The Holy Land-Day 1

The main reason we took this cruise was to get to Israel. My bucket list coming to Europe was Israel, Egypt and Russia. One down. I did a lot of research in preparing for coming to Israel. I knew that we needed to do a tour in Israel so we could see as much as we could. I emailed five different tour companies and whittled them down to one who gave us the best itinerary and best price. His name was Moti and he did a pretty good job. I can't give him a ringing endorsement because at times he spoke too much and had too much of a Pro-Israel slant. Don't get me wrong, I love Israel and the Israeli people but please don't put down my country or build your country up unnecessarily...just give me the facts of what we are seeing. Also, you have to realize that our tour guides (we had two buses and each bus had their own tour guide) are Jewish and therefore don't believe our Christian beliefs.

We got off to a rocky start, somewhere along the way I thought we were supposed to meet Moti at 9am. We got off of the ship a few minutes before 9 and there he was. He asked what took us so long because he was expecting us at 7am...your kidding, we wasted two hours on the ship? Man! So we had to adjust our itinerary for the first day and reverse the order. Once loaded on the buses we left the port area. We spent the first 40 minutes in the bus driving past Mt. Carmel, leading to the Jezreel valley (Valley of Armageddon). It was foggy to begin the drive and I prayed that the fog would lift so we could see everything we came to see. Within 30 minutes the fog was gone. As we drove through this large and spacious valley I imagined the armies of the world gathering in this valley and waging a devastating war. Could not believe I was here...this will be the theme of the next two days.

Our first stop was Mt. Tabor, where it is believed that the Transfiguration of Christ occurred. We had to disembark our buses at a base camp and take smaller shuttles to the top. We all filed into the shuttles, which took a little while to get everybody up to the top. It was a long and winding road to the top, but it gave a fantastic view of the valley below. There was a Franciscan church at the top of the mountain to celebrate the Transfiguration of Christ. There were three tabernacles built into the church, one for Christ, one for Moses and one for Elias (Elijah). As a side note, each place we were to visit was assigned to a member of our group. They were expected to do research and present a small devotional at each place where we could hear what happened there and read it in the scriptures. Hailey had the opportunity to read the account of the transfiguration out of the scriptures at this stop. We had a group photo here and then moved on.

Once down from the mountain we climbed aboard our buses again. Next stop was the River Jordan. The road wound through the mountains and then we could see another valley. This valley had a large lake in it, the Sea of Galilee (lowest fresh water lake on earth). It was much bigger than I imagined it to be. On the other side of the Sea of Galilee we could see the Golan Heights, Syria and Jordan. Wow! Seriously? These countries you hear about in the news...they are right there! We took our picture next the "Sea level" sign, which is interesting because you are used to the sign being near water. This one was half way down the side of a mountain.

We made our way to the Jordan River. Now this isn't the place that Jesus was baptized, it apparently is 100 Km to the south but for tourists sake they have created a stop to sell souvenirs etc. They have built a fenced off area of the River that you can go into. There is the opportunity to perform mock baptisms in the river. There were many many people that had paid money to dress in white, enter the river and have themselves 'baptized' by who knows who. I stood there in awe of what I was seeing...in my mind, making a mockery of a very sacred covenant that a true follower of Christ makes. But I had to take a picture. The river was teeming with huge catfish and muskrats, I don't think I would have entered the river even if I was paid. We had our devotional which was very nice. I bought a small bottle and went down to the edge of the river and filled it up with water. Pretty dirty, but who cares. The river itself was pretty with overhanging beaches from trees near the river bank, much like the pictures I saw in church of where Christ was baptized.

We left the River Jordan area and drove the banks of the Sea of Galilee. Our first stop was Tiberius along the shore. Not much happened here specifically, but it is in the general area of where many miracles occurred. We stopped here and had lunch. We all had falafels (pita filled with lettuce and deep-fried chickpeas) for lunch. After 30 minutes for lunch we were back in the bus and on to Capernaum. This city did hold several stories from the bible. This is where Jesus came to preach after leaving Nazareth. He chose many of his apostles from this small town. We stopped at a synagogue that Jesus preached at, not much of it left now. We also saw the spot that is claimed to be the home of St Peter, a small circle structure made of rocks and mortar. Over the top of his home are the foundations of several churches that have been built. Those have all been destroyed except for their foundation, now there is a modern church/structure that has been built, which still stands. While here many people had the chance to wander down to the shore of the Sea of Galilee and gather some rocks and sand.

Our next stop was the Mt of Beatitudes. Much like several stops there is no clearcut evidence that the Sermon on the mount was held where we visited. But it seems likely that it could have been here. And much like many places we saw, religions have built their churches over/on the spot where they think things occurred. The Mt of Beatitudes was no different, there was a Catholic chapel built at the top of the mountain and another edifice built half way down the mountain. Unfortunately, the manicured lawns, landscaping and buildings detract from what this place truly is. I wish it would have been left in its natural state. It was hard to get an idea of how people would have been gathered due to the planned landscaping.

We jumped back into the buses and started on our way back to the ship via Nazareth. Unfortunately we hit unexpected traffic on the way back and spent excess time in the bus. We would have hit Nazareth in the morning but because I was late getting our group off the ship we had to wait until the evening to see Nazareth. Everything was dark and it was hard to get an idea of what Nazareth really looked like. We stopped at the Basilica of Annunciation in Nazareth. This church was built by the Roman Catholic church and described as the place that they believe it happened. Whereas the Greek Orthodox church says that it occurred at a local spring and therefore they built their edifice there. Because we were running late we didn't have much time in the church itself. The outside of the church had some very interesting carvings in the large wooden doors of the church. We made it in the church and had just enough time to walk through the church without stopping. We went from the second floor down a spiral staircase to the first floor. It opened up into a large chapel that held made different versions of the the birth of the savior, each one from an artist from different countries. We left the church and wandered the grounds. As we were standing there the bells of the church started to chime...I love the bells on churches. And even before the church bells had stopped the Muslim call to prayer began. I also love the call to prayer. Hearing both of these sounds competing for my attention? I just loved it.

We made it back to the bus and drove back to the port. What a great first day. We felt tired but knew that we had seen so many wonderful things. What made it even better was that I was helping my children's testimony of the Savior grow. They got to see places that, up to that point time, they had only read about in the scriptures...in the words of MasterCard...priceless.

Katakolon and Days at sea

I have opted to group our Katakolon, Greece stop with our days on the ship in this blog post.

Our days at sea (there were four of them) consisted of sleeping in, usually after a late evening. We would normally get up just in time before the breakfast offering ended. The rest of the time was a game of cat and mouse with everybody, sometimes you would see several people that you knew throughout the day and other days you literally wouldn't see anybody from our group, and remember we approx 70 people in our group. I have to admit that I really enjoyed my days at sea, more so on this cruise than any other cruise that I have taken. I don't know why this was the case, but it probably had something to do with that everybody had their own agenda. Hailey, McKay and Maddi simply wanted to be with their friends all day long. Sharma had a chance to relax with friends, family or by herself and therefore she was contented. I fell into the same boat as Sharma, but I must admit most of my time was spent on sea days to myself. Most of the time I spent my hours in the "Around the clock lounge". This was a large, usually empty lounge that overlooked the sea. There were nice couches and chairs that one could lounge on. I usually had a book, iPad or iPhone in hand to keep me company. If this lounge was busy I was go to "Rick's Piano bar" or the "Wien Wien ballroom", both of which were next door. One of my fondest memories was hanging out in the Wien Wien ballroom with my children and all of their friends while they did homework. They did home work for several hours with a couple of games of chess thrown in just to keep their sanity. My daughter practiced for jazz band on their grand piano in this ballroom. It was awesome to sit in the ball room listening to my daughter play the piano while I was adrift in the Mediterranean sea.

We attended most of the shows at night, sometimes we opted to skip the performances, usually if it was the dancers. The entertainment for the most part was mediocre at best, but we appreciated a few of the acts. Breakfast and lunch were usually on our own, meaning there was no preplanning to eat, sometimes you ate by yourself, other times you had a large group. We opted for late dinner seating, which meant that we ate at 9pm. Very unusual for us, and probably will not opt for the late dinning again. We chose this option because we had some long port days and wanted to make sure that we could make it back on board in time for dinner. We started out with everybody in our group doing late dinning, by the second night, there were probably only 15 of us. We knew coming on to this cruise that the food wasn't their forte and it lived up to our expectations unfortunately. There were a few things that they did really well and there were several that were just 'okay' and there were a few that were complete strikeouts. Their version of pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving is the first thing that comes to mind. 'Horrific' I think best describes it. It looked inedible and it tasted even worse.

Our English liaison on board was able to arrange for all of the families with children in our group to have a chance to go up to bridge and meet the captain and see what it looks like to steer the ship. It is a marvelous opportunity, one that doesn't happen very much, in fact in the 13 cruises that we have been on, we have been to the bridge only one other time. I don't think they liked it too much when I tried to commandeer the ship...but hey it was worth a shot. I am sure there was a moment when the captain thought to himself "What did I get myself into?" when he saw 15 noisy, energetic children on his otherwise quiet bridge.

The ship was very nice, large and relatively empty. This made the cruise even that much better, the less people the better. Usually ships are filled so full that you have to reserve space on it just to sit down. The ship also had soft serve ice-cream. This may not sound like much of a luxury, but when you have kids that love ice cream this is a life saver. They may have eaten more ice cream than actual food.

The only downside to this trip was that some sort of sickness spread like wildfire through each of the families in our group. Our family had three people get hit with sickness. But literally every family had a bought of sickness-stomach ache, diarrhea, vomiting and just plain feeling bad. Luckily it only lasted one to two days and then it was gone.

The other thing about this cruise was that it was the best weather and calmest seas we have ever had. Everyday was sunny and 65 degrees. For three hours one evening the ship rocked moderately, other than that there was no rocking, so smooth you couldn't tell you were on a ship...calmest seas of all our cruises.

This brings us to our first stop...Katakolon. We have been to this stop before and did the only thing to do here...go to Olympia. Therefore because we had been here and McKay and Maddi were both sick we opted to get off of the ship and just find a beach and hang out there. Talking with a taxi driver at the port I found out there was a beach right next to the dock...literally 50 feet, it was called Plakes beach.

When we first got to the beach there was nobody there so my kids chose a couple of large rocks to sprawl across and catch some sun and just rest. Sharma and I did some exploring along the beach and collected sand and some small shells. Then I found a rock and found a comfortable position and let the sun beat down on me. After 30 minutes another person joined us, then 10 more minutes and four workers from the ship came and took a dip in the sea. Then 20 minutes after that another three joined us and so we decided it was time to pack up and go. We wandered into the town of Katakolon, there is not much there. One street 1/2 mile long with shops on either side. The most interesting thing happened however. I was in a shop with Sharma, she had picked out a couple of things so I was given the task of paying for the items. I struck up a conversation with the shop keeper as she spoke perfect English. We started making small talk and realized that she was from the US...then from Washington state...then from Tacoma...then had gone to my high school. She was a bit older than me so I wouldn't have known her, but still, what a small world. She gave me the 'Tacoma' discount on my items...nice.

By that point we were done and decided it was time to go back to the ship. We walked 10 minutes back to the ship and found our way to our cabin. Stop #1 completed.

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: