February 2002
Well, it seems that the terrorist attacks have overshadowed all other news this last year. I will, never the less, write this letter to try to let you know what is happening in our lives. Even though we live in Washington, D.C. the attacks have had minimal impact on our daily lives. There is a larger than usual perimeter around the Whitehouse where it is blocked off. I know one person who was killed at the Pentagon, a classmate of mine from the Naval Academy. I knew him casually, mostly from the tailgaters at the home football games. Otherwise our only connection to the events has been through the news.
We had a great time on our trip to California. My 20-year high school reunion was quite fun. We had a pretty good turn out, and my close group of friends were all there. Two of those friends we had lost track of. There were a few people that I was hoping to see that did not show up. Gisleide and I drove out to Las Vegas for a few days. We had a good time, especially when Gisleide won $250 at the slot machines. That is how much money we left with, so she was up even higher than that at one point. I, of course, lose all the money that I put in those one armed bandits. We then went to the Grand Canyon for a day. We walked around the south rim for a while. It was a really nice walk. Then we drove to Santa Barbara. Gisleide really liked it there.
At the beginning of August there was a pretty strong heat spell in D.C. Fortunately we missed most of it while we were in California. The end of the heat came with a tremendous downpour. It rained so hard that there were a number of power outages and a number of places got flooded. The crawl space under our house was flooded a little. The furnace, which is the blower for the A/C, was damaged. After much procrastination I fixed it myself, I had to replace the controller board. It was fixed just in time for our trip to Europe for our belated honeymoon.
We flew to Paris at the middle of October with no reservations except our round trip plane tickets. We flew out of Washington-Dulles airport, which is where the plane that hit the Pentagon took off from. There was a lot of lip service made towards increased security there, but it was only slightly more. We spent a week in Paris, and both loved it immensely. We didn't do a very intense sightseeing tour. We did more of a hang out and soak up the ambiance type of tour. We did see a few sights, Gisleide did some shopping and I did some photo taking. It was overcast or raining for nearly all of the time we were there. Then we took the train down to Bordeaux, where we spent three days. The weather was a little better there. Bordeaux is a very nice town with very nice places for walking through the downtown area. Next we went to Montpellier. It was similar to Bordeaux, but smaller. There was a Roman aqueduct there that was pretty interesting. There was a big hexagonal stone building at the end of the aqueduct. Then we went to Nice, which is on the French Riviera. The beach there is made of small stones and not sand. There was some historical and cultural stuff there, but the town is pretty much set up for tourism. We took a short trip over to Monaco for a few hours to see what it is like. Then we went to Italy. We went to Genoa first. We spent only one day there because there isn't much to see. So, we went to Milan. It was a little more interesting there. There is a huge cathedral there that is quite dramatic. Right next to it is the Galleria Vittorio. We weren’t too excited with Milan, so we went to Venice, which we really loved. We spent five days there. From there we went to Florence, where we spent three days. We really liked it there. The cathedral there is fabulous, of course, as are the statues and museums. I took the train back to Paris, as my vacation time was drawing to a close. Gisleide continued on down to Rome, where she spent a few days. She went back to Nice after that until it was time to head back to Paris and fly home.
We spent Christmas together at home. Last year's trip was too much stress and hassle, and I am just plain out of vacation time after our trip. We went out to a friend's Brazilian restaurant for New Year's. We had a great time and got home very late.
Gisleide is currently in Brazil again. She is visiting her grandparents (from both sides of the family). She has not visited them in many years since they live in remote parts of Brazil. She is also getting some dental work done. Also, a friend of hers rented a house on the beach for two weeks, so Gisleide hurried up her trip a little bit so she could join her there. She just spent Carnival in the city of Salvador, and is now in the southern part of Brazil in the city of Florianópolis. Hopefully she will have good stories to tell when she comes home.
We hope that you are doing well and that we will hear from you soon. On the back page is our small photo gallery from our trip to Europe. You can see many more photos at http://alexkiefer.net/europepix/
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