Thursday, October 23

Thank you all for the kind birthday wishes, it's really nice to know that so many people think of us!

It seems we "saved the best for last" when it comes to beautiful photogenic nature. The Antelope Canyon in Page is small, but oh so pretty for photographs! It took us 2 guided tours, the rental of a tripod for the camera and a detour of 3 hours by car, but we thought it was all worth it, see some results below.

Then we went on to Las Vegas to celebrate Marloes' birthday in style, but not before quickly visiting Bryce Canyon. In our memory this was the most beautiful National Park we'd seen during our holiday 5 years ago and we wanted to see it again. We were not disappointed and this time we saw the sunrise colour the canyon in spectacular shades of orange.

In Las Vegas we've tried, but failed... to win back our trip. We had a great time however, looking at the craziness, playing the slot machines for 1 cent, trying some blackjack and learning to play a dice-game called 'craps'. There were even more hotels being built than 5 years ago, all bigger and fancier than the existing ones, but we stayed in the largest hotel in the world until now: more than 6.000 rooms! Something else that had changed from when we were here before: the slot machines. In the past everybody walked around with a plastic bucket filled with quarters and you heard the sound of quarters falling in winning machines all around you. Now they've made the machines all electronic and it prints a voucher when you want to collect your winnings (even when it's just 1 cent!); it's less fun and more business-like. For a database marketeer like Jeroen this is a very interesting development because players can put their member-card in the machine and everything you do is registered ;)

When we arrived in the US 2 weeks ago the weather was extremely cold for the time of year. But luckily we finished it with extremely warm weather and we enjoyed 2 days of relaxing at the pools in our hotel, which was nice after all the driving we'd done before.

By the time you read this, we're on our way home. We will need some time to digest all our experiences and to sort out the more than 10.000 pictures that we took :-). We look very much forward to seeing everyone again and we wonder how it will feel to live in the western world again, adjusting to the fast pace, looking for a job etc. etc. We'll tell you when we see you!