A view out our front door as the 2011 blizzard sweeps the land

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Libertyville Christmas Tree Lighting

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Libertyville is located 40 miles north of Chicago and 5 miles west of Lake Michigan. From downtown Chicago, it’s about an hour drive or a short Metra train ride on the Milwaukee District North line.

The community is extremely charming, with a turn of the centry historic downtown, many interesting local shops and restaurants, bike paths and parks. There is always something going on in town, from parades, outdoor concerts, farmer’s markets and even “dog days” (for dog owners ). Here is the official community site for your reading pleasure:  http://www.libertyville.com/

Paula and I have enjoyed making a start in Chicago, and are excited about this next chapter of our lives in Libertyville. We look forward to having our friends and family come out and visit in the near future (and even spend the night, now that we have a little more room.. or roomS I should say, haha). We’ll try to get some pictures posted soon too of our new house once we’re a bit more moved in!

A ferocious hammerhead shark caught while deep sea fishing near Bal Harbour, Florida

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Paula's tasty Bloody Mary bar is just the thing to welcome in the New Year

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Paragliders on Mt. Salève looking out over Geneva

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The walled city of Dubrovnik, Croatia on the Adriatic Sea

We made the most of our trip with both land and sea adventures. On our first day we visited the Old Town which is a large walled portion of the city dating back to the 1400’s. The remainder of our days were spent in or near the water. Although the water was still a bit chilly, the days were hot and sunny. We hired a private boat charter which took us to several neighboring islands and allowed us to explore the interesting “nooks and crannies” of the islands, including a few caves. One of the caves we visited is called “The Cave of Odysseus” by locals because according to legend it is the cave Odysseus spent 7 years in after being shipwrecked. The cave is not accessible by boat, so we had to jump out and swim in. Once past the entrance (which is partially underwater) the cave opens up and is open on the top, so the sun shines in and gives the cave the effect of a giant swimming pool. (Unfortunately, we didn’t have a waterproof camera, so we have no pictures.) On the same day we also visited Mljet which is a Croatian National Park with two salt water lakes. We hiked around the island a bit and swam in the larger of the two lakes. We also had lunch on the island at a restaurant where the “fresh catch of the day” was both fresh and caught that day - we watched them walk to the front of the restaurant and catch the fish!

The other main highlight of our trip was the seaside stone cottage we stayed in. We spent most mornings and evenings on the terrace overlooking the bay, eating feta and olives and drinking red wine.

We’re ready to go back to Croatia. Who’s in?

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The Danube River and Chain Bridge in Budapest

Highlights for us included walking along the Danube, having a drink in a few of the city’s many open squares (always a great place for people watching), walking up to the Buda Castle for a great view over the city, and seeing all the old architecture and sculptures that seem to be everywhere. Many (seemingly all) of the old stone buildings have gargoyles and various human faces built right into them, which certainly gives them a personality of sorts.

We also enjoyed a couple of very nice dinners out - once to a restaurant called Rezkakas Vendeglo, famous for it’s authentic Hungarian cuisine and live string music (one guy also played the saw.. check the pics!), and the second night we dined at a place called the Columbus Pub, which is a floating restaurant on the Danube where they had a live jazz band show.

Lastly, I should mention our visit to the Great Market Hall, which is a huge multi-floored building full of market stalls, where you can buy nearly anything. Interesting items included, Hungarian paprika, hand-cut crystal, any kind of meats imaginable, pastries galore, fur pelts, linens, and strange political Matryoshka dolls (Russian nested dolls). We picked up a great set of multi-colored crystal wine goblets, which we’ve been enjoying back in Geneva

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La Gruyère is a district of Switzerland just northeast of Lake Geneva, where we ventured to for a weekend trip at the end of April. The area is well-known as a popular skiing destination and also a great place to get a peek of Swiss countryside life. And without a doubt, the region contains some of the most breathtaking pre-alpine landscape I have ever seen, and you can easily picture Heidi (from the popular children’s stories) playing about on the lush green mountainsides.

The area is also well-known for it’s famous Gruyère cheese, which is made from cow’s milk, and has a sweet but slightly salty flavor that varies widely with age. Of course, once I found out about this, we made a point of visiting the La Maison du Gruyère (cheese dairy) to see where it’s made and score some free samples

So, we had hopped on a train in Geneva on Friday and after a few hours we arrived at the small capital town of the district called Bulle, where we then took a taxi through the mountains until we reached our hotel in the nearby small Swiss village of Charmey (map). When I say small, I think there are maybe two streets, and two hotels with a few small shops along the main street. If you want to dine out in town, you basically have those two hotels to choose from The big attraction in Charmey, however, is Les Bains de La Gruyère (Gruyère Baths), which contains two large pools (indoor and outdoor) filled with heated natural spring water, massage jets, Nordic and Oriental steam baths, and all sorts of other spa features that I still don’t fully understand (an ice pool?!?). But now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure Paula knew exactly what she was doing when she suggested we stay here!

Of course, what trip to the Swiss countryside would be complete without a visit to a medieval castle? Well, lucky for us there was the nearby Château de Gruyères (Gruyères Castle), which is set up on a high hill and overlooking the entire region. The castle was constructed in the 13th century, and was home to a long succession of Gruyères counts before becoming the popular tourist attraction it is today. We spent a day trekking up a huge hill to reach the medieval town within the castle walls, and set about exploring for several hours.

Afterwards, we decided to visit the HR Giger Museum, which also resides in the medieval village, and seemed just a “bit out of place”. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the name, HR Giger is probably best-known for designing the freaky creatures seen in the Alien films starring Sigourney Weaver. Well, I will also tell you straight up after visiting the museum, that those creatures are just the tip of a very large and rather messed up iceberg of paintings and sculptures that comprise Giger’s life work. Indeed, if the thought of cyber-erotic-alien-women in compromising positions isn’t your thing, you may wish to to steer clear. After we had seen enough, we then crossed the street for a drink at the rather hilarious HR Giger bar, which looks exactly like you are in an Alien spacecraft. I ordered some green drink and a biscuit.

We hope you enjoy the pictures, and stay tuned for another exciting PandaBytes update soon!

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The stadium was mostly empty that night despite being able to hold 30,000 spectators. I don’t know if this was due to the game being on a weeknight, but I sorta suspect it’s because our team is not very good. The lack of crowd attendance also meant that the cameraman who was responsible for filming “atmosphere” shots of people for broadcast TV ended up filming everyone in the place at least once. Indeed, my dreams of having our faces projected on a huge stadium jumbo-tron were finally realized. C’est la vie!

As I mentioned, I don’t think our team is very good. In fact, we lost. Not too badly, but the final score was 4 to 1. My favorite part, of course, was when we scored our only goal by heading the ball into the net past their goalie.. the place lit up, the jumbo-tron screens were filled with all sorts of crazy soccer animations, and of course, the announcer screamed out “GOOOOOOAAAALLLLL!!!!!!” for about thirty seconds on the loudspeakers. It was awesome. When the other team scored (four times), I’m not even sure if they acknowledged it at all. Pretty funny.

Speaking of the other team, those guys had traveled all the way across Switzerland and brought the craziest group of fans with them. There were maybe a hundred visiting fans all sitting in one corner of the stands, and they were literally belting out fight songs throughout the ENTIRE game. Shirtless mostly. At one point someone shot off a huge smoking flare gun, and then they fired something like a cannon causing an enormous BOOM! in the stadium. Seriously, they were just nuts and relentless.

All that said, it was extremely cool to see a European soccer game, and it reminded me of how much I enjoyed playing the sport growing up!

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PS. Sorry for the grainy pics, they’re from my camera phone!