Going to the USA !!!!!!

After a lot of work draining, antifreezing, cleaning, shutting off, arranging, checking, closing, moving and on and on and on we were finally ready to leave our barge in Roanne on November 15th and drive to Paris to spend the night prior to our flight on November 16th to Dulles Airport in Washington DC. As usual we were amazed that everything went as planned. Tulah , although not raving about how fabulous the trip was, arrived in good form.

Our first stop in Charlottesville was - of course - Walmart for those things you don't bring with you like toothpaste, shampoo etc. The next day guess where we were again ?

This of course was followed by our first visit to the world famous "but not as good as the French coffee" Starbucks.

We are amazed at the shopping, traffic, number of good inexpensive restaurants, lack of good coffee and the number of people going no where to do nothing.

Then there was Thanksgiving with family which was a treat after all this time.

Not only did we have dinner with Eric's mother, sister, brother-in-law, nephew and his wife but we were lucky enough to meet Alice and Violet. Tulah was not as sure that they were so charming or possible great girlfriends.

We have been here - Charlottesville, Virginia - for almost a month. It has snowed twice! We have experienced Black Friday, spent enough to help the economy a bit, seen family, enjoyed American TV shows, eaten our share of hamburgers, read the newspaper Washington Post almost every day, found you can call family and friends who are on AT&T whenever you want and now we cannot wait to go West on Sunday the 13th of December.