Computer woes

As I'm reading my friends blogs this morning, I've remembered that I haven't posted anything in quite a while. This is due to the fact that our computer crashed -silly Vista. Something got corrupted and then made it so microsoft thought we didn't have an "Authentic Copy" of windows Vista. Very frustrating. We are still not back to 100% of functionality. I really need to add pictures from the Netherlands. Maybe later today... Oh, Ryan helped me put a different photo slide show of Carson and the Big Jud. I created it with Proshow Gold software, but then I couldn't figure out how to put it on my blog. This slide show software has a lot more features, and I like how this slide show looks compared with the other one.

Carson's visit

Right after we returned from Europe, my brother came for a visit. A friend of mine told me we must take Carson to Big Jud's for dinner, so we did. (She was surprised that I had never heard of this local landmark.) These are the pictures that prove that we went there, and that Carson earned the top honor at this restaurant.

If you eat the whole Big Jud Special, you get to have your picture put up on the wall of fame. There are a lot of missionaries' pictures on the wall... amidst a slew of other not-so-well-mannered folks' pictures.




Yes, he did eat the whole thing. Then, right after they took his picture for the wall, he went to the bathroom and said he'd puked. Of course now he denies the puking. (There were no witnesses either way.)

Fountains of Peterhof

Peter the Great designed St. Petersburg to be like western European cities. Peterhof, he planned to be like Versailles. When I went to Paris in September 1996 and visited Versailles, tourist season was over, so all of the fountains were off -- a great disappointment. Happily, the fountains were all on at Peterhof.

The grand fountain shows Samson ripping open the lion's mouth, a symbol used by Peter the Great for his naval victory over the Swedes.














More of the Grand Fountain.











At a Fountain in front of the Great Palace.

The Roman Columns (of course there is a pair, but I didn't have a wide angle lens to capture them both).



The Pyramid



Even in Russia, parents let their children play in fountains! This is a "trick fountain" meaning it randomly spits water when people are walking on it. (The Lonely Planet guide book said that kids are always on it, so the fountain is constantly on.)



This fountain spun around, very slowly.

This fountain was on the canal that would bring Peter in from the sea.

All of the water in these fountains are recycled by gravity - a forward thinking innovation designed by Peter the Great.

Wedding tradition in Russia

While walking around the touristy sections of St. Petersburg, we had the opportunity to see a lot of wedding parties. Apparently, the couples would hire a limousine, a photographer and perhaps a videographer, and then drive around St. Petersburg with 2 attendants, having their photos taken at various sights. We saw them almost everyday!