset cruise was a no brainer.  Our group would get to go on a boat, drinks would be taken care of, and everyone would get to see the city from a unique angle while watching the sunset before we rushed off to our dinner reservations. All for about $25 per person.  Perfect Christmas present that would result in memories, rather than material items. 

And, boy, did it result in memories.  This was easily one of the funniest events of the trip, with everything going terribly wrong and calling into question my (thusfar) flawless planning skills.  First we were late. Then they made me trek all over the stupid waterfront harbor in my carefully selected (champagne casual but boat practical) wedge heels. Once we got on the boat, we were, of course, last aboard and there weren't enough seats.  Certainly not together.  Nevertheless, we were all on board and I began to relax and look forward to the champagne and lovely views.

Unfortunately, things did not work out that way.  As soon as we got out of the harbor, the wind and waves picked up dramatically.  The little sailboat began to lean perilously to one side ("totally normal" says the captain) and the first waves began to crash onboard.  Luckily, Joseph secured some of the few available blankets for our group.  Tara, Kelly, and I huddled together and tried to "turtle" inward to create a warm, dry shelter.  Jared and Mom got to bond a bit under a shared blanket as Michelle, Joseph, and Michael clung to the more perilous, but drier top level.  Somehow, between Kelly trying to calm herself by repeating, "this is fun, it is just like Six Flags" and moving the blanket just enough to stick our glasses out for more champagne, we spy Dad examining the bubbles in his champagne glass from the warm, dry boat cabin.  How he became the only passenger to secure this position is unknown to us, but lets just say that it didn't create any warm feelings in our turtle shell. 

Exiting the boat, everyone was soaked to the bone and shivering.  Nevertheless, this was easily overshadowed by the hilarity of a Champagne cruise gone terribly wrong.

The Family Cometh

“Yes, hello, I have a booking. Name? Galvin, party of 10.”

After months of waiting, hoping, and making bookings until I thought that my head might explode, the day had finally arrived: Mom, Dad, Kelly, Michael, Tara, Kirsten, Michelle, and Joseph were in South Africa and the whirlwind tour had begun!   The two weeks or so that everyone was here passed very quickly, but we were still able to pack in quite a bit of fun, so I think that I am going to try to break this up into a few different postings.

First, lets just start with some favorite pictures that seem to sum things up...

Cousin Lib in Cape Town!

After months of waiting, cajoling, and outright lobbying, we have a visitor!  Cousin Libby arrived last Sunday night and the adventure has been non-stop since.  Whether checking out local flora and fauna or getting a little crazy with our new expat friends, we have done our best to show her what Cape Town has to offer.