Part Twee

Belgium

On our way to our lovely rented home in Belgium we stopped at Flander's Field museum.

It was very well done.  Our hostess was sad, however, because she had discount tickets to lots of museums and other things around the area for us to use.  Oh well.  

We also saw Brugge,

Old wall- under a hotel, now.  They let you go see it if you ask, however, and since Rick Steve's told us to ask- We did!

 Fancy Podium for the preacher depicting Adam and Eve

Brussels and Gent.

Gent was a much smaller version of Brugge, and let's face it, the highlight of touring Brussels has to be this guy- right??? The Mannekin Pis (1618).  Several stories say why the little boy peeing was where the town came to get it's drinking water from.  One, the little boy peed on a witches house and got turned to stone.  Another one, a man lost his son and said he would make a statue of what he was doing when he finally found him.  There are several others, but regardless, he's a lot smaller than you think he will be, even when forewarned by Rick!

We got lovely chocolates and we ate Belgium waffles and Belgium fries.

Beautiful, Beautiful Belgium.

I would love to live there- unfortunately they already gave that spot away for next year, so we are going back to the states.  Boo! and Yeah.  I'm of two minds about it.  Well I will try to enjoy our last year here and enjoy traveling to places like...

What do you do when you are so behind?

This year has flown by and I just can't seem to keep caught up.  Since March, I have written one blog post, but I think it is best to keep that blog post unpublished for awhile.  Instead I decided to just go slowly through and see if we can catch up to our "now" by the end of summer.  So here it is-

 Spring Break

 Part Une- Paris:

The kids and Rob really didn't want to go to Paris, but Emma decided she really needed to see it before going back to the states, so we fit it into our Spring break trip.  Our trip there started out great. We stopped at Verdun and lit a candle at the memorial there.

We also wandered around the pock marked landscape.  Think of a teenagers face who is suffering with severe acne- that is Verdun.  You look at the landscape 100 years after World War 1 and it's still so scarred and full of holes that you wonder how anyone survived!

Then we stopped at Reims and saw the Norte Dame Cathedral where all the kings of France have had their coronations.

It was amazing!  Joan of Arc brought Charles the VII here to be crowned.
After all those stops we got to Paris rather late.  We stayed in a wonderful tiny Parisian apartment in a great neighborhood.  Unfortunately it was such a hopping neighborhood it took Rob 2 hours to find a parking spot.  We were so worried about the car the entire time we were there.  Besides a little keying on the gas tank, it came away OK, however and without parking tickets!  We kept it where it was after getting it parked and metro-ed everywhere.

We saw Notre Dame (We actually liked the Reims one better.)

Although the Paris one does have an amazing rose window in blues.

We all put our feet on point zero- we were there!

I kissed Rob on the Lock Bridge

We continued our tradition and had French Fries in France!

We saw the Eiffel Tower and climbed up over 700 steps to the second platform.

Poor Max was crying most of the way, because he is so afraid of heights, but he kept going.  I took him inside the stores and museum parts to get him inside away from the wind.  That helped a lot.

We also subjected them to the Louvre.

Yep- had to be done.
And we saw her- over about 200 heads, but we still saw dear old Mona Lisa.

We also walked the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.  Along the way we ate yummy macaroons

- our favorite were the lemon, and rode this amazing slide at a car shop.

The Arc De Triomphe circle is still as crazy as ever.  You can sit there for hours being amused and amazed that there aren't more accidents.

It's something like 11 entrances and exits all converging and diverging around that remarkable monument.  These Parisians are crazy!- so Asterix would say.  We found his amusement park-

too bad it was opening up a few days after we were there.  The kids love Asterix and Obelix. We saw it as we made our way to....

Cruisin the Baltic

Warnemunde and Rostock, Germany

We chose not to take a fast train down to see Berlin at breakneck speed like many others on the cruise, since we live in Germany and can go see it like it is meant to be seen another time.  Instead we took the train to Rostock to see...

Some fun swings outside the train station

 The Max-Samuel Haus sign

 One of the largest astrological clocks which didn't seem to be working- or maybe we just couldn't figure it out.

 And one of the largest organs

and this funny little goat fountain

 Then we took the train back and went to the beach

 It was too cold to enjoy the beach, but that didn't stop some of the Europeans from naked sunbathing.  Eww, don't look now!

It was a fun, relaxing start to the cruise!

Helsinki, Finland

From where we docked in Helsinki was just a short walk to all the major sites.  We heard that we would have to take a bus to some of the farther out ones, but we walked and didn't find it unusually far.  Because we walked we didn't have time to get out to see the Fortress, though.  Instead we saw the Lutheran church- the main religion of Finland 

and the Upenski church which is Eastern Orthodox

and much more ornately decorated.

We saw the Guardians of Gondor or lamp holders outside the train terminal.  I will let you decide
which.
 

We took the scenic route near the inlet and came upon a large torch which we had no idea what it was for.  All I know,  is it wasn't the olympic torch, but it looked very vikingish, so we liked it.

We finished off our tour by visiting the rock church- which was carved out of... Wait for it... rock.  It just looks like piles of rock were put on the entrance, but I promise, it was really carved out of a rock.

Tallin, Estonia

This is a medieval town that we were going to take a fun bike tour in, but it was raining that day, so instead we did what Kress' do best, we walked it.

 Tallin is famous for being the place where Skype was developed.  You can say thank you to Jaan Tallinn, Mom and Carolyn.

It is also believed that in 1441 the first ever Christmas tree stood here in the town hall square.  Other than that, it used to be under communist Russian rule for a long time and is happy to have it's independence.  It is a super cute medieval town with walls and ramparts still around it.  And of course it has it's share of pretty churches

 and buildings

 The wall

It also has this cool walk that is a timeline.  1154 Estonia first appeared on a world map.  Who knew?

The cobblestone all day long was a killer!

Pretty gardens outside the wall

Emma found a candy shop that did all kinds of fun things with Marzipan.  Cute to look at, but nasty to eat.  Sorry Mom and Lynette, I know you like it, but you are the only two American's I know that can stand it.  I gave all our marzipan samplers from our Rittersport mix away to the Swiss missionary before he left.

Stockholm, Sweden

Stockholm is beautiful with all it's hundreds of tiny islands.  It seemed everyone had a summer home out on one of them.

It was the only time they opened the very front of the boat for passengers so that we could see it up close and personal.  Rob and I were the only ones of our family that got up early enough to go see the view.  It was so stunning that Rob wanted to move there.  Since it was July and we still had to wear jackets, however, I was against the idea!

We made it just in time for the changing of the guards.  We followed them most of the way as they played various songs and marched up to the palace.

Where we saw someone get yelled at and pushed by the guard, so that he could properly do his changing of the guard ceremony!

These things are important, man!

We somehow stumbled on the US Embassy.  There were tons of Swedes looking for American Visa's. Guess they like to come look at us.  Also they are probably rich enough to do it.

We went to the Vasa museum on the recommendation of everyone.  It was cool, but we arrived early and got straight in.  Within 1 hour it was packed and we decided to high tail it out of there!  The line was huge by then.  It would not have been worth it for my children if we had had to wait in that line.  After all, how long can you look at a ship that never made it out of the harbor before it sunk?  Seriously, though, they did have some very cool displays all around it, that I would have enjoyed looking at a little more.

 We took a Rick's Steve's walking tour of Gamla Stan and found the Random canon in the wall.

And to top off the day, we ate Swedish fish in Sweden!  Because we are cool like that!

I had every intention of buying us bus tickets here, but when I got up to the counter and asked the lady how far everything was if we walked, she said, "oh 20-30 minutes to here, 20 minutes to there," so in the end, I said, "let's just walk it."  The walk wasn't so bad, but that was because we took it bit by bit.  We went to the Vasa, then the palace and then took the walking tour of Gamla Stan.  By the end of that, we were so far away from the boat that we had to trudge over an hour to get back, so we missed City hall where they give out the Nobel prizes.  Sad face!
The cruise was a fabulous way to see all these different countries.  We would have never done it, if we didn't do it this way.  Everything was very expensive.  We brought lots of snacks with us, ate big breakfasts and ate as soon as we got back to the boat each day.  We did it all pretty cheaply, and probably missed out on some wonderful things because of that, but we were happy with our experience in the end.
 Our favorite part is always the boat, however.  We had the chance to do this tour just 2 days less, but also almost $3000 less with a European cruise line.  We couldn't do it.  Once you get used to the luxury of the North American lines, you can't go back.  As Rob says, "It's all about the boat!"  We went with NCL this time and really enjoyed it.  Sam and Max loved the teen center and kids club.  We all enjoyed the food and the hot tubs.  The boys loved the pool and slides.  I had to do the slide at least once, but man it was cold!

Superhero day

Trying out the Chinese sticks

Sam tried too

I actually learned to juggle using these!  I am so proud of myself

Bunny?  Dog?

Happy birthday, Sam!

Getting down with the crew

 Penguin
The entertainment wasn't as good as some cruises I have been on, but we loved the talent show at the end, especially the finale which was called Fountains and was 7 crew members imitating different water fountains while spitting water from their mouths at each other to Only time by Enya- it worked for Volvo and Jean Claude Van Damme and it worked for the NCL crew!! (definitely a scout camp kind of skit!)  Can't wait for our next adventure!