Flat Emma visits Sunny California!

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Emma enjoyed sunny California so much she decided to take an extended stay. While Emma was here she came to work with me at Wells Fargo private bank, while she was here she learned about investments and made her very first 50 million dollar business deal (go Emma). But she did take a slight detour back to the east coast for a few days. Flying from LAX to BWI. She met my puppy Louie and took him for many walks and got to see all of what Santa Barbara has to offer.  As a native to Newland, North Carolina I love the mountains and living here in Santa Barbara not only do I get the ocean 5 minutes from my door I have beautiful mountains 5 minutes out my back door. Emma went to have authentic Mexican food while she was here with homemade salsa, she went to the Santa Barbara mission which is one of 26 missions in the state of California (ours is the most beautiful) I hope flat Emma enjoyed her stay in California! Now she is off to Florida.

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Flat Renee visits Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic!

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On Saturday, February 13th, we flew from Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) to Frankfurt, Germany (FRA).  We left PHL at 4:30 pm on Saturday and arrived in Frankfurt Sunday morning at 6:30 am.  We had a two hour layover in Germany, finally departing FRA at 8:30 for Katowice, Poland (KTW).  This was a much shorter flight.   We arrived in Poland around 10:30 am.  In Katowice, we rented a car from Hertz and drove for about 90 minutes to Ostrava, Czech Republic.  We finally arrived at our hotel and checked into the Mercure Ostrava City Center hotel around lunch time on Sunday.

 

In Europe, all the places we visited are 6 hours ahead of the time in the east coast of the U.S.

 

After a brief nap, we walked around the city of Ostrava and found a place to eat dinner.  The weather for the week was overcast and dreary, but we still managed to get out a few times.

Each day we drove from the hotel in Ostrava to my work at Teva Pharmaceuticals in Opava, Czech Republic.  This drive was about 30 minutes through the countryside of Czech Republic.  There’s not much to see during the ride and I’m not supposed to take pictures at work, so Renee did not get to experience much there.  We did spend some time out and about in the city of Ostrava though.  There is a small city park in front of the hotel that you could see from our hotel room.  There are cobblestone roads that were very bumpy to drive on.  The city square had some very colorful buildings and a street sign with lots of arrows telling everyone were to go.

 

The trip home started in the afternoon on Thursday, February 18th.  We left work in Opava, Czech Republic and drove back to Katowice, Poland.  We took a 6:30 pm flight from there to FRA.  We arrived in FRA around 8:30 pm.  After eating dinner, we spent the night at a Hilton Hotel that was in the FRA airport.  The flight on Friday was not until 1:00 pm, so we were able to sleep in a little bit.  Because of the time change, the flight back to PHL arrived around 4:30 pm.  When we got off the plane in PHL, we had to go through customs and immigrations to allow us back into the U.S.  We found our driver at the International Arrivals Hall and he drove us home.

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Flat Alex is enjoying his stay in Holland!

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We are a family in Maastricht, Holland, and Flat Alex is visiting us.
Our family exists out Thomas (father), Lo (son 5 years) and me Frédérique. Our family name is Sijen – Stille.
We got Flat Alex from Canada.
I am sorry but we have him for 2 weeks now and we have not done any adventures…
We were ill and my son found Flat Alex a bit scary…
So we needed to get used to one another 😉
So for this week we will bring Flat Alex to school and to the work of his father.
Thomas has a foundry. He casts statues in bronse.
I work at a cultural institute in Maastricht. It is called Centre Céramique.
In this building is housed the public library, exhibitions and the cultural inheritage of Maastricht.
I am responsible for the PR/Marketing and communication.
Kind regards,
Frédérique, Lo and Thomas Sijen – Stille