Now we have proof this vacation actually happened...

Been working on culling down my 1151 pictures and here's what I thought were the ones that fairly represented our trip.

Photo Gallery

Oh, the "Don Juan," the ship carrying Heike across the pond, is now in the open ocean heading to Halifax, NS, then New York, and finally Brunswick, GA on July 1. W00t!

Homeward bound

So it looks like Heike will be loaded onto the slow boat tomorrow and should arrive in the U.S. and A. on July 1. There's still basically no chance of getting it before the 4th, but I should have it the week after.

W00t! W00t!

The long road home

So it would appear that "Heike" sat under the Riviera sun for about 10 days before starting her trip home this morning.

First stop is Bremerhaven, which is ~1400km from Nice. Let's hope the truck driver has a better reason to get there than simply unloading a bunch of cars.

This delay pretty much ensures that I will not take redelivery before the 4th of July weekend, and will likely push the redelivery time out into the 7-8 week timeframe.

How soon is too soon to call?

I feel like a guy who had a great date with a girl who's waiting for enough time to pass before calling her so he doesn't seem desperate. This phase is easily the worst part of the whole European Delivery process. You've had a little taste of your new UDM and now you have to wait in limbo until you can get whatever morsels of information that dribble out about where it is, which ship it's going to be on, when that ship is supposed to cross the pond, how long it's going to be stuck in customs. It's absolute torture. #firstworldpains

On a lighter note, I feel completely overwhelmed going through my 1100 photos. I just got through importing them all into Adobe Lightroom and have geotagged and applied basic keywords and post-processing steps to them. I think I am going to have to just go one day at a time and be ruthless about which shots make the first cut. I got a new monitor to help out with navigating through the pics and tweaking them and I think that will speed up the process a fair bit.

If I can't be in Italy, I'll let Italy come to me

So we found out that Target sells gelato imported from Italy under their "Archer Farms" label. Guess what? They have a "combo pack" of pineapple and coconut. Yes, you heard correctly. I can now have pineapple and coconut gelato whenever I want. Schwing!

Home... Bummer

We're home. Bummer.

Landed in the ATL around 3:30 yesterday afternoon and were out of the airport; into the car (which I will be turning in on Tuesday); and on I-85 by 5:15. The new international terminal is great. It took a little longer than I would have expected to get through passport control, and the CBP lady there didn't quite understand what I wrote on our customs declaration form (I wrote "prepared foods," probably in error, referring to our trofie pasta, pesto sauce, olive oil), but net-net it was a much more pleasant experience than our previous international arrivals through the old "Concourse E."

We had dinner at Five Guys since we were both craving a cheese burger pretty bad. Mmmmmm..... cheeseburger.

We didn't even attempt to start on our mountain of laundry more than to just extract it from the suitcases and pile it up in front of the laundry closet.

It was all Angela could do to stay up until 9:30, but I got a second wind watching the replay of the UEFA Champions' League finals between Bayern and Dortmund and made it until 11:30. We were both still up and at 'em by 5:30 this morning, though. Thanks goodness we have today and tomorrow to shake the jet lag.

I feel a visit to "Casa des Waffle" this morning...

No word at all on when my vehicle (which I have chosen to name "Heike," in honor of the woman who managed my delivery) will make it up to the port. I'll probably send the shipping company a note tomorrow or Tuesday to inquire.

An anxious goodbye, and not all crepes are created equal

Our final full day in Europe started out with a little breakfast omelette down at the "da Aristide." I needed the energy since I had to schlep up the hill to the car that I parked on the street while carrying my camera backpack and one of our duffels. Let me tell you that it was much easier coming down the hill with no bags than hiking up with 45lbs of gear. As I walked up the hill, a tour bus ready to disgorge its passengers pulled in to the upper parking area. Yikes, I had to really get on it if we were going to load the car and get out of town while the streets were still relatively empty.

We got the car loaded and got out of town before the horde of locusts descended on "our" Cinque Terre. It was a pretty easy drive to Nice. I am continually impressed by the viaduct-tunnel-viaduct system on the coastal motorway. The engineering and surveying work required to get all those roadways to line up is amazing; especially when the roads are curving and changing their elevation.

After fumbling around finding the hotel (including one aborted attempt at the wrong "Novotel" which included a full unload of all the baggage), we finally got checked into our "2 room suite" (where the "rooms" are formed by sliding dividers, not actual walls) and I left to get the car washed and dropped of at the "TT Auto Transport" office at the airport. I found everything OK and parked the car, but to my shock and concern, no one was at the desk waiting to accept my turn-in. I had no idea what to do. I waited around for about 10 minutes, called the number (no answer), knocked on the door behind the counter, and was about to call my CA back in the states when a woman politely, but directly (in that French way), asked me to step out from behind the counter. Whew! Relief. Evidently, the man with whom I made the appointment failed to put me on the day's drop-off schedule. Good thing that there were two other ED drop-offs scheduled for that day or they may have called it a weekend.

Unfortunately, during the walk-around, we noticed some very minor curb rash on the right front wheel and some superficial scratches (like from brushing up against very stiff vegetation or very lightly rubbing concrete) on the right-front corner of the front bumper. I sure hope that doesn't delay my redelivery. I sent a note with the pics to my CA asking him his advice.

Since it was still fairly early, we decided to take the bus into the center city and stroll around "Vieux Nice" and try to find a place to eat. Angela had a craving for crepes, so that's what we looked for. Our first place had sweet and savory crepes as well as "doner's" (which I had a craving for). My "doner kebap" was excellent (of course, I was pretty hungry by then, so that might just be the hunger talking), but Angela's crepe with nutella and bananas wasn't up to scratch. Onward...

We walked along the Promenade des Anglais; amongst the stalls that get set up in the old flower market area, and through the warren of narrow streets that is "Vieux Nice." Stop #2 for crepes was a place called "L'Abbaye," where I got a savory crepe with ham, cheese, and eggs, and Angela got one with ham, cheese, onions and mushrooms. The crepe batter here was a wheat flour-based one, and Angela didn't like it at all. I actually liked the "buckwheat" style crepe, but we didn't even attempt to order a sweet crepe, even though there were a couple on the menu that looked quite tasty. Strike 2. Our final attempt was at this place called "Pinocchio" that sold crepes and gelato. I got a dark chocolate filled crepe and Angela got one with mixed fruits; except that it came out as just a plain crepe with all the fruits on top of, not cooked in, the crepe. Strike 3. You're out.

We got back to the hotel a little before 9 and finished our packing. Tomorrow is a very early morning for Angela and me. We have a 4:15 wakeup for a 6:30 flight to Frankfurt. I did manage to blow a circuit breaker trying to plug my US mini-power strip into a 240V adapter so that we could charge all of our iOS devices at once. It even took out our door locks.