Another fun day is now in the books. Mom and I got up and downstairs to breakfast at 9:30 am. This was quite a feat since we spent the morning dancing around each other trying to get ready in our awesome but tiny castle room. When we descended our castle stairs we had a nice traditional German breakfast waiting for us in our window table. It included a ridiculous amount of bread, some cheese, cold-cuts and liverwurst. After breakfast I explored the castle a little more. It was bigger than I thought. There were four floors. Previously I had only been to the second floor because that’s where our room was located. It might have been cool to stay at the top but I think that the rooms got smaller as you went up. Additionally I would not have wanted to carry mom’s bag up any more than one flight of stairs. All of the decorations were very fitting. On the fourth floor there was a sword case that was probably my favorite decoration in the whole place.
When we were leaving St. Goar yesterday I spotted a hoop with a nice view of the Rhine. Unfortunately we were already on the ferry and had paid the toll. When I woke up this morning I decided I should have taken the picture. Mom was fine with stopping by it on the way to Luxembourg, since we had to cross the river with the car anyway, so we did. I quickly took the picture and we were off to get another country pin on my map.
I liked Luxembourg considerably more than Belgium. It seemed cleaner, the people were friendlier and it had many pretty green spaces. Mom and I started by exploring a bit of the downtown and poking our head in a few of the shops. We haven’t made any big purchases on this trip and that didn’t change today. Mom bought her dad one little thing and we bought a few food items. There was some type of carnival in one of the downtown squares with a bunch of food venders and kids games. One stand claimed to have “The World’s Best Waffles”. I wanted to congratulate them like Buddy the Elf on their success, but I figured they wouldn’t get it. Instead mom and I just bought a strawberry and cream waffle to share. It wasn’t cheap, it cost 5 Euros, but it was quite good. One thing we couldn’t figure out was the vendor’s mascot. It was a little boy, no joke, playing with himself. This vendor had two carts in separate locations and both had the same statue. The marketer in me can’t figure why one would pick that mascot, unless pedophiles are the target market for “the World’s Best Waffles.”
One of the main things I wanted to see in Luxembourg was General Patton’s resting place. I had read somewhere that it was located in Luxembourg but I couldn’t find an address in my guidebook. This meant that we had to find an Internet connection so I could look it up. I’m still shocked at how hard reasonably priced wireless internet has been to come by on this trip. It isn’t that hard to find but the prices are outrages. For instance, at a rest stop this morning they wanted 20 Euros for an hour’s worth of usage. I wasn’t willing to pay that. In retrospect I sort of wish I had. We eventually found the address but not until after we had played in the city. We didn’t make it to the cemetery until 5:15 pm and it had closed at 5 pm. I wanted to hop the wall but mom wouldn’t have it. (That’s another difference between traveling with mom and dad. He would have been all about me seeing it since I was there). You could tell, even just looking through the fenced off grounds, that it was a special place. More than 8,000 soldiers, some 5,500 from the US are buried in the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial (near the site of the Battle of the Bulge). The grounds appear to be kept in immaculate condition, which is a fitting tribute to those of the Greatest Generation who sacrificed themselves so that others could live.
After “visiting” the cemetery we were off for Trier. Yet again we hit some serious traffic. It took us 45 minutes to go our last 4KM. We finally made it to our room around 7:30 pm. My first order of business was getting in touch with Udo because we are meeting up with him tomorrow. After getting our plans set mom and I went out to explore a little bit of Trier and to get some dinner.
One of the most famous landmarks in Trier is the Porta Nigra, or the Black Gate. The gate, built in the 2nd century is the oldest German defensive structure and the best preserved Roman city gate in the world, at least according to the Trier travel brochures. Our hotel is located directly across the street from the gate, so we decided to stroll over to see it before walking somewhere for dinner.
We are now back in the room and it is 10:40 pm. Our evening stroll allowed us to map out our plan for seeing Trier tomorrow. In the early afternoon we will drive along the Mosel to Cochem to meet up with Udo, Kathy, Hans and Finnie. I’m really looking forward to finally seeing the city I’ve heard so much about from Udo...
Katy
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
I Want a Castle
Today I think the fairly frenetic pace mom and I have been keeping is going to catch up with us. As you all know my body likes more than 7 hours of sleep a night and that’s all it has been getting.
We are up early enough, it’s 10 am as I write this, and we’ve had breakfast. We were planning on taking a river cruise, however, I think that plan got scratched. We are going to take a cruise or two with Udo when we meet up in a few days, so we’ve decided to just take the car along the river to our few highlighted spots of the day. First up on the agenda is visiting Niederwalddenkmal, a statue of Germania. According to my guide book the statue is 34 feet high and was built to commemorate victory of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, which resulted in German unification.
Niederwalddenkmal was pretty cool. A 34 foot high statue is really quite tall, especially when it is built high up on a hill. Today was a little hazy but the views over the Rhine and Bingen were still interesting.
Mom and I are now sitting at a little cafe for a late lunch in St. Goar. We slept on the east side of the Rhine, so in order to get to St. Goar we had to a take a cute little ferry from St. Goarhausen. The fairy runs all day back and forth across the river carrying tour buses, cars, bikers and pedestrians. We are sleeping on the east side of the river tonight, so we decided to ride over as pedestrians and just explore the town by foot. The town’s highlight was probably the (self proclaimed) world’s biggest beer stein shop. It’s now pushing 4 pm and our next stop is the castle in which we are staying tonight. It is called Castle Liebenstein and located in the town of Kamp-Bornhofen.
It’s crazy I am now writing to you from my bed, in a tower, in a castle. We’re not in Kansas anymore Toto. This specific room was again recommended to us by Jim. It is tower room 5 and couldn’t be cuter. It’s tiny and there is barely enough room for mom and my bags but awesome nonetheless. I wouldn’t want to sleep here every night (there is no Internet or TV) but one night is awesome. We have a window that opens with two window seats. The view is spectacular even on this hazy day. We also have goats on the hillside outside our window. I am still super tired and think I am going to take a nap...
... my nap was awesome. I slept from 5 pm to 7 pm. We then went down to dinner. The lady of the castle had “reserved” us the window table in the dining room. The dining room has all kinds of knights in armor and other medieval things. I could try to describe the place in words but it is really more something that has to be seen. Dinner was random and super good. I ordered a german sandwich. It consisted of breaded turkey, bananas and pineapples, served open face, with a hollandaise like sauce. It was amazingly good and only a dollar more than the dang Chicken Caesar salad at McDonalds in Switzerland.
After dinner mom and I explored outside the castle a little more, watched our favorite baby goat play with his momma, and took a few pictures. The differences between traveling with mom and dad are funny. I asked mom to go take a picture of me atop a tower. She couldn’t really see me standing behind the wall, so I decided to climb on top of it. She freaked out and was certain I was going to die. The picture she took ended up being totally zoomed in and chopped off my head. The picture was an epic failure. She claims she was too nervous to take a good one. This made me laugh hysterically. She would have died had she seen some of the stuff dad and I tromped around on at Angkor Wat. It’s now 10:35 pm and time for bed.
Until tomorrow,
Katy
We are up early enough, it’s 10 am as I write this, and we’ve had breakfast. We were planning on taking a river cruise, however, I think that plan got scratched. We are going to take a cruise or two with Udo when we meet up in a few days, so we’ve decided to just take the car along the river to our few highlighted spots of the day. First up on the agenda is visiting Niederwalddenkmal, a statue of Germania. According to my guide book the statue is 34 feet high and was built to commemorate victory of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, which resulted in German unification.
Niederwalddenkmal was pretty cool. A 34 foot high statue is really quite tall, especially when it is built high up on a hill. Today was a little hazy but the views over the Rhine and Bingen were still interesting.
Mom and I are now sitting at a little cafe for a late lunch in St. Goar. We slept on the east side of the Rhine, so in order to get to St. Goar we had to a take a cute little ferry from St. Goarhausen. The fairy runs all day back and forth across the river carrying tour buses, cars, bikers and pedestrians. We are sleeping on the east side of the river tonight, so we decided to ride over as pedestrians and just explore the town by foot. The town’s highlight was probably the (self proclaimed) world’s biggest beer stein shop. It’s now pushing 4 pm and our next stop is the castle in which we are staying tonight. It is called Castle Liebenstein and located in the town of Kamp-Bornhofen.
It’s crazy I am now writing to you from my bed, in a tower, in a castle. We’re not in Kansas anymore Toto. This specific room was again recommended to us by Jim. It is tower room 5 and couldn’t be cuter. It’s tiny and there is barely enough room for mom and my bags but awesome nonetheless. I wouldn’t want to sleep here every night (there is no Internet or TV) but one night is awesome. We have a window that opens with two window seats. The view is spectacular even on this hazy day. We also have goats on the hillside outside our window. I am still super tired and think I am going to take a nap...
... my nap was awesome. I slept from 5 pm to 7 pm. We then went down to dinner. The lady of the castle had “reserved” us the window table in the dining room. The dining room has all kinds of knights in armor and other medieval things. I could try to describe the place in words but it is really more something that has to be seen. Dinner was random and super good. I ordered a german sandwich. It consisted of breaded turkey, bananas and pineapples, served open face, with a hollandaise like sauce. It was amazingly good and only a dollar more than the dang Chicken Caesar salad at McDonalds in Switzerland.
After dinner mom and I explored outside the castle a little more, watched our favorite baby goat play with his momma, and took a few pictures. The differences between traveling with mom and dad are funny. I asked mom to go take a picture of me atop a tower. She couldn’t really see me standing behind the wall, so I decided to climb on top of it. She freaked out and was certain I was going to die. The picture she took ended up being totally zoomed in and chopped off my head. The picture was an epic failure. She claims she was too nervous to take a good one. This made me laugh hysterically. She would have died had she seen some of the stuff dad and I tromped around on at Angkor Wat. It’s now 10:35 pm and time for bed.
Until tomorrow,
Katy
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Really... in a Moat?
It was the best of times and the worst of times. That sums up today. I guess I’ll start with the best because that’s chronologically how it happened. Mom and I were up and at them at nine in hopes of seeing a little more of Rothenburg before we needed to make our way to Heidelberg. I also, shockingly, wanted to try and find a hoop that featured the old wall.
Breakfast was in a super cute little eating room that we had all to ourselves two minutes into the meal. Many of the places we have been have been rather quiet. I’m not sure if this is a result of people canceling their trips because of the volcano or the fact that the worldwide economy sucks. Either way it has made for a very nice vacation for us.
As mentioned in yesterday’s post. I was excited by the fact that it was possible to march around on the wall. I wanted to do a little more of that, get a Schneeballen, and poke my head in a few of the cute little shops that weren’t open last night. We started by wandering the shops. I spotted a sign that looked like it led to a school. Schools often have basketball hoops, so I wanted to go there. We spotted a field where kids were playing and a teacher was leading a class. I swore in the distance I heard basketball bouncing. As we approached the sound it become clear that we were about to find the town’s old amphitheater. As we looked below I saw three kids dribbling and passing around a basketball. One took a shot. I followed the ball and watched it hit... the wall. They were playing basketball without a hoop. This was like the ultimate tease in hoop hunting. It would have been a remarkable picture to have a hoop in that amphitheater. Instead I just have a story of frustration. I also, however, had a bit of hope. It seemed to me that if one of the kids actually owned and was playing with a basketball, there was likely to be a hoop somewhere.
Mom and I continued to wander near the wall. We found a stairway leading up and decided to climb around on it for while. It was actually a convenient place to look for hoops because of the elevation. All of the windows on the wall are a little different. Some are little slits, some are like larger shaped key holes and others are more significantly sized rectangles. Every ten windows or so I would stop and try to take a look out one.
We had been hiking around the wall for 20 minutes or so when it happened. “It” can only be described as a miracle. I found a hoop in a moat. It’s entirely possible that this is my favorite hoop of all time. I have taken them all over the world, with some of the most famous monuments, yet there was something special about this shot and its 1000 year old wall. I can’t wait to show those of you that are interested.
Having found a better hoop picture than I ever hoped possible, I was ready to give up hiking on the wall. I think mom was over hiking it way before I, so we decided to head back to check out of the hotel, stop in a few remaining stores and buy a schneeballen.
Schneeballen are everywhere in Rothenburg. In fact, Rothenburg is the only place I have ever seen them and they are in every other store front. The front desk lady in our hotel described them as fried cookie dough with a sugar or icing coating. Mom and I didn’t find any that tasted like cookie dough but more like fried pie crust or puff pastry. They were decent but there are definitely other things I would prefer to eat for my calories, like the dessert at the BMW place. Filled with schneeballen and happiness from my hoop find, we were off to Heidelberg Castle.
We never made it to Heidelberg. As we attempted to merge onto an Autobahn we saw standstill traffic. People were literally standing outside of their cars on the highway. I have no idea what happened. We had seen a fair amount of construction traffic on this trip but nothing like this. As far as the eye could see in both directions cars were stopped. It was like a parking lot. Mom and I debated whether we should attempt to throw the car in reverse and back out the on-ramp. As we were discussing this another car pulled up behind me. At first he gave me a dirty look for being stopped sort of far back and slightly on the side of the road. Then he realized why I was there. He and his passenger then decided to start backing out. This was the perfect opportunity for me to do the same because if we got hit, he would clearly get hit first. A car came flying by us and gave us both an extremely dirty look. He then got passed the blind curve, saw the standstill traffic, and before we knew it was also backing out behind me. I knew driving in Germany was going to be fun but I never thought I would get to drive in reverse on an Autobahn.
After making it back to a moving highway I looked at the map on the GPS and tried to locate a route that avoided A6 for a while. I found one, but unfortunately it seems everyone else with GPS, a map, or that could understand German radio traffic reports did as well. Traffic was sloooooooooow going for a long time. In fact, we never found consistently fast moving traffic until 6:30 pm, after we had been driving for five hours. In all a trip that should have taken us three hours took nearly seven. Needless to say by the time mom and arrived in our final destination for the night, the town of Rüdesheim, we were ready to be out of the car.
Our hotel, called the Hotel Lamm was super cute. The exterior and common rooms were sort of old-school but our room itself was super clean and fairly modern. We actually had wireless which was awesome and gave us the opportunity to gchat with dad again. After getting all of our stuff settled we decided to walk around the town a little bit and get some dinner. The town was fairly dead. We strolled the whole thing in 20 minutes or so and decided that we would just eat back at our hotel. We had a very nice dinner in a restaurant that was, yet again, all to ourselves.
We are now back in the room and it is post midnight as a write this. I am really tired from all the time in the car and must get some shut eye. Tomorrow night we are staying in a castle. Literally. I don’t think it has the Internet, so I’ll do my best to post when I can.
Katy
Breakfast was in a super cute little eating room that we had all to ourselves two minutes into the meal. Many of the places we have been have been rather quiet. I’m not sure if this is a result of people canceling their trips because of the volcano or the fact that the worldwide economy sucks. Either way it has made for a very nice vacation for us.
As mentioned in yesterday’s post. I was excited by the fact that it was possible to march around on the wall. I wanted to do a little more of that, get a Schneeballen, and poke my head in a few of the cute little shops that weren’t open last night. We started by wandering the shops. I spotted a sign that looked like it led to a school. Schools often have basketball hoops, so I wanted to go there. We spotted a field where kids were playing and a teacher was leading a class. I swore in the distance I heard basketball bouncing. As we approached the sound it become clear that we were about to find the town’s old amphitheater. As we looked below I saw three kids dribbling and passing around a basketball. One took a shot. I followed the ball and watched it hit... the wall. They were playing basketball without a hoop. This was like the ultimate tease in hoop hunting. It would have been a remarkable picture to have a hoop in that amphitheater. Instead I just have a story of frustration. I also, however, had a bit of hope. It seemed to me that if one of the kids actually owned and was playing with a basketball, there was likely to be a hoop somewhere.
Mom and I continued to wander near the wall. We found a stairway leading up and decided to climb around on it for while. It was actually a convenient place to look for hoops because of the elevation. All of the windows on the wall are a little different. Some are little slits, some are like larger shaped key holes and others are more significantly sized rectangles. Every ten windows or so I would stop and try to take a look out one.
We had been hiking around the wall for 20 minutes or so when it happened. “It” can only be described as a miracle. I found a hoop in a moat. It’s entirely possible that this is my favorite hoop of all time. I have taken them all over the world, with some of the most famous monuments, yet there was something special about this shot and its 1000 year old wall. I can’t wait to show those of you that are interested.
Having found a better hoop picture than I ever hoped possible, I was ready to give up hiking on the wall. I think mom was over hiking it way before I, so we decided to head back to check out of the hotel, stop in a few remaining stores and buy a schneeballen.
Schneeballen are everywhere in Rothenburg. In fact, Rothenburg is the only place I have ever seen them and they are in every other store front. The front desk lady in our hotel described them as fried cookie dough with a sugar or icing coating. Mom and I didn’t find any that tasted like cookie dough but more like fried pie crust or puff pastry. They were decent but there are definitely other things I would prefer to eat for my calories, like the dessert at the BMW place. Filled with schneeballen and happiness from my hoop find, we were off to Heidelberg Castle.
We never made it to Heidelberg. As we attempted to merge onto an Autobahn we saw standstill traffic. People were literally standing outside of their cars on the highway. I have no idea what happened. We had seen a fair amount of construction traffic on this trip but nothing like this. As far as the eye could see in both directions cars were stopped. It was like a parking lot. Mom and I debated whether we should attempt to throw the car in reverse and back out the on-ramp. As we were discussing this another car pulled up behind me. At first he gave me a dirty look for being stopped sort of far back and slightly on the side of the road. Then he realized why I was there. He and his passenger then decided to start backing out. This was the perfect opportunity for me to do the same because if we got hit, he would clearly get hit first. A car came flying by us and gave us both an extremely dirty look. He then got passed the blind curve, saw the standstill traffic, and before we knew it was also backing out behind me. I knew driving in Germany was going to be fun but I never thought I would get to drive in reverse on an Autobahn.
After making it back to a moving highway I looked at the map on the GPS and tried to locate a route that avoided A6 for a while. I found one, but unfortunately it seems everyone else with GPS, a map, or that could understand German radio traffic reports did as well. Traffic was sloooooooooow going for a long time. In fact, we never found consistently fast moving traffic until 6:30 pm, after we had been driving for five hours. In all a trip that should have taken us three hours took nearly seven. Needless to say by the time mom and arrived in our final destination for the night, the town of Rüdesheim, we were ready to be out of the car.
Our hotel, called the Hotel Lamm was super cute. The exterior and common rooms were sort of old-school but our room itself was super clean and fairly modern. We actually had wireless which was awesome and gave us the opportunity to gchat with dad again. After getting all of our stuff settled we decided to walk around the town a little bit and get some dinner. The town was fairly dead. We strolled the whole thing in 20 minutes or so and decided that we would just eat back at our hotel. We had a very nice dinner in a restaurant that was, yet again, all to ourselves.
We are now back in the room and it is post midnight as a write this. I am really tired from all the time in the car and must get some shut eye. Tomorrow night we are staying in a castle. Literally. I don’t think it has the Internet, so I’ll do my best to post when I can.
Katy
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
200% Price Increase
Yet again mom and I managed to get going before ten. Those of you who know us should be proud. At breakfast mom had what she is currently describing as her food highlight thus far on the trip, the “perfect pretzel”. I’ll admit to it being quite good. Especially after I put Nutella and strawberry jam on it.
Our first stop this morning was Mainau Island. Jim had said that if we even had a mild interest in plants we should visit this place. Saying mom has a mild interest in plants is like saying I have a mild sweet tooth. Needless to say we went to the island and mom had a wonderful time. I enjoyed myself too. The plants were again very cool. However, my two favorite things were the butterfly house and a showoff of a peacock. I don’t know that I had ever seen a peacock spread his tail in person. It was amazing.
Europe is fun because all kinds of things are extremely close together, at least by American standards. On this trip we have been super close to both Austria and Switzerland. Seeing both places was out of the question because of our limited time but I wanted to spend at least in a few minutes in one, so that I could legitimately add another pin to my world map. It worked out this afternoon that we had time to swing by Schaffhausen, Switzerland.
Schaffhausen is a super cute town. It is very much what I picture when picturing quintessential Europe. There was a popular central waterway with all kinds of people congregating near the water’s edge, a main shopping street with bustling foot traffic and random historical things everywhere you look. In order to put a pin in my travel map for a country I have to both purchase something there and use a bathroom. In this case mom and I decided that we weren’t super hungry and didn’t want to spend a bunch of time or money on lunch, so we just popped into Mcdonalds. To my shock our meal was $25 US. I still for the life of me can’t figure out why it was so expensive. I’ve eaten ice cream cones and Coke Light at McDonalds all over the world and the prices are always +/- 15% of home. In this case it was more like +200%. Anyone know what the deal is with McD’s pricing in Switzerland? I seriously would like to know. Twenty miles north in Germany, the prices are normal. I really don’t understand it. And I spent the entire three hours of our drive from Schaffhausen to Rothenburg thinking about it.
Visiting Rothenburg was another stop recommended by Jim. This town is ridiculously cool. It is a medieval walled town dating back to the 1100s. All people from Eugene should be required to visit Rothenburg to get a true understanding of what “old” means. A fifty-year old building is not historic. Rothenburg and its nearly 1000 year old walls is historic.
Mom and I checked into out hotel and then wandered around the town to get a feel for it before the sun went down. I wasn’t aware prior to the trip that you can climb the wall and walk around on it but you can. The views from the wall, when you can find a hole bigger than that for a bow and arrow, are down right impressive. I watched the sunset from one of the west facing windows on the wall and then mom and I went to dinner in a cute family run little German restaurant.
We are now back in our old, but awesome hotel room. We have a balcony that overlooks some small vineyards and a portion of the wall. The view is really quite nice. I would sit outside and enjoy the nearly full moon if it were just a little bit warmer. Instead I think I am going to call it a night.
Katy
Our first stop this morning was Mainau Island. Jim had said that if we even had a mild interest in plants we should visit this place. Saying mom has a mild interest in plants is like saying I have a mild sweet tooth. Needless to say we went to the island and mom had a wonderful time. I enjoyed myself too. The plants were again very cool. However, my two favorite things were the butterfly house and a showoff of a peacock. I don’t know that I had ever seen a peacock spread his tail in person. It was amazing.
Europe is fun because all kinds of things are extremely close together, at least by American standards. On this trip we have been super close to both Austria and Switzerland. Seeing both places was out of the question because of our limited time but I wanted to spend at least in a few minutes in one, so that I could legitimately add another pin to my world map. It worked out this afternoon that we had time to swing by Schaffhausen, Switzerland.
Schaffhausen is a super cute town. It is very much what I picture when picturing quintessential Europe. There was a popular central waterway with all kinds of people congregating near the water’s edge, a main shopping street with bustling foot traffic and random historical things everywhere you look. In order to put a pin in my travel map for a country I have to both purchase something there and use a bathroom. In this case mom and I decided that we weren’t super hungry and didn’t want to spend a bunch of time or money on lunch, so we just popped into Mcdonalds. To my shock our meal was $25 US. I still for the life of me can’t figure out why it was so expensive. I’ve eaten ice cream cones and Coke Light at McDonalds all over the world and the prices are always +/- 15% of home. In this case it was more like +200%. Anyone know what the deal is with McD’s pricing in Switzerland? I seriously would like to know. Twenty miles north in Germany, the prices are normal. I really don’t understand it. And I spent the entire three hours of our drive from Schaffhausen to Rothenburg thinking about it.
Visiting Rothenburg was another stop recommended by Jim. This town is ridiculously cool. It is a medieval walled town dating back to the 1100s. All people from Eugene should be required to visit Rothenburg to get a true understanding of what “old” means. A fifty-year old building is not historic. Rothenburg and its nearly 1000 year old walls is historic.
Mom and I checked into out hotel and then wandered around the town to get a feel for it before the sun went down. I wasn’t aware prior to the trip that you can climb the wall and walk around on it but you can. The views from the wall, when you can find a hole bigger than that for a bow and arrow, are down right impressive. I watched the sunset from one of the west facing windows on the wall and then mom and I went to dinner in a cute family run little German restaurant.
We are now back in our old, but awesome hotel room. We have a balcony that overlooks some small vineyards and a portion of the wall. The view is really quite nice. I would sit outside and enjoy the nearly full moon if it were just a little bit warmer. Instead I think I am going to call it a night.
Katy
Monday, April 26, 2010
A Birthday Castle
Happy 57th birthday mom! You’re back to being within 10 years of dad, well done! I apologize for making you get up so early on your birthday but we have places to go and things to see ;~) First up on today’s list is the Neuschwanztien Castle. I am very excited about this visit. Neuschwanztien is supposedly the castle Walt Disney modeled the castle at Disneyland after. It’s an hourish drive from Munich, so I must get on my way...
... Neuschwanztien is really cool. It is located a ways up a hill, so to get there mom and decided to take a horse and buggy. Our horses were named Olga and Peter. They worked fairly well as a team, although on occasion our driver wanted them to go faster. It was sort of funny. All she had to do was make it so they saw the whip in her hand and their pace would significantly quicken.
The views from around the castle are insane. I didn’t realize that there would be a million and one trails you can hike around on the “grounds” of the castle but there are. (It puts Pisgah to same Jami.) These aren’t traditional castle grounds with moats, and manicured lawns but rather more like hiking trails around the base of what I think are the German Alps. Much of our path on this portion of our trip was planned by our friend Jim. He had a great list of highlight places we needed to see in Bavaria. He said his favorite place at Neuschwanstein was the “bridge”. He was right. The view from there is nothing short of spectacular. The views were ever changing on this day because of the different cloud formations. I could have stayed on the bridge for a very long time but we had to get going in order to make our alloted tour time of the castle.
The castle tour was sort of pathetic by typical standards. It was a walking tour with a guide that lasted 35 minutes. He didn’t offer all that much information about the place but getting to see the inside of the castle was still worth it. One fun fact I learned from a random tour guide on the walk back down the hill was that Michael Jackson evidently tried to buy the Castle at some point for $30 million but the powers that be, obviously, told him no.
We ate mom’s birthday lunch/dinner at a nice traditional German place at the base of the castle. It was fun to be able to celebrate directly below one of the most famous castles in the world. After eating we set out on a bit of a hoop hunting adventure. I wanted to see if I could capture a hoop with the castle and/or one that captured the essence of Hohenschwangau. I think was decently successful on both fronts.
Our last thing to accomplish today was to drive to the town of Konstanz. It was roughly a two hour drive from Hohenschwangau and not without adventure. About 50KM from Konstanz we drove under a bunch of power lines. At the same moment all of the electronics in our car shorted. The radio, the GPS, and the dashboard all went momentarily dark. It was nuts. The dash quickly returned but the the GPS and radio appeared to be fried. I had a general idea of where were we going but I had no idea how to find the hotel. Eventually we decided to pull over and see if stopping and restarting the car would help. It did, for 15 minutes or so. We then stopped and restarted again. This not only didn’t reset the system but now the dash lights and radio wouldn’t go off when the key was removed and the car was locked. We decided to drive a while longer and see if the car would cure itself. It appeared that it did. The third time we stopped the GPS started working again and safely led us to our hotel.
Tonight we are staying in the Apartment Hotel Konstanz. It is like a little apartment and a gynormous by European standards. It even has like 12 foot ceilings. The people at the front desk were super friendly and got us quickly settled. For the first time on this trip I actually have wireless in the room which is great. We just finished video Gchatting with dad. Kudos to him for getting it to work with limited tech support. We are tired after a fun birthday day, so I’m calling it a night.
Katy
... Neuschwanztien is really cool. It is located a ways up a hill, so to get there mom and decided to take a horse and buggy. Our horses were named Olga and Peter. They worked fairly well as a team, although on occasion our driver wanted them to go faster. It was sort of funny. All she had to do was make it so they saw the whip in her hand and their pace would significantly quicken.
The views from around the castle are insane. I didn’t realize that there would be a million and one trails you can hike around on the “grounds” of the castle but there are. (It puts Pisgah to same Jami.) These aren’t traditional castle grounds with moats, and manicured lawns but rather more like hiking trails around the base of what I think are the German Alps. Much of our path on this portion of our trip was planned by our friend Jim. He had a great list of highlight places we needed to see in Bavaria. He said his favorite place at Neuschwanstein was the “bridge”. He was right. The view from there is nothing short of spectacular. The views were ever changing on this day because of the different cloud formations. I could have stayed on the bridge for a very long time but we had to get going in order to make our alloted tour time of the castle.
The castle tour was sort of pathetic by typical standards. It was a walking tour with a guide that lasted 35 minutes. He didn’t offer all that much information about the place but getting to see the inside of the castle was still worth it. One fun fact I learned from a random tour guide on the walk back down the hill was that Michael Jackson evidently tried to buy the Castle at some point for $30 million but the powers that be, obviously, told him no.
We ate mom’s birthday lunch/dinner at a nice traditional German place at the base of the castle. It was fun to be able to celebrate directly below one of the most famous castles in the world. After eating we set out on a bit of a hoop hunting adventure. I wanted to see if I could capture a hoop with the castle and/or one that captured the essence of Hohenschwangau. I think was decently successful on both fronts.
Our last thing to accomplish today was to drive to the town of Konstanz. It was roughly a two hour drive from Hohenschwangau and not without adventure. About 50KM from Konstanz we drove under a bunch of power lines. At the same moment all of the electronics in our car shorted. The radio, the GPS, and the dashboard all went momentarily dark. It was nuts. The dash quickly returned but the the GPS and radio appeared to be fried. I had a general idea of where were we going but I had no idea how to find the hotel. Eventually we decided to pull over and see if stopping and restarting the car would help. It did, for 15 minutes or so. We then stopped and restarted again. This not only didn’t reset the system but now the dash lights and radio wouldn’t go off when the key was removed and the car was locked. We decided to drive a while longer and see if the car would cure itself. It appeared that it did. The third time we stopped the GPS started working again and safely led us to our hotel.
Tonight we are staying in the Apartment Hotel Konstanz. It is like a little apartment and a gynormous by European standards. It even has like 12 foot ceilings. The people at the front desk were super friendly and got us quickly settled. For the first time on this trip I actually have wireless in the room which is great. We just finished video Gchatting with dad. Kudos to him for getting it to work with limited tech support. We are tired after a fun birthday day, so I’m calling it a night.
Katy
Sunday, April 25, 2010
BMW and Beer
This morning we were up decently early to go to the airport. Having not landed in Brussels we had no idea how long it would take to return the car, check in and get to the gate. We decided to leave the hotel 2:30 hours before our flight (8:30 am) which ended up working quite nicely. Returning the car was a breeze, which was a welcomed relief after our AMS experience with Hertz. The Lufthansa check-in wasn’t super fast took a few minutes but was fine. I also learned something interesting. Lufthansa doesn’t care how many bags a person checks, it only cares about the total weight of checked items. Each passenger is allowed 20KG. To be difficult I specifically asked the lady if I could check ten bags each weighing 2KG if I wanted and she said yes.
After completing our check in we went spent a few minutes in the Star Alliance’s Gold Lounge before heading to the gate. I was stoked to see that they had a self service soda fountain and glasses that were bigger than 6 ounces. Needless to say I consumed a lot of Coke Light in the ensuing 30 minutes. When we arrived at our gate I read the information on the reader board. It said, “Lufthansa strictly adheres to a one carry-on baggage limit.” This set a lightbulb off in my mind. We were missing a bag. We left our Lulu Lemon shopping bag at either the car return or the Lufthansa counter. We only had 20 minutes until our plane left and there was no way I had time to run back and try to find it. The bag contained all of our acquired yummies and two electrical cords. Mom had used my portable plug adapter to charge her camera battery in the car. I threw those cords in the top of the Lulu bag at the hotel and sadly they are now gone :~( I hate wasting money and that’s about $200 down the drain. I’m also devastated (that is not too strong of a word) by the fact that I think I lost all of the mini-boxes of chocolate sprinkles I had lifted from breakfast. Evidently people in Belgium put chocolate sprinkles on bread for breakfast. I thought this was the coolest things ever, and had taken a few boxes for the road. Unfortunately I think they are now being blown up by the bomb squad in the Brussels airport.
We are now on the flight to Munich. I had a terrible thought. My drug bag (insulin, all my pump supplies, and my pills) is not in my backpack. I am not certain that I put them in my checked bag, which means they too might be in the lost Lulu bag. If that’s the case, I’m screwed. And I’m still really bummed about the sprinkles. I am also entertained by the fact that woman, yes woman, across the aisle from me is reading Playboy. I’m sure it’s for the articles.
Few... my drugs are in my checked bag. Crisis almost averted. I was holding out hope that my sprinkles would be in my checked bag too. I really thought I had put them in something other than the Lulu bag. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to settle for not dying. Now off to get the car at Hertz.
On the way to the rental car area in the Munich airport you have to go outside into a large courtyard like area. In this courtyard today there was, no joke, a polo exhibition being played. It’s pretty cool that the first live polo, of the non-Marco variety, I’ve ever witnessed came at the Munich airport.
Hooray for the Munich airport Hertz. My name was actually in lights today! Within ten minutes of spotting my name we had a car, keys and were ready to roll. That even included the time it took me to figure out how to reset the language of our GPS system from German to English.
My first goal for Munich was to locate a hoop near the Olympic Stadium complex. I knew the area surrounding the venues from 72 Games had been turned into a park and I figured I could probably find a hoop. It turns out I was right. It was super cool. The best picture, however, was probably not of the Olympic Stadium or corresponding radio tower, but rather one of the BMW World buildings. Speaking of BMW world...
... after wandering around the park a bit I decided I wanted to see a little of BMW World. Not surprisingly seeing all the cars made me want a new convertible, so I bought one. I kid, I kid. I didn’t buy a car, at least not one I can drive. Only a mini-model of the one I currently have. I also bought and ate possibly the best dessert I’ve ever had. It was truly an amazing marscapone/whipped cream/mouse like base, with a layer of raspberries and then topped with meringue. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water.
Next we hopped on the U3 and head for downtown. Munich really is a clean and beautiful city. The buildings are totally picturesque. Since today was a Sunday, almost all of the stores were closed but even just peeking in the windows was enjoyable. Before too long both mom and I were hungry, so we set off for the Hofbrahaus for dinner.
The Hofbrahaus is quite a place. First off, it is HUGE... like really, really big. I think it is supposed to be the largest beer house in world and frankly, I can’t imagine one bigger. The beer was quite good. I know you are all thinking, “How does Katy know?” Well I actually had one, or at least part of one. The only size available was 1L and I didn’t want to be THAT adventurous. Mom even had a few sips and I think she liked it as well. The most amazing part of the beer in the Hofbrahaus was our particular waitress’ ability to serve it. I really wish I had a picture of this. There was a large group of kids sitting at the table next to us. When the waitress brought their beer she was holding all 12 glasses, in her hands (no tray), at once. I fancy myself as being a pretty strong lady and I felt compelled to drink my single glass with two hands. The fact that she could carry and control twelve is just insane.
Post dinner mom and I were both full and wanted to move a little bit to burn off some of the 10,000 calories we had just consumed. We strolled around downtown Munich for a while before hopping the U3 train back to the hotel. It’s now 11:30 pm and another great day is in the books. We are driving quite a bit in the next few days but I’ll do my best to write and post as often as possible.
Katy
After completing our check in we went spent a few minutes in the Star Alliance’s Gold Lounge before heading to the gate. I was stoked to see that they had a self service soda fountain and glasses that were bigger than 6 ounces. Needless to say I consumed a lot of Coke Light in the ensuing 30 minutes. When we arrived at our gate I read the information on the reader board. It said, “Lufthansa strictly adheres to a one carry-on baggage limit.” This set a lightbulb off in my mind. We were missing a bag. We left our Lulu Lemon shopping bag at either the car return or the Lufthansa counter. We only had 20 minutes until our plane left and there was no way I had time to run back and try to find it. The bag contained all of our acquired yummies and two electrical cords. Mom had used my portable plug adapter to charge her camera battery in the car. I threw those cords in the top of the Lulu bag at the hotel and sadly they are now gone :~( I hate wasting money and that’s about $200 down the drain. I’m also devastated (that is not too strong of a word) by the fact that I think I lost all of the mini-boxes of chocolate sprinkles I had lifted from breakfast. Evidently people in Belgium put chocolate sprinkles on bread for breakfast. I thought this was the coolest things ever, and had taken a few boxes for the road. Unfortunately I think they are now being blown up by the bomb squad in the Brussels airport.
We are now on the flight to Munich. I had a terrible thought. My drug bag (insulin, all my pump supplies, and my pills) is not in my backpack. I am not certain that I put them in my checked bag, which means they too might be in the lost Lulu bag. If that’s the case, I’m screwed. And I’m still really bummed about the sprinkles. I am also entertained by the fact that woman, yes woman, across the aisle from me is reading Playboy. I’m sure it’s for the articles.
Few... my drugs are in my checked bag. Crisis almost averted. I was holding out hope that my sprinkles would be in my checked bag too. I really thought I had put them in something other than the Lulu bag. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to settle for not dying. Now off to get the car at Hertz.
On the way to the rental car area in the Munich airport you have to go outside into a large courtyard like area. In this courtyard today there was, no joke, a polo exhibition being played. It’s pretty cool that the first live polo, of the non-Marco variety, I’ve ever witnessed came at the Munich airport.
Hooray for the Munich airport Hertz. My name was actually in lights today! Within ten minutes of spotting my name we had a car, keys and were ready to roll. That even included the time it took me to figure out how to reset the language of our GPS system from German to English.
My first goal for Munich was to locate a hoop near the Olympic Stadium complex. I knew the area surrounding the venues from 72 Games had been turned into a park and I figured I could probably find a hoop. It turns out I was right. It was super cool. The best picture, however, was probably not of the Olympic Stadium or corresponding radio tower, but rather one of the BMW World buildings. Speaking of BMW world...
... after wandering around the park a bit I decided I wanted to see a little of BMW World. Not surprisingly seeing all the cars made me want a new convertible, so I bought one. I kid, I kid. I didn’t buy a car, at least not one I can drive. Only a mini-model of the one I currently have. I also bought and ate possibly the best dessert I’ve ever had. It was truly an amazing marscapone/whipped cream/mouse like base, with a layer of raspberries and then topped with meringue. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water.
Next we hopped on the U3 and head for downtown. Munich really is a clean and beautiful city. The buildings are totally picturesque. Since today was a Sunday, almost all of the stores were closed but even just peeking in the windows was enjoyable. Before too long both mom and I were hungry, so we set off for the Hofbrahaus for dinner.
The Hofbrahaus is quite a place. First off, it is HUGE... like really, really big. I think it is supposed to be the largest beer house in world and frankly, I can’t imagine one bigger. The beer was quite good. I know you are all thinking, “How does Katy know?” Well I actually had one, or at least part of one. The only size available was 1L and I didn’t want to be THAT adventurous. Mom even had a few sips and I think she liked it as well. The most amazing part of the beer in the Hofbrahaus was our particular waitress’ ability to serve it. I really wish I had a picture of this. There was a large group of kids sitting at the table next to us. When the waitress brought their beer she was holding all 12 glasses, in her hands (no tray), at once. I fancy myself as being a pretty strong lady and I felt compelled to drink my single glass with two hands. The fact that she could carry and control twelve is just insane.
Post dinner mom and I were both full and wanted to move a little bit to burn off some of the 10,000 calories we had just consumed. We strolled around downtown Munich for a while before hopping the U3 train back to the hotel. It’s now 11:30 pm and another great day is in the books. We are driving quite a bit in the next few days but I’ll do my best to write and post as often as possible.
Katy
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Multiple Uses for a Hairdryer
Since we lost a day to United’s mechanical problems we decided to try and get going at a reasonable hour this morning even though we were both pretty dang tired. As we were preparing to head down to breakfast we lost power in our room. All of the lights and electronics went off randomly. I had to admit this wasn’t all bad because it meant I wouldn’t have to wait for mom to do anything with a blow drier or curling iron.
By 9:40 am we were out of the hotel and on our way to Atomium. Atomium is a structure that was built in 1958 for the World Fair held in Brussels. Now it is considered one of the most popular tourist sites in Brussels and according to its website the “symbol of Europe’s Capital.” I primarily wanted to go there to try and get a picture with a hoop in front of it. I managed to find two hoops, one of which also happened to have a girl trying, emphasis on trying, to throw the javelin behind it. This court was inside an old school European park filled with random track and field event areas, including a jav runway, long jump pit, pole vault pit, shot put rings and a discus cage. It also happened to be located on “Javelot Straat” which was awesome.
Getting a picture with Atomium was number one on my to-do list for Brussels. After completing this task mom and I headed for Ghent. Our purpose for going to Ghent was to visit the Ghent Flower Show, which is a GIANT flower expo held once every five years. Needless to say I wasn’t super excited about this but I knew mom would love it, so I decided to take one for the team.
Five and half hours after entering the expo hall we finally left. The exhibited was actually really cool. Three hours probably would have been perfect for me but the additional two and half weren’t too painful, aside from the fact that I was pretty hungry. Food prices in Europe are traditionally ridiculous and the Ghent Expo center was no exception. A meal in the restaurant cost 40 Euros a head for a tiny plate of something scary looking. I had noticed on the way in that there was an Ikea not far from the parking lot. I suggested we get a plate of Swedish Meatballs from its cafeteria for dinner. Up to this point, our meatballs, salads and sodas, all for only 11 Euros, was by far the best meal of the trip.
After dinner we went back to downtown Brussels to see a few more of the sites. All of the buildings and museums were closed because of the time but it was still fun to get a bit of a feeling for the city. If I’m being honest, I really didn’t care for Brussels that much. It felt like a dirty city, with a ton of young people standing around smoking their lives away. I didn’t find the service people particularly friendly or charming either. Which reminds me of one other funny thing.
Almost all of the bathrooms we have encountered require an entrance fee. I’m not sure if the money goes directly to the person who watches over the bathroom and keeps it “clean” or what. However, it clearly does NOT go to sanitation training. Mom and I went to a restroom at the Ghent Expo. The entrance fee was .40 Euros per person. I was out of Euro change, so I gave the woman at the table a 5 Euro bill. She gave me two, two Euro coins and two 10 cent coins for my change. She then proceeded to grab a rag off of her table and enter the restrooms with us. She waited for a woman to exit a stall. She then entered the stall wiped down the seat with the rag and motioned for the next women in line to enter. Another woman left a different stall, she went in wiped down the seat with the same rag, and motioned for the next woman in line to enter. She then went to the sink and wiped down some excess water with the SAME rag with which she had just cleaned two toilet seats. Next she returned to her table in the hallway, set down the rag next to her cash drawer and proceeded to make change for the next customer. At this point I legitimately considered throwing away the 4.2 Euros she had given me for change for fear of contracting the CVS or some other disease. Thinking about it now still causes me a bit of gag reflex.
On our way back to the hotel mom decided she was a bit hungry. We had leftover pizza from the previous night and I thought we should eat it since we would be flying to Munich the next morning and couldn’t really take it with us. Mom agreed reluctantly because she’s not a fan of cold pizza and our room didn’t have a microwave. After a bit of pause in the conversation mom said, “I know what I’ll do. I’ll use my hairdryer on the pizza.” I was like, “What?” She said, “Yes. I’ll just hold my hairdryer over it. It will warm up the cheese.” I thought this was hilarious. And low and behold, as soon as we returned to the room, she took the pizza out of the refrigerator, took it into the bathroom and started hairdrying it. Evidently the hairdryer on the wall wasn’t “hot” enough, so she took out the adapter, took out her hairdryer and begin “heating” the pizza again. It was amazing. It really did work quite well and I have a hilarious picture to commemorate the experience.
It’s now 10:30ish and I’m exhausted. Day four of Euro 2010 is in the books. Tomorrow morning we are off to the airport to fly to Munich. I’ll try and post again tomorrow evening.
Katy
By 9:40 am we were out of the hotel and on our way to Atomium. Atomium is a structure that was built in 1958 for the World Fair held in Brussels. Now it is considered one of the most popular tourist sites in Brussels and according to its website the “symbol of Europe’s Capital.” I primarily wanted to go there to try and get a picture with a hoop in front of it. I managed to find two hoops, one of which also happened to have a girl trying, emphasis on trying, to throw the javelin behind it. This court was inside an old school European park filled with random track and field event areas, including a jav runway, long jump pit, pole vault pit, shot put rings and a discus cage. It also happened to be located on “Javelot Straat” which was awesome.
Getting a picture with Atomium was number one on my to-do list for Brussels. After completing this task mom and I headed for Ghent. Our purpose for going to Ghent was to visit the Ghent Flower Show, which is a GIANT flower expo held once every five years. Needless to say I wasn’t super excited about this but I knew mom would love it, so I decided to take one for the team.
Five and half hours after entering the expo hall we finally left. The exhibited was actually really cool. Three hours probably would have been perfect for me but the additional two and half weren’t too painful, aside from the fact that I was pretty hungry. Food prices in Europe are traditionally ridiculous and the Ghent Expo center was no exception. A meal in the restaurant cost 40 Euros a head for a tiny plate of something scary looking. I had noticed on the way in that there was an Ikea not far from the parking lot. I suggested we get a plate of Swedish Meatballs from its cafeteria for dinner. Up to this point, our meatballs, salads and sodas, all for only 11 Euros, was by far the best meal of the trip.
After dinner we went back to downtown Brussels to see a few more of the sites. All of the buildings and museums were closed because of the time but it was still fun to get a bit of a feeling for the city. If I’m being honest, I really didn’t care for Brussels that much. It felt like a dirty city, with a ton of young people standing around smoking their lives away. I didn’t find the service people particularly friendly or charming either. Which reminds me of one other funny thing.
Almost all of the bathrooms we have encountered require an entrance fee. I’m not sure if the money goes directly to the person who watches over the bathroom and keeps it “clean” or what. However, it clearly does NOT go to sanitation training. Mom and I went to a restroom at the Ghent Expo. The entrance fee was .40 Euros per person. I was out of Euro change, so I gave the woman at the table a 5 Euro bill. She gave me two, two Euro coins and two 10 cent coins for my change. She then proceeded to grab a rag off of her table and enter the restrooms with us. She waited for a woman to exit a stall. She then entered the stall wiped down the seat with the rag and motioned for the next women in line to enter. Another woman left a different stall, she went in wiped down the seat with the same rag, and motioned for the next woman in line to enter. She then went to the sink and wiped down some excess water with the SAME rag with which she had just cleaned two toilet seats. Next she returned to her table in the hallway, set down the rag next to her cash drawer and proceeded to make change for the next customer. At this point I legitimately considered throwing away the 4.2 Euros she had given me for change for fear of contracting the CVS or some other disease. Thinking about it now still causes me a bit of gag reflex.
On our way back to the hotel mom decided she was a bit hungry. We had leftover pizza from the previous night and I thought we should eat it since we would be flying to Munich the next morning and couldn’t really take it with us. Mom agreed reluctantly because she’s not a fan of cold pizza and our room didn’t have a microwave. After a bit of pause in the conversation mom said, “I know what I’ll do. I’ll use my hairdryer on the pizza.” I was like, “What?” She said, “Yes. I’ll just hold my hairdryer over it. It will warm up the cheese.” I thought this was hilarious. And low and behold, as soon as we returned to the room, she took the pizza out of the refrigerator, took it into the bathroom and started hairdrying it. Evidently the hairdryer on the wall wasn’t “hot” enough, so she took out the adapter, took out her hairdryer and begin “heating” the pizza again. It was amazing. It really did work quite well and I have a hilarious picture to commemorate the experience.
It’s now 10:30ish and I’m exhausted. Day four of Euro 2010 is in the books. Tomorrow morning we are off to the airport to fly to Munich. I’ll try and post again tomorrow evening.
Katy
Friday, April 23, 2010
We Finally Made It
It turns out I was too excited to sleep anymore on our flight. We exited the plane around 8:30 am and made our way through the airport. We spent two minutes looking for an airline lounge to grab a bite of food and wash up a bit for our day. The lounge we found was not the right one, so we decided to just make our way to customs. The customs guy was the most chill customs agent I have ever met. He asked me how long I was going to be in Europe and then proceeded to ask me if I was going to go out and party for Queens Day in Amsterdam. He said it was a great time and I should definitely do it. Only in Amsterdam does the customs agent suggest partying to arriving tourists.
Our next stop was the baggage claim. The baggage from a our flight took a long time to get rolling but thankfully when it did, our bags arrived! Next we went to locate the Hertz counter. We found it and there was quite a long line. There was a sign for Number One Club Gold members that said they could proceed outside to the car kiosk. That’s me, so I decided to give it a try. We went to the parking garage, found the kiosk and unfortunately that had a long line too. I decided to just wait this time. Twenty minutes later a guy finally started helping me. After pulling up my reservation he asked, “Have you already checked in?” I said, “No you are the first Hertz agent to help me.” He looked confused, banged around on the keyboard again, and declared I would have to go back inside to be helped. His name tag said he was the manager and he was dressed in a suit. I wasn’t sure what the non-managers inside would be able to do that he couldn’t outside but I didn’t have much of a choice. Then one of the other guys said he could help me, so he took over for “Marco” and started banging away on the computer. I confirmed with this guy that my car needed to be an automatic and that it had to have GPS. He then said he could do that but I would have to get a large body Mercedes that would cost me a 1,000 more Euros for the two days I would have the car. I laughed, said, “Uhm no thanks, you can look here at my PREPAID reservation. You are on the hook for sending me away with an automatic vehicle.” He looked at the sheet, was like, “Ok. You’ll have to go inside.” Now 45 minutes into this Hertz adventure I headed back inside to another long line. I eventually made it to the front of the line where a nice woman was waiting. Marco was now working the position next to her, so I said, “Marco sent me back inside, I don’t really know why other than I evidently couldn’t be helped outside.” They then started conversing in Dutch. She then went through a stack of contracts from earlier in the day and pulled one out. She showed it to Marco and said “but her first name is Kathryn, not Deborah.” From what I gather both Marco and the other guy who tried to help me outside thought I had already checked a car out because a woman named Deborah Polanwsky (no joke it had the ‘w’) had already rented one this morning. The woman, the only one with a brain, then located my correct reservation in the system and had me on my way within 4 minutes. She warned me that my car was “very big” and hoped that would be okay. I was excited to see what this actually meant when I got outside. My “Espace”, no joke, that’s the name of the car was like a hybrid SUV and minivan. It didn’t have a key but rather a card that was inserted before pressing an on and off button. It also had no place to put any luggage. We had to fold down seats and load our stuff on top of them. This wasn’t ideal because our car would be parked with exposed luggage but at this point, there was NO WAY I was going back inside. Two hours after landing at Schipol mom and I were finally on our way to Keukenhof.
Keukenhof is a ginormous flower garden located just outside of Amsterdam in a town called Lisse. It is definitely the type of place that is best seen as opposed to described. It is also the type of place primarily inhabited by people with gray hair. Clearly this was an activity chosen by mom. I did, however, enjoy seeing it. Some fun facts about Keukenhof:
The name Keukenhof originated in the 15th century, when the land belonged to Countess Jacoba of Bavaria.
The park is situated on 32 hectares.
Each year 7 million bulbs are planted, among which are 600 varieties of tulips.
The bulbs are provided by some 90 “Purveyors of the Royal Household”.
Some 7,500 kg of annual grass seed are is sown each year.
In total, 15 kilometers of foot paths run through the park.
There are 280 benches, 15 fountains, and 32 bridges in the park. (I counted, no I didn’t, I read it in a book.)
After spending four hours at Keukenhof we were off to our next destination. I wanted to stop and see the North Sea coast line, so we set off for Katwijk. It was only 20ish miles away, so it didn’t take long to get there. Katwijk felt like a much more developed, with older architecture, Oregon coast to me. Actually that’s not really true. What felt similar was that it smelled like ocean, and it was breezy and cold. It was however, beautiful and I got to touch the North Sea which is silly but made me happy.
It’s now approaching 4:30 pm and we still have a bit of a drive ahead of us tonight. We are sleeping in Brussels which is supposed to be a two and half or three hour drive from here. Traffic makes me think it will be longer... I’ll let you know.
Traffic around Rotterdam was terrible. It took us forever to get through an “incident ahead” as our GPS kept telling us. Once we got passed Rotterdam things picked up and we proceeded to Antwerp for dinner. One thing that surprised me on the way was that going from country to country, or at least the Netherlands to Belgium is just like driving from state to state in States. There was no border crossing, customs or anything. Just a sign that said “Welcome to Belgium”.
In Antwerp we ate in what seemed to be a Friday night hot spot. I think we were in a bit of the suburbs near a movie complex and some other entertainment, like billiards, etc. The restaurant we ate in seemed sort of trendy and showed the “Fashion Network” on a real. The majority of the footage talked about how it was the founder of the “F TV’s” birthday. There was a rolling ticker talking about how the staffers at the network wanted to wish Michel Adam a happy birthday. I have a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t the staffs’ idea. The images of this “fashion icon” made him seem like a total, uhm... you know the word.
The drive from Antwerp to Brussels was surprisingly quick, only 40 minutes or so. Our Courtyard by Marriott was easy to find. It’s 10 pm now and I can barely keep my eyes open. Mom had the luxury of naps while I was driving... obviously I did not.... to that end... it is now time for bed.
I’ll write again soon!
Katy
Our next stop was the baggage claim. The baggage from a our flight took a long time to get rolling but thankfully when it did, our bags arrived! Next we went to locate the Hertz counter. We found it and there was quite a long line. There was a sign for Number One Club Gold members that said they could proceed outside to the car kiosk. That’s me, so I decided to give it a try. We went to the parking garage, found the kiosk and unfortunately that had a long line too. I decided to just wait this time. Twenty minutes later a guy finally started helping me. After pulling up my reservation he asked, “Have you already checked in?” I said, “No you are the first Hertz agent to help me.” He looked confused, banged around on the keyboard again, and declared I would have to go back inside to be helped. His name tag said he was the manager and he was dressed in a suit. I wasn’t sure what the non-managers inside would be able to do that he couldn’t outside but I didn’t have much of a choice. Then one of the other guys said he could help me, so he took over for “Marco” and started banging away on the computer. I confirmed with this guy that my car needed to be an automatic and that it had to have GPS. He then said he could do that but I would have to get a large body Mercedes that would cost me a 1,000 more Euros for the two days I would have the car. I laughed, said, “Uhm no thanks, you can look here at my PREPAID reservation. You are on the hook for sending me away with an automatic vehicle.” He looked at the sheet, was like, “Ok. You’ll have to go inside.” Now 45 minutes into this Hertz adventure I headed back inside to another long line. I eventually made it to the front of the line where a nice woman was waiting. Marco was now working the position next to her, so I said, “Marco sent me back inside, I don’t really know why other than I evidently couldn’t be helped outside.” They then started conversing in Dutch. She then went through a stack of contracts from earlier in the day and pulled one out. She showed it to Marco and said “but her first name is Kathryn, not Deborah.” From what I gather both Marco and the other guy who tried to help me outside thought I had already checked a car out because a woman named Deborah Polanwsky (no joke it had the ‘w’) had already rented one this morning. The woman, the only one with a brain, then located my correct reservation in the system and had me on my way within 4 minutes. She warned me that my car was “very big” and hoped that would be okay. I was excited to see what this actually meant when I got outside. My “Espace”, no joke, that’s the name of the car was like a hybrid SUV and minivan. It didn’t have a key but rather a card that was inserted before pressing an on and off button. It also had no place to put any luggage. We had to fold down seats and load our stuff on top of them. This wasn’t ideal because our car would be parked with exposed luggage but at this point, there was NO WAY I was going back inside. Two hours after landing at Schipol mom and I were finally on our way to Keukenhof.
Keukenhof is a ginormous flower garden located just outside of Amsterdam in a town called Lisse. It is definitely the type of place that is best seen as opposed to described. It is also the type of place primarily inhabited by people with gray hair. Clearly this was an activity chosen by mom. I did, however, enjoy seeing it. Some fun facts about Keukenhof:
The name Keukenhof originated in the 15th century, when the land belonged to Countess Jacoba of Bavaria.
The park is situated on 32 hectares.
Each year 7 million bulbs are planted, among which are 600 varieties of tulips.
The bulbs are provided by some 90 “Purveyors of the Royal Household”.
Some 7,500 kg of annual grass seed are is sown each year.
In total, 15 kilometers of foot paths run through the park.
There are 280 benches, 15 fountains, and 32 bridges in the park. (I counted, no I didn’t, I read it in a book.)
After spending four hours at Keukenhof we were off to our next destination. I wanted to stop and see the North Sea coast line, so we set off for Katwijk. It was only 20ish miles away, so it didn’t take long to get there. Katwijk felt like a much more developed, with older architecture, Oregon coast to me. Actually that’s not really true. What felt similar was that it smelled like ocean, and it was breezy and cold. It was however, beautiful and I got to touch the North Sea which is silly but made me happy.
It’s now approaching 4:30 pm and we still have a bit of a drive ahead of us tonight. We are sleeping in Brussels which is supposed to be a two and half or three hour drive from here. Traffic makes me think it will be longer... I’ll let you know.
Traffic around Rotterdam was terrible. It took us forever to get through an “incident ahead” as our GPS kept telling us. Once we got passed Rotterdam things picked up and we proceeded to Antwerp for dinner. One thing that surprised me on the way was that going from country to country, or at least the Netherlands to Belgium is just like driving from state to state in States. There was no border crossing, customs or anything. Just a sign that said “Welcome to Belgium”.
In Antwerp we ate in what seemed to be a Friday night hot spot. I think we were in a bit of the suburbs near a movie complex and some other entertainment, like billiards, etc. The restaurant we ate in seemed sort of trendy and showed the “Fashion Network” on a real. The majority of the footage talked about how it was the founder of the “F TV’s” birthday. There was a rolling ticker talking about how the staffers at the network wanted to wish Michel Adam a happy birthday. I have a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t the staffs’ idea. The images of this “fashion icon” made him seem like a total, uhm... you know the word.
The drive from Antwerp to Brussels was surprisingly quick, only 40 minutes or so. Our Courtyard by Marriott was easy to find. It’s 10 pm now and I can barely keep my eyes open. Mom had the luxury of naps while I was driving... obviously I did not.... to that end... it is now time for bed.
I’ll write again soon!
Katy
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Let's Try This Again
It’s now 3:15 am Eastern Standard time and I can’t really sleep. I have been dealing with Hertz issues ever since we miss connected yesterday. As most of you probably know the majority of cars in European fleets are manuals. I can’t really drive a manual. If someone was dying, I could probably get them to hospital based on the few lessons I’ve had from Briana and Ilsa but I certainly wouldn’t want to have to navigate tiny European roads in one. Therefore I wanted Hertz to confirm that it would not be a problem if I picked up my car a day later than planned. It doesn’t seem like this should be a difficult question but evidently it was. It took me four phone calls, spread over ten hours to in fact confirm that I would have no problems. Finally, at 3:30 am, I got this confirmation. I’m going to sleep now and it’s going to feel amazing...
... That sleep was awesome. I was exhausted. It’s now almost 1 pm and mom and I are going to go to the shopping mall within walking distance of our hotel to acquire a few items in case we don’t see our bags for a while...
... Our shopping run was successful. We both got a few clothes to get us through. Mom also bought a pair of shoes (she only had uncomfortable dress shoes, I flew in running shoes) and a small arsenal worth of hair supplies. With our shopping completed we hustled back to the hotel to make the 3:30 pm shuttle to the airport.
Our bags were obviously already checked but we didn’t have boarding passes. I had reserved seats and everything but I needed to get our tickets printed. I approached the counter and explained our previous days misadventures to the check-in lady. Her first response to me was, “you don’t have a business class seat.” In my head I was thinking, “Does she really me want to go Ape $#&^ on her?” She went off and this long explanation of system wide upgrades not allowing for reserved business class seating, blah, blah, blah and I was getting close to losing it. Finally I just said, “So what are you really telling me? Where are our seats.” She eventually decided that she could give us the seats which I was already told three times the previous night I had reserved. I’m not sure what the woman’s deal was but she did have one piece of good news for me that I didn’t have to fight with her over, our bags had been scanned in to DC this morning and should most definitely be on our fight to AMS with us.
We boarded our flight right on time, only to have the captain yet again tell us there would be a delay. Fortunately this time it was weather. There was a storm passing through the Eastern seaboard and air traffic control put an hour delay on our departure. Mom and I looked at each other and laughed noting this was going to be the fourth hour thus far on this trip where we were sitting looking at a jet way.
The flight attendants on our flight were super nice and helpful. The group of fellow business class passengers was also noteworthy because it was an atypical mix. Often times business class passengers very much keep to themselves and do their own thing. Not so on this flight. There were a bunch of middle aged to older women who were all going to see the tulips in Holland. There were a couple business guys that were having fun trying to pick up the old women and one of the flight attendants. There were also two other women who didn’t know each other before boarding but shared a paper from four rows apart.
The afore mentioned business guys are now slightly out of control in what is the approximate middle of the flight. I just spoke with the flight attendant and she said that she had to cut off one of the guys after 10 shots of Jack Daniels. She said at first she thought, “He’s kind of cute. He’s my future husband.” (Blog Note: I thought he was cute too. He looked a bit like Brett Favre.) But now she is thinking, “He’s my future EX husband.”
... No joke, this same guy just laid down on the ground in the aisle... now he is doing military style push ups that he is calling “burpies”... I can honestly say in all the traveling I have done this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone lay down in the aisle or do burpies adjacent to the galley...
We are supposed to land at AMS at 8:15 am according to the map in front of me. It is currently 6:40 am. We have a busy day in front of us, so I need to try and grab another hour of sleep. I’ll write more tomorrow!
Katy
... That sleep was awesome. I was exhausted. It’s now almost 1 pm and mom and I are going to go to the shopping mall within walking distance of our hotel to acquire a few items in case we don’t see our bags for a while...
... Our shopping run was successful. We both got a few clothes to get us through. Mom also bought a pair of shoes (she only had uncomfortable dress shoes, I flew in running shoes) and a small arsenal worth of hair supplies. With our shopping completed we hustled back to the hotel to make the 3:30 pm shuttle to the airport.
Our bags were obviously already checked but we didn’t have boarding passes. I had reserved seats and everything but I needed to get our tickets printed. I approached the counter and explained our previous days misadventures to the check-in lady. Her first response to me was, “you don’t have a business class seat.” In my head I was thinking, “Does she really me want to go Ape $#&^ on her?” She went off and this long explanation of system wide upgrades not allowing for reserved business class seating, blah, blah, blah and I was getting close to losing it. Finally I just said, “So what are you really telling me? Where are our seats.” She eventually decided that she could give us the seats which I was already told three times the previous night I had reserved. I’m not sure what the woman’s deal was but she did have one piece of good news for me that I didn’t have to fight with her over, our bags had been scanned in to DC this morning and should most definitely be on our fight to AMS with us.
We boarded our flight right on time, only to have the captain yet again tell us there would be a delay. Fortunately this time it was weather. There was a storm passing through the Eastern seaboard and air traffic control put an hour delay on our departure. Mom and I looked at each other and laughed noting this was going to be the fourth hour thus far on this trip where we were sitting looking at a jet way.
The flight attendants on our flight were super nice and helpful. The group of fellow business class passengers was also noteworthy because it was an atypical mix. Often times business class passengers very much keep to themselves and do their own thing. Not so on this flight. There were a bunch of middle aged to older women who were all going to see the tulips in Holland. There were a couple business guys that were having fun trying to pick up the old women and one of the flight attendants. There were also two other women who didn’t know each other before boarding but shared a paper from four rows apart.
The afore mentioned business guys are now slightly out of control in what is the approximate middle of the flight. I just spoke with the flight attendant and she said that she had to cut off one of the guys after 10 shots of Jack Daniels. She said at first she thought, “He’s kind of cute. He’s my future husband.” (Blog Note: I thought he was cute too. He looked a bit like Brett Favre.) But now she is thinking, “He’s my future EX husband.”
... No joke, this same guy just laid down on the ground in the aisle... now he is doing military style push ups that he is calling “burpies”... I can honestly say in all the traveling I have done this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone lay down in the aisle or do burpies adjacent to the galley...
We are supposed to land at AMS at 8:15 am according to the map in front of me. It is currently 6:40 am. We have a busy day in front of us, so I need to try and grab another hour of sleep. I’ll write more tomorrow!
Katy
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
I Swear I Have Been Here Before
As with many a Polansky international journey, this one too is starting at Wal-mart. Last night I asked dad for our international converter. He yet again couldn’t find it. As loyal blog readers will remember the Asian adventure of 2008 began at Wal-mart with the $9000 foot rest. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot on Delta Oaks I swore I was having déjà -vu back to that morning in ’08. Dad was having a mini-freak out that there were no cars in the parking lot and that the store must be closed. The same open 24 hour sign was prominently placed by the front door, just like two years ago. And just like two years ago, dad still didn’t believe it. We entered the store and dad hurriedly shuffled toward the aspirin he wanted to buy. I went to the back for the converter. As I returned to the front of the store, he spotted me near the checkout and started running toward me. I know Wal-mart is a big store and he probably missed me, since I was gone SO long, but still, the running was uncalled for. It did make me laugh, however, since I knew there was no way we would make it out of the store without him having run at least once. A nice woman quickly checked us out and another ancient nice lady, Lillian, wished us a good morning at the door. We were off to the airport.
On the way to the airport I called the United 1K desk to confirm that our flight was in fact still going. The agent said it was and that United was actually flying all of its long haul flights to Europe for the first time in a week. I was pumped, I told the guy thanks for confirming that barring a mechanical problem or an additional volcanic eruption we’d be in Amsterdam by morning!
Evidently all of Spring Blvd decided to go somewhere this morning. We spent a good part of the time before our flight talking to Lori and then Mark and Mary showed up too. Mark and Mary happened to be on our flight to Denver and sat in the row in front of us. We talked to them for a bit and then I fell asleep. We walked from our arrival gate to the Red Carpet Room with Mark and Mary. We were telling them about our plans and how we were going to road trip around. Mark asked if I was looking forward to driving on the Autobahn. I told him I was. He then asked if I was disappointed I wouldn’t be able to drive dad’s Taurus on the Autobahn... hahahahaha... score one for Dr. Jewell! I’m frankly impressed that Mark even knows that’s what dad drives and the fact that he commented on it is just extra funny.
In the Red Carpet Room in Denver mom and I started accumulating our free emergency survival food. We nearly filled an entire quart bag of yogurt covered raisins. At one point I went for a cup on the opposite side of the lounge, while unbeknownst to me mom was getting a cup on the near side. Meeting back at the seats with two giant cups of raisins made us both laugh a bit.
We left the club to head for our flight from Denver to Chicago. We boarded on time and got settled in our seats. I was pretty dang tired at this point and proceeded to fall asleep. After I while I thought I heard the captain come on and say something about a delay. I was too tired to concentrate on what he was saying, so I just ignored him. Later I thought I heard the captain again, so I thought I should open my eyes and see what figure out what was going on. When I opened my eyes and looked out the window we were still on the ground. That’s never a good sign when you’ve already been asleep long enough for drooling to commence. It turns out that when I woke up we had been sitting at the gate for roughly an hour. The captain come on and explained that we had an oil leak in the engine and mechanic needed to take a look at it. Thirty minutes later he came back on and announced that the problem could be fixed but the oil would have to be completely drained and changed. This was going to take another hour. In all we sat on the runway for two and a half hours before taking off. We had a two and half hour layover in Chicago. We had a chance at making our flight, but it wasn’t a great one.
We pulled up to our gate in Chicago at 6:02 pm. Our flight to AMS was scheduled to depart at 6:05 pm. We ran to the gate, which was conveniently only three gates down. Unfortunately our plane was long gone.
During the repeated delays while we sat in Denver I made a back up plan with the 1K desk. If we missed our flight, which we did, the earliest we could get to Amsterdam would be the following day on a flight from Washington DC. United wanted to put us up in Chicago for the night but I wanted to get to DC to avoid the possibility of having a mechanical hiccup again the next day. There was a 9:55 pm flight out of ORD to IAD and we decided to take it.
We landed at IAD at roughly 12:30 pm. We went to the baggage claim hoping that the arrangements we made in Chicago to get our bags to IAD would work. Turns out they didn’t. After speaking with a very nice United customer service lady she determined that our bags never left Chicago. This sent mom off the handle a little bit. Mom is not a fan of traveling without her stuff and the potential of getting to Europe without bags raised her personal stress level to orange.
I was hoping that the bags had just been tagged with the original rerouting United wanted to put us on, meaning the they would go to DC in the morning and then take our flight to AMS with us in the evening. Only time will tell. For now we are staying in a very nice Courtyard by Marriott. I had hoped to spend the first night of this trip at a Courtyard by Marriott. The only problem is the hotel I had originally booked was in Brussels, Belgium not an Off Airport Property, Virginia!
Here’s to hoping tomorrow will be a more successful travel day,
Katy
On the way to the airport I called the United 1K desk to confirm that our flight was in fact still going. The agent said it was and that United was actually flying all of its long haul flights to Europe for the first time in a week. I was pumped, I told the guy thanks for confirming that barring a mechanical problem or an additional volcanic eruption we’d be in Amsterdam by morning!
Evidently all of Spring Blvd decided to go somewhere this morning. We spent a good part of the time before our flight talking to Lori and then Mark and Mary showed up too. Mark and Mary happened to be on our flight to Denver and sat in the row in front of us. We talked to them for a bit and then I fell asleep. We walked from our arrival gate to the Red Carpet Room with Mark and Mary. We were telling them about our plans and how we were going to road trip around. Mark asked if I was looking forward to driving on the Autobahn. I told him I was. He then asked if I was disappointed I wouldn’t be able to drive dad’s Taurus on the Autobahn... hahahahaha... score one for Dr. Jewell! I’m frankly impressed that Mark even knows that’s what dad drives and the fact that he commented on it is just extra funny.
In the Red Carpet Room in Denver mom and I started accumulating our free emergency survival food. We nearly filled an entire quart bag of yogurt covered raisins. At one point I went for a cup on the opposite side of the lounge, while unbeknownst to me mom was getting a cup on the near side. Meeting back at the seats with two giant cups of raisins made us both laugh a bit.
We left the club to head for our flight from Denver to Chicago. We boarded on time and got settled in our seats. I was pretty dang tired at this point and proceeded to fall asleep. After I while I thought I heard the captain come on and say something about a delay. I was too tired to concentrate on what he was saying, so I just ignored him. Later I thought I heard the captain again, so I thought I should open my eyes and see what figure out what was going on. When I opened my eyes and looked out the window we were still on the ground. That’s never a good sign when you’ve already been asleep long enough for drooling to commence. It turns out that when I woke up we had been sitting at the gate for roughly an hour. The captain come on and explained that we had an oil leak in the engine and mechanic needed to take a look at it. Thirty minutes later he came back on and announced that the problem could be fixed but the oil would have to be completely drained and changed. This was going to take another hour. In all we sat on the runway for two and a half hours before taking off. We had a two and half hour layover in Chicago. We had a chance at making our flight, but it wasn’t a great one.
We pulled up to our gate in Chicago at 6:02 pm. Our flight to AMS was scheduled to depart at 6:05 pm. We ran to the gate, which was conveniently only three gates down. Unfortunately our plane was long gone.
During the repeated delays while we sat in Denver I made a back up plan with the 1K desk. If we missed our flight, which we did, the earliest we could get to Amsterdam would be the following day on a flight from Washington DC. United wanted to put us up in Chicago for the night but I wanted to get to DC to avoid the possibility of having a mechanical hiccup again the next day. There was a 9:55 pm flight out of ORD to IAD and we decided to take it.
We landed at IAD at roughly 12:30 pm. We went to the baggage claim hoping that the arrangements we made in Chicago to get our bags to IAD would work. Turns out they didn’t. After speaking with a very nice United customer service lady she determined that our bags never left Chicago. This sent mom off the handle a little bit. Mom is not a fan of traveling without her stuff and the potential of getting to Europe without bags raised her personal stress level to orange.
I was hoping that the bags had just been tagged with the original rerouting United wanted to put us on, meaning the they would go to DC in the morning and then take our flight to AMS with us in the evening. Only time will tell. For now we are staying in a very nice Courtyard by Marriott. I had hoped to spend the first night of this trip at a Courtyard by Marriott. The only problem is the hotel I had originally booked was in Brussels, Belgium not an Off Airport Property, Virginia!
Here’s to hoping tomorrow will be a more successful travel day,
Katy
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Euro 2010
Tomorrow the Europe 2010 adventure begins. Unlike most of my big international trips, Dr P. we will not be joining me. Instead Momma P. is my travel companion. I haven’t decided if we will have Momma P. fun fact but we will have a Momma P. barf count. Mom often gets travel sick and this is trip will have a fair amount of driving along with, obviously, an international flight. When we went to NYC in January she spent the first night barfing in the room, so I expect to have at least one such incident on this trip. We’ll see if we do. This all assumes that we will be able to go at all. The dang Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, has been wreaking having on European air travel. As of now United says our flights are going, but I won’t believe it until we are on board.
Keep your fingers crossed,
Katy
Keep your fingers crossed,
Katy
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Home to Work?
I had an early departure out of Logan this morning, 6 am to SFO. Ilsa is a great friend because she was nice enough to get up and take me. A little road-rage ensued because of construction detours but I still arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare.
I didn’t see much sky from BOS-SFO and I saw no sky from SFO-EUG. I’ve got to keep this short because I have to run to the office for a 3 pm meeting. Yup, you read that right, I just wrote that I have to go to the office. There is a first time for everything ;~) Euro 2010 commences on April 21 and that’s when I’ll be back in the blogosphere...
Until then,
Katy
I didn’t see much sky from BOS-SFO and I saw no sky from SFO-EUG. I’ve got to keep this short because I have to run to the office for a 3 pm meeting. Yup, you read that right, I just wrote that I have to go to the office. There is a first time for everything ;~) Euro 2010 commences on April 21 and that’s when I’ll be back in the blogosphere...
Until then,
Katy
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Fenway Park: Yankees vs Red Sox
Today I have only one thing on the agenda, Fenway Park. I am going to take a tour in the morning and go to the Yankees Red Sox game at night. I’ll get back to the blog after my day of baseball...
... What fun! I got to see a great game tonight which was won by the Yankees in the ninth inning. If you’ve never been to a Yankees Red Sox game, you should really try to go before you die. It doesn’t matter too much if you go in Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park (I’ve now done both). You just need to go. Listening to the fans of the two teams go at it is worth nine innings of entertainment even if you don’t like baseball.
I’m glad I chose to tour the park before the game. I learned some fun Red Sox history I didn’t know and I got to see the sight lines from everywhere in the house, including the top of the Green Monster.
It was a long day and I’ve got to go to the airport soon, so I’m going to keep this short. I’ll be back in the Eug tomorrow if any of you local folk need me.
See you soon,
Katy
... What fun! I got to see a great game tonight which was won by the Yankees in the ninth inning. If you’ve never been to a Yankees Red Sox game, you should really try to go before you die. It doesn’t matter too much if you go in Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park (I’ve now done both). You just need to go. Listening to the fans of the two teams go at it is worth nine innings of entertainment even if you don’t like baseball.
I’m glad I chose to tour the park before the game. I learned some fun Red Sox history I didn’t know and I got to see the sight lines from everywhere in the house, including the top of the Green Monster.
It was a long day and I’ve got to go to the airport soon, so I’m going to keep this short. I’ll be back in the Eug tomorrow if any of you local folk need me.
See you soon,
Katy
Monday, April 5, 2010
Teaching the Youth
Each time I visit Ilsa I like to go to at least one of her classes. It’s fun to see her in her element. I attended both a freshman and junior English class. I personally can’t imagine teaching these kids all day. I remember my high school days being so different. I’m not sure if that’s because they were or if my memory is failing. Ilsa would probably tell me it is a combo of both.
After class Ilsa had to go to a meeting for her Lulu Lemon job at the Prudential Center. We walked there from school. While she was in the meeting I had lunch at Paradise Bakery and did some work.
Later in the evening Ilsa and I stopped by two of her friends’ apartment. I’ve met Hannah and Allison previously and always enjoy their company. What started out with the intention of being a 10 minute drop in turned into an hour, which was totally fine by me. For dinner Ilsa and I went to Henry’s Bar. It was a blast. We played trivia, watched the first half of the NCAA championship game and had a good dinner. We went back to Ilsa’s to watch the second half of the game. Ilsa fell asleep before the final buzzer, which was crazy since it was one of the best championship games ever. Speaking of sleep...
Goodnight!
Katy
After class Ilsa had to go to a meeting for her Lulu Lemon job at the Prudential Center. We walked there from school. While she was in the meeting I had lunch at Paradise Bakery and did some work.
Later in the evening Ilsa and I stopped by two of her friends’ apartment. I’ve met Hannah and Allison previously and always enjoy their company. What started out with the intention of being a 10 minute drop in turned into an hour, which was totally fine by me. For dinner Ilsa and I went to Henry’s Bar. It was a blast. We played trivia, watched the first half of the NCAA championship game and had a good dinner. We went back to Ilsa’s to watch the second half of the game. Ilsa fell asleep before the final buzzer, which was crazy since it was one of the best championship games ever. Speaking of sleep...
Goodnight!
Katy
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Happy Easter
Happy Easter everybody! I’m not sure if I’ve ever missed church on Easter before but I did today. In order to beat the evidently notoriously horrible Easter traffic through Connecticut, Ilsa wanted to leave Becca’s apartment by noon. We did a fairly good job of this and made it back to her apartment by 3:30 or so.
Ilsa decided instead of eating out tonight she wanted to cook and watch opening night of the baseball season. We walked to Whole Foods from her place, bought a bunch of groceries and she whipped up a few lovely salads for us. Jesse and I were happy campers and we all settled in to watch the game, in which the Yankees are currently blowing the lead.
Ilsa has fallen asleep on the coach and I’m not far behind. I’m going to call it a night but will write again tomorrow if I find time.
Goodnight!
Katy
Ilsa decided instead of eating out tonight she wanted to cook and watch opening night of the baseball season. We walked to Whole Foods from her place, bought a bunch of groceries and she whipped up a few lovely salads for us. Jesse and I were happy campers and we all settled in to watch the game, in which the Yankees are currently blowing the lead.
Ilsa has fallen asleep on the coach and I’m not far behind. I’m going to call it a night but will write again tomorrow if I find time.
Goodnight!
Katy
Saturday, April 3, 2010
I Love Hoops
We got up fairly early this morning, 8:45 am and went to get manicures. This was fun because the boys, Jesse and Becca’s boyfriend Shawn, went with us too. When we walked in all of the workers greeted Becca. Clearly she is regular and again not 14 years old anymore. With all of our fancy nails, we next headed to a diner for breakfast, Have I mentioned that I love diners and breakfast? I had an omelet with a side of pancakes and was one happy camper.
After breakfast we went back to apartment to clean up for our day of adventures. No one had anything they were super set on doing, so I asked Shawn, a native New Yorker if we could hoop hunting. As I’ve noted before I like to take pictures of basketball hoops when I travel. Shawn likes basketball and I figured he might have some good ideas in places to look them.
Our first stop was Rucker Park. The park was way smaller than I had imagined it to be but fun to see nonetheless. It didn’t have any great site lines to New York landmarks but Yankee Stadium was nearby so we decided to go check for hoops near it.
As I’m sure most of you know the Yankees opened a new stadium last season. I wasn’t sure if the old stadium had been taken down yet because the plans were to convert it to more parking. It turned out upon arrival that approximately half of the old stadium was down. In between the old stadium and new stadium a park was being constructed. The park was about 95% done, the unfinished part happened to be basketball courts. The basketball courts also happened to have a great view of not only New Yankee stadium, but not long for this world Old Yankee Stadium as well. My only problem was the courts were surrounded by chain link fence and a guard. Construction guys were feverishly working on the court, so I knew there had to be a way in, the question was just how could I sneak through the fence and by the guard.
After assessing the situation I determined there was no way to get in without having someone “let” me. I decided to approach one of the construction workers and ask him. He suggested I enter in one of the gates that I had spotted before. The problem was even if I made it through the gate there was a second layer of fencing that I couldn’t get through.
I went back and told the crew that I didn’t think my plan was going to work. At which point I saw the the guy I was talking to previously telling one of the guys he works with about what I wanted. The gentleman he was talking to looked like he might have a little more authority, so I decided to approach them again and ask him if he would let me in. I told him that I was a crazy Oregonian who travels the world searching for hoop pictures with cool backgrounds and that I was hoping to get a shot with Old Yankee Stadium. I explained how I wouldn’t be back until long after the old stadium was gone and that this was my one and only chance to take THIS picture. I think he got a kick out of me and low behold he decided to let me in the secret side entrance!
It took a while to walk all the way around so I got a chance to chat with my partner in crime. His name was Victor Clarke, he was originally from Ireland and still had his accent. He had lived in New York for 20+ years and knew all about the old stadium. For instance, during the demolition work crews had just in the previous day or two removed one of the newer facades from the exterior of the facility to reveal some super cool old stuff. This stuff included an old painted sign with Joe Dimaggio’s famous quote, “I want to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee.” I ended up quite pleased with my hoop picture. The best part, is of course, that this truly is a picture I will never be able to replicate again.
After Yankee stadium I was more than pleased with my hoop hunting but Shawn had one more place he wanted to take us. We went to Riverbank Park which featured a decent view of the George Washington Bridge.
With our NY side hoop hunting complete we headed for an area near Madison Square Garden. There was a neat art instillation that featured a ton of copper statues. The statues of 6’ish naked guys were placed all over the rooftops and exteriors of buildings throughout the area. I don’t know how many statues were included in the exhibit but we must have spotted at least 20 of them.
It was now time for Ilsa and me to leave the group and head for the Nets game. The Nets are terrible this season. The only good part about this is it makes getting tickets to games super easy and super cheap. I managed to get a couple of fourth row “court suite” seats for way under face. I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant but I was excited to see.
Our drive to the stadium had one planned stop at the Newport Ferry Terminal. After viewing this place on Google Maps I thought it might have a very cool view of a hoop and the NYC skyline. Unfortunately it took us forever to get though the Holland Tunnel, so it was darker than I would have liked. The hoop looked like it was in the process of getting removed, so I may not get an opportunity to take this shot again, which definitely makes what I did get, better than nothing.
From the Newport Ferry Terminal we headed to the Izod Center. Mertle (my GPS) took us an interesting way. Sometimes she takes random shortcuts. Usually they work out great. In this case, not so much. She took us through an incredibly industrial area, which was fine, until we got stuck waiting for a train. This was the slowest moving and longest train I have ever seen. We literally sat at the crossing for 25 minutes. This wouldn’t have mattered if we were a little earlier or if I didn’t have to pee my pants. About midway through our waiting time Ilsa came up with a nickname for the train, from this point forward it is known as the “F’in train”.
Upon our arrival at the Izod Center we ran straight for the bathroom. I don’t think I’ve ever peed for three minutes straight but I swear I did. I was halfway concerned that the toilet was going to overflow but man it felt good. Okay... I’ll stop over sharing now.
After completing our bathroom stop we spent a bit of time wandering around the the facility. First we did a lap of the main concourse. Then we decided to try and find our seats. That proved to be a bit of challenge. We cruised around the bowels of the Izod with barely anyone saying boo to us. Ilsa even had the opportunity to climb on top of a Zamboni. It was awesome. I have a picture. Eventually we found the two all-you-can-eat clubs to which our tickets granted us access. The grub wasn’t great (it paled in comparison to the Blazers all-you-can-eat seats) but there was a giant projection screen, along with a bunch of 42” plasmas that were showing the end of the Butler Michigan State game, which was awesome.
We eventually made it to our seats slightly before halftime. We had our own little box like thing. It was a row of seats but the row in front of us had a little table like thing and a TV. This again was an amazing stroke of luck since it allowed us to watch both the NBA game in front of us and the Final Four.
My favorite part of the Nets in-game entertainment was the mascot. They had a regular mascot but they also had a mini-mascot! No joke, I think it was a little person. Watching it run was so dang funny. It was sort of like a little ewok. Ilsa and I were fascinated by it. We decided at the end of the game we would go hunting for “mini-sly” to take a picture with him. Needless to say we were successful and the picture is awesome.
Getting back to Becca’s apartment took a while because there was an accident on one of the highways. We were both exhausted by the time we got back to apartment. It was a great day but it’s time to call it a night.
Katy
After breakfast we went back to apartment to clean up for our day of adventures. No one had anything they were super set on doing, so I asked Shawn, a native New Yorker if we could hoop hunting. As I’ve noted before I like to take pictures of basketball hoops when I travel. Shawn likes basketball and I figured he might have some good ideas in places to look them.
Our first stop was Rucker Park. The park was way smaller than I had imagined it to be but fun to see nonetheless. It didn’t have any great site lines to New York landmarks but Yankee Stadium was nearby so we decided to go check for hoops near it.
As I’m sure most of you know the Yankees opened a new stadium last season. I wasn’t sure if the old stadium had been taken down yet because the plans were to convert it to more parking. It turned out upon arrival that approximately half of the old stadium was down. In between the old stadium and new stadium a park was being constructed. The park was about 95% done, the unfinished part happened to be basketball courts. The basketball courts also happened to have a great view of not only New Yankee stadium, but not long for this world Old Yankee Stadium as well. My only problem was the courts were surrounded by chain link fence and a guard. Construction guys were feverishly working on the court, so I knew there had to be a way in, the question was just how could I sneak through the fence and by the guard.
After assessing the situation I determined there was no way to get in without having someone “let” me. I decided to approach one of the construction workers and ask him. He suggested I enter in one of the gates that I had spotted before. The problem was even if I made it through the gate there was a second layer of fencing that I couldn’t get through.
I went back and told the crew that I didn’t think my plan was going to work. At which point I saw the the guy I was talking to previously telling one of the guys he works with about what I wanted. The gentleman he was talking to looked like he might have a little more authority, so I decided to approach them again and ask him if he would let me in. I told him that I was a crazy Oregonian who travels the world searching for hoop pictures with cool backgrounds and that I was hoping to get a shot with Old Yankee Stadium. I explained how I wouldn’t be back until long after the old stadium was gone and that this was my one and only chance to take THIS picture. I think he got a kick out of me and low behold he decided to let me in the secret side entrance!
It took a while to walk all the way around so I got a chance to chat with my partner in crime. His name was Victor Clarke, he was originally from Ireland and still had his accent. He had lived in New York for 20+ years and knew all about the old stadium. For instance, during the demolition work crews had just in the previous day or two removed one of the newer facades from the exterior of the facility to reveal some super cool old stuff. This stuff included an old painted sign with Joe Dimaggio’s famous quote, “I want to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee.” I ended up quite pleased with my hoop picture. The best part, is of course, that this truly is a picture I will never be able to replicate again.
After Yankee stadium I was more than pleased with my hoop hunting but Shawn had one more place he wanted to take us. We went to Riverbank Park which featured a decent view of the George Washington Bridge.
With our NY side hoop hunting complete we headed for an area near Madison Square Garden. There was a neat art instillation that featured a ton of copper statues. The statues of 6’ish naked guys were placed all over the rooftops and exteriors of buildings throughout the area. I don’t know how many statues were included in the exhibit but we must have spotted at least 20 of them.
It was now time for Ilsa and me to leave the group and head for the Nets game. The Nets are terrible this season. The only good part about this is it makes getting tickets to games super easy and super cheap. I managed to get a couple of fourth row “court suite” seats for way under face. I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant but I was excited to see.
Our drive to the stadium had one planned stop at the Newport Ferry Terminal. After viewing this place on Google Maps I thought it might have a very cool view of a hoop and the NYC skyline. Unfortunately it took us forever to get though the Holland Tunnel, so it was darker than I would have liked. The hoop looked like it was in the process of getting removed, so I may not get an opportunity to take this shot again, which definitely makes what I did get, better than nothing.
From the Newport Ferry Terminal we headed to the Izod Center. Mertle (my GPS) took us an interesting way. Sometimes she takes random shortcuts. Usually they work out great. In this case, not so much. She took us through an incredibly industrial area, which was fine, until we got stuck waiting for a train. This was the slowest moving and longest train I have ever seen. We literally sat at the crossing for 25 minutes. This wouldn’t have mattered if we were a little earlier or if I didn’t have to pee my pants. About midway through our waiting time Ilsa came up with a nickname for the train, from this point forward it is known as the “F’in train”.
Upon our arrival at the Izod Center we ran straight for the bathroom. I don’t think I’ve ever peed for three minutes straight but I swear I did. I was halfway concerned that the toilet was going to overflow but man it felt good. Okay... I’ll stop over sharing now.
After completing our bathroom stop we spent a bit of time wandering around the the facility. First we did a lap of the main concourse. Then we decided to try and find our seats. That proved to be a bit of challenge. We cruised around the bowels of the Izod with barely anyone saying boo to us. Ilsa even had the opportunity to climb on top of a Zamboni. It was awesome. I have a picture. Eventually we found the two all-you-can-eat clubs to which our tickets granted us access. The grub wasn’t great (it paled in comparison to the Blazers all-you-can-eat seats) but there was a giant projection screen, along with a bunch of 42” plasmas that were showing the end of the Butler Michigan State game, which was awesome.
We eventually made it to our seats slightly before halftime. We had our own little box like thing. It was a row of seats but the row in front of us had a little table like thing and a TV. This again was an amazing stroke of luck since it allowed us to watch both the NBA game in front of us and the Final Four.
My favorite part of the Nets in-game entertainment was the mascot. They had a regular mascot but they also had a mini-mascot! No joke, I think it was a little person. Watching it run was so dang funny. It was sort of like a little ewok. Ilsa and I were fascinated by it. We decided at the end of the game we would go hunting for “mini-sly” to take a picture with him. Needless to say we were successful and the picture is awesome.
Getting back to Becca’s apartment took a while because there was an accident on one of the highways. We were both exhausted by the time we got back to apartment. It was a great day but it’s time to call it a night.
Katy
Friday, April 2, 2010
Good Friday
On the east coast they honor Christian holidays in the public school system. This means that Ilsa has today off because it is Good Friday. Since she has a three day weekend, we decided to go to New York to see her sister. On our way out of town we picked up breakfast, Jesse and hit the road for New Rochelle.
The drive was roughly three hours but felt faster. We arrived at Becca’s apartment (it still seems weird saying that, she will always be fourteen to me) and spent a while just chatting and catching up. Becca had dinner plans so we made some of our own. For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant that Ilsa’s grandparents, true Italians, used to frequent. It was really good. I had some of the best veal parmigiana I’ve ever had. I also saw “easter bread” for the fist time. It was appeared to be bread, cooked around an egg, with rainbow sprinkles on top. You all know I like anything with sprinkles, so I had to try it. It was a little disappointing in that it basically tasted like regular old challah bread, which was fine, just not the desserty sweetness for which I was hoping.
We had talked about going bowling when we got back from dinner but as it turned out, we were all too tired. Instead we set up camp in the family room and got ready for bed. I, not surprisingly played on puter a little bit and am now going to call it a night as well.
See yah on the flip side,
Katy
The drive was roughly three hours but felt faster. We arrived at Becca’s apartment (it still seems weird saying that, she will always be fourteen to me) and spent a while just chatting and catching up. Becca had dinner plans so we made some of our own. For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant that Ilsa’s grandparents, true Italians, used to frequent. It was really good. I had some of the best veal parmigiana I’ve ever had. I also saw “easter bread” for the fist time. It was appeared to be bread, cooked around an egg, with rainbow sprinkles on top. You all know I like anything with sprinkles, so I had to try it. It was a little disappointing in that it basically tasted like regular old challah bread, which was fine, just not the desserty sweetness for which I was hoping.
We had talked about going bowling when we got back from dinner but as it turned out, we were all too tired. Instead we set up camp in the family room and got ready for bed. I, not surprisingly played on puter a little bit and am now going to call it a night as well.
See yah on the flip side,
Katy
Thursday, April 1, 2010
SK6ers
Ilsa had to get up and go educate our country’s youth today. I decided to sleep in a little bit and then walked around town. Ilsa lives in Allston and they have a few fun shopping streets which is where I window shopped until Ilsa got home from work at 4ish. Today we celebrated her birthday even though it was four months ago.
To celebrate we went to a place called The Regale Beagle for dinner. We decided to share a bunch of stuff including wings, tacos and mac n’ cheese. It was all scrumptious and I would definitely go there again. We then took public transport (the bus and T) over to Summerville to see Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, one of the most underrated bands in the country. If they are ever passing through your town, go see them. You can thank me later.
We had to wait for Jesse, Ilsa’s boyfriend to meet us outside the theater, so we decided some JP Licks was in order. For the non-Bostonians among us, that is a good local ice cream place. I had vanilla with rainbow sprinkles. Why mess with a classic?
The concert and company were both great. It was passed midnight by the time we got back Ilsa’ s apartment. That means it’s way passed midnight now that this is getting concluded... in other words... goodnight.
Katy
To celebrate we went to a place called The Regale Beagle for dinner. We decided to share a bunch of stuff including wings, tacos and mac n’ cheese. It was all scrumptious and I would definitely go there again. We then took public transport (the bus and T) over to Summerville to see Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, one of the most underrated bands in the country. If they are ever passing through your town, go see them. You can thank me later.
We had to wait for Jesse, Ilsa’s boyfriend to meet us outside the theater, so we decided some JP Licks was in order. For the non-Bostonians among us, that is a good local ice cream place. I had vanilla with rainbow sprinkles. Why mess with a classic?
The concert and company were both great. It was passed midnight by the time we got back Ilsa’ s apartment. That means it’s way passed midnight now that this is getting concluded... in other words... goodnight.
Katy
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