After a busy July & August it is time to reflect upon my recent activities.

Firstly, it was my cousin Nat and her fiancé Craig  who spent 9 days with me at the end of their European vacation tour. We had a relaxing few days and ate extremely well while taken in some of the nearby sites including Annecy (France). They also took the opportunity to visit Geneva, Lausanne, Evian and Milan which are all within one to three hours from Chateau de Rouillon.

I then had 1 day to prepare for the arrival of my oldies. With me acting as chaperone we covered over 3,500 kms and 3 countries in twelve days, visiting Barcelona, Lourdes, Paris and the environs of Montreux along the way. It was wonderful, hectic, tiring and not without incident but somehow I don't think that Mum and Dad will forget this vacation in a hurry.

Amongst the many highlights I would rate the hospitatlity and kindness of my cousin Marie and my Dad's cousin Guy as the standouts, they were exceptional tour guides during our time in Paris.

After a saying goodbye to my parents I returned to work to recover from my exhausting vacation. A week and half later though and I flew  off to L.A. for a week of meetings. Being my first trip to America, I took a couple of extra days in order to look around. It was very colourful experience indeed with plenty of good and bad to be seen.

Americans can be a strange lot at times but it probably doesn't get any stranger than L.A. That said my week of meeetings were very productive and I learned a great deal, and I must thank my colleagues over there for looking after me so well.

Other notable points during my time in L.A. were Redondo, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, the amount of wealth that is concentrated in that area probably rivals that aof a small nation. Speaking of wealth, I have none as I spent up big on a clothes, shoes, glasses and a fantastic new Canon EOS 10D digital SLR camera. I am looking forward to taking some awesome photographs in the future with this new 'toy', once I figure outhow the hell to use all the features. But more about the camera later.

I also got to check out a baseball match, L.A. Dodgers vs. Chicago Cubs. An interesting game in an amazing stadium with an extradrodinary amount of stuff happening it was actually difficult to concentrate on the match, although I do know that to of the biggest names of the sport were playing, the legend Sammy Sosa and young gun Eric Gagné.

So in summary, the past six weeks or so has been pretty full on. There has no doubt been some adventure including driving around the Arc de Triomphe, Paris and on the L.A. freeways but I have come out of it all relatively unscathed despite the debacle of the events on the night of 14th July 2003 (Bastille Day) More about that some other time.

So for now I leave you with a vast sample of photographs from my recent adventures, which you can check out by going to Phozto Album page. Good bye, God bless and come back soon for details of my next adventure, Germany.

Cheers,

Marc