We were thrilled to have our first visitors since we started our expat life abroad.
Our youngest son Adam and his fiancée Liz spent 18 days with us. We combined the visit with travel to Paris, Barcelona, the Mediterranean Sea, and sharing our adopted home in Carcassonne. I plan to write about their visit by breaking it up into an individual blog postings for each of the different locations we enjoyed exploring together.
It was such a pleasure to share our new life with Adam and Liz (and to congratulate Adam on earning his bachelor degree just a few weeks previous to their visit.) We explored shared interests in great cities, history, cultures, lifestyles, art, travel, architecture and enjoyed conversation, food, and drink. Adam and Liz are vegetarians so we had an opportunity to examine a totally different food culture in our travels than we had previously had a chance to try. Adam juggled on the streets of Paris, Liz sampled Sangria in Barcelona, we splashed in the Mediterranean, Adam and Liz demonstrated their Spanish language skills, we celebrated Adam’s 22 birthday (and Adam and Liz attended a performance of his favorite band that just happened to be in town on his birthday for Festival de Carcassonne), and all of us (including Kiara) watched France’s biggest fireworks extravaganza for Bastille Day with the medieval city of Carcassonne as a backdrop.
All in all, it was a spectacular visit which made us look forward to our next visitors.
An Italian Point Of View 
Must have been hard to say goodbye to Adam and Liz, but it looks like you guys all had a wonderful time together. Gerry and I are starting to look at the calendar for our visit. We can’t wait to see you both. Miss you lots!
We are so looking forward to seeing you!
It was very hard to say goodbye, we had such a wonderful time with them here. Got to flex our cooking muscles a bit since they are vegetarians, it was great fun — I even created a lentil based meat-less ball for spaghetti that is actually very good!
Dear Tracy and Alan Glad to here from you both I am excited that Adam & Liz had a great time together. Ihope some day I will be able to visit. Trina & Brycen Etta & myself just got back from DISNEYLAND , We had had a great time. Brycen really enjoyed this place it’s called Flight Deck it is a flight simulater were you dog fight with others. It has been so very hot high 90 to over 100 . Brycen bought his own car the first of July, it’s a 91 Toyota 4Four Runner He has been 4wheeling ever since I have a mud ball sitting in the front all the time, but he has been having so much fun having his own car,and I don’t have to have him drive mine. I called Dirk this morning for his birthday, I sent his card before I went on vacation he hasn’t let me know if he got it. Well I will close for now, I hope you are both well. Sent from my iPad Love Mom
Thanks Nana,
Glad everyone is well and having fun.
Mom, so glad that you guys had a good time at Disneyland. We didn’t realize when we went to Paris on the train that the train station is right next to the entrance of Euro Disney! It was a great surprise! Tell Brycen I said congrats on his first car! I remember how cool I thought I was when I got my first one. I’m sure that Dirk got his card, but he is a very busy guy these days. He may be in town for the UNR vs UNLV game in a couple of months, I think he mentioned that they might be going. It’s in Reno this year and a lot easier for everyone to attend. We hope to see you here in France someday too! It would be so much fun. I love you with my whole heart Mom, miss you so much!
Wow, what an awesome visit for all of you! I’m so glad everyone had a great time and you were able to travel to those great destinations! It’s not every day you can say you went to visit your parents and they took you to Paris 🙂
We have so many of the same interests, it made the visit especially fun. Barcelona trip post is coming. 😉
Mike, we had such great fun! The kids are art lovers like Alan and I so there was plenty to see and do that everyone enjoyed. My favorite part of Paris was definitely the Louvre, and Barcelona was absolutely amazing that we are looking forward to returning soon. We can’t wait for the next of the college kids to graduate so that we can plan another trip. We had a lot of fun thinking of all the places to go and things to see and do when the kids got here! Our love to you and Phoenix!