Florence, Paris, Tilburg, Delft, London, Cambridge, Munich, Chicago

It sounds crazy when I write all those cites down.  This is shaping up to be quite a fortnight (how's that for European?).  Last week I was in Florence, a weekend in Paris (with some work thrown in), the afternoon in Tilburg, later this week to Delft, and this Friday, we leave for London on the north-bound train, then Cambridge, and getting the family settled in Sheffield before I abandon them for the LIBER (Munich) and ALA (Chicago) conferences.

Lessons learned this week: do your homework before booking train travel.  The sites that sell train tickets aren't like Orbitz and Travelocity.  The systems are not well linked, and if you're not careful, you'll be buying a train ticket to the station at which your tickets are available for pickup.  Oh, and overboooking doesn't mean you get bumped, it means you hover like a vulture in the club car waiting for an empty seat, or grab a jump seat between the trains.  It was all handled with good spirits and a sense of adventure.

Florence was beautiful, though my stay was brief.  I could listen to people speak Italian all day long.  I met some great people, a new colleague, and had a wonderful Tuscan dinner just off the beaten path.

The other statue of David.

 Paris was amazing. We had a beautiful day on Sunday and 10 hours of

sight-seeing.  Best Father's Day ever.  And we can't say enough nice things about our wonderful host and guide, Chris Négrel.  He took time out of his weekend to get us to our hotel, recommend a sight-seeing strategy, etc., etc.  I'm convinced that without his help, we would still be on the Paris Metro looking for our stop.

Today, I managed to make my way to Tilburg and back for a nice visit with the librarians there.  It's hard to believe that my time in the Netherlands is almost done.  I'll be back for some meetings in July.  The family is anxious to get to the U.K. where the signs and menus are in English, and we can be spared the embarrassment that comes with uni-linguilism (though I remembered a lot more French than I thought I would).