Days20-21 Venice

We left our family in Slovenia and drove our rental car to Venice. After dropping off the car 1 minute before it was due, we went to the airport to find out how to get to the islands of Venice. We ended up taking a bus to the edge of the mainland and then walked across a bridge to get to Venice. At this point we could have taken a water bus (vaparetto), but instead we decided to walk since it didn't look very far to our hotel. However, Venice is confusing with all the canals so we got lost, a few times. We did eventually find a good map and then found our way to our hotel. During our time in Venice we stayed at the Apostoli Palace. It has 12 rooms with each one named after one of the apostles. And we met a wonderful Italian man, Paul, who ran the front desk at the hotel.
Our first day in Venice we walked around to explore, do some shopping and of course get some gelatto. Then we had a funny mishap while trying to find a place for dinner. It was pouring down rain, after being 80 degrees just an hour before, and we had our trusty Rick Steves guide book and were trying to find a place he recommended. It wasn't until after searching for over 30 minutes did we find out the restaurant was closed because the owners were on vacation. And the sign was up above the restaurant and since it was raining we weren't looking up. We did find a different place to eat close to our hotel. During dinner we found out that we never want to eat anything "Venetian style." (It is squid cooked in it's own ink.) But we other seafood that was good and had a nice dinner together, with some gelatto for dessert.
Our second day we decided to take it slow, so Micah and I went off on our own and had a nice, relaxing day. In the morning we went to the Doge's Palace and spent a couple of hours there exploring. There were some interesting things to see such as torture devices, the prison and the beautiful palace rooms. And it was interesting to think of Venice as once being a world power. When we left the palace we took a vaparetto to the hotel to rest a bit. Then we went out to find a good place for lunch. I had a disappointing panini sandwich. But after lunch we met a lost Scottish couple and we had fun chatting with them a bit before we helped them find their way. We found some more gelatto, I found out they have a Nutella flavor yum yum. After walking around and exploring we went back to the hotel to meet up with Mom, Dad and Justin. We went to dinner together at a restaurant on one of the small canals. It was a nice dinner with even traveling musicians coming by and playing for us. And after dinner it was raining so we passed on going on a gondola ride, so instead we walked through St. Mark's Square and bid Venice good-bye. It was a nice end to our three week European adventure.

Days 15-19 in Slovenia

Well, we left Germany and headed to Slovenia. On our way we stopped in Salzburg for lunch and then got back on the road. We arrived at our relatives' house in the evening. We enjoyed a time of visiting and eating dinner before we headed to bed.
On Friday our relatives from Kim's grandma's side came and picked us up to go to see some churches and graves of relatives.We also went to a family farm. It is the farm Kim's great grandma grew up on. While we were there we learned how to cut the grass the Slovenian way and had a wonderful lunch.
After our time on the farm we went to a monastery and watched a short video on the lives of the monks. To end our evening we had a nice dinner at a local restaurant we ate yummy salad, wiener schnitzel and calamari. On Saturday we visited Kim's grandpa's other cousin and also went to the property Kim's grandpa's family owned. It was neat to walk around the property and think of what life would have been like when Kim's great grandpa was born in a house that was on the property. Next, we went to lunch and ate way too much yummy food.
In the evening we went to a tourist spot--Lake Bled. We took a boat to the island in the middle of the lake. On the island is a church and while we were there we got to see a wedding taking place. Micah also carried Kim up the 99 steps, the legend says if the man carries his loved one up all the steps they will have a long happy marriage. We finished the evening by eating the local dessert at a restaurant and then going to a gingerbread factory and being surprised by our relatives having special gingerbread hearts made with our names on them.
Sunday was the day we had a big family reunion with both sides of the family. We enjoyed meeting everyone and getting to know them. We had a wonderful day spending time with family and eating lots of wonderful food.
On Monday we went to the capital city of Lublijana, walked around in the rain and visited the castle. We also drove into the mountains and visited some caves underground. It was amazing how huge the caves are. It seemed surreal.
We had a fabulous time in Slovenia with our family. We enjoyed all the time we spent with them and wished we could have stayed longer.

Days 13-14 Oberammergau, Germany

On Day 13 we drove from Chamonix, France to Oberammergau, Germany. It was not a very eventful day. We spent 10 hours driving in the car. For lunch we stopped in Salzburg, Austria. We had a yummy lunch (Kim had warm feta cheese wrapped in bacon on top of a salad). It was a pretty uneventful day.
Day 14 was our only full day in Oberammergau. We woke up early so we could get to Neuschwanstein castle for our scheduled tour time. The castle is the one that they modeled Sleeping Beauty's castle after for Disneyland. It is only one-third finished since King Ludwig died before he could complete it. We only saw the parts that are finished. It is beautiful. Buckingham Palace was more impressive, though. The views of the castle are beautiful. There is a bridge close by where you can get a great view of the castle. After our tour we ate lunch at a restaurant where we had a view of the castle. We ate sausages, sauerkraut and apple strudel. By this time the castle area was getting very crowded and we were glad we were leaving.
We left the castle and went to the nearby Tegelberg summer luge. Here's a video I found on YouTube that shows what the luge is like. The luge was a lot of fun. The first time we took it kind of easy. The second time we tried not to brake at all. We got going pretty fast. Micah and Justin went a third time. We think Disneyland should build one of these. It was a blast!
We spent the rest of the day in Oberammergau. We went shopping and just walked around the town. It was a Catholic holiday so a lot of places were closed.

Day 12

Our first full day in Chamonix. We woke up early to catch the lift up to the top of the nearest mountain to get some up close views of Mt. Blanc. We had to take two lifts/gondolas to get to 10,000 feet. At this point it was freezing and of course we packed for summer so we were very cold. I was wearing as many clothes as I could put on, and was still freezing. There were people ice climbing, rock climbing and getting ready to trek to the top of Mt. Blanc.
It was kind of surreal to be at the top of a mountain and it took less than 15 minutes. And there was a building with a cafe and bathrooms, and it had ice caves too.
When we were on top we walked around, looked at the views, snapped pictures and then warmed up with some hot chocolate/coffee. When we thawed out we hopped on the gondola and took it to the halfway point. We took a little hike to Lac Bleu. I was glad we took this 30 minute hike instead of the 2 and a half hour hike down the mountain some of my other family members were thinking about doing.At the bottom of the mountain Mom bought a painting by a local artist. We spent the rest of the day having a picnic lunch, shopping and exploring the town. For dinner we went La Dru. We ate outside and had an amazing view of the mountains around us. We ate cheese fondue, soup, salad, the guys had a bar-b-que on their table that they used to grill raw meat. We finished with creme brulee and coffee.

Day 11-Chamonix

This morning we left our hotel, got on the Metro and walked to the car rental place. We picked up our Alfa Romeo and headed out of Paris, unfortunately we didn't find the freeway that circles Paris. We ended up driving an hour out of our way before we eventually found the right road. And did I mention the car seats five and there are five of us adults? It was not the most comfortable car trip, but it was cheaper than taking a train for us.
We stopped in a small town for lunch, but everything was closed since it was Sunday. It was nice to see that things just shut down for Sunday and most people go to church. But since everything was closed we ended up eating lunch at a McDonalds. It's pretty much the same as at home. Then we got back on the road and then stopped in Beaune to get an ice cream cone and just look at the cute little city. We finally arrived in Chamonix over eight hours after we left Paris.
Chamonix is a cute alpine town. It reminded us of Leavenworth, WA. It is set in the French Alps close to the base of Mt. Blanc (the highest peak in Europe, it is over 15,700 feet). The mountains are all around the town and they are beautiful. We spent the evening walking around the town and eating some dinner before we went to bed.

Day 10

Our last day in Paris. We were sad to leave, but excited for the rest of our trip. On our last day we went to the Louvre museum. We just got a 2 hour glimpse at the massive collection. Of course we saw the Mona Lisa, although we did not get very close since there were so many people in the room. We also saw the French crown jewels, many Greek statues, paintings by Da Vinci, and many other beautiful paintings. And the building itself is beautiful to look at; it was the palace before the royalty moved to Versailles.
From the Louvre we walked to the Champs-Elysees and enjoyed doing some window shopping, there are even car dealerships! At the end of the Champs-Elysees is the Arc de Triomphe. We walked up to the top of the Arc and loved the views of Paris. (And added another 284 steps to our monument climbing, see the picture.) It was also fun to watch the cars in the massive roundabout below us.We left the Arc to walk to the Eiffel Tower. When we got to the tower we realized we would not be able to take the elevator up, since it was a 2 hour wait. So we got in the line for the stairs, which was still 30 min. long. (Here's another 700 stairs.) It was fun to be able to go up the stairs, we got to enjoy the view longer and now we get to say we have climbed up the three major monuments in Paris. :) The views were amazing. We also sent a postcard to Micah's work and to Kayla who was housesitting for us. They have a little postoffice on the first floor of the tower. While we were on the second floor we got seperated from Mom, Dad and Justin, but we had agreed to meet on the grass. It wasn't until we climbed down that we wondered what green grass they meant. We looked around the parks at the base of the tower and waited, but didn't find them so we got an ice cream cone and a crepe to eat while we waited. We didn't find them until we got to the hotel, and found out they had meant the fake green grass on the first floor of the tower, oh well.
For our last night in Paris we had a group dinner at Le Grand Coulbert. We enjoyed talking with the other members of our group and eating the wonderful food. The tour has been a lot of fun, and it has been nice to have a guide give us information on the places and things we were seeing. We had a great group and a wonderful guide. We hope we will get to go on another Rick Steves tour in the future.

Day 9

This day we went on a walking tour of Montmartre. We met our tour guide in front of the Moulin Rouge. We learned that moulin means windmill. This is also the neighborhood where the French film Amelie was filmed. On our tour we saw where Picasso and Van Gogh once lived and worked. We learned how the artists lived and what restaurants and bars they went to. It was interesting to be there and see what the artists lived like.
At the top of the hill we came to the church of Sacre Coeur. We spent some time looking around the church. Mom got a bee sting while we were standing on the steps. Then we went to a square where there were artists painting and selling their wares. We wanted to buy a painting as a reminder of our time in Paris so we walked around to look at the paintings. Kim picked out one of the Eiffel Tower. After we bought our painting we went to get some lunch; we had yummy quiche.
Later in the day we went to the Impressionism museum, the Musee d'Orsay where we saw paintings by some of the artists who worked in Montmartre along with others by Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, etc. We loved seeing paintings we have only seen prints of. They are beautiful. Then we walked over to the Orangerie musuem that has some of Monet's waterlily paintings. The paintings are huge. There are two circular rooms that have four paintings each. Each painting takes up one large wall. The paintings were done at different times of the day so some are dark, while others are light. They are amazing.
We headed back to the hotel to rest for a bit before dinner. For dinner we went to a restaurant our tour guide recommended. It is one of the restaurants the artists went to and instead of paying for their food with money, they painted the inside of the restaurant. We went to La Coupole, it has pillars that were painted by Monet, Picasso and others. Micah got to try steak tartare. We also ate oysters, salmon, creme brulee, and a rasberry tart. It was a wonderful dinner, the best we had on our trip. Our waiters were a lot of fun and we had fun trying to speak French to them.
After our dinner we went on a river cruise on the Seine. It was beautiful to see Paris all lite up at night. We had great views from the boat. We watched the Eiffel Tower sparkle, saw Notre Dame, people dancing in a park, and other sites along the way. This was a perfect day.

Day 8

The first thing we did on day 8 was take the Metro to the Ile de la Cite where Paris started. We went to the Saint Chapelle church first. This was a church built by a French king to be a jewelry box for the crown of thorns Jesus wore when he was crucified. It has amazing stained glass windows that reach up towards the sky. Each large panel has stories from a certain part of the Bible (ex. the Resurrection, the book of Joshua, etc.) We enjoyed gazing up at the windows and marveling at their beauty. Next, we walked to Notre Dame. One of the cardinals of the Catholic church had passed away so they had a memorial set up for him inside the cathedral; so it was very busy when we were there. We had just enough time to go in and have an hour inside. It is amazing how big it is, it took over one hundred years to build it.
After our quick tour of Notre Dame we walked to our lunch at a restaurant where we ate in the wine cellar. Afterwards we walked through the Latin Quarter to get to the Cluny Museum. It is a museum of things from the Middle Ages. We saw stained glass windows, beautiful tapestries and lots of weapons. This is where our tour ended and we had some free time. We decided to walk back to Notre Dame to go to the top. We stood in line for two hours to get the chance to walk up the 400 stairs to get to the amazing views. We even got to see the huge bell, gargoyles, and the long line to get into the cathedral.
That evening we went to a concert at Saint Chapelle (the same church we went to in the morning). It was a concert with two violins, two violas, one cello, one bass and one harpischord. They did Adagios, and they also did Canon in D. It was beautiful to listen to the music in such an amazing setting. The acoustics were really good, too. There were only about 40 people in attendance, it was a very intimate setting. This ended up being one of our favorite things we got to do on our trip.

Day 7-Paris

Today we leave for Paris! We were excited to take the Chunnel to Paris. We had to get to the train station early. While we were waiting there was also a train leaving for Disneyland Paris and they had a musical group play to get the Disney customers excited to go to the park. It was fun listening to them, and it made us wish we were going to Disneyland. But we are going to Paris, so we weren't too disappointed. The train ride was a couple of hours long and we were under the English Channel for only 20 minutes. Most of the trip is going through the north of France. During the trip we enjoyed talking to another couple from our tour group. When we arrived in Paris we got on a bus for a tour of the city. We went by the Opera house, the Louvre, stopped by the Eiffel tower to get pictures, and saw lots of great views of the beautiful city. The bus then took us to our hotel. We had an hour to get settled and then had a walking tour of our neighborhood. After our walk we had a couple of hours of free time. We spent our time looking for crepes, yum yum. We also explored our neighborhood some more. Then it was time to meet our group for a group dinner. We ate some wonderfully yummy food. After dinner we walked through the city to see the Eiffel Tower at night. It was neat to see Paris light up for the night. We also used one of the self cleaning toilets. We got to the tower a little before 10pm. At 10pm it sparkles for 10 minutes, it does the same thing at 11 and midnight. It was beautiful. I found a video on YouTube of the tower sparkling click on the link to check it out. Eiffel Tower lighting up at night. We thought of going up it, but the line was long and we wouldn't be able to get up until 11pm. So we just headed back to the hotel to rest for our first full day in Paris.

Day 6

Our last day in London. We went to the British Library where we saw a Gutenberg Bible, the Magna Carta, Beatles lyrics, Sheakesphere's signature on a bill of sale for his house, and they had a special exhibit on sacred texts (the Bible, Torah and Koran). It was so neat to be able to see these old manuscripts. Of course we especially enjoyed the Bible texts, one of which was a piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Kim also enjoyed seeing the Magna Carta and Gutenberg Bible since she taught her students about them last year.
Next, we went to the British Museum. We only spent two hours there, we want to go back just to spend some more time at the museum. They have so much to see there. There are lots of things from Egypt, Assyria and other old civilizations. We saw mummies, statues from the Parthenon in Athens, stone carvings from Assyria, shields from the Celts, and many other fun old things. We had a great guide who helped us see the highlights of the museum.
We had a full day's schedule so we had to leave the museum right after our tour. We ate lunch at a yummy pizza place and headed to Buckingham Palace. At first Micah and I were not going to go to the palace because it was so expensive, but we heard from others that they enjoyed it and they thought it was worth going. We decided to go and we are glad we did. It is only open in the summer because the queen is on vacation. We got an audioguide with our tour and it was fun listening to the commentary as we went through the beautiful rooms. It is amazing how elaborate the rooms are, they are gorgeous. I wish we could have taken pictures inside! It is also the 60th wedding anniversary of the queen and prince. We saw her wedding dress, jewelry, video of the wedding and some wedding presents. I enjoyed our tour there.
After the palace we had just enough time to go back to the hotel to get changed, catch a quick dinner at a Pret a Manger and then head to the theatre for Phantom of the Opera. Before we left for our trip we bought tickets online to go to Phantom. We have never seen it live and thought London would be the place to see it. It was a lot of fun seeing it, although we were way up in the nose bleed section. But it was still amazing!

Day 5

Today was our first full day of our tour. We went to Westminster Abbey where we had a guided tour with Tom. He gave us the history of the Abbey and showed us where some of famous graves are in the building. He was fun to listen to because he is very British and has a great sense of humor. Our favorite parts of the tour were seeing Queen Elizabeth I's grave and just looking at the amazing, beautiful architecture.
After Westminster, we took a walk down Whitehall. This is where the London government buildings are located. We walked by 10 Downing Street where the Prime minister lives, but didn't get to see much because they had police officers in the way. We had lunch at a nice pub. Kim ate a ploughman's lunch (bread, meat, fruit, and yummy goat cheese) and Micah had a large steak meat pie.
Then we hopped on a bus to head to the Tower of London. We took a tour with a Beefeater and heard about some of the famous people who were imprisoned and then executed at the Tower. After our tour we saw the British crown jewels. One crown had an amazing diamond on the top, it is the size of a tennis ball. Then we just walked around and looked in the buildings and enjoyed looking at the exhibits.
Then it was time to go back to the hotel for a quick rest. For dinner we went to a grocery store to get food for a picnic. They have great prepared foods at their grocery stores. We had pasta salads, great sandwiches and fruit. We took our picnic to the Buckingham Palace and ate on the Victoria monument right in front of the palace. What a great view!
We left the palace and walked to the London Eye. We thought it would be fun to go on the Eye at night to see London all lit up. We happened to buy tickets five minutes before closing (no lines, yeah!) and hopped on one of the last pods. There were only four other people in our same pod. London was beautiful at night. It is amazing how high up we got, Big Ben looked little. We almost didn't go on the London Eye because it is expensive. But we thought it would be fun to do at night, and also our friends Melissa and Bryan got engaged on it so we wanted to experience the Eye. We were glad we did do it. There were beautiful views!

Day 4

Sunday. Today we went to the Victoria Station to find out how to use the tube to get to Hillsong Church in London. We ended up getting a one day Travelpass. The tube is wonderful! I wish we had something like that in the Seattle area. We got to the church early, so we had some time to find an internet cafe and check emails. Hillsong was a lot of fun to go to. The worship was awesome. That day they had a guest speaker, Marilyn Hickey, from Colorado. She is an evangelist who travels the world. She was very inspiring.
After church we found a quick lunch and then headed back to the internet cafe to send out some emails. Then it was time to head back to the hotel to meet our tour group. First, we went to Al and Caroline's room to see them and see how their trip to the English countryside went. Then we went to the breakfast room to meet our group. We spent an hour introducing ourselves, going over what the tour involves and schedules. After our meeting we went on a walking tour of the St. James Park area. While we were on our walking tour we were not allowed to go down one of the streets because there was a film crew filming a scene for National Treasure 2.
It was a car chase scene with Nicolas Cage, and we saw three cars going around with their wheels squealing. On our walk we also walked through Leicester Square and the theatre district.
After our walk, we went to a restaurant by our hotel for our first group dinner. It was a nice three course dinner. We had smoked salmon, sausage, pasta, fish and wonderful desserts.

Day 3-London

On Saturday we woke up at 3:30am so we could make our 6am flight to London. We really needed some coffee this morning. Around 9am we arrived in London. We found the street our hotel is on, but had a hard time finding it. A British lady stopped and asked if we needed help and we told her we were lost. She ended up using her cell phone and called the hotel to ask for directions. She was very nice! We found the hotel, dropped off our bags, and went to explore London. Our hotel was close to Buckingham Palace so we walked there and looked around, walked to Westminster, Big Ben and the London Eye.
We found some fish and chips for lunch (we still like Ivar's best). By this time we were exhausted because we were up so early, so we went to St. James Park and sat down and relaxed for a bit. We looked through our Rick Steves book and looked for something to do later in the day. We decided to go back to the hotel to rest and freshen up and then we would walk to Harrod's and Hyde Park.

For dinner we went to Harrod's for tea, sandwiches and scones, mmmmmmmmmmm. We also had fun looking around the massive store. It is amazing how much stuff is in Harrod's, they even have Armani baby clothes. After window shopping we walked over to Hyde Park. Kim was excited to see swans swimming in the lake. We walked around for a little while, but our feet were hurting from all of our walking so we decided to walk back to the hotel. On our walk back we saw four Ferraris. We are looking forward to starting our tour tomorrow!

Day 2

Today was our only full day in Edinburgh, and Micah's birthday. In the morning we had a wonderful breakfast at our B&B; we had a hard time eating it all. After breakfast we decided to get to Edinburgh Castle right when it opened to beat the crowds. We were glad we did because when we left around lunchtime it was getting crazy. At the castle we went on the 20 minute tour and enjoyed listening to our guide's accent and information. One of the buildings in the castle is over 900 years old. All of the other old buildings from the same time period were destroyed by Robert the Bruce. We also saw the Scottish crown jewels, the prison, a military memorial, the Royal Scots Army exhibit, the great hall and lots of great views of the city.

When we left the castle we walked down the Royal Mile and enjoyed looking in shops and window browsing. We went in one shop and talked to the girl working there about tartan and asked her questions about it. Kim ended up buying a scarf as a souvenir. When we got to the end of the Royal Mile we saw the Holyrood Palace, the Queen's residence in Edinburgh. Across the street is the new parliment building. We just walked around and looked at the beautiful buildings. After our walk we went to the New Town and found a T-Mobile store for Micah to get a UK sim card for his phone. We then went to the National Gallery and looked at many beautiful paintings. They have some VanGogh, Monet and Sargents. My favorite was one that showed a visual representation of the Old Testament on the left and New Testament on the right, and Jesus in the middle. It had a lot of detail and symbolism. When we came out of the gallery there was a band of bagpipers playing. We really enjoyed listening to them. We left downtown and started looking for a place to have dinner for Micah's birthday. After looking for awhile we ended up going to the Blonde Restaurant. We shared an appetizer of fishcakes and entree of salmon with a glass of wine. It was an enjoyable dinner. After dinner we left to go back to our B&B to pack and try to get to bed early since we had to wake up at 3:30 am the next day for our early flight to London.

Day 1-Edinburgh

Our first day in Europe we flew into London, took a bus to Luton airport and then flew to Edinburgh--all on one hour of sleep in the last 24 hours. We arrived in Edinburgh around 2pm. When we got to our B&B (Belford Guest House) we went against the advice we heard to not take a nap, we were just so tired we couldn't stay awake. After we woke up and got ready we went to a pub for our first pub dinner. Micah had a Guiness, and it was better than one at home. And the dinner was pretty good.

After dinner we decided to walk the mile and a half into downtown. Edinburgh is an old city from the middle ages. The buildings are made of stone and all look old and quaint. When we arrived downtown we walked to the Royal Mile where there was a lot going on since their big Fringe Festival would be starting in just a few days. We watched a few magicians, dodged crowds and enjoyed the energy of the city. Then we turned a corner close to the castle and found some military men getting on horses. We stopped and watched for a while. The Tattoo Military show was set to happen the next day, and tonight was the dress rehearsal. So we got to see the horses and the men on top (who also had musical instruments). We would have enjoyed seeing the Tattoo; we tried to get tickets in February. We later heard they sold out in December. Later we walked back to our B&B. It is a nice walk since the closer we got to our place the quieter the streets became.

We're home from Europe

We made it back home after three weeks of adventures in Europe! We will be adding to the blog to give more details about our trip, so stay posted.

Christmas 2006 Vacation

Kim's family has been planning a vacation together for many years and they finally decided to go on a cruise. I am glad that they waited until I was a part of the family to go because it was a lot of fun. The short version is Seattle, Orlando, Disneyworld, Miami, Costa Maya-Mexico, Grand Cayman, Jamacia, Miami, Orlando, Seattle. But the details are much more interesting. Most of the family met in Orlando at a house near Disneyworld. It was a big house but pack 19 relatives in and it gets quite cozy.
It was there that we received a call from my brother-in-law, Justin (the only person who couldn't go on the vacation due to a scheduling conflict with his first Christmas Concert as an elementary music teacher.) He said that the worst wind storm on record blew through the Seattle area (60-80mph gusts.) There were people who didn't have power for a week or more. We were so sad to have to endure 70-90 degree sunny weather.

Well, back to the phone call from Justin, He said he had some good news and bad news. "Remember the tree in your backyard?" (This is the same tree from the blog post from last year when I was trying to destroy the ivy.) Justin continued, "The good news is that you can finally remove all of the ivy. All the way to the top of your 150ft tree." "However, the bad news is that the wind storm blew it over." I am glad he didn't stop there, he also said that it didn't fall on our house.

A side note: the wind storm postponed his concert until January 22nd which we did get to attend afterall. The bummer is that he didn't get to come on the vacation.

We went to Disneyworld's Magic Kingdom the day after we got there. It was fun, including getting shipwrecked. Which I will have to continue the next opportunity I have to blog.