Hello from Bordeaux

We had a long long trip last Tues/Weds! First we flew from Denver to Frankfurt -- Owen had a special bassinet attached to the wall in front of us and he managed to sleep for most of the way! Then, we had a 5 hour layover in Frankfurt. Unfortunately, it turns out that the Frankfurt airport is one of the worst in the world for chilling out -- there is almost nowhere to sit down except at cafes and such where having a baby with you is a bit less pratical. Eventually we found a place where I took Owen outside on an observation deck to watch planes land -- quite fun!



We arrived in Bordeaux at about 6pm last Wednesday evening (Sept 10). Franck picked us up at the airport and took us to our home for the next couple months on the grounds of the Observatoire de Bordeaux, in Floirac, just out side of town. We are staying in a house called la "Maison Mercure", which is wonderful. Owen has been crawling like mad on the wood floors, and his new favorite thing is a tunnel made from a big cardboard box that he crawls through at will:


He has also been pulling himself up to standing about every 5 minutes, on anything that is about the right height (a foot or so off the ground), although in some cases we need to hold down anchor so he doesn't end up on his head ... again.


We spent the next few days getting used to our surroundings. We spent one day walking around in town -- Owen got up on his feet by a nice fountain. We also had some great pizza and our timing was very lucky because there was a big downpour but we were protected under a canopy.




The next day (Sunday) we headed to the beach at a town called Lacanau-Ocean. It was Owen's first time touching the ocean! He loved the sand and the waves but was not a big fan of the wind (it was pretty chilly) so we had to wrap him up in warm clothes shortly after getting him all wet.


We had a picnic on the observatory grounds the other day -- awfully scenic! There are some deer who are always around, but they are super skittish.



We have been eating very well -- lots of wine and cheese so far.



So far things are going great and we have only a coupe of gripes -- one ouchy one is that there are quite a few wasps nearby. Marisa got stung the other day and Owen has come scarily close. We are trying to figure out how to get them to stay out!

more to come
Sean

ps - We have no internet access in the house and no telephone either so blog posts will probably be written mostly by me (Sean) from my office. Meow!