Bastogne, Garmisch and Savona

My vacation started off with going with my son on a scout campout to Bastogne, Belgium, where part of the battle of bulge was fought. We drove into Belgium near the town of Bastogne where we had secured a scout cabin. It was a perfect place that slept 20+ people, the boys upstairs and the adults downstairs. We spent the first several hours outside cooking our food under a full moon and playing capture the flag. After three games and eating chicken, potatoes and apple turnover. We then had a testimony meeting and enjoyed the spiritual side of being together as a quorum. We sat around and talked for a bit and then called it a night around 11pm. The next morning we arose early and then drove to the city of Bastogne where we took a walking tour through the city. We spent a cold day seeing the sites, answering questions for a scout worksheet and taking pictures.

The next day I left for a conference in Garmisch, Germany. I was dropped off early at the hospital in order to catch a bus to Garmisch. I decided it would be easier to take the bus to Garmisch and then have Sharma come and pick me up. Our friend's the Pextons flew into Paris a few days earlier and then took the ICE train to Germany while I was in Garmisch. I spent three days learning about exercise and manipulation, it was a great class. This winter has been warmer and drier than normal so all of the mountains around Garmisch had no snow. It wasn't as spectacular as I would have hoped but still majestic, you could picture how beautiful it would be normally. I was assigned to room with another therapist from Vicenza, somebody I didn't know before, but he was very easy going and easy to get a long with. Sharma loaded the van with luggage and 5 other people and off they drove to pick me up. I tried to sleep a little prior to them arriving, but like normal, I can't calm down enough to get any sleep prior to a big drive before starting our vacation. I tried, I tried but to no avail. The family and friends arrived at 10pm. I knew if we left at that point we would arrive in Savona several hours before we should be there. We decided to hang out in the lodge for several hours and use their free wifi and time our arrival into Savona better. We left at 1am with the car all loaded up and every seat filled. We drove out of Germany and into Innsbruck Austria within 30 minutes. I was able to make it three hours and then suddenly got very tired. I pulled off at one of the gas stations stops along the Autobahn. I was able to sleep for 30 minutes and then I was back on the road again. As we pulled out of the Alps the fog was as dense as I could remember in recent memory. Our first destination was trying to find the parking garage that we had reserved online. We drove into Savona and found this little side street and practically passed up this tiny little garage. We pulled in and this little Italian man met us at the garages entrance. He didn't speak English and I didn't speak Italian, but I showed him my receipt and he motioned to me to give him the keys to the van. I did and he hoped behind the wheel of the car and I got into the back, next thing I know he is driving us to the port, dropping us off and then taking our van back to his garage with the instructions to give him a call when we got back into port. As we pulled up, we parked next to the bus carrying the rest of our group from Germany. They got in literally 15 minutes before us, so it was great timing. We unloaded all of our items from the car and hauled them upstairs to the terminal to await our boarding. We all got there pretty early and therefore could stake our claim to all of the benches that we needed. We took up a large section, full of luggage and kids. Our boarding group number was 5. We waited patiently until our number was called. We were reminded quickly that lines and waiting patiently don't work if you live in Italy...it is fend for yourself, push and cut to get on the ship. We made our way onto the ship and quickly found our cabin to drop off our luggage. Our whole group was in the same area of the ship, it looked like all of the mormons infiltrated a section of the ship...a section that they lost money on because nobody gambled or ordered alcohol. We made our way to the buffet and loaded up on food. Once there we caught word that the Prices lost one of their young daughters and was looking for her. About an hour later she was discovered, not lost, just with another group of kids and her parents didn't know. We waited for two of our pieces of luggage to arrive, they were sent with the bus because we didn't have enough room in the van. Once it arrived we unloaded all of our clothes into a compact room meant to fit two people instead of five. We employed our inner creativeness to find cubbys, nooks and secrets spots to put all of our items. We attended the 'welcome show' and had a late dinner in the dinning room. So ends the first night on the ship.

metros, trams and buses...oh my!

It has been a little while since we last took an extended vacation and boy was it needed. It is just so easy to get into a mundane rut that never really gives a lot of satisfaction. Much like I recharge my spiritual batteries every week at church, I find it is also needed in other aspects of life. Work is work, and although I like me job, I need to recharge my 'daily grind' batteries.

We had talked about going to Amsterdam for several months but the price of hotels never seemed to be a great deal and therefore just kept putting it off. We finally decided this was going to be the week, partly because it just needed to get done and partly because we were going to an annual Wine Festival at Bernkastel-Kues which is located in that general direction anyway.



Last year we were invited to go to Bernkastel-Kues by our friends the Jasters and enjoyed it so much have decided to make it an annual event. Last year we probably had about 10 families from the ward ("ward"= our local congregation) there in our little section along the bank of the Mosel river. This year we decided to keep the tradition alive by 'unofficially' making sure that all of the new families in the ward were aware of this little gem. We sent out the info and planned caravans to make sure everybody had at least some knowledge of this event. We met at our usual meeting place for anything that happens in the ward 'The Netto' in Spesbach. It is just a grocery store that is pretty centrally located in our ward and we tend to take up half of their parking lot anytime we gather for scouts, caravans or any other ward function that might need a meeting place. We drove an hour to Bernkastel-Kues, arriving at 3:00pm. This is an excellent time because, although it is busy, you have beaten most of the crowd and can still find excellent parking. We happened upon this wonderful parking spot last year and again found it this year. We got out, loaded ourselves down with blankets, chairs, cooler with food, Eddie and his carrier and off we went joining the throngs of people. This year it was quite warm, into the 80s, which you might think is rather pleasant, but the summer this year has been cool and therefore we are not acclimatized very well to this kind of weather. We found a nice shady area, it sat back off of the river bank but still had a perfect line of site to the fireworks display. We laid out our blankets, making sure to touch everybody's blankets together, much like a patchwork quilt. You see, this ensure that the Germans don't squeeze in between the blankets, because if they see green it is fair game. The parade of church members kept coming and coming. I don't know officially how many people we had from the ward but it was a lot. I could only guess that there were 30 families there. The adults left first and went into the little village for the festival part. We had two main objectives, mushrooms and grape juice, not necessarily in that order. They have the best grape juice right from the vineyards in that town. The word for the non-alcoholic grape juice is 'Traubensaft'. There is white and red grape juice, they range in price from 2.50-5 euro for a bottle. We ended up buying 4 bottles. We also found a stand that sold fried mushrooms in an excellent garlic sauce and decided we needed some more of that this year. Our walk through the village took us past three different bands playing their traditional German music, with the crowd entranced and entertained. We headed back to the river banks and found the kids there ready for their turn. I gave my children money and off they went in the other direction to the amusement park area, This little area could keep up with any of the carnivals back home. They had every ride that spun, twisted, whirled etc. and my kids loved every minute of it. We all planted ourselves on the banks of the river just as the fireworks show started. It is arguably one of the best firework shows that you will ever see, in my honest opinion, especially for just a tiny village putting it on. The barge shoots fireworks from the Mosel river and the castle shoots fireworks, representing a battle.



We quickly exited after the show because it was going to be a long drive to Amsterdam. The drive itself was pretty easy for the first two hours. Then we could see lightning off on the horizon, just a foreboding of things to come. The Netherlands are also working on their highways, which I think is a European thing in general, you can't travel more than 50 Km without having road construction somewhere along the way. In the Netherlands they simply just closed down the Autobahn and detoured you several Kilometers out of the way. Then the storms hit. It was dark, windy and rainy, not a great combination to be driving in a foreign country. The wind blew the rain straight down, front behind and sideways...I think I even felt it under the car. We made it to our apartment. I was able to find a relatively inexpensive apartment, there was no pictures of this place, no reviews and it was quite far from Amsterdam but the price was right. All I knew about the place was that it was an old converted Cheese farm. Awesome! Let the adventure begin. We drove through pastures, canals, cattle crossing, fields with sheep, cows and lakes with Swans. We had advised the owner that we would be coming very late at night and so she decided to leave the keys to the front door in the door so when we arrived we could just go right in and sleep. When would that ever happen in America? We opened up our door and lo and behold it was like the Shangri-la of apartments. It was this ultra-modern two story loft style apartment. Very cool! We rolled the dice and won. Since we didn't get to bed until 3:00am we slept in a little later than we normally do on vacation. I looked for our landlord to let her know we arrived and to pay her the money but she was no where to be found, and nobody around there seemed to know where she was. So we left for the day, not really having a concrete plan but ready for an adventure.



On the first day we left with a metro destination in hand and a cell phone with a map and we hoped we made it. We made it to the Metro stop closest to us...a 15 minutes journey in our van. I tried to buy tickets at the unmanned kiosk, but it didn't like my debit card. There was an information tower that you could use to call somebody for help, which is what I decided my best option was. I explained my situation to the nice man in my most needy voice. He told me to go to a certain stop, which was a hub, and there I could purchase tickets with cash. I asked him what if one of the security personnel ask to see our tickets? He said "just have them call me". With this bit of re-assurance we boarded the metro, nobody else was on it. Over the next couple of stops a few people joined us on our journey...and then it happened. Security showed up, entered the doors right in front of us. I made eye contact and gave him my best "I got a ticket" face that I could. He and two other security officers went and stood by a door not too far away from us. I sat there waiting for the inevitable to happen, but nothing. He got off a few stops later, and after 20 stops from our starting point we also got off. We purchased tickets and grabbed a bite to eat. We decided to go all the way into the city, to the main metro station so we could change metros. Wouldn't you know it, they closed down a section of the metro so we were forced to disembark and followed the crowd outside. Where it became apparent we needed to catch a bus in order to get to our next stop. So we got first hand experience on how the Dutch bus system worked, for the record, it is not much different from America's system. We waited in a long line and eventually got on and to our destination. We walked to a central square in Amsterdam that contained the Koninklijk Paleis. From here we walked over to Anne Frank's house. It was a little walk but nothing the Shumate clan can't handle. We crossed several canals and admired their beauty. We saw thousands of cyclists going every direction and it almost made you dizzy from all the commotion on the street. Along the way we passed several "Coffee shops"...these are not traditional coffee shops, these are Marijuana shops and as you would walk by you would get a nice big whiff of it's unmistakeable smell. We made it to Anne Frank's house and this was one of my main reasons for going to this city. I remember reading this story in school and again thinking this was so foreign, so far, so different. To have this opportunity? I couldn't pass it up. We bought tickets and I stayed outside with Ed while everybody else went it. Soon it was my turn and I was in awe of everything I saw. It actually wasn't spectacular in the strictest sense of the word but if you adjusted your perception just a bit it was awe-inducing. To think this room was were Anne Frank wrote her deepest feelings and desires, and to see the cutouts, pictures etc still glued to the wall where she put them. Just amazing. To walk through the swinging bookcase, knowing beyond this partition she spent many formidable months just being. Wow. From here here kept walking along the canals and just taking it all in. We decided to head back, this time to get to our metro we were told to take the tram to our stop. So we did, and felt just like a local, once you figure out how to get around...Europe in general, it is all pretty easy.



The next day we decided the main attraction was going to be the Van Gogh museum. We got there just as it started to rain, and again, I was stuck with Eddie. So Ed and I waited out the rain under the roof of the entrance of the Van Gogh museum, I am sure they didn't want me loitering around there, but they never said anything. I needed to use the restroom pretty badly and because I had Ed it limited my ability to use the facilities. I knew McDonalds would provide the relief I was looking for so I plugged it into my GPS and away we started. As we were approaching our destination I encountered a red-light district. Amsterdam has three of them, not really situated in the heart of any tourist destination so it is fairly easy to avoid these places. But it just so happened as I was getting ready to cross one of the many canals I noticed a bunch of red awnings all the way up the side of this building, and the next, and the next. Then I noticed all of the windows, wide open, with what looked like people standing in them. As I got closer I realized what I was seeing, the selling of women. I quickly crossed the street making sure that I kept my eyes straight ahead. That was my one and only time encountering the red-light district in Amsterdam. Once getting back to the Van Gogh museum we swapped Eddie out and it was my turn. I have really started to like art and Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists. I enjoyed my time in there, couldn't believe how many paintings they had of his. The most astonishing thing was my realization that he only painted for 10 years...amazing! We left Amsterdam and made our way back to our apartment.



We drove our van to The Hague...I love that name, anytime you can put 'The' in front of a city I think it is cool. The LDS temple is near the Hague so we stopped and saw the temple. Really interesting little temple, the immediate grounds of the temple were well manicured but that area led out to a front lawn that really wasn't kept up very well and the perimeter was not surrounded by a fence like they normally are. I am not sure if this is a city ordinance or not but it was just different. There was a little bridge that crossed a small man-made canal to enter the temple...how very appropriate for Amsterdam. From there we drove to Rotterdam to see a cluster of 19 windmills, called Kinderdijk. You could park your car and walk along the path of the windmills, which would have been great if we had time. It was late in the day and we decided that a bunch of pictures taken looking at the windmills from a distance would have to suffice. It was very surreal to see the windmills of Holland. Oh and in case you were wondering we did buy several small wooden shoes...technically they were made of ceramic, but they reminded us of wooden shoes. What a great, quick trip.

Some funny things with money happened to us. I always wear a waistband with a pouch tucked into my pants, with my shirt pulled over it, to prevent any pickpockets. This has always worked, but sometimes it is hard to get the money in/out of it. As I got money out to pay for something I became frantic because only half of the money that I knew I had was not in my pouch. I looked all over, everybody checked their pockets. I took off the waistband and checked it thoroughly. Sharma said wouldn't it be funny if it was in your pants...Yes, Ha Ha, we all laughed. After another few minutes of searching I checked inside my pants around the waist, there was my money tucked neatly in between my pants and my underwear. Man, good thing I keep my pants tight enough or I would have been littering money all over the streets of Amsterdam. But since I was feeling in a giving mood I eventually did lose some money. I got 200 Euro out at an ATM with McKay and somewhere along the way it dropped out...so I can't give an endorsement for the Dutch being too honest, but I can speak to my own stupidity. And in case you were wondering I have never been pick pocketed here in Europe, a well known problem... I can lose my money on my own...thank you very much. That bothered me the rest of the trip, as my family can attest to.

As an aside, we found the people of The Netherlands to be very nice and cordial, and they spoke English really well, which was a nice departure from being in Germany.
Info Transportation to city: drove from Germany Transportation in city: Metro 10.50 Euro/person, two days Lodging: Appartementen Huis ter Lucht, 3 nights/200Euro, 5 people Sites: Van Gogh museum 14 Euro/adult, under 17 free; Anne Frank's house-9 Euro/adult, 10-17 4.50 Euro, under 10-free; Kinderdijk windmills (Rotterdam)

Luxembourg-Koln

At this point we are one car down, the van died, it lived a good life. It has seen so much and been through many trials and tribulations with us. At some point though you just have to let nature takes it course and go the way of all old reliable cars. We junked it. We were lucky enough to borrow our friend's van while they were away for three weeks. We decided to drive to Luxembourg and Cologne for the 4th of July weekend. We left early on a Saturday and drove one hour to Luxembourg (hard to believe it is so close to us). We first went to the American cemetery, next to the Luxembourg airport. There were many headstones, all either in the shape of a cross or the Star of David. We were able to meander around the cemetery thinking of all lost lives that preserved our freedom. The highlight was seeing General George Patton's headstone. He is placed prominently in the cemetery. From here we drove through Luxembourg city. It seemed like a nice city, as it almost appears to be an island without the water. We had to cross a high bridge to get to the city, which lead us to a nice lookout from the city center. After driving through the city for a few minutes we decided to head out.

Our next stop was Aachen, a small town outside of Cologne. There is a Lindt chocolate factory store there, which sells discounted items. Chocolate + discount= I am there. On our way there we were hungry so we stopped at a McDonalds for a quick bite to eat. As we pulled out there was a divider in the street and we needed to be on the other side going the opposite direction. No cars coming either direction as I pulled out. So I thinks to myself "self, I am going to slyly pull into the far lane and make a u-turn around the divider", seems like a good idea. As soon as I do, a Polizei pulls out of nowhere and is on my tail. I turn at the intersection and as soon as I do, the Polizei turns on its readerboard which tells me to 'stop'. Great! I am driving somebody else's car and I just got pulled over. The lady was really nice and explained what I did is very dangerous. She takes my registration and license and then looks into the car and sees that I have my wife and kids with me. I can hear her say "This is usually an expensive ticket", then she says I am going to charge you 10 Euro for this offense. She beckons me to come back to her car where she whips out a portable debit card machine and charges me 10 Euro on the spot. Now that was a neat experience, even if I did get pulled over. The receipt is now in my journal. Then I realized that we were quickly running out of gas and there were no Esso gas stations in the local vicinity (this makes a difference because through the military we get deeply discounted gas rates compared to the local economy, as long as we use an Esso gas station). The GPS shows a gas station coming up and wouldn't you know it, I make a wrong turn. Now the van says I have exactly 5 kilometers until I run out of gas. I am just praying that a gas station appears on the horizon. This isn't like the USA where gas stations are like weeds, sometimes you won't see one for 10 miles or farther. Luckily, a gas station appeared and we were able to put a few Euro into the tank.
We got to the Lindt store with 20 minutes until it closed. We browsed around and got a general sense of what they were selling and then we made our move. Everybody picked out several items, then several more and then just a few more for good measure. Some of the highlights were chili flavored chocolate and mango centers.

We drove to Cologne, which was only a few miles away. On our way, I needed to fill up the car with gas, easy enough. I pull into the Esso station and right behind me pulls a Polizei...again. This time I knew I didn't do anything wrong, he was just buying something at the store. But I was using my van gas card with that car's info on it. If he checked the card against the van's license number he would notice they don't match. They never check at the German stations, at least until today. The first time I am checked and I am driving a different vehicle...and...the Polizei is in line right behind me. The guy behind the counter looks at my card, turn on his camera to show the license plate on my van, check my card again. I put the most confident, yet innocent look on my face...last thing I wan't to do is look guilty. Thank goodness he doens't say a word to me about it and I am on my way. We find our hotel, which is 20 minutes outside of Cologne. We had to sneak an extra person and dog into our room, no problem.

The next day we took the train into Cologne, my first hint that something wasn't quite right was the larger lady decked out in rainbow colors. We get off of the train near the Cologne cathedral, there was energy in the air, a lot of people gathering and mingling...mostly in rainbows. Uh-oh. Yes, you guessed it, we picked the annual gay pride parade in Cologne on the first weekend in July. Oh boy. After taking a tour of the Kölner Dom cathedral and hiding Eddie in a large bag to get him in we decided to walk to old town. As we did, we noticed we were following the crowds...we were heading to the parade unbeknownst to us. And let me tell you, it was a parade, a festive, loud and flamboyant parade. We saw many things somebody should never see, sadly, my kids saw things they should never see. We walked over to the Lindt chocolate factory and museum. Because we had a dog we had to go in shifts, the girls went first and then McKay and I went. It was interesting, worth the 10 Euro for the whole family, but not more than that. Then we walked over to the Ludwig museum, but we had to take a circuitous route since the parade cut a swath right through the heart of our path. We made it to the art museum and again, because of Eddie we had to go in shifts. The museum was neat and had Picasso and Matisse on exhibit. After that we caught the train back to the hotel and decided to get McDonalds back at the hotel. We just relaxed the rest of the evening.

The next day we jumped into the car and drove to Bonn, Germany. A neat little city where Beethoven was born and lived for the first twenty years of his life. We took the tour of his home...in shifts. They had a strict no photo policy...which we broke again and again. We took pictures of compositions, his pianos, organ, viola etc. Oh yeah, we were just snapping away...but we had to avoid to roaming security. After the museum we walked down to the main square and did some souvenir shopping and then grabbed lunch. The girls had Currywurst, McKay and I had Bratwurst and Sharma had McDonalds...again. We finished the day going to the Birkenstock outlet and doing some shoes shopping. We all got some birkenstocks except for Maddi, they didn't have anything in her size. We drove home and crashed because we were tired. An excellent adventure... Info Travel to city: drove van Travel into city: S-bahn (Spich) Lodging: Holiday Inn Express Cologne Troisdorf (located in Spich) Sites:

I am a Berliner...not the pastry

I have wanted to get to Berlin since coming to Germany. There is so much history contained in this country, especially in Berlin. We drove to Berlin, all six hours of the drive, which actually is pretty good time considering the threat of staus along the way. Some people had said we should take the train because we inevitably would get caught in one. We were lucky, we had one on the way home for 30 minutes, not too bad. Unfortunately this was one of our worst vacations for weather since being here. It was cloudy the whole time and rained off and on, sometimes pretty hard. The weather was cool and the wind blew pretty hard most of the time. We got to our hotel at 1pm and ran into the guy the ran the hotel as he was leaving. He checked us in very hurriedly and left. Here is the interesting thing, we never saw him again, if I hadn't have run into him at that moment in time, we would have wasted a lot of time waiting for him. We dropped everything off and then walked to the Metro, which was only 10 minutes away. Berlin has a very extensive metro system which is good and bad. It makes it nice when you want to get somewhere but there are so many tracks that it can be a bit confusing. We found ourselves standing at metro stations for several minutes trying to make head or tails of where we were going, sometimes we just made our best guess as a train would pull up and we would hop on hoping it was going in our direction. Luckily, we were right every time.


Our first stop was Brandenburg gate. I won't relate much of the history, as you can look it up for yourself, but the history is very interesting. Just as we left the metro station at the Brandenburg gate the first of many downpours started, so we headed back underground to wait it out. A few moments later it had passed and we were walking toward the gate. The gate is this massive structure that really is the persona of Berlin, it is the image one equates with Berlin. There were several country embassies that sit around that area, many of which used to be old nazi buildings. After taking pictures, we walked over to the Reichstag (German parliament building). It was again looking threatening, so we kept a lookout for potential hideouts. We walked around the Reichstag and then along the river, looking for a portion of the Berlin wall. After stopping and discussing we realized that we would see a big portion of it the next day, so we decided to walk down to Checkpoint Charlie. As we got closer the sky looked very ominous, so we ducked into a souvenir shop, just as the skies opened up. We walked in and browsed the store for quite some time, even Eddie was browsing. We ended up buying a lot of small stuff, just as the rain let up. The Checkpoint area was interesting, if only for it's significance. The actual checkpoint was a replica, there were two 'actors' portraying an American and Russian border crossing guard. I wanted them to stamp our passports, but they said they weren't doing it today because of the rain. There was a museum dedicated to Checkpoint charlie, we didn't pay to go in, but it did have pieces of the wall attached to the outside of the building. Being in the former East Berlin area, there are reminders of what it was like in the form of shops, museums and other subtle clues. We ate at McDonalds near checkpoint charlie, in fact it overlooked it. Near the checkpoint there was a wall that had a running description of the wall, the history of the Berlin and East Germany etc. Next we walked over to the Jewish Memorial, a very neat experience. It was a series of over 2,000 slabs of concrete, shaped in rectangles, placed in rows and columns. As you approached it, you could see some were taller than others so there was dimension to this memorial. The interesting thing, however, is that what you didn't see was that the ground undulated beneath the concrete slabs. In essence, as you walked amongst the concrete pillars some were more than 12 feet high, but from the outside they didn't look more than just a few feet in difference.

We took several pictures, it was all so picturesque. We walked back up to the Brandenburg gate again and this time we did some more souvenir shopping.

We then caught the Metro back home as it was around 10pm and we were getting tired, even though there was still ambient light outside.
The next day we started off by going to the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church. We got off the metro followed the signs, 350 meters to the church, off we went. We went 400 meters and no church. Did we pass the street it was on? Is it further ahead? It's a large church we couldn't have passed it. Then I noticed the church that was built right next door to the iconic church, I had seen this new church in pictures, it was next to the old church...but no church. Then I realized that the whole church was covered with a makeshift structure hiding it from the world. They were repairing it and you couldn't see any of it from the street, just the sterile covering. It will be hidden from the public until 2012. Guess we'll have to come back. We hopped back on the Metro and took it to the Eastside Gallery. This is the name of the longest existing piece of the Berlin wall, each section has become a canvas that artist have been commissioned to paint on. Some of them were crazy, some just let your imagination run wild, while others were amazingly beautiful and thought provoking.


We walked along the 1.3 Km length and took it all in. We got our passports stamped at the wall, some corny thing you are supposed to do as a tourist, so we did it. We grabbed lunch and left the wall and headed for the large television tower (4th tallest structure in Europe). As we got there it started to rain pretty good, so we stayed in the metro until the passing shower...passed. We walked over to the Berliner Dom, a large protestant cathedral. It was meant to rival St. Peters Basilica, not as big but very ornate and the unique coloring on the outside, make it a wonderful place to stop and take it the contrasting palate. The church is located next to 'museum island', an island in the middle of the Spree river that contains 5 museums. The one that stood out to us, and the one most people said to go to, was the Pergamon museum. We stood in line for quite some time waiting to get tickets. We were going to attempt to hide Eddie in Hailey's big bag, in fact I stood in line most of the way with him in there. Then I had Hailey ask a worker if he could come inside in my bag, 'no' was the answer. I decided to part ways with my family and let them go inside and see everything and Ed and I would go for a walk and explore. We found a local market selling goods. We strolled through looking at everything and then found our way back to the Berliner Dom area. There was a large grassy area with a large round fountain in the center. There were trees lining the bank of the river and they had built wooden lounge chairs that you could lay back on. So that is what Eddie and I did while we waited. We finally joined up with the rest of the family. As we didn't really have this trip planned out very well, we just flew by the seat of our pants. With that being said, we had no idea what to do next. I had seen this area called "topographie of Terror" labeled on the map...boy that sounded interesting. We decided we would see what that was all about. As we reached our destination, the sky turned black and the rain started to fall.


This turned out to be a great stop. This block was the most feared address in all of Berlin. It housed the foundation of the third Reich; the SS, the gestapo,SD and RSHA. As a Berliner, you did not want to be anywhere near this place. They had a covered area outside that had the history of Nazism, the third reich and Hitler. We stood outside reading all of the hanging placards, in the cold and rain. Then we noticed a large building behind us and decided we might be able to find a bathroom in there. Come to find out this was the actual museum, complete with a more detailed account of what we just read outside. I will be the first to tell you, I didn't know very much about Germany and WWII, but after this vacation I definitely learned quite a bit and it has peaked my interest in learning more about this historic time. It was raining most of the way back to the Metro, so we were pretty wet...and tired and ready for a warm night's sleep. That evening back at our apartment the storms let loose, it rained hard and blew even harder. I felt quite comfortable lying in my bed, nice and warm listening to the elements howl around outside.
The next day we packed all of our belongings up and loaded them into the car. Since we didn't have to be out of the apartment until 11am, we just left the car parked into the parking lot and walked over to the Schloss Charlottenburg. It was a large palace built by a Prussian king. It was patterned after Versailles, the huge palace outside of Paris. It was actually pretty impressive from the outside. We walked back to our car and drove to the Olympic stadium, where in 1932 Jesse Owens proved his dominance over Hitler's dream team. Unfortunately, the stadium was closed because they are getting it ready for the Women's world cup soccer tournament that they are holding in Germany. There have been few cities that I would have a desire to go back to, but Berlin makes my short list on this. Info Transportation to city: Drove van Transportation in city: Metro Lodging: Apartmenthaus Sybille Hecke Sites:

Prague blog

We have been really forunate on all of our vacations so far. Everything just fell right into place, we found the right hotels, we had our itinerary all laid out, the finishing touches completed. Like the pieces of a puzzle, everything fit. This one however, was a different story. We had no plans, no hotel in advance, no reliable transportation. It just didn't feel right. But was that going to stop us? No way.


Our van was in the shop a few weeks before we needed it for this trip. It freaked out on Sharma and overheated, A/C stopped working, the check engine light came on and had several leaks. I dropped it off at our mechanic. I normally just drop the car off in his parking lot, drop the keys in a box and leave a note on the seat saying what is wrong with it. I usually receive a phone call within a few days with what is wrong and how much it will cost. This time there was no call. I called him a week later and he said that he was on vacation and now is very busy. I said just let me know when you look at it. 'No problem' he said, he'll look at it tomorrow and let me know. Another week passed, nothing. Called him again. This time he had bad news, it was going to cost a lot of money to repair it...more money that it was worth. I decided right then and there to junk it. It was time, it has been a great vehicle, but it is 14 years old and has 190,000 miles on it. It is only a matter of time before something major goes wrong with it. It is time to cut our loses.

So this brings me to our current vacation. No van to drive to Prague, we decided to rent a vehicle. We got a mid-sized car that ran well and had A/C, what more could you want. The drawback to this is that we can't take advantage of the discounted gas that we are entitled to as part of our military agreement with Germany.

Our pet sitter was also booked this time around, being Memorial weekend, so we had to take Eddie as part of our trip. I love Eddie, but sometimes he can be a bit of a handful when he is out. He gets a bit anxious...wait, a lot anxious and can attract attention. The thought of going through this gave me anxiety, so here we are, two anxious people trying to go on vacation to have a good time.

We loaded up the car and started off for Prague. It took us a little longer than we anticipated to get there...seems like this is always the case. We had great travels until we got to Prague. We were racing against time, because our hotel confirmation stated that the front desk closed at midnight. We got into Prague with about 10 minutes to spare but had no idea that we had to drive all the way through Prague to get to our hotel. It took forever to get to our hotel, and then to make matters worse, we could see our hotel but couldn't get to it. We had to call our hotel twice to make sure they knew we were coming so they would close the doors on us. We drove up this deserted road trying to find the hotel, realizing it was a deadend we turned around. We spotted a couple of police officers standing, smoking and talking. I pulled up and asked for directions. They didn't know either but gave us their best guess. With a bit of luck we finally found our place. Time to go to bed.

The next day we ate a continental breakfast at the hotel and left around 9am. We had to walk about 15 minutes to our metro stop, under a couple of overpasses that could be intimidating, especially if it was nightime. We found the metro to be easy to use and convenient to where we wanted to go.


Our first stop was the area near the Powder gate. As we were approaching it, we noticed several advertisements for concerts, operas, ballets etc for that evening. We had our choice of twenty different places to watch a show, but we had Eddie, there would be no culture on this trip. We wandered down several streets without a real destination or purpose. We could see this amazing edifice in front of us, but it was surrounded by buildings and we didn't know how to get there. We wandered down a couple of streets...passed a TGIFridays...that wasn't what we were looking for, too American. We finally made our way to the area that contained the church and then realized it was still surrounded by buildings. The church we were after was called 'The church of our lady Tyn'. It is a monstrous church with multiple spires, very beautiful. We were standing around near this area, trying to get our bearings straight and figure out where to go next, we noticed a group of people taking a picture of this thing'. It looked like a hooded figure, but it was a statue. It had a plaque on it, but it was in Czech so we couldn't read it. Come to find out the place was called Estates Theatre, and it was the first place that Mozart's Don Giovanni was ever performed. We took a picture outside and then strolled into the lobby, asked if we could go inside and take a picture, were denied and then left. There were several groups of Americans in tour groups, we stood and listened for a while but realized we did'nt like that style of tourism and kept on moving. We worked our way to several other churches and happened upon a wedding that had just taken place. They were taking pictures outside of the church in front of this classically restored automobile. We stopped and took a picutre ourself, little did they know they had just become part of Sharma's roll of pictures. In this same area there is something called an astronomical clock, a very neat clock that displays the relative position of the sun, moon and zodiac constellations.
Next we walked to the old Jewish settlement admiring the synagogue, the old cemetery and other buildings...what we failed to realize is that it was Saturday...their sabath. Everything was closed, we would have to return tomorrow. We continued on to the Charles Bridge. A wondrous bridge, that spans the Vltava river, unique with its pairings of statues the whole length. It was very crowded with sightseers with vendors selling their goods. As we were approaching the end of the bridge I noticed these photographs of different Beatles lyrics painted on this graffiti ladened wall. I took note, but did not buy. Then a few vendors later I noticed more pictures, and the next vendor had more. By this time I was intrigued so I stopped and browsed through them. I selected one, Hailey and McKay each got one as well. As we were leaving I asked the vendor where these pictures were taken, expecting the obvious "London" as a response. I was surprised to find out we were about two blocks from it...that suddently became my mecca, I had to find it. It was a nice stretch of wall, a block long with all sorts of Beatles lyrics, inspirational sayings and tributes to John Lennon. It was the highlight of our trip. Everybody in the family took turns defacing the wall with our own Beatles lyric. It was well attended and everybody had a good time. We stumbled upon a street bazaar, full of souvenir shops and tourist kiosks. We spent quite a long time shopping...correction, Sharma spent quite a long time shopping. It is okay though, we knocked out most of our souvenir shopping at this stop. Our next destination was the Prague castle. A huge (according to the Guinness Book of world records, the largest castle in the world) castle set on top of a mighty hill. Yes, we climbed up to it. It is within a walled area that contains a church and other buildings. The best part was the view that it afforded us once we got to the top. We looked out over Prague on a beautiful evening and just took in the sites. One of those quiet times to reflect on the unique situation that we find ourselves in, being in Europe. We walked back down from the castle and caught a metro home. We were tired and it was late, our beds sounded good.


The next day we grabbed breakfast at the hotel again and caught the metro. First we stopped at the Jewish Quarter since it was open. We bought tickets to take the tour of the Old Jewish quarter and decided we should hide Eddie so that he could go along. We dropped him into Hailey's bag and stood in line. The next thing I knew we had been spotted and told that we couldn't take him in. I opted to stay outside while everybody else went in. When Sharma got to the ticket booth, she explained the situation and described how big Eddie was, she got special permission for Eddie to accompany us, as long as he stayed in the bag. No problem. We enjoyed the buildings and especially the cemetery. It contained the gravestone of Rabbi Loew, who is associated with the lengend of Golem...look it up. All of the kids took etchings of Rabbi Loew's headstone. Very cool. We went to St Wenceslas square and walked toward the National museum. It was a nice walk and we passed a lady selling pizza, we bought a slice each and a drink and enjoyed it as we sat in the middle of the square watching the cars zip by. From the National museum we walked down to a museum dedicated to Antonin Dvorak, Sharma's favorite composer. This was her highlight. We almost had tragedy strike...we got there and realized it was closed. We tried to read the sign and realized we had missed it by 10 minutes. RATS! So we decided to walk around and look in the windows, then Hailey noticed that they were just closed for lunch, not for the day. Awesome!! We waited in the shade and then the time came. We paid the small fee and I just sat back and watched as Sharma and Hailey were enthralled with everything. It had his viola, piano, pen, music sheets, family pictures, graduation robe. It even had a desk that Beethoven owned. It was very neat, and Sharma was happy, that is all that mattered at that point in time. We walked to the National Theatre and walked out on to the bridge next to it. There were several paddle boats in the water, many people taking in the day on the river. We stood on the bridge and watched them. We walked down to McDonalds to grab a quick bite to eat and then headed back to the hotel.


We caught a nice night's sleep and the woke up and grabbed one last breakfast before leaving. On our way out of town, we stopped at an IKEA for Sharma. If any of you know her, this is her passion, so she loves to collect catalogs...but not just any catalog, European IKEA catalogs. We stopped, but it was closed except for those that were having breakfast there. Sharma went in and convinced the lady to lend her a catalog...little did the lady know that that would be the last time she would see it. Now announcing, in our IKEA catalog collection, we officially have a Czech IKEA catalog...I know how excited everybody is. Since you can't make it over here to see it, I am sure if you ask Sharma, she will take a picture of it and send it to you. We decided to drive to Dachau and see the concentration camp. Too make a long story short, we drove 4 hours just to find out that the site was closed on Mondays. I felt so bad, I should have looked up the hours/day of operation. The drive home was especially long from that point on. Info Transportation to city: Drove van Transportation in city: Metro Lodging: Wellness Hotel Step Sites:

Observations around Miesau

I wanted to write this before it fades from my mind. Sharma, I and the kids had the glorious experience of renewing our ID cards yesterday. As most of you are not privy to military adventures such as this I will describe it as such...very similar to sticking a hot poker up your nose (which is better than a hot 'picker' I guess, but I digress). I had my picture taken for the ID card and I realized "Rob, you don't look like you did last year". In the picture, whether real or imagined I felt like my face was much fuller than it was a year ago. When I told Sharma about this she called me crazy and said that I looked the same (as a good wife should, she said all the right things). However, since I had been thinking about doing some exercises lately and this visual proof was in my hand I decided today was the day. I asked if Sharma wanted to go and she politely declined but said that she would walk with me. So we compromised, we sadled up Eddie with his harness and leash, set out with money in hand and off we went. We walked down to the local Hanchen (chicken) guy that shows up down the road from us everything Wednesday selling his rotisserie chicken. Man, these aren't just any chicken, golden brown, dripping juices, just spinning around...tempting you with every spin. Now, this is not all, he also has some of the best fries as well, freshly made at the time of your order. In addition he has a small container of salad (cucumber, carrot, sauerkraut, potato) that you get. We order Menu #2-chicken, salad and fries (which feed the whole family) for 10.90 Euro. We purchased the meal and walked back down to our house, as we approached our house there is a small road that branches off and leads of into the fields behind our house. I told Sharma not to eat the whole meal and ventured off down the road on my run. The first thing that entered my mind was "I am running...here in Germany" just a mundane activity that I could be doing anywhere, but I was doing it here in Europe...how grateful I was. Then I started to really take in my surroundings. I found myself running on this paved path through fields of bright yellow flowers, followed by green fields, followed by yellow as far as the eye could see. Then I noticed the hills that surrounded us, far in the distance, but still present, watching over us. As the monotonous sound of my gasps for breath continued I noticed this brilliantly yellow bird land on a plant in the field and watched me as I lumbered by. I had never seen a bird so brilliantly yellow, except in photos, what a treasure. In conclusion, I made it all the way back (I didn't run that far because I have to start slowly, lest I kill myself) and enjoyed the chicken, fries and potato salad that we bought. But I just wanted to let you know I do the same things here I would back in the states, pretty ordinary if you ask me...ordinarily amazing! I love it here and am glad that I took the time to really notice what was happening around me yesterday and appreciate our unique situation.

My oh Mallorca

We had a really hard time deciding where we should go on vacation for spring break. We had a few requirements, among the most important was it needed to be warm. Second, it needed to have sand for the kids. We thought about the south of France or Sardinia, off of the coast of Italy. Then as always, we let Ryan air help us decide. We were able to get tickets to Mallorca for 6 Euro each way, problem solved. We were able to go with two other families, the Cherringtons and the Tholens, they each had children the same age as ours so it really was a nice fit. We were able to get a hotel with three rooms that could accommodate all of us, which turned out to be 30 minutes outside of the main city of Palma. The funny thing was that when we booked plane tickets on Ryan air I thought we had all booked on the same flight, it turned out that we were the only ones on the late flight, and the others had arrived there early in the morning. We arrived around 6pm and found our way to the car rental, we upgraded one step to get a little bigger car, a nice Peugeot. The first impressions of this island is that it is fairly large with a very diverse terrain and much like Aruba in that it is a pretty arid place. It is not the lush green island one would automatically think of, but then again the Mediterranean lends itself to this kind of landscape. The other noticeable feature of this island is its dichotomy, 1/3 of the island is very steep mountains and 2/3 very flat expanses. We arrived to our hotel in Cala Pi and found our cohorts resting from their fun adventures. We were starving and they had just ordered pizza and were getting ready to eat. Since our hotel had a kitchen we decided to go to a grocery store. We had Kyle Cherrington take us back into town to the grocery store they went to. We didn't realize it was going to be such a long drive. We made it to the store and bought breakfast and lunch items. On our way home we stopped at the pizza joint and ordered three pizzas. They looked good and they were good, mainly because we were so hungry. At the restaurant we picked up a cool souvenir of wooden matches in a triangle box. We quickly planned out the next day and then went to bed. So the observation on driving on this little island. The side roads that lead to the smaller towns are narrow, not a terrible thing but when you combine this with the fact that they line every lane with 4 foot tall rock walls, it makes it a bit treacherous when you meet another car. Now if this wasn't bad enough, apparently in the winter this is where are the cycling teams do their training. So now we had the added pleasure of trying not to kill the cyclists. They were everywhere, on the road, on the side of the road, in the middle of the road, in the bushes, in the trees...okay, they weren't in the trees, but if they had been I wouldn't have been surprised. And the problem? They all thought that they owned the road, if you came up behind them, they may or may not scoot over to let you past. I felt like yelling at them "Hey! You're not Lance Armstrong you know?"...since I was driving I had Sharma do this. Our first full day we decided to hit the beach. I had done a little research and found a beach called Es Tranc, which was supposed to be this big beautiful beach. We get to one end of the beach and realize 'this place stinks', there was washed up seaweed all over the place, no place to enjoy the sand, no facilities etc. So after driving all the way there we decided to go back to Palma and hang out at the beach there. As a side note, come to find out, we were at one end of the beach and the nice part was at the other end. We went to Palma beach, which was very nice. They had built rows of shaded straw huts that you could just throw your beach towel under and start to enjoy. It was also next to a McDonalds so if we needed a bathroom, food or a diet coke (for Sharma) it was 30 seconds away. The day was sunny, but it was not warm, in the truest sense of the word. If the wind wouldn't have been blowing it would have been fine, but the wind kicked up pretty strong and it kept the day cool. The kids stripped down to their swimsuits and started to enjoy the sand right away, even getting into the water. The adults just lounged. I collected a bunch of small shells and sand from the beach as is our custom anytime we go to a new beach. I didn't put any sunscreen on because I wanted as much color as I could possibly get. And boy was I successful. I never realize how red I am getting when I am out in the sun, and this time I had no pre-beach color...I was as white as I could be. Oh I would pay later. We walked across the street to a McDonalds and grabbed a quick bite to eat, while there we decided to go to the big cathedral in Palma. We drove down to the Cathedral and decided to pay the entrance fee to get in. It was a very interesting church, very different architecture on the outside, faced by a pond and just a stones throw from the bay. We bought a few souvenirs from the cathedral to commemorate our visit and then decided it was time to head back. We found a nice restaurant so we could sit down and enjoy the evening. We were able to sit outside and enjoy the refreshing air. We ordered pizza and burgers and just enjoyed good conversations throughout the evening. The next day we decided to explore the other side of the island. We drove through Palma and went up into the mountains. Along the way we passed an Ikea, Sharma drooled and we drove on. We went to a little village along the coast named Soller. It was a very quaint city that sat on a cove, surrounded by 90% land. There were two lighthouses at the entrance to the cove that looked off into the Mediterranean. There was a small beach that sat along the cove. They also had a cool little train that went from Soller to Palma and back. We walked around the whole cove along the waterfront, stopping in stores and browsing their goods. Our goal was to make it to the lighthouse, after walking for what seemed like an eternity we made it to the other end of the cove where the lighthouse sat. Then we realized the lighthouse was in an area off limits to tourists. We decided to climb up the hill, looking for another way into the lighthouse. We passed little alleyways full of tiny houses, with ladies out hanging laundry and sweeping, kids playing. We made it to the top of the hill and found a museum that overlooked the ocean. We all took pictures of each other, with the sea in the background with it's constant pounding against the shear cliffs. We walked back down the hill to the city and found a nice little grocery store and did our normal routine. We found a few tables and sat and ate our bread, cheese, meat, chips, red peppers, drinks and candy. We decided to drive to the other side of the inlet and checkout the other lighthouse, with the main goal of finding a bathroom at the top. We did find a bathroom but don't think it was meant for public use. It was meant for a bed and breakfast that sat at the top of the hill, but it served the purpose we needed it to. We drove back to the hotel and let the kids play. The older ones wanted to go to the little inlet by our hotel and do some snorkeling and the younger ones wanted to swim in the pool. Sharma and I stayed at the pool with Maddi and her friends and just enjoyed the sunshine, however it was a little on the cool side. McKay was only one of two people that actually went snorkeling, everybody else said they wanted to, but when it got down to it they decided it was too cold. We cleaned up and went to this little restaurant that we passed every time we drove from/to our hotel. And every time we passed it there were 50 cyclists there eating. This evening it was us and another family. Sharma and I decided to order the Paella (seafood). Man it was good, very filling and plenty of seafood. Oh and just so you knew I had a pretty bad sunburn from the first day so I was pretty happy not to be at the beach today. The next day we decided to hang out at the beach on the eastern side of the island. We drove several small villages, as we passed one in particular we noticed them having a small farmers market. We stopped and roamed around, but several different fruits and sat on the steps and ate. We bought more food from a local grocery store and had lunch before continuing on our journey. We finally ended up in Portocristo and planted ourselves on the beach. We enjoyed the beach, the kids played in the sand, the older ones played with a soccer ball McKay had brought and the adults lounged on our mats and talked. I played keep away with the kids, using the soccer ball, until I realized that I was in the middle more times than anybody and I should probably quit before I pull something. After several hours we decided to drive into Palma one last time. We found our way to the McDonalds by the beach, we had spent quite a bit on dinner the previous three nights so we needed something a little more manageable on the pocketbook. We enjoyed our meals and then walked across the street to take in the view one last time. There were four guys that had just finished making a beautiful sandcastle complete with candles on it. We paid them a few coins and then took some pictures of it. The Cherringtons always collect items from 'Hard Rock Cafe' wherever they go, so we hit that up so they could collect their souvenirs. Then it was home to pack. Goodbye Mallorca, it was fun getting to know you. Maybe we'll meet again sometime.

Info Transportation to city: Ryan Air Transportation in city: Rental Car Lodging: Cali Pi Club (located in Cala Pi, 45 min outside of Palma) Sites:

Friends and Family

We recently had the joy of having our first two sets of visitors come and visit us. We first had our friends, the Mitchells, come from North Carolina. We met Sharmyn and Jon just prior to us moving to Germany. We had the opportunity to get to know them briefly as we crossed paths a few times. We really liked them, and felt they had seen and done things in life that we wanted to do, and therefore looked to them as a mentor for us on our travels. We received an email out of the blue that they were coming in a month and were very excited to have them, but not knowing them too well, we were a little nervous if our young friendship would last the four days they would be here. Sharma picked them up at the Kaiserslautern train station on a Friday. They had flown into Paris and took the ICE train from Paris to K-town. They arrived at our house very tired but very excited to be here. They were just like little kids on Christmas morning just oooh-ing and aah-ing over everything in our house. Just so excited about everything we were doing and seeing. We spent a good hour giving a tour of our place and showing them all of our trinkets and goodies that we had collected. Jon sat at my desk and thumbed through my little book of things that I have collected. I got a sense of how an artist feels when somebody gushes over one of their works of art as Jon sat there talking excitedly about everything I had collected. The first night we decided to give them a tour of Ramstein AFB and grab a Doner Kabop. We got them checked on base, interestingly enough the pass to get them on base was never collected at the inspection point. We thought momentarily about keeping it and adding it to Jon's collection, but we decided against it. After a nice dinner and tour of the base we drove back home and talked for quite some time. The one thing I love about the Mitchells is their interest in everything, they are always asking questions...to everybody in the family, and we loved it. Through questions you become introspective and find out a lot about yourself. They shared some gifts for our kids from their friends back in NC and then we had family prayers and turned in for the night. The next day we set out for Frankfurt. It was raining a little as we left our home but within an hour it was almost perfectly clear and beautiful. First, we found our way to the Frankfurt temple and spent a hour touring the grounds. We also found a LDS store with CTR rings in German and French, I bought a Book of Mormon in French, German and Spanish for our collection. Sharmyn bought a bunch of German CTR rings for the young women back in her ward. Next we walked down to a local square that had a local market set up. We purchased a big red pepper, baguettes, cheeses, olives and heart-shaped salami and sat in the middle of the square and watched as German life just swirled around us. It was fantastic! After the temple we went to a museum in Frankfurt that the Mitchells wanted to see. They appreciate art and know much about it so we felt it an honor to go to a art museum with them and learn about the art we were seeing. I must admit at this point in the story, although one can think art to be boring, my children have never expressed that sentiment as we have toured numerous art/museum exhibits. They do very well and try to appreciate what they are seeing, I know they are going to be much more cultured than I ever turned out, thank goodness. From the museum we walked across a bridge into the main part of Frankfurt. We made it to the Goethe museum (he wrote Faust, among many other literary works). We walked to a very large cathedral and toured the inside of that, and again were educated by the Mitchells about some of the meanings, architecture etc. We stopped in a little square and did some trinket shopping. The highlight was having McKay buy some stamps, using only German (Jon speaks some German and he was telling McKay what to say), McKay was definitely a good sport and we all had a good time and a nice memory. Thanks to you, Jon and Sharmyn, for making small moments like that the highlight of your visit. The next day was Sunday and we went to church. We have a German branch that overlaps their time with ours, so Jon and Sharmyn went to Sacrament with them and I think they really enjoyed it. We came home, changed clothes and drove to Idar Oberstein to see the church in the rock. We enjoyed a nice drive on a sunny day and arrived at our destination with only two wrong turns...not too bad when you consider who was driving. We hiked up to this church...in the rock. Literally looks like a giant scooped a piece out of the side of the mountain and then just placed this little church inside of it. We toured the tiny church but the highlight was looking at the paintings and getting an education by Jon about the symbolism and the content of the pictures. Then we took pieces of paper placed them over carved names on the wall and took a pencil and shaded the paper to leave the impression of the names...very cool. After the church, we decided to keep hiking up the hill to the castle. What a hike, pretty long and steep, but good company makes the time go fast. Rocks, leaves and paper were collected throughout our travels...anything can be a souvenir, many times it is the free things that are the most valuable. Jon and McKay (Jon started calling McKay 'enfant' while he was here) got lost from the group and ended up calling for Eddie (our dog) to help. Eddie wasn't much help and they had to find their way back to the group themselves. We drove home and munched on some food. We then had family home evening, and evening of songs around the piano and looked at a bunch of our photos on the tv. We have truly been blessed. The next day I had to work, so Sharma brought Jon and Sharmyn up to the hospital so they could see me in action, actually I just gave them a tour of the place, but I think they appreciated it. Sharma then took them to France (we love France) and went to Cora, a great French grocery store. I think they may have bought the place out of yogurt and cheese. Sharma then had to take the kids to piano lessons and Jon and Sharmyn stayed at our place packing and just winding down. I came home and had a lovely talk with them. Our last night together came too quickly, but our time together will always be remembered. We have truly strengthened a friendship and now often ask ourselves, 'why didn't we get to know them better when we lived in NC?'

That very same day Carey, Chantel and their kids joined us. Sharma picked them up from the train station. They were tired as they had already been to London and Paris for three days each. Their kids were doing remarkably well and ready to play with our kids. We also gave them the tour of the base and basically just let them relax the first day. They rented a car and from that point on, they were go, go, go. They decided to drive to Prague, Munich and Neuschwanstein castle in a matter of two days. A very long trip but they really seemed to like it quite a bit. Our kids continued to play and entertain each other. It is great when cousins can get a long so well and entertain each other and play. They also went to Trier, Germany (one of our favorite, little cities in Germany) and then kept going to Luxembourg city. They did that on a Sunday afternoon, which just goes to show how close many places are to us. It seemed like they had a great time and would fancy a return to Europe again...maybe Italy this time. It is so nice to have friends and family come and visit, to renew ties and catch up.

Rome can't be seen in a day

We left early to take our flight to Rome. We got off to a later start than I wanted and then realized that my GPS had indicated that the trip would be 20 min longer than I had anticipated. We got to the ticket counter, no line thank goodness. Next we stood in line for the security check and again relatively short lines. What we didn't realize is that we were racing against time, in fact as we made it to the terminal there was nobody else in line...that was because everybody else was on the plane settling in. They immediately closed off the gate as we walked through. We were the last ones on and needed to find a place to deposit our luggage, which is never an easy thing to do on a Ryan air flight. We made it to Rome a little early, got in line to use the restroom and then walked out to catch our bus to Rome. Unfortunately, our little detour to the restroom delayed us just enough to miss the bus, we were the first people for the next bus. Our bus took us to station Termini, the main bus, metro and train station. What we didn't know was that our bus dropped us literally 50 yards from our hotel. Our hotel consisted of one medium sized room with 2 beds, a bunk bed and a very small bathroom that had an intermittently working toilet. The location of the hotel was fantastic, next to the metro station, a stones throw from the hotel and within walking distance to the Colosseum. It was beautiful weather, completely sunny and 60 degrees. We made it to the Colosseum and had a great view of it as we approached it. Now I had Rick Steve's guide to Rome and had read it multiple times and did my due diligence in researching what to do and how to do it. But I went against his advice and stood in line at the Colosseum, I could have stood in line at Palatine hill and probably saved a half and hour. We stood in line for 30 minutes and gained access to the immense structure. You walk through and just can't imagine how old this structure is and even more unbelievable is what went on here. The precursor to our stadiums today. There were a lot of people at the Colosseum but only a fraction of what would be here during the summer, that plus the fact that it wasn't hot made it a very nice experience. From here we walked over to Palatine hill and walked through the ruins and made our way across to the Roman forum area. Again, many ruins and structures, it just keeps you in awe of what they were able to achieve so many centuries ago. After walking along cobblestones paths for several hours and almost twisting...nay, breaking a couple of ankles it was time to move on. After leaving the Roman Forum area we walked to the Pantheon past many old churches and buildings. The Pantheon is interesting because it has an oculus in the center which allows the only light into the building (at least at the time it was built, now it has some mood lighting at night). The artist Rafael is also buried here. From here we walked several small streets until we reached the Trevi fountain. The steps were filled with people, many people sat on the steps while others were lining the edge of the fountain and casting coins over their shoulders into the fountain. I must admit, each one of us jettisoned a coin into the water to ensure that we will return to Rome...I think that is a good investment. There were many vendors selling all sorts of trinkets. We took the metro home at that point, because we were all tired and still needed to officially check into the hotel. We made it back to the hotel and crashed. Our toilet wasn't working so I called the desk and they had a guy named Bruno come and fight with it, only to get it working temporarily.

The original plan was to get up very early the next day and stand in line at the Vatican. We decided not to get up so early and just make our way to the Vatican at a decent hour. We finally made it to the Vatican by 9:30am and stood in the line. We were hounded by "tour groups" wanting to get us to join with the promise that we could skip the line. We were not swayed, we stuck to our guns and stood in line for 30 minutes. We were herded like cattle into the Vatican museum. Man, so much to see in this tiny country. We made our way through the museum and saw all sorts of classic works by Michelangelo, Bernini and Rafael. The opulence was remarkable, there was definitely an air of "look what we own". The Vatican museum was long, with the final destination leading to Sistine chapel. The chapel was really an amazing site, I can't imagine Michelangelo putting together a scaffolding and lying on his back for several years, meticulously painting this huge ceiling. Amazing. The best part was listening to the security guards yell out "No photo!" over, and over and over again. You could tell they were definitely tired of saying it. I must say we did break the rules and take some photos, I think we were only busted one time. I mean really, how can you stand in this amazing room without stealing a few photos? We left the country of the Vatican temporarily after seeing the Sistine chapel. We stopped at a little outside cafe and ordered three pizzas. After filling our bellies, we walked over to St Peter's square and snapped a bunch of pictures and then got in line for St Peter's Basilica. Upon passing through the metal detector we entered into the church itself. A huge, cavernous church that is believed to house the remains of Peter, the apostle of Christ. After the basilica we decided to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine, 60 degrees should not be wasted. We pulled up a couple of steps, leaned up against a pillar and just lounged about. There were a lot of pigeons in the area waiting for people to discard their food. As we sat there, one of these birds decided to relieve himself on my wife's camera. It was a direct hit, I mean it couldn't have been more accurate. The good thing is that it landed squarely on outside of the lens and only caused cosmetic damage. I don't think anybody else around us was even aware that we were had just become casualties and that soon they would too. Now I could make up some old fable at this point and say it is good luck to have a pigeon relieve itself on you on a sunny Saturday in St Peters Basilica...but I don't recall that ever being talked about in Rick Steve's book, and after all, if Rick didn't say it, it can't be true. After sitting there for an hour we walked to Piazza Navona. On the way we stopped by a grocery store and purchased baguettes, chesse, chips, red pepper and some water. We parked ourselves at one of the many benches in the piazza and watched life go by. There were many people milling around just taking in the night, enjoying the atmosphere. There were many artist stands selling their wares, with many artists drawing seated tourists. The kids were amazed at their talent and would have stayed there all evening watching them if we would've let them. We left the piazza and meandered over to the Pantheon. Each piazza we went to was alive with people. Onward we kept moving, to the Trevi fountain. The fountain was surrounded with people sitting on the steps, vendors selling their goods, snapshots going off and coins being tossed over shoulders. We purchased all of the kids this cool little toy, basically a very heavy balloon material filled with a flour like substance. When you molded it, it would stay in that position. It had yarn for hair and two little eyes, it was really a neat souvenir and funny to play with. Next we walked to the Spanish steps and again mingled with the crowd and took some pictures. From there we caught the Metro home.

The next day we started out by going to piazza del Popolo. We bought muffins from a girl scout stand outside of a church. After eating the muffins we went into the church and sat for 20 minutes of mass. After listening to the sermon in Italian and appreciating the religious fervor, we decided to move on. We walked down to the Spanish steps and took copious pictures all the while maneuvering through the crowd toward the steps themselves. We climbed the steps, took some more pictures and took in a view of the city. At the top there was a church that we took a break in. We walked over to Borghese Gardens, which overlooked the city. We stumbled upon a few young men showing off their rollerblading ability, they were doing tricks, weaving in and out of evenly spaced cones and doing "rubber legs"...thats the best way I can describe it. We rented two pedal powered go-carts for Maddi and McKay. 10 Euro for an hour for the both of them...a small price to pay for some fun times. Next we all had pinini sandwiches and kept moving toward the Borghese museum. We couldn't go into the museum, not only does it cost but you have to reserve a time to visit it. We walked further through the park and found several old men playing Bocce ball. Classic. We walked back into the city, past the US embassy. Our last destination was the Capuchin crypt. When we got there it wasn't going to be open for another 10 minutes, so we decided to find some Gelato...since I had been promising Maddi for three days. We all purchased two scoops and stood by one of the many running water fountains (ones that you can fill your water bottles from. They are throughout the city). Once finished we walked to the crypt and paid a small donation to see the remains of 4,000 Capuchin friars arranged in an artistic fashion. Sharma was a little freaked out and decided to take Maddi out, while Hailey, McKay and I finished up. After we finished we caught the metro back to the hotel. It was a great call as we were tired and the kids were ready to just sit and relax, plus it started to downpour about 2 hours after we got back to the hotel. The next day we caught our bus back to the airport only to find our plane delayed 1.5 hours because of snow on the ground back in Germany....great, do we really have to go home? Info Transportation to city: Ryan Air (10 Euro/person, roundtrip); Ciampino to Rome 8 Euro/person Transportation in city: Metro Lodging: Viennese due BB (near Termini station) Sites: Colosseum, Roman Forum, Trevi fountain, Spanish steps, Borghese park, Pantheon