We took a stellar trip to Yellowstone with Grandma Rose and Grandpa Marshall from July 18-23. We took a day and half to drive up, spent 3 days in the park, and did a looooong drive home on Thursday. The girls had a GREAT time -- Holly wants us to move into a house at "Lellowstone".
Grandma and I took hundreds of pictures. A selection can be found in the Yellowstone photo album.
We had a great time at Point Defiance today, with our good friends, the Williams! The last time we were all here together we were pushing strollers. The weather was marvelous, and the girls and animals had a ball. Holly’s favorite, Mercats put on quite a show for us, and the penguins were once again waddling in the Evergreen Trees rather than swimming in their pond. Unfortunately, they currently don’t have any Beluga Whales. They serve as a facility for juvenile whales these days and they just sent there last one off to California to enter the breeding program there. Hopefully they, or someone else in North America will be successful, and Point Defiance will have Belugas again soon. However, the walruses are going strong, and the polar bears put on quite a show for us. That's one big fish! Hunting for tigers.
We took our 10 ½ hour flight from Frankfurt to Seattle yesterday. How lucky are we? We ended up with the bulk -head seats! We had pre-reserved 3 seats in the aisle behind, but the flight was a little over booked and they gave us boarding passes with me separated from the girls. Guess who got those marvelous bulk-head seats that they won’t let people reserve!!! They gave the kids a couple of fun toys to play with, and we were quite comfortable. Later, when my personal TV wouldn’t work, they gave me a 25 Euro voucher to buy stuff from the in-flight catalog. We are having very little issues with jet lag, and the girls are having a great time. Holly is a bit overwhelmed by everything. At Target when she was allowed to select a night gown from a choice of about 5 in her size she exclaimed, “I can’t choose -- there are too many!” She is also in love with all of thing you can taste at Costco.
Katja, Stefan, 3 other families from the neighborhood, the girls, and I went to Legoland on Memorial Day. We had a great time! As it was not a German holiday, the park was virtually empty – if you haven’t had the chance to partake in an empty amusement park, I’d highly recommend it. It was the hottest day of the year so far, much warmer than typical for May so the girls really enjoyed getting a little wet in some of the water features, and we drank our weight in slurppies. Katie and Stefan rode the infamous dragon roller coaster 8 times, and Holly went on one of the small coaster for her first coaster ride. We love Legoland!
Though she looks horrified, Holly really wanted to go on this ride a second time, but we were out of time. It’s top on her list for “next time” And, submitted for your amusement, all of the neighbors that weren’t too sissy to go on the log ride. (Notice that Katja and I are the only adults – the other two are strangers.) Of course, when the kids went for a second go round, we stayed on the ground.
After almost 13 years of wishing to make the trip, we made it to The Netherlands at Tulip Time this spring break. We drove up and Monday, visited The Keukenhof Gardens on Tuesday, went into Amsterdam on Wednesday, and drove home again on Thursday. We stayed at a really fun Holiday Inn in Leiden. They had a great pool, which Holly was able to make some use of, but was less of an asset than we hoped when we booked the trip prior to Katie breaking her wrist.
We had a bit of rain for our trip. On Tuesday when we visited Keukenhof, we had a light, misty rain for much of the day. It really wasn’t too bad, and the gardens were BEAUTIFUL. We were treated to early tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and lots of water fowl. We’ve decided that perhaps we are destined to visit these famous gardens only in the rain: Versailles – it rained, Powerscout – record rains, Keukenhof – rain again. I took hundreds of pictures at the gardens. There are about 50 in the Keukenhof: April 7, 2009 photo album.
On Wednesday, we took the train into Amsterdam. We had rain and wind all day. (Until about 15 minutes before we got back to our hotel.) We stood in-line, in the rain, to tour The Anne Frank House for about an hour. As it was so very rainy, we then went to tour the Van Gogh Museum. Katie LOVED the Van Gogh Museum. We got to see Starry Night, and many of his other works. The rain prevented us from seeing as much of Amsterdam as we might otherwise have. The canals and the fresh budding trees throughout the city were beautiful, but I didn’t take any pictures as it was raining so much. Pictures were banned in the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh Museum. I was only able to take a couple of pictures of the girls in front of the exhibit intro.
We have returned from Rome. We took an hour and half flight to Rome on Thursday evening, and headed back home Monday afternoon. This gave us three whole days to tromp around Italy’s capitol city. (Using Google Earth, Curtis estimates that we walked about 5 miles each day.) On Friday we concentrated mainly on ancient Rome: the Coliseum area, the Roman Forum, Trajan Market, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, and various “piazzas” and “palazzos”. We began Saturday at the Vatican and saw the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s Basilica. We ended the day with a visit to The Mouth of Truth, St. Valentine’s relics (on St. Valentine’s Day I might add), Circus Maximus, and the exterior on the Coliseum. On Sunday, we proved that the third time is the charm and managed to finally get into the Coliseum (it was closed on Friday due to a demonstration and we got there too late on Saturday), visited the Protestant Cemetery of Rome and Shelly and Keats’ graves, climbed a hill to St. Sabina’s to overlook the city, and roamed around the Forum area a bit to soak up the atmosphere.
Our flight went very smoothly, our hotel was great, and the temperature was 20 some degrees warmer than here. (We returned home to snow, again.) I have about 800 pictures and three days worth of guides to sort through, so keep checking back for a day by day review of our experiences.
On Sunday, we once again had perfect weather. The weather was really a treat for us all weekend. It was such a nice change from the cloudy/snowy/rainy/cold weather we have been experiencing in Germany. Sunday morning we finally managed to get into the Coliseum! By this point the Coliseum had become the Holy Grail of our trip; we were beginning to think we were only destined to see the exterior. We were a bit concerned when we saw the length of the line, but it moved really quickly, and we finally got to go in and roam around. From there we went up to visit the Pyramid of Caius Cestius and the Protestant Cemetery of Rome. The Romans liked what they saw in Egypt, so the build the Pyramid between 18 BC and 12 BC as a tomb for Gaius Cestius Epulo. The Pyramid was incorporated into the Aurelian Walls between 271 and 275. The Protestant cemetery on the site was established in the 1730’s – it is the final resting place of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
We then took advantage of our time out in the suburbs of Rome to eat lunch at a wonderful little place. We decided that if we went a little further afield and ate where the Romans ate we would be rewarded – we were definitely correct. After lunch we walked along the Tiber River for a ways and climbed up to St. Sabina’s Basilica – a peaceful oasis with wonderful views of the city. St. Sabina’s is one of the oldest surviving Christian Churches in Rome. From St. Sabina’s we wondered around enjoying the weather some more, had some gelato and cappuccino, and let the kids run at Circus Maximus again. We returned to the hotel to freshen up, and found a delightful little place to have dinner. Our faith in Italian food was restored this day.
I have, of course, placed a ton of pictures in our Rome Day 3 photo album.
The hotel had an offering of special little bit sized cakes with breakfast for Valentine’s Day. The kids thought they had been transported to a magical land, and my Valentine was able to get me a little something.
We figured that we had better doing our touring of the Vatican area on Saturday, as it would be pretty crowed on Sunday. We rode the train over and took a 2 hour guided tour of the Vatican Museum, and toured St. Peter’s Basilica. The Vatican Museum is HUGE! Their collections are unbelievable. Our tour guide said if you only spent 30 second on each piece of art it would take you 13 years to view the Museum in its entirety. Our tour focused on the history of religious art. It collimated with the Sistine Chapel. Holly says that the “Sixteen Chapel” was her favorite part of the trip. We then explored St. Peter’s Basilica – it was truly amazing. I anticipated that the highlight of St. Peter’s for me would be Michelangelo’s Pieta, but everything St. Peter's had to offer was spectacular. It was after two o’clock by the time we were done so we appeased the hungry beasts in the children with the first little grilled sandwich place we found.
From the Vatican we walked over to The Mouth of Truth. It was quite a trek, Rome is going to be a lot easier to get around once they complete the new subway lines they’ve been working on; however, we did have a mighty fine cappuccino break. If you were to visit Rome and had plenty of time, I’d highly recommend walking around like we did and getting the flavor of the streets. There is so much to see there if you are only going for like a day as part of a multi-city tour I would recommend getting around using one of the Hop on Hop off bus tours so you can get to the sites efficiently. After we traumatized Holly by sticking our hands in the mouth, we let the kids run laps around Circus Maximus, and then headed over to the Coliseum to find that it had already closed. (They stop letting new people in an hour and a half before they close.)
We spied a McDonalds when we got off the train returning to our hotel, since Friday’s dinner was so terrible, and we had such a late lunch, we grabbed the kids some stuff to go and took it back to our rooms. About an hour later we went out to the most expensive ice cream of our lives. I’d like to say there was something special about it, but I’d be lying. We went to this empty little ice cream place a few doors down from our hotel and got cones. Now ice cream is tasty stuff here, but cones that are usually 1 Euro in Germany were 2 Euro to 2 Euro 50 all over Rome. That we could handle, but at Bar Washington they charged us 6 Euro per cone! (A price they only disclosed after we ate them. Apparently there was an unwritten 4 Euro additional charge per cone because we sat at a table in a completely empty ice cream shop. There is a lot of corruption in Italy.) So, for our group of 6 our ice cream bill was 38 Euro – that’s about $50 for 6 single scoop ice cream cones! So . . . stay away from both Est! Est! Est! and Bar Washington if you go to Rome.
I have placed tons more pictures in the Rome Day 2 photo album. Sorry, they didn’t allow pictures to be taken in the Sistine Chapel.
Sorry it took me all week to get back to posting more information about our trip. It’s been quite a week! I am going to use Internet Magic to post about our experiences on the actual day they happened. For those of you who don’t know, we traveled to Rome with our neighbors, Katja and Stefan. Stefan and Katie have been friends for a couple of years, and are in the same class in school this year. Katja is one of my local partners in crime. We took advantage of one of the European cheap airlines and flew round trip from Karlsrule, Germany to Rome for 60 Euro a person, plus various baggage and check in fees. The process was suprizingly smooth, we would definately do it again. Notice Stefan's red hat -- Holly has a little boy doll for her doll house that wears a red hat, she calls him Stefan.
Since we flew into Rome Thursday evening, we were able to get up and get going right away on Friday morning. We discovered that our hotel had a very nice breakfast – Stefan lists it as one of his trip highlights (He liked the little sasages -- the boy can eat meat like you wouldn't believe.), and were off to the Coliseum and Roman Forum. Unfortunately, there was some kind of a protest parade today so the Coliseum was closed – these types of interruptions are rather common in both Italy and France. The Forum area was still open, so we decided to come back for the Coliseum the next day and go ahead explore the ruins of the center of ancient Rome. The kids really enjoyed the Forum, as there is only foot traffic and they were able to explore to their hearts content. Holly was especially excited that the dandelion like daisy weeds were already growing in the grass in Rome, she been waiting for them to pop out again here. Based on our recent weather, she still has awhile to wait.
We made our way through the Forum and up the hill to the capitol building designed by Michelangelo for a great view of the entire site. We went from 400 BC to the Renisance in just a few blocks. We had lunch at a little pizzeria, and headed over to the Trajan Markets. Unbeknownst to me, this ancient, giant, indoor shopping mall is one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. From there we walked over and saw the Pantheon, visited the Piazza Novona and had some Kiwi Gelato, and headed over to the Trevi Fountain. I was unprepared for how amazingly beautiful I found the Trevi Fountain to be. Using Map My Run, Curtis figures we walked about 5 miles each day of our trip. We then headed back to the hotel to freshen up and find some dinner. Our Friday night dinner choice was a bit of a bust, but we did much better the remainder of the trip.
Of course, since I am me, you will find some of the 800 pictures I took of our trip in the Rome Day 1 photo album. I will try to restrain myslef from posting all of them.
Curtis, Katie, and Holly in the rain in the Powerscourt Gardens – it was far too windy for umbrellas.
“By Paul Hoskins DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland faced further flooding on Monday after a second successive weekend of torrential summer rain drove people from their homes, blocked road and rail links and threatened to destroy farmers' crops.
The weather station at Dublin Airport has recorded 177.7 millimeters of rain in the first 17 days of this month, already more than double the August average and quarter of what might be expected in the course of an entire year.” Click here to read the rest of the Reuters story.
We have just returned home from our five day trip to Dublin – we saw some fantastic sites and quite a lot of rain. Saturday was really the only day of our trip that we had non-stop, torrential rain. Thursday and Friday we actually saw no rain at all, and Sunday and Monday we were able to work around it, but Saturday was pretty bad. It’s raining today in Germany, so it seems we brought the rain home with us.
We arrived in Dublin, after a short 2 hour plane ride, at lunch time on Thursday. After checking into our lovely bed and breakfast hotel, we took the city bus into downtown Dublin. We spent the afternoon exploring the Southern side of the city. Dublin marks Holly’s first big trip with no stroller – she rode on Curtis’s shoulders some, and had a few “I’m all worn out” tantrums, but things went pretty well. The highlights of the day were St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Guinness factory. We had a great dinner in the Temple Bar area, where the girls and I enjoyed some marvelous fish and chips and Curtis had a stake. On the way back to the hotel we learned how to use Dublin’s DART rail system, and made great use of it the rest of the trip. (Photos from the first day of our trip can be seen here.)
On Friday, we got going a little late in the morning to take advantage of the tour companies, so we took the advice of the staff of our B and B and took the DART rail system out into the suburbs of Dublin to Dalkey along Dublin Bay. We had some tasty pastries in Dalkey, and walked through the suburbs and along the bay back towards Dublin 3 train stops to Dun Laoghaire. In Dun Laoghaire, we boarded the train and head back to Blackrock for lunch. We ate the most amazing stuffed baked potatoes at a little deli and followed it up with a trip to Starbucks. (Curtis and I had noticed the Starbucks from the train on the way to Dalkey – the whole reason we choose Blackrock as our lunch stop.) Friday afternoon we booked a Dublin countryside tour for Saturday and explored the O’Connell Street section of North Dublin. (For photos of our Friday adventures, click here.)
On Saturday we took an all day bus tour out into the Irish Countryside. We visited Powerscourt Gardens, the ancient Irish Monastery site at Glendalough, and the Wicklow Mountains. We also enjoyed an all day monsoon that made things too windy to use our umbrellas, and so rainy that our raincoats were eventually overwhelmed and we were soaked to the skin. None the less, the sites we saw were exceptionally amazing and the rain was not particularly cold so we did all right. We got less of a view from the bus than we might otherwise have had in clearer weather, but it was still a site to behold. It also proved to be good that we took the trip out to Dublin Bay when we did on Friday, because that section of the DART system was closed down on Saturday due to flooding. The rain prevented me from taking as many pictures as I would have liked, so you can link to the official web site for each place we visited above. You can also see my pictures and read more about our trip here.
It took all night Saturday, and early Sunday morning to get our shoes and coats dried out on the radiators, but Sunday morning the rain tapered off early, and we had great weather for a trip to the Dublin Zoo in Phoenix Park. We had lunch, and watched the Meerkats at the Zoo’s fantastic Meerkat Café. Then we were off to the Old Jameson Distillery to learn all there is to know about triple distilling and the various ways to malt barley. (American whiskey (Jack) is made of corn and distilled once. Scottish Whiskey is distilled twice and the barley is malted with a smoky heating method. Jameson is distilled three times and the barley is malted with a non-smoky heating method.) Then we visited a bookstore and enjoyed perusing the stacks in English. We bought a couple of the Harry Potter books in their British version and found another Starbucks. The rains set in right about dinner time, and we ducked into a restaurant, had some food, and made our way back to the DART train and our home away from home. (For our Sunday photos, click here.)
On Monday our plane was not scheduled to leave until four in the evening and we woke up to more rain. We weren’t about to spent another day walking around in the rain so we checked out of the hotel, left our luggage in their keeping, and took a taxi over to the Dundrum Town Center (a shopping mall) and took the girls to a Build-a-Bear Workshop that I had scouted out on the Internet before we left home. We wondered around a bit, visited another Starbucks, and headed back to our luggage and the airport. Unfortunately, things were a bit of a mess at the airport and our plane took off two hours after it was scheduled. We landed in Frankfurt about 20 minutes after our train left for Mannheim. Once we got our luggage collected and got out of the customs area, we discovered that we had about 14 minutes to make it from the furthest terminal in the airport to the furthest rail station or we would be stuck in Frankfurt for an additional 3 hours (until one in the morning). We ran forever, dragging luggage and children and managed to hit the train platform at the same time as the train to Mannheim. We made it home about 11 pm last night.
