Ode to America

Throughout our journey we have been reminded of the many tourist destinations in America. Usually the conversation starts with us mentioning that we had last lived in Colorado. The first response to this statement is usually “Oh yes the Grand Canyon” since people associate Colorado with the Colorado river that flows through this famous place. It is at this point that Mike and I usually mention that neither of us have been to the Grand Canyon but hope to in the future. From Niagara Falls, Yosemite, Hawaii, Alaska, California, and the Florida Everglades we're developing quite a list of must see places in the US. The impression of most visitors is that the United States is a place of great cities and natural beauty. In our recent trip back to the United States I felt the same way. I experienced great awe seeing for the first-time the California coast near Monterrey and walking in the redwood forests. We had a great time in San Francisco seeing Mike's brothers Luke and Dane and our longtime friend Lance Johnson. Coming fresh from winter in Lima it was interesting to visit San Francisco and fast forward to the summer. Sea lions and surfers were common to both but the Spanish influences have been muted in San Francisco overshadowed by the magnificent bridges, state parks, skyscrapers, and subways. It was great to be back home.

From California 2010

The beauty of America continued as we traveled from Omaha to Chicago. I was glad that Mike also appreciated the drive across Iowa. Between the free wi-fi at rest stops, the paved roads, and the beautiful rolling hills I'm not sure what he enjoyed the most about Iowa. However, it definitely struck us how easy it is to travel in the United States and this is a more significant achievement than we had previously realized. Then we arrived in Chicago and the experience reinforced my belief that it is one of the greatest cities in the world. From the lakefront to the buildings, Chicago is such a beautiful city.

From Nicole and Dave's Wedding

Then we had a brief stay in Omaha and got a chance to visit my favorite zoo!

From Omaha Summer 2010

Lastly we headed up to the Pacific northwest to visit friends in Bellingham and Seattle. The nature here reminded me of our time in Argentina and Chile. Here too are the glaciers, volcanoes, lakes, and thick forests that are a marvel to behold. The beauty truly takes your breadth away and it was great to have time to take it all in.

Northern Hemisphere Hospitality:

Seeing familiar faces, speaking the language, free water, free restrooms, and plenty of hope to go around it was easy to see how much we take for granted at home. Even the most downtrodden individuals seem fortunate by comparison. In America some people seem to be down on their luck. However, in their faces you can see that with some help they believe their situation could be quite different. By comparison some people we have encountered on our trip seem to have accepted their fate and don't even dare to dream of a different life. The American dream is unique in that anyone can hope to achieve it.

From California 2010

Our trip back gave me an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of hospitality. At Anne and Matt's wedding, the priest spoke about the importance of hospitality in marriage. He elaborated that hospitality is different than kindness because the goal of hospitality is to have people feel cared for and welcome. Maybe it is just because we have been traveling in a land of strangers but this message really resonated with me. I think my ideal society is not necessarily one focused on peace but rather one focused on hospitality. Conflict is bound to exist but if everyone feels welcome and cared for it is easier to focus on the issue instead of trying to discredit the individual. In our trip we were able to make it to two weddings (although if time travel was available we would have loved to be at four). I know a lot of people scoff at the effort and expense of a wedding. However, I think that a wedding is probably the best example of traditional hospitality. At a marriage ceremony all that is needed is two committed people and some witnesses to their willingness to enter into the covenant. The focus of a wedding seems to be sharing the couples' joy with all the family and friends that made them the people that they are today. I remember for our wedding discussing with Mike the merits of the wedding invitation. Mike was lobbying (jokingly he claims) for the far cheaper and more efficient e-vite option stating that everyone would love being able to see who else was coming, etc. It is true that if the purpose is simply informing people of the event the traditional invitation has serious competition from the e-vite. However, the reason the e-vite loses is on the hospitality scale. When people receive a wedding invitation that has been carefully selected, stamped, and addressed they feel personally invited and welcomed to the celebration. The wedding guest is expected to simply be present and celebrate. At both Anne and Matt's wedding and Nicole and Dave's wedding, I felt fortunate to be invited and be the recipient of such welcoming hospitality. After months of traveling it was fantastic to be surrounded by friends.

From California 2010

From Nicole and Dave's Wedding

The hospitality continued throughout the trip. A special thanks to Luke, Betsy, William, my parents, Julie, Sarah, Nick, Jacob, Elaine, Larry, and Catherine for letting us invade your space and making us feel welcome. In addition to all the people we stayed with, thanks to all the people who we got to catch up and share a meal (this list would be much longer but you know who you are). I only hope that we can return the favor sometime in the future.

~Suzanne

From Chris and Kristen pre-wedding

Doing nothing and loving it!

After a bad experience at a hostel in Lima as we were dropping off my mom from her visit, we just wanted to get out of Lima and Peru in general. We spent in total just under 60 days there and we were ready to move on. But where to? We now have an extraordinary experience of not having to be anywhere at anytime for several months! I know that sounds weird, we've been having one great adventure for the past 8 months right? But one thing we did since the beginning was place deadlines on ourselves that forced us to do some detailed planning out at least a month or two. At the start it was get south as soon as possible before bad weather set in at Patagonia, then we wanted to get to a cool celebration of Semana Santa up in Peru, then we wanted to get Galapagos done before Thomas arrived, then he was here, then we were in the US then Mom was here. But now, glorious now, we have nowhere to be and no deadline except the end of our trip! Our road is completely open once again. Our first act in our new freedom was to head up to Quito. We had thought about going along the coast of Ecuador because we had heard good things about it from an Australian surfer dude but we had an urge just to go to Quito where we had familiarity and take some more salsa lessons. So that is what we did! The past couple of days have been full of nothing except a dance lesson! The rest of the time we have spent catching up on our blog, our pictures and just reading books in our room. We have a nice little setup in our hostel which has a great guest kitchen so we've been cooking our own meals.

But can it last?

We're reveling in our new slothfulness but we know that it'll eventually have to end. After all, there is only so much of our trip left and there's still a ton to see. Our long range plan currently includes us heading up to Colombia where we will spend a couple of weeks. Then a big decision is before us. Do we continue north through Central America or do we stick to our original plan and head down through Brazil and end in Buenos Aires? A quick finance check says that while we'll definitely go over our budget for our trip, we have enough spare cash to experience Brazil and BA. So that's our decision. Here's the catch. Since Brazil is expensive and BA is at the end of our trip, we're going to have to book flights and that means long range planning again! But for now, we're just enjoying the moment.

Included are some more shots of Quito's old town both at day and night, plus one or two of some dancing people we saw at the archbishop's palace.

From Quito

From Quito

From Quito

~Mike

Archeology and Surfing

Where we last left off, we had just taken an overnight bus to Trujillo. We decided to bed down in the beach resort town just outside the town named Huanchaco. We checked into a nice hostel right off the beach and reveled in the silence of this little surfing town in the off season. Most mornings began with an overcast sky with a cool breeze but we would often get a sunny sky in the afternoon. We liked it so much that we decided to make this a base for the remainder of Mom's trip outside of Lima. From this base we were able to explore three different archeological gems in the area.

There are three big archeological sites near Trujillo. The first we visited was Chan Chan. This place is the remains of a huge city completely made of adobe. Nowadays its in a pretty sad state, most of the walls have melted away due to rain (mostly El Nino effect rain since Trujillo is still a desert). However, archeologists have been able to discover a lot about the culture from what remains. The most interesting thing about the Chimu people was that every ruler built his own palace complex from scratch. When they died, they buried the king (and his whole court) inside and then shut the place up and moved to a new palace. Mom of course was in heaven. We hired a great guide and she pummeled him with questions during the whole tour.

From Chan Chan

From Chan Chan

The next big site was close by but of a different culture. It was called Huaca de la Luna and its culture was the Moche. These people were older and they preferred to rebuild their temples on top of each, rather than start from scratch. This is a boon to archeologists though because the newer temples on top keep the older temples very well preserved. The Huaca de la luna (translated means “temple of the moon”) was the religious center of the Moche people and was the place they would do their sacrifices (sometimes human) to ward off the El Nino floods. The current theory is that a particularly bad El Nino happened and the sacrifices didn't work to stop the floods and people got disillusioned with the rulers and they lost their power.

From Huaca de la Luna and Sol

From Huaca de la Luna and Sol

From Huaca de la Luna and Sol

The third site was actually not that close but we opted instead for a day trip to see the famous Lord of Sipan. This place is a Moche site where they discovered a burial of a king in such opulence that it rivals that of the more famous King Tut in Egypt. Walking through the excellent museum translating all the signs for Mom (we were proud we could do this) was quite an experience. They set it up kind of like how they discovered the tomb layer by layer. We were blown away by the amount of gold and the amazing artifacts they found. Unfortunately we were unable to take any pictures with our camera so you'll just have to take our word that it was awesome. We do have pictures from a smaller museum and the actual site:

From Lord of Sipan

Suzanne being amazed:

From Lord of Sipan

Artifact found in the tomb:

From Lord of Sipan

The trip to see this site and museum was quite an adventure. First off, we forgot that we needed passports to get on a three hour bus ride up to the city of Chiclayo. So that set us back by an hour and a half on a very long day trip. Once we arrived we hired a taxi for going to the museum and the actual site outside the city and got going. Our deadline was 5pm when the site would close and the area around it would start getting dangerous. After spending longer than expected on the great museum, it was 2:30pm and we decided to skip lunch and head out to the actual site. Our taxi driver extracted a couple more dollars out of us since we were at the museum so long but we agreed on a new price and we began the trip out to the huaca. He took us east and of course within minutes we were on a dirt road bumping bumping inland. On either side of us rose up sugar cane plants from seemingly endless sugar-cane plantations. As the minutes ticked on and we could see nothing except more sugar-cane we started to get worried that our cab driver was taking us out in the middle of nowhere to rob and kill us. We managed to stay calm and keep telling ourselves that our guide book had told us it was about an hour outside the city but fear is definitely not that rational... After what seemed like ages though, we saw a bit pile of melted adobe rise out of the horizon and breathed a sigh of relief. We were going to live after all! We had only about 45 minutes at the site before we hit 5pm and it was time to get going. The taxi driver decided to try another road back to the city due to the previous road being very terrible (unmaintained pavement IS worse than just a dirt road). He then proceeded out and before we knew it we were back on the road, but something was wrong. We were headed south and east and the city was west and north. I kept asking him if he was sure we were going the right way and he kept saying yes, but when we definitely started heading east and the road went as far as the eye could see east, I convinced him to ask for directions from a (luckily) passing moto-taxi. The taxi confirmed we were going the wrong way and he generously told us to follow him and so we did and got back to the city just as the sun was setting and things got too dangerous. After a three hour bus ride back to Trujillo we were just glad to be alive and safe once again!

Surfing

With all our archeological sites done and visited we had the next couple of days to relax before heading back to Lima to drop Mom off at the airport. Since we were staying in a surfing village of course we had to try it out! I've always wanted to know how to surf and we had the time so I took my first surfing lesson. It was great! The place we went to guaranteed you'd stand up on your first lesson and that I did. It turns out that they make this guarantee because they end up giving you the proper push right when the wave is coming so all you have to do is stand up. Even though it felt a little like cheating, I have to admit that it was nice at first to just focus on standing on a moving board. I can understand the reason people like surfing because the rush you get on actually riding a wave towards shore is quite exhilarating. It is also a lot of exercise! You have to use your arms to paddle out to sea so every foot you travel on the wave that's a foot you have to paddle back. I did just fine for about 1.5 hours, but after that my shoulders were mush.

From Trujillo

We waited one more day before trying again, this time I had convinced Suzanne that she also should take a lesson and so we went back. However, while Suzanne did great on her first lesson, my shoulders were still sore and quickly returned to their mush-like state. Since I was at the point of trying to catch my own wave I needed those muscles to respond but they just wouldn't! In the end though, it was a ton of fun.

Exhausted Mike:

From Trujillo

Suzanne surfing it up:

From Trujillo

Finally it was time to head back to Lima. One overnight bus trip later and we were there with a day or two to spare before Mom's flight. We used these days to hit some of the national museums that were located in Lima. Of these the most strange one was the exhibit of erotic pottery! It was really weird to see thousand year old pottery with people engaged in all sorts of sexual acts as well as pottery of venereal disease and the like. Then there was the very strange figures of skeletons engaged in acts with living people... Very weird. Consider this a disclaimer and warning for the pictures on my public albums!

Artifacts and gold!

From Lima Museum Day

From Lima Museum Day

From Lima Museum Day

From Lima Museum Day

Birdman:

From Lima Museum Day

Finally we had to take Mom to the airport. We had a ton of fun with her and really enjoyed having her around to share some of her knowledge on all these sites. She is also the easiest person to travel with. She left all decision making up to us and told us that whatever we decided was fine with her. She didn't care when we wanted to eat pizza or just hang out a day reading in our room. Nor did she complain when we picked hotels that had all night parties going on next door. She just went with the flow and had a great time. So thanks Mom!

From Trujillo

~Mike

ps. Since Mom wanted to remember a lot of information and use it for her class planning (she's a professor at Baylor) we took a ton of pictures of museums artifacts and information cards at the museums. So our public albums will hold a ton more pictures than we usually put up there. If you're interested in learning about these things too though, hopefully you'll find it interesting.   

Back in Peru!

We entered Peru and passed through customs for the 4^th time on our trip. This time, my mom was with us and we had come to see some of the big archeological sites of the country. We decided to ease her into Peru by staying in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima, which is the most western and upscale in Peru, but still has that unique Peruvian flavor. We walked in the main plaza area and visited a market which had some very unique and high-quality crafts. Among the people cutting stone and polishing it and people making cool souvenirs from olive wood on-site, we also saw a guy who would write whatever you wanted on a single grain of rice! Also in the plaza was a band with this amazing flute player, which we caught on video if you'd like to hear him:

The day we flew in happened to be Peruvian independence day, but we figured we would miss most festivities since we came in late at night and slept late the next day, but this was not the case. They decided to take the long weekend to celebrate! Since we arrived on Weds, this was quite a long desfile! This was both good and bad news for us. Good news cause we could also celebrate and witness the city in celebration mode, bad news because all the museums we wanted to go to were closed. So instead we just walked around the old city and the Plaza de Armas.  Here's Suzanne and Mom at the plaza with the Peruvian flag:

From Lima

Our plan was always to get out of Lima quickly and start seeing archeological sites so we quickly left Lima for Huaraz. The big site located near Huaraz was called Chavin de Huantar. The Chavin culture was highly spiritual and intellectual using soft power to extend their influence across modern day Peru. People would come on pilgrimages to hear an oracle tell them messages from the gods. The center of their culture was this site, which consisted of a very large temple and plaza where they would do their ceremonies. It was larger than I had imagined it would be and much more elaborate too. There were labyrinths and tunnels underground that would even go out of the site and under a nearby river. They would use water in interesting ways, using steam that they would push from under the ground to make the priests look more mystical. Mom was in heaven, she loved everything and quickly exhausted the battery on her camera taking pictures. Suzanne was the main translator, using her superior skills to translate for Mom and for me (I was filling in at taking pictures of everything). Finally, we had to bid adieu to Chavin and began the long trip back to Huaraz, which was only 100km away but the road was so bad it took hours. However it was such a beautiful drive over the mountains that we didn't mind it (that much).  Picture of Chavin site followed by a couple of mountain shots:

From Chavin de Huantar

From Chavin de Huantar

From Huaraz

Unless you're an archeologist, you don't come to Huaraz for Chavin though. You come for the amazing mountains that surround the city. The Cordierra Blanca and Cordierra Negra (which mean “White Range” and “Black Range”) are stunning ranges that frustrate attempts to describe. They have the highest peaks in Peru (most over 16,000 ft), are covered in snow (white range at least) and glaciers, and their peaks seem to shoot straight up out of the earth resulting in huge cliffs that just cause you to drop your jaw and wonder. We spent the two other days we had in Huaraz going on day hikes around these mountains. Most people who come though aren't really day-hikers so we found ourselves quite isolated up there. We had to take a taxi to get to a decent starting point but the road quickly got too rough for it and he had to drop us early. So we started in this little village up on the hill. We got to see a true rural Peruvian village. It was great; everyone looked at you and smiled and said “buenas tardes” or good afternoon and wanted to know where you were from. No one asked us for money or wanted money if you took their picture. Then throw in the scenery (rolling hills with wheat, cows, sheep and dogs with a brightly dressed shepherdess watching them graze with the mountains behind) and you get as close as you can to those romantic paintings you see in museums around the world. It wasn't perfectly ideal though. We had been warned that sometimes there is petty robbery up there so we had to leave behind Niko (my camera). Hopefully though we got some good ones with the other smaller camera we brought. Thankfully we never experienced any problems like that.

From Moms_Camera_2

From Moms_Camera_2

From Moms_Camera_2

We ended up not being able to take a taxi back down and had to walk all the way down the mountain to Huaraz, a elevation drop from 13,566 to 10,178 (3,388 ft) over a distance of 5.5 miles (thanks to Google Earth). Mom really impressed us both. She had no problem with the elevation and often took the lead! By the end, we were exhausted and had an overnight bus to take so we showered in our hotel (thankfully our hotel was cool with this since we had already checked out) and ate way too much Chinese food and drank too much beer. But these factors all made us very sleepy and we ended up sleeping the best we've ever slept on an overnight bus!

Our next stop was Trujillo, more of that later...

~Mike

Lovin' the USA

So in my last post I gave an update on arriving in the USA for a little break from South America while we hit up some weddings and see some friends. Here's a little recap of what we've been up to.

Just a warning to all two of my readers, this post is probably more of a recap of events and maybe not that exciting. :) I still persist in blogging this way because for me it's like a journal for our trip and it will help me remember our adventure of a life-time when I'm old and gray. That said, I am aware that our blogs are a lot less frequent and are consequently much much longer so I am going to make an attempt to blog more often (say every two weeks). Hopefully this will make my posts shorter and perhaps force a bit more creativity.

So we left off leaving California and heading to Omaha to spend a couple of days with Suzanne's family. This turned out to be very relaxing. We of course went to the zoo, Suzanne wouldn't have it any other way! Also, if you've been following our blog you know that our new camera arrived and we named him Nico based on the superstition that our named items do not get stolen (EEVA our computer is still safely ours). So after a quick Amazon order to get another SD card and remote control, we are back up to 100% functionality with our camera! The only thing missing is our super-cool strap that Julie gave us with the soft fabric and Notre Dame pattern.

Soon the next wedding was coming up and so we hopped in a car with Suzanne's parents for an early morning drive to Chicago for 8 hours. This seems like a long time but with 4 drivers and our new endurance for long travel times it was a piece of cake. We really enjoyed the ability to stop whenever you want and not have people come into your car (or bus) and steal your camera. :) After dropping Suzanne's parents off at the hotel, we got back into the car and began a 4 hour trip to Michigan to see some Colorado friends for the night.  We weren't able to go to Chris' wedding because we had been triple booked for weddings on this day!  So even though we'd have loved to go to all three, we let whoever had asked us first be the deciding factor which is how we got to Michigan.  But we still wanted to see as many people as possible so we drove out to Michigan to see Chris and Kristen and a lot of our Colorado friends on the pre-nuptials night. After crashing with our friends William and Betsy, we woke up early and began our 4 hour trip back to Chicago for Nicole's wedding. Their wedding was very beautiful. They got married in a gorgeous church and the reception was great. My favorite part was that Suzanne and I got the dancing started! I convinced a very shy Suzanne to get started but once we did everyone else began also so we felt like we definitely contributed to the party!

Great photo I took with Nico before the wedding:

From Nicole and Dave's Wedding

And Suzanne and I at Nicole and Dave's wedding:

From Nicole and Dave's Wedding

The next day we attended a brunch and then headed back to Omaha. One thing I noticed on our way back was how beautiful Iowa was to drive through. Everyone thinks that it's just flat corn crops as far as the eye can see but what you really get is a beautiful countryside of rolling hills with that same corn with a barn and grain elevator thrown in to make things beautiful. Then there are all these wind turbines dotted across the landscape (perhaps a testament to Iowa's importance in presidential primaries?) that altogether make Iowa very nice! I have some pictures to attest to this, see below.

From Omaha Summer 2010

With the weddings out of the way we spent two days in Omaha re-packing. We were able to leave things behind that we hadn't used in our 5 months but didn't want to throw away down south. Newly lightweight, we got on a plane for Seattle where we were met by our friend Sarah Kheriaty. Sarah had told us to consider our planning done while we were visiting her and she meant it! From the day we arrived to the day we left we were taken care of. She first took us to local hot spot the “5 Spot” where we took the following picture showing the sentiment of the city to Arizona's new immigration law:

From Seattle

Next she drove us up to Bellingham, WA where she and her husband Nick live during the summer. We had visited Bellingham before during the Ski-to-Sea relay race and had always wanted to return during the summer to enjoy hanging out on Lake Whatcom, so when the opportunity came up we wrote Nick and Sarah and they said sure! Bellingham is a medium sized town right by the border with Canada. It's known for being beautiful during the summer and for its lake. Nick's parents live on that lake. Nick was my roommate in college and he was constantly telling me about how great it was during the summer when they would wake-board, water-ski, wind-surf and play a sport called jetski-frisbee. This last one is even cooler than it sounds. Have you ever wished you could just accelerate to 20mph in a second as you were chasing down that overthrown disc? Have you ever wished that you when you dove for the disc, instead of hard ground was a nice cool lake to land in? Have you ever wished both of these things at the same time? If so, then jetski-frisbee is for you! Check out these fantastic shots:

From Bellingham Watersports

Nick:

From Bellingham Watersports

The only thing that could make this activity better is if instead of a boring old disc, you could use the amazing Aerobie flying ring! The only problem with this is that the Aerobie sinks, but one day we can hope some scientist makes a breakthrough. :) The other awesome sport that I learned was wake-boarding. This was slightly more difficult than jetski-frisbee, but just as fun. It was really my first time on a board (as opposed to skis) and had to learn the subtleties of shifting weight and the dangers of “catching an edge.” The same water that was so forgiving with jetski-frisbee was a bit different when you were going faster on a boat and your entire forward momentum is transferred to angular momentum (with your head traveling the fastest) and you slam into the water. Luckily its a type of lesson that you learn quickly from and you try not to repeat. Here's video of my fall (hint, hit the View HD Video link above and to the right of the playing video):

From Bellingham Watersports

Overall though, it was incredibly fun to learn all those watersports. You can see pictures of all the sports and all the videos of the falls below. Suzanne preferred skiing to wake-boarding and did great, never falling and never failing to get up on her skis!

Off the water was just as fun as on the water. Nick and Sarah and Nick's parents Larry and Elaine opened up their home to us and made us feel like family. Sarah pre-cooked tons of delicious food for us before we even arrived and we ate like kings all week. We also had plenty of time to get to know little Jacob Thomas and attend his super-cool 1^st birthday party. Sarah went all out for her son's party and had some really cute homemade cupcakes while Nick grilled up some good old hamburgers for everyone. Nick and Sarah are teaching Jacob hand signs so he knows how to signal that he's hungry and dance and all sorts of adorable things. When Jacob was sleeping we would often occupy our time playing a new game we got Nick and Sarah, “Settlers of Catan”. They were at first a bit skeptical but we think we won them over on how fun it was and at the end we were playing every night! Overall it was just fantastic. I think I would rank it just behind our Galapagos trip in terms of pure enjoyment. It was also really nice to stay in one place for 10 days in a row (a new record!).

Finally we had to say goodbye to Bellingham and begin our trip back to South America. First we headed to Seattle for a couple of days which turned out to be jam-packed with visiting friends! First we stayed with our good friend Kathryn who like our friend Anne was someone who knew both of us from freshman year in college but separately. From her home as base, we saw good friends Jennifer Slavick, Kevin Wachel, and Riddhi Mukhopadhyay. With each of them we got to see another part of Seattle and had a great time catching up and talking with our friends. After Seattle we caught a plane to San Francisco to catch our flight to Lima. During our 6 hour layover we were able to jet into the city and meet up one final time with our friend Lance and my brother Luke. Then it was back to the airport to continue on to Lima. First off we got on a flight to Houston and picked up my mom who will be traveling around northern Peru with us for 2 weeks! Then we flew to Panama City and finally continued to Lima arriving late on the 28^th.

All in all, we counted and we think we saw 58 people (friends and family) in the 28 days that we were here in the USA. I call that pretty good! We want to say thanks to everyone who showed us their hospitality and took in a couple of homeless and unemployed friends for a couple of days.

~Mike

5:47 PM 8 pounds, 0 ounces

Niko arrived at 5:57pm weighing 8 pounds 0 ounces and looking perfectly healthy. He's currently undergoing tests to make sure he's a healthy Nikon and can see clearly. Now Mike is sitting in a rocking chair, reading all about Niko.  This is definitely a happy day for the Macaulay family.  


  

From Niko

Michael and Niko

Californication

The flight back to the states was quick and uneventful.  We did think it was a little weird that they served us a meal at 1:15 am but we ate it.  I also got to see a great movie called "Date Night" with Tina Fey and Steve Carrel (sp?).  Other thing of note is that Continental only gives you one checked bag on international flights (Delta gives you two).

We arrived in around 10am and after immediately taking a drink on the nearest water fountain and visiting the nearest clean bathroom, we headed into the city.  We met up with our good friend Lance Johnson and had lunch on a beautiful San Francisco summer day.  Then we decided to take a "quick walk" around the city, walking off our delicious lunch.  The only problem is that it was so nice outside and we were having such a great time with Lance that it turned into a 2 hour walk causing my brother Luke to start getting worried about whether our flight arrived or whether we were on it.

We then stayed with Luke and headed down to Carmel to go to our good friend Anne's wedding.  Anne is one of our longest friends from Notre Dame, and Suzanne and Matt are Archie friends and Matt lived in Omaha (definite plus for Suzanne).  The funny thing is that Anne also knew both of us us but separately.  We each belonged to a separate world in Anne's life.  I knew her from her dorm friends and Suzanne knew her from architecture.  Anne was the first person I asked about Suzanne after I asked Suzanne up on our first date.  I knew that Suzanne was an architect and since I knew Anne so well, I asked what she thought about Suzanne and she paused and said, "Suzanne... is one of the nicest people I know".  I knew then that if Anne would say that about someone, then she had to be pretty special.  :)  So anyway, we had a great time at the wedding.  The ceremony and reception were all very beautiful and very fun.  We hope Matt and Anne who are currently on their honeymoon enjoy their new life together and we are so happy for them.

Now we're back in Berkeley hanging out with my two brothers which is really great.  We took our time coming back and really enjoyed the amazing California coastline, including the famous Pebble Beach golf course and 17-mile drive.  Our next plan is to head to Omaha for a bit before we get to Chicago for the next wedding we came back for, Suzanne's good high school friend Nicole.

Couple of observations:  1)  Putting toilet paper into toilets is just as awesome as we expected.  2) ditto for drinking water.  3)  Free water at restaurants, also awesome is helping me justify tipping more than 10%.

~Mike