Pandemic - Implications for Business

I'm writing this from France, tracking things in Europe, where things are 2 weeks+ ahead of the US.

This worldwide pandemic is going to have real issues for companies everywhere. I'm certain the governments worldwide are here to help us out. That was sarcastic, just in case you didn't get it. Of course, much of the current worry about food shortages I hear about in the US would have been ameliorated had our government not stopped supporting efforts at civil defense and encouraging people to have emergency supplies back in the late 70s.

If we look back to 9/11, the other big crisis in my lifetime, what I see was that we had a huge amount of government expansion with the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA. I'm expecting the same thing to happen here. Unfortunately, when the government taketh, it rarely giveth back.

But right now, I'm trying to figure out how all the US government legislation is going to affect business. My business, and by association, other businesses we serve.

The bill the US House passed, was opposed by a few Republicans as rushed through. It probably was. I do not believe that many in the Senate read the entire 124 page document. I had to filter through close to 250 bills introduced so far this month to find this on the US Congress Website. Having read it myself, I still cannot wrap my head around much of this legislation exist.  Some examples from one section:

• Domestic Violence Provisions? (p77)
• Requirements to employers to update all company's employee handbooks? (p78) 
• Penalties to employers if we don't post the new law or if we misapply law? (p80)

My reading of the bill is that it was initially designed for most making sure students who needed meals provided by schools got their nutrition. A noble idea. Then they kept adding to it, because this was the one no one could vote against - because who would vote against giving poor kids breakfast and lunch? So they jammed all the legislation together into one mass bill instead of working to solve problems shortly and succinctly.

Will this help?  In some areas, probably, but my feeling is other areas, not so much.

An industry association I belong to posted a nice summary of how the new legislation will affect companies: https://www.securityindustry.org/2020/03/19/summary-of-new-covid-19-stimulus-law-phase-2/

and this is the latest with respect to SBA disaster loans:
https://disasterloan.sba.gov/ela/Declarations/Index

Some of the items mostly to give additional rights to employees in case they get sick and for faster/longer/better unemployment benefits. This will certainly help employees who are certain to lose jobs because of the forced quarantine. I'm not sure how things are in the US, but France just locked people down so they cannot go for a run more than 1km away from their home. My feeling is that significant new restrictions will be coming to the US.

But I don't see the help being all that helpful for employers. What I see are tax credits against payroll taxes that we have to currently pay.  Thinking about my company, my biggest costs in order are:

1. Employees
2. Costs of goods sold
3. Marketing / Sales expenses
4. Taxes (payroll is only a part of this)
5. Rent
6. Recurring Expenses

So perhaps payroll tax is a total of 5% of my total outflow. My guess is that much of this "savings" will get eaten up by trying to make sure we are in compliance with all of the new regulations.

There will be a lot of income being lost immediately in many industries:

• Travel - Hotels / Air / Rental Cars
• Clothing Retail / Malls
• Restaurants / Cafes
• Bars / Nightclubs
• Fitness
• Museums / Theme Parks
• Tourist Industries
• Manufacturing
• Weddings
• Trade Shows / Events
• Churches

This is going to result in massive income lost to people in various professions:

• Cooks / Waitress / Waiters / Hostesses / Bartenders
• Retail Sales (Commission/Noncommission)
• Personal Trainers
• Entertainers and support staff
• AirBnB hosts / speculators
• Building / Construction
• Blue collar workers

The people this isn't going to directly affect monetarily will be:

• Government workers (gotta love that guaranteed income!)
• White Collar workers (who can work remotely)
• Agriculture workers (someone's gotta grow the food)
• Hospital Staff (obviously)

And there will probably be some winners (short term):

• Food production / Sales
• Amazon (I'm betting that this will pick up from all other retail, even with the losses)
• Computer Industry - minor gains from more telework 
• Broadband Providers
• Internet education and entertainment

Large, healthy companies may have enough in the bank to pay their employees for a while, but it will be difficult to pay them indefinitely with lower incoming revenue. But eventually, this will hit even the safer industries hard.

The problem we are going to see even after the initial pandemic has passed is the huge loss of savings of people in every economy in the EU and the Americas. The majority of people just won't be able to afford to buy things or travel as much. Without travel and tourism, my feeling is that lots of people who speculated in the market on AirBnB being able to provide them income are going to find they have to sell or foreclose. This will depress the real estate market, which they had artificially inflated. And as real estate prices are fairly inelastic going down, I fear a glut in the market as people won't want to sell at prices lower than yesterday, but people will no longer be able to afford these prices.

This is going to result in a very slow recovery for a long time.

So how do we get out of this mess? As I woke up, the US government said they are looking to pump 1 trillion into the economy.  But do we need government to fix this problem? Maybe not.

My next entry will address some thoughts.

Not Stressed Out

Years back, I took a personality test that indicated how stress affects individuals. The results were shown by two points - a stressed point and a normal point. The path and direction between the two suggested actions to return a person to their "happy place". After the test, many people in the room exclaimed how insightful and helpful their results were. I couldn't understand what they were talking about - my stressed point and my normal points were on top of each other and no recommendations were made.

The test administrator said I must have made a mistake and had me retake the entire test.  Same results. He had never seen this before. The following conversation took place:

Instructor: "Do you react differently when you are stressed than when you are normal?"
Dave: "Not really, I just work hard to fix whatever is stressing me out."
Instructor: "That is not normal."

Dave: "Once I take care of business, whatever it is, things get back to normal."

I walked away thinking that the test was a waste of time. Over time, I have come to recognize this "non-result" was about the most beneficial thing I have learned about myself. It also helped my wife Christine understand that I might be stressed, even when I am not showing it. The main outward sign is that I'm working more and harder to fix whatever is causing the stress - but I might do that if a project is a lot of fun. I actually have to tell her or she has to ask.

Right now, I'm thinking about how this COVID-19 situation is going to affect everything in my life. Because it will. It may appear from the outside that I'm not stressed, but on the inside, I'm working out trying to understand how to take care of my business. How to fix problems that have not exhibited themselves yet, but will shortly.

What will things look like for my business in the next year?
What will our cash flow be?
What will my customer situation likely be?

My company went through this in 2008-2012 with the last downturn. It almost drove us out of business, because I didn't see it coming. This time, the freight train is clearly coming at the economy and I have a little time to plan.

We've seen trouble before. This too shall pass. My recommendation - keep calm and carry on. Eventually, things will get back to normal.

Click to play video

Dominoes - Adjusting after the blocks fall

Finally, some time for reflection.

We have been reacting to world events for the past 3 weeks, improvising continuously trying to figure out the best path for my family to take during the COVID-19 virus outbreak in Europe.

We were on the last day of a lovely 2 week vacation with my aunt and uncle through Portugal and Spain. We had scheduled our next stay to be a simple 3 week stay for study and work in Sicily before flying to Copenhagen for a conference. When I woke up, Christine surprised me by saying we still had a couple hours to cancel our lodging in Sicily - a $2300 expense - should we cancel Italy entirely because we might not be able to get out?

With an hour of deliberation and 10 minutes on the clock, we cancelled our Sicilian stay to the severe disappointment of our AirBnB host. "Why?" our host asked, "Things are fine here!" We lost $700 on our flights, but figured this was worth the opportunity to not miss my company's $4000 investment in the Copenhagen conference. Little did we know at the time.

We re-routed to Carcassonne - one of the places we had wanted to go to, but had not yet figured out how to visit. We found a nice inexpensive place within walking distance of the castle. A detour, but not an undesireable one. We connected this foray into France into an opportunity to visit Christine's family in Paris and the Normandy D-Day beaches, which still found us with a cheap flight from Nantes to Copenhagen, with the goal to attending my trade show there and visit my cousin in Denmark. We also had reservations to continue to Austria afterwards to visit Christine's good college friend.

At this point, the dominoes began to fall.

• Denmark restricted meetings to less than 1000 people.  My conference organizers said no problem, we only expect 600.
• Italy closed its borders entirely.
• Austria called all its citizens home as "The World is Not Safe"
• The US restricted travel from the EU, but not Ireland or the UK.
• Denmark finally said no meetings with more than 50. My conference was cancelled, but perhaps we could still visit my cousin?
• Austria restricted gatherings to 5 or less people - our family of 6 was now illegal in Austria!
• France was starting to make noise about closing public spaces.
• The US restricted air travel to only US citizens returning home, including from the UK and Ireland. We heard multiple stories of families dropping thousands of dollars to get home as they thought they had to beat the clock.
• Finally, France (and basically the rest of Europe) decided to shut down all public spaces, restaurants, cafes, museums.

Each time we tried to adjust and figure out our next move, the virus problem expanded. So we tried to go minimalist - the place we found in Normandy was near lots of great hiking. They couldn't shut down the great outdoors, could they? Turns out they can.

The virus checked us again. France put limitations on people leaving their houses for any purpose other than essential work or to purchase food. So now, here we are in Normandy. Locked down, but safe. And we are likely in a better situation than most.

Challenges we don't face immediately:

1. School - We have already been homeschooling the boys, so we know what to do here. 
2. Company - My company is more than half remote as it is. The 4 people in the office can easily stay away from each other in private offices or even choose to work at home.
3. Food - We are provisioned comfortably for 2 weeks, but could get by close to a month if required.
4. Cabin Fever  - the house we are in is larger than ours in San Diego and has a huge property for the kids to run around. 
5. Personal Work - The internet is functional....barely - this could pose a problem, but we might be able to come up with an alternative.
6. Friends - We can see friends in the USA more easily now online than before, because they would have been at work or school during our normal awake hours.

We have been very blessed.  And hope that the next months will start to find a resolution to the problems COVID-19 is causing. But by staying in our little corner of the world and not moving, hopefully, we are contributing to the solution.

New Daily Routine

With all of France on lockdown, we are living in a great place in Normandy, France.  Being confined here is not a challege. I feel incredibly blessed to have landed where we are.

Nice big table to eat and study

The house, gardens, orchard, and playground are magnificent as well.

And the kitchen is great for cooking

or for just staring out the window...

To keep myself focused, I've set myself some personal goals for this extended time of restrictions.

1. Hug the people around me more.
2. Situps, pushups, leg lifts, planks, and sprints each day.
3. Write something of substance each day.
4. Write some fluff....blogs counts.
5. Bake something different each day and involve the kids. 
6. Toss the frisbee every day.

Separately, I have a lot to do for work, which helps.

Lent seems an appropriate time for the world to focus on what is really important and to be introspective. Hopefully Christians will take advantage of this time apart and pray more as well.

Mixed-Up World Mixtape

Everyone deals with the stress of these days in their own manner. Putting together a list of songs helped me stay in the moment and more importantly get them out of my head.

I guess it makes sense that it is a bit 80's heavy, but that was the best era of music for me. In another time, I would have sent each of you a mixtape. I would love to know what you would add.

Click here for all these in a YouTube playlist

---

Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
Lego Movie - Everything's Not Awesome/Rallying Together
Peggy Lee - Fever
The Smiths - Panic
Depeche Mode - Shake The Disease
Nine Inch Nails - Down In It
Love and Rockets - Ball Of Confusion
R.E.M. - It's The End Of The World As We Know It
U2 - Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of
Jason Mraz - The Remedy
The Civil Wars - Safe & Sound
The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows
Adele - Rolling in the Deep
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
twenty one pilots - Stressed Out
Queen - The Show Must Go On

---

Safely Sequestered in Normandy

The Line Up Outside Costco Paris

Monday was a busy, long and anxious day, but we've managed to provision ourselves and move into a new house in the countryside of Normandy. This means we have relocated out of the Paris area while stopping by Costco (the only one in France) and a few grocery stores along the way to our new place. We arrived ten minutes before opening at Costco and there was a crowd of about a hundred ready to enter. The store seemed fully stocked on nearly everything, only the fresh meats were limited but frozen were fine. Everyone seemed to be walking at least at 1.5 times normal speed, if not 2 times. It reminded Christine of a shopping market spree game show that used to be on when she was little. There was an edge of tension, but everyone was polite and just trying to get what they needed and get out. Lines were long since everyone had so much. We filled up two carts in an attempt to provision our family for two weeks of autonomy. As it was, we needed to visit a regular grocery store as well to fill in a few items you'd normally have in your kitchen but we couldn't expect (baking powder, laundry detergent, shampoo, spices, etc). Dave has this idea to try some recipes from the British Baking Show, so we needed to make sure we had all the basic ingredients for his bakes.

I spent how much at Costco?!?!

That's a LOT of Food!

In the first town, Christine went into the pharmacy as we only had about a day's supply of acetaminophen and wanted to be sure we have enough in case we do get sick. She had to start by waiting outside as they didn't want crowding and the line was instructed to stay 1 meter apart from each other. The line then snaked around until it reached the four cashiers who were clearly harried. The thing is, here you can't buy medicines from anywhere but pharmacies, even over the counter medicines. And the pain reliever and fever reducers were kept behind the counter, tabout. They sell them in boxes of 8 capsules. At least they are extra strength, 1000 mg, but this was a far cry from keeping a bottle of 100 around because it's standard form in the U.S.! The whole affair took about 30 minutes. When we drove by the supermarket in the same town and saw a line of at least thirty shoppers outside the store, waiting in a line, each 1 meter apart from each other, we decided to try to find another store in another town. While it looked orderly and calm, it also looked like it would take an hour to get in and out.

The next town on our drive had a nearly empty lower-end store that had few people, no milk, but at least a few of the other items we were missing. A final stop to find the elusive baking powder at the last store showed a population who seemed unconcerned as there were lots of people buying things, but shelves were fully stocked and people were not being as careful about keeping distance from each other. All in all, we're just relieved to have purchased enough to keep four hungry boys fed for quite a while.

Lots of People in Lines Waiting To Buy Food

Our Airbnb is in a little village named Mandeville-en-Bessin - population 348. We have a large, four-bedroom gîte to ourselves with a large outdoor play area complete with swing set, badminton set, boule court and balls, and some other kids toys. The property has 60 apple trees and lots of lovely flowers and grass for the kids to run around in. We are 30 minutes away from the big city of Caen (population 106,000) but also 5-10 minutes from a small town with a pharmacy, boulangerie (break bakery) and two boucheries (local butcher). The area is bucolic and serene. I think we'll be quite comfortable here.

And at 8pm tonight, the French president just announced a national lockdown starting tomorrow, Tuesday, at noon. Everyone in the country is to stay home unless they are going to a pharmacy, grocery store or work, with checkpoints set up. Non-essential stores are all closed and workers have been sent to work from home. The borders have been closed to any non-French citizens.

While that is going on in the world, our plan to focus on business-as-usual inside as much as we can. We'll do our school work, take breaks to run around in the yard, enjoy their nice game collection, and take advantage of friends at home being out of school to catch up with people on Skype - give us a call - just remember, we are 8 hours ahead of PST. More updates to follow as life continues...

Sunday Coronavirus Update - Calm and Cool in Paris

Neat Island in the River Marne

We had a quiet day to ourselves in the outskirts of Paris today before heading to Normandy tomorrow for two weeks to "shelter in place" which involves renting a large farmhouse, stocking up on food and going on long hikes. In honor of the closed churches in the USA, Dave arranged an at home Sunday school for everyone. It is amazing to us how well Adam is able to pronounce almost all the words in his reading - pretty good for a kindergartener!

Plenty of Food on the Shelves in Paris

France has moved up a level on restrictions in the country. Now all cafes and restaurants and non-essential shops are closed; food stores, gas stations, banks and medical care remain open. At this time, you are allowed outside, though we have just been taking walks along nearby River Marne, going to the store, and not interacting with others.

Both our flight to Copenhagen and the subsequent one to Vienna have been officially cancelled and therefore we have gotten refunds, so that's a relief. Denmark, Austria, and Spain have all closed their borders to foreigners.

As of last night there were still plenty of supplies on the shelves at the grocery store. We hope that doesn't change. With the past couple weeks, our plans have been a bit fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants, so we are quite looking forward to just schooling and working in one place for a while.

Here are a few interesting, data-driven websites we check.

• Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths
• COVID-19 in France
• Geographic Distribution of COVID-19
• Johns Hopkins Research Center Map

and a couple others of interest:

• It may take 5 days for coronavirus symptoms to show
• Just how deadly is the corona virus?

I'm starting to choose to limit my intake of headlines. By and large it's not affecting my course of action and isn't conducive to keeping calm and carrying on, to borrow a British phrase. Or in France they say, "même pas peur!" (Not even afraid!).

(Dave's addendum)
Well - maybe we are a little bit apprehensive about our Costco Paris trip tomorrow. But this is really more for research - more about that in our next blog!

World Schooling - Analyzing the size of the Pandemic March 14, 2020

Something we had not seen in any of the charts about COVID-19 was the relative size of the outbreak in different countries. On our drive towards Paris, Sam and Christine put this together.

Click to see larger

As we settled into our place in Paris, we found an official source if you are interested:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

We extended this to understand what was going on around the country in the United States.

This was a great learning opportunity for Sam in how to analyze data by hand and how to use Excel. It will be interesting to see how this changes.

State	Cases	Cases per 1M	Population (2019)
US - Total	1636	4.98	328,239,523
Washington	457	60.01	7,614,893
New York	325	16.71	19,453,561
Massachusetts	108	15.67	6,892,503
South Dakota	8	9.04	884,659
Colorado	49	8.51	5,758,736
Oregon	24	5.69	4,217,737
California	224	5.67	39,512,223
Wyoming	3	5.18	578,759
Nebraska	10	5.17	1,934,408
Iowa	16	5.07	3,155,070
Vermont	3	4.81	623,989
New Hampshire	6	4.41	1,359,711
Washington D.C.	3	4.25	705,749
Georgia	45	4.24	10,617,423
North Dakota	3	3.94	762,062
Nevada	11	3.57	3,080,156
Virginia	29	3.40	8,535,519
New Jersey	29	3.26	8,882,190
Delaware	3	3.08	973,764
Louisiana	14	3.01	4,648,794
Rhode Island	3	2.83	1,059,361
Montana	3	2.81	1,068,778
Tennessee	18	2.64	6,829,174
Illinois	32	2.53	12,671,821
Kentucky	11	2.46	4,467,673
South Carolina	12	2.33	5,148,714
Maine	3	2.23	1,344,212
Hawaii	3	2.12	1,415,872
Arkansas	6	1.99	3,017,804
Maryland	12	1.98	6,045,680
Connecticut	7	1.96	3,565,287
Pennsylvania	23	1.80	12,801,989
Indiana	12	1.78	6,732,219
Minnesota	10	1.77	5,639,632
Florida	31	1.44	21,477,737
New Mexico	3	1.43	2,096,829
North Carolina	15	1.43	10,488,084
Wisconsin	8	1.37	5,822,434
Arizona	9	1.24	7,278,717
Kansas	3	1.03	2,913,314
Mississippi	3	1.01	2,976,149
Utah	3	0.94	3,205,958
Texas	24	0.83	28,995,881
Oklahoma	3	0.76	3,956,971
Missouri	3	0.49	6,137,428
Michigan	3	0.30	9,986,857
Ohio	3	0.26	11,689,100
Alabama	0	0.00	4,903,185
Puerto Rico	0	0.00	3,193,694
West Virginia	0	0.00	1,792,147
Idaho	0	0.00	1,787,065
Alaska	0	0.00	731,545
Guam	0	0.00	146,229
Virgin Islands	0	0.00	107,268
American Samoa	0	0.00	55,641
Northern Marianas	0	0.00	55,144
Marshall Islands	0	0.00	53,127
Micronesia	0	0.00	8,185
Palau	0	0.00	7,450

Worldschooling in a pandemic

    Well,  life has changed dramatically for us and yet much remains the same. Like the rest of the world, we check the news often and are following the spread of COVID-19 across the world. Thank you to everyone who has reached out to us to see if we're ok. We are healthy and alert but not in fear or panic. A couple of mornings ago I had this verbatim conversation with our 6-year old:
     Adam: "Mommy can we change our tradition?"

     Mom: "What tradition?"

     Adam: "Like our tradition of traveling?"

     The boys have been hearing lots of conversation about coronavirus and it's on our minds daily as we make decisions about what to do and where to go. We aborted our trip to Sicily because we weren't sure we would be able to leave. Boy, does that feel like a prophetic decision now. We chose to go to France instead. There were a number of reasons for this - top of which were proximity, an opportunity to see family we hadn't, and Carcassonne - a medieval castle that was high in our list of places we wanted to see. 

     We had a restful two weeks in Carcassonne where life was mostly normal for us, home school, work for Dave, and frequent walks to, through, and around the castle. The only thing which was not normal was the emptiness of the castle - one gelato proprietor said while this was normally the slow time in his business, he said there were almost no tourists now and the hotels had a flood of cancellations.

     We drove to the outskirts of Paris to see family. With concern about the rapid spread of COVID-19, we saw some family but others felt they were in the high risk group, so we did not meet them. We had a lovely day at the Versailles Palace which remained open with only ticketed entry available. After 45 minutes in the palace, the rest of our day was spent walking the estate and risk level felt very low. 

     Our future plans had been to go next to Denmark, Austria and then Greece - mostly in alignment with Dave's conferences. Then the dominoes started to fall. Italy closed its borders to all travel. US closed travel from Europeans to the US. Denmark went into lockdown. Austria advised all Austrians to come home because "the world is not safe." At this time, travel seems ill-advised. The situation is changing so quickly it's impossible to predict what actions any country take and what the spread will look like in two weeks. It becomes more a question of how each country is addressing COVID-19 and how this relates to life on the ground. The measures here in France have stepped up - schools are closed indefinitely, people encouraged not to take public transportation. People over 70 are recommended to limit contact with others and for a few days now care facilities for elderly have been closed to visitors. People don't seem to be panicking, however, and taking it in stride. 

We don't plan to return to the US. right now. We understood early on that Trump's ban on travel from EU wouldn't apply to us (a nice French couple in Versailles even asked us if we were worried we wouldn't be able to return). We heard stories of poor Americans who scrambled back, often with a huge expense! It doesn't seem life is that much more perilous here than anywhere else in the world. Travelling home at this time is an uncertain proposition (could we go to the airport of our choice? what screening would be involved? risk of quarantine?). For now, we'll shelter in place and stay in France. On Monday we'll move to a house in Normandy and keep a rental car handy, likely staying there for a few weeks. We may consider eventually heading to Ireland or the UK, possibly before flying home. Our tickets home are for May 15 from Amsterdam and we may just stick to that.

     We already have all our schooling supplies with us, so it doesn't change daily life for homeschooling much. Being in Normandy, we'll throw in some D-Day and WWII history and visit the Bayeux tapestry if we can. Sam and I are working on a project taking the cases of COVID-19 per country and assessing it in terms of that country's population. We'll post it later...it's quite interesting and when looked at essentially as a % of population makes some the problems in some countries look smaller than you may have thought otherwise. 

     So, that's where we are now. Taking it day by day but carrying on in the meantime. 

Carcassonne? No! CARTA-ssonne!

We just passed a delightful week and a half in the beautiful town of Carcassonne in southwest France, well known for it’s medieval castle. While resuming full-time studies and work, we enjoyed walking the ramparts around the castle, discovering each of the three entrance gates and the narrow, winding streets inside. While originally built in the third century by the Romans, the walls and fortifications were significantly expanded starting in 1120 through the 14th century.

The medieval walls and structures were falling into disrepair by the 1800s and people were using the castle for pre-quarried blocks. An architect/archeologist named Viollet le Duc led the effort to restore the castle to its former glory, starting in 1853. While much of the castle was in ruins, he was able to reconstruct the entirety of it based on old drawings and by analyzing the remains of various towers and walls that survived. His reconstruction and studies seem to have been held up to the test of time as suggestions he made have been validated by the best scholars today who have studied and critiqued his plans.

The castle was strategically located between the Pyrenee and the Massif Central mountains on the river Aude. It was built to protect France’s border that was nearby at the time. The geographic location also means strong winds often whip through the area in the narrower space between the mountains. We got to witness this firsthand during our visit, thinking how guards in medieval times must have been very cold huddled in the towers hiding from the gale force winds, precipitation, and cold. We experienced dumping rains, a warm sunny day, rainbows, and even an astonishing amount of hail one afternoon.

We were lucky enough to rent a house that was a great value and only a 15 minute walk to La Cité - the walled castle. We were able to get around by walking, thereby partially offsetting the cost of our Italian flight cancellation. All in all, it was great fun exploring the medieval walls, various hidden entrances, and winding passageways of the castle nearly every day.

The kids really liked it as well!
Adam: Carcassonne has a castle.
Thomas: I liked everything about the castle, especially the secret entrances.
Andrew: I loved walking the battlements.
Sam: I finally beat Dad in Carcassonne! (He also liked the real castle...)

 

One of the neat things about homeschooling, is that it enables us to do some organic learning with the boys on trips like this. One day, we started with a video guided lesson of Carcassone which described castle features and explained how each of the various features might help the inhabitants survive a seige. We then walked to the castle, found each of the features, pointed them out, and examined how they specifically were implemented.  It's a great video and we highly recommend it! The video also shows the yellow concentric circles which was taped onto the castle in 2018 by artist Felice Varini. In our pictures (one day and one night time), you can see the remains of the cleaned areas after the yellow tape was removed.

Carcassonne also had an amazing cathedral inside the wall. From the ground level, the cathedral could be completely overlooked. The walls were plain walls and the stained glass windows appeared black. But, both from above and inside, it was spectacular!

And of course, we had many epic eponymous games in the city with the entire family. Notably, Adam learned how to play Carcassone in Carcassone. He bragged to Dad that “I totally wrecked Mom in Carcassonne!” No competitive streaks in this family...