McAllister and I leave the wintery Rochester and Jon & Lisa leave the mild DC. Where are we going?! To Fort Lawdi-Dawdi - we likes to PARTY. (in Justine's new apartment)

We go to visit Jon & Lisa's new apartment in Arlington, VA. We tour the monuments of DC, Arlington Cemetary, went to the the folklife festival, watched fireworks, visited historic Alexandria, whacked away crabs with a mallet at the Quarter Deck, took a paddleboat out on the Bay and ate Belgian Waffles in the shape of American Flags!

After Switzerland, we meandered through the French Alps by car to visit our friends Brad and Kerri for an evening. They were snowboarding for a week with friends from England in the little ski town of Bourg-Saint-Maurice, France. Our recently married friends live in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina; coincidentally we happened to all be vacationing within an hour of each other half-way across the world!

After Paris, we fly to Switzerland where we enjoy some laid back vacationing by avoiding the BIG cities. We rent a car, and EXPLORE Interlaken, Grindewald and everywhere in between.

CHRISTMAS 2006 in Paris!! We did not have the snow, but it was FRIGIDLY cold. Coldest city of the whole trip. We were stuck with fog the first 2 days - but it did not slow us power-tourists down. It was gone by the 3rd day and we got to experience the Eiffel Tower with a gorgeous view of Paris. CAUTION - There are atleast 25 photos of the Eiffel. SMILE.

After our lovely engagement, McAllister and I head to LONDON to site-see. We hit up Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, the London Eye, the London Tower and tour around some of the popular London districts like Notting Hill and Kensington. We also felt a bit at home and like locals as we frequented any and all the MARKETS we could find including Portabello, Camden, Covent Garden and Jubilee.

I am so blessed to have been hugely surprised with a night's stay at Le Manoir during our trip to Europe. Bill works as a pastry chef at Le Manoir in Great Milton, England. He gave us a night's stay @ the Dovecote as a Christmas present. We toured the kitchen, several rooms and had a fabulous 10 course dinner, le menu Decouverte. And all along I thought we were catching a train to London.....

Our first stop in Europe was Thame (pronounced 'tame'), the little town where Bill (Mc's brother) lives. It's a quiet town just 15 miles east of Oxfordshire, home to about 12,000 residents. Reminds us a little bit of NOTL, minus all the FOG we ran into. We love our great hosts, Bill and his 3 roomates, who all work at Le Manoir - they made our stay GREAT and we felt right at home.