Turin – The Egyptian Museum

Saturday, prior to my son Tristan and I knowing that we had contracted the flu, we all walked into the center of town to visit the Egyptian museum. It contains the largest collection of artifacts, outside of Egypt. We had thought that Italy was still allowing free admissions to museums from the 5th – 9th. However, this was not the case. In fact, we could not even get a student discount since those are only offered on Thursdays – oh well. The one thing we did get unexpectedly were headsets, which unfortunately ended up to be useless technological throwbacks to the early 1990’s. Undeterred, we soldiered on determined to make the best of it, even among an afternoon throng.

The amazing pieces were the statues and sarcophagi which were surrounded by glass so you can see all sides.

Below is Patti in front of a 4200 year old Sphinx, like the one near the pyramids of Giza.

And finally the sarcophagi we mentioned before.

Well after an hour, which we really enjoyed (our son, Tristan is an ancient history buff), we took our leave to consume some of Italy’s really fine coffee.

Next time we hope to post about something a little less macabre.

Cary – Farewell Dinner With The Boys

Last night we enjoyed dinner at Stellino’s to say farewell to Dana, he will be staying behind in Cary, working for Genesys in RTP.

Erick, Patti, Dana and Tristan at Stellino’s

After a great supper, we said our goodbyes and stayed at the TRU Hilton hotel. It is located very near RDU airport, so it was a snap this morning to drop our rental vehicle off and start our real trip. First destination, JFK airport in NY. So we say goodbye to North Carolina for the time being, onto new adventures.

RDU airport and NC from the air

We will keep all posted as we make progress to our final destination, Turin Italy. Ciao for now!

Cary – Our Preparations Moving to Europe – Initial Thoughts

Welcome to the Griffin’s European travel journal. Here we hope to highlight our travel preparations, travels and experiences moving to Europe and specifically Italy. Today is the start of this blog but not the start of our journey, which frankly started some five (5) years ago.

To be frank, this journey has been long in coming. The first germs of our even wanting to do this occurred close to a decade ago, if not somewhat longer. Now that time is growing short for our trip, there seems almost too much to do: financial planning, selling, gifting, storing, packing, and shipping; the list seems to grow each day. We enter our third week from finishing all this up which will culminate with our travel and entry into Europe via Milan, Italy.

Our storage – our life condensed into a 16 cubic meter space for our children…

As this our first post on this subject and the day has grown somewhat long in the tooth already, I shall pause here and add more tomorrow or later this week. I hope to convey some of the results of our own specific preparations as well as investigations into what we think still must be done. Back soon!