Picture Galleries Updated!

This is long overdue...but I finally updated all the photo galleries on the left side of the blog. All the galleries from the most recent ("Düsseldorf Funfair") down to "Bavaria, Germany & Austria" are newly added. Enjoy!

Funfair on the Rhine

This week there is a fair set up along the Rhine, which is the largest public gathering along the Rhine and the biggest summer event for Düsseldorf. For the 9 days it is open it gets around 4 million visitors. Ben and I decided to check it out since it is, after all, within walking distance of our apartment. It was quite the sight! This fair was huge, packed full with rides and food. And these weren't just little rides...they had roller coasters, they had rides with moving statues and water features at the entrances, all sorts of interesting things. Ben and I didn't want to spend a lot of money though, and didn't feel much like riding the rides, so we basically just walked through the whole thing, ate some food and candy, and left. It was still very entertaining though!

A picture gallery to follow soon!

A Week of Ups and Downs

Right before leaving Paris to go back to Düsseldorf, I found out the terrible news that my aunt Sharon died tragically in an accident. Needless to say, this was completely devastating news, especially after just losing my grandmother to cancer just 12 days earlier. Going back to what I said in an earlier post, losing my aunt makes me realize yet again how grateful I am for the hope we have in Christ! Sharon was a believer, so I know she is in heaven now with Christ, being reunited with her dad who died a couple years ago and all the others she has lost over the years who were Christians. I know this time is so difficult for all of our family, but what a blessing to know that we will all be reunited one day in paradise! Without a hope like that, a tragedy like this would be unbearable. Thanks to everyone who has been praying for my family!

I have been sick all week...not surprising after flying to the states for a funeral, flying back to Europe and touring all week, experiecing such a tragic loss, then a late train back to Düsseldorf. Luckily, I had a workshop the last 3 days of the week that was great and helped get my mind off things. It was on intercultural effectiveness...I learned a ton and it was really beneficial for working internationally. I also got to see a lot of friends I'd made from the last workshop, which was fun. The only bad thing was coughing and sneezing and sniffling through the whole thing, and even losing my voice completely on Thursday.

So after a long few weeks, we decided to stay in town for the weekend and put traveling on hold for a while. It was good to just relax and recoop. Saturday night, we went to our first movie since we've been here...I found a theater that plays the movies in english- score! :) Saw Star Trek, which we both really liked (even though neither of us have been into Star Trek before). Best part of all- while we were there, we bought tickets to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on Thursday...CAN'T WAIT!! The previews look awesome!

I guess I better go join Ben for the rest of the evening...he just beat Super Mario Bros 3 (the oldschool one, but we downloaded it on the Wii) for the first time in his life...all the way through, all by himself, no warps and no help from me! I'm so proud :) Now he's playing through it again since once you beat it once you get an inventory full of p-wings to play it again. You fellow gamers out there know what I'm talking about!

Paris

The last stop on our week of touring- PARIS!! I was so excited to finally visit Paris and see all the sites. It was a tiring 3 days there, but there is just so much to see! By the end of the trip, it sort of felt like "fabulous building overload" because there are just so many. The food in Paris was fabulous as well...even something as simple as a ham and cheese sandwich turned into something gourmet and unbelievable! The only drawback to Paris was that with so many immigrants, it didn't quite feel as "French" as one would expect...in fact, Carl was chatting with a school teacher in line to get into the Petit Palais museum and she said only about 20% of her students are French! Carl missed the French feeling he used to get visiting there years ago and said that the change was pretty unbelievable. We also found so much of Paris to be really dirty...literally, trash and debris everywhere. Still, we didn't let these things hinder our visit!

Some of the highlights: Friday, Ben and I went up the Eiffel Tower of course...

...but sadly, only got to go to the 2nd platform on the way up because the very top was too full and they weren't going to sell tickets for another hour. Oh well, still a good view!

Carl poses in front of Churchill, one of his heroes...

We toured Notre Dame, yet another amazing cathedral (Europe is just full of them!). There was some sort of service going on while we were in there, and they carried supposed relics (a splinter from the cross and a thorn from the crown of thorns) to the stage and had some ceremony.

We saw the Conciergerie where Marie Antionette was imprisoned, but it turned out to be a flop without a tour guide. We walked down the street where people would have been paraded through town on their way to be killed, ending with the Place de la Concorde where Marie Antionette and others were guilitined. We visited the arch for Napolean with all the names of his generals and all the wars he fought and won, as well as a tomb there for the unknown soldier. Carl took off his hat in respect. Loano (you can see that name at the top) was one the generals Carl likes.

Saturday we went to the Palace of Versailles...WOW! Talk about a palace! That whole thing in the background is all connected...all parts of the palace, not to mention the gardens in the back! Practically all the gates and balconies are gilded in gold.

King Louis the XIV, XV, and XVI lived at the Palace of Versailles. The inside was just as spectacular, with rooms full of paintings and more gold-gilding, an amazing chapel, the Hall of Mirrors where the Treaty of Versailles was signed ending WWI, painted ceilings, statues, etc. If you walked through the gardens in the back you could see where Marie Antionette lived, but we didn't get to do that. We ended this long day of touring the palace with a nice, leisurely dinner with- what else- fabulous food.

Sunday we visited the Louvre. Luckily for us, the first Sunday of the month is get-into-all-the-museums-free day, so no charge! Unluckily for us, the first Sunday of the month is get-into-all-the-museums-free day, so it was packed!

We saw the Mona Lisa and tons of other famous paintings, sculptures, artifacts, etc. One of our tour books said that just to glance at everything in the entire Louvre would take 9 MONTHS! We stayed about an hour, but didn't have a lot of time so decided to move on...ha. Next we visited the Petit Palais, but Carl was disappointed to find that the huge war paintings he was expecting to find there from his last visit were either only a temporary display last time, or in another museum altogether. We also passed by the Paris Opera House (where the Phantom of the Opera story takes place), and later the tunnel where Princess Di was killed in a wreck, where a memorial now stands. We ended the day with an early dinner before Ben and I caught a train back to Düsseldorf, while Carl stayed behind to fly out of Paris the next day.

Quite an exhausting week...who knows how many miles we walked all over Rome, Berlin, and Paris, not to mention Carl and Ben walking all over Pompeii, Capri, and Sorrento before I got there! We truly had the vacation of a lifetime and are so thankful that Carl could be there with us!

Berlin

The next stop for Ben, Carl and me on the week of traveling was Berlin. We decided to take an 8 hour walking tour that started at 10:30 AM. Little did we know what was in store for us with our guide Terry...he was a 74 year-old former British embassy worker in East Berlin...and did he ever have ENERGY! After our 9+ hours day of touring ("It's impossible to give a shorter tour, there is too much history," according to Terry), he was still energetic and hadn't sat down once except for at lunch and dinner, while the rest of us were sitting down at every site and were completely exhausted...meanwhile Terry looked shocked that anyone would be tired enough to sit down. Exhausting at it was, Terry truly made Berlin come alive for us. He was passionate about this history and would barely let anyone ask questions because he was so intent on telling the story.

We walked mostly through East Berlin, then made our way into West Berlin toward the end of the tour. While sometimes we saw some neat monuments or memorials, the stuff that got to me the most was when we would stand somewhere and hear a story like, "Right here in front of this Jewish girls' school is where the Jewish girls had to report to be shipped off to concentration camps." Nothing spectacular to see, but so moving. A lot of the buildings in East Berlin were pretty dilapidated still from the war, but there were still quite a few that had been rebuilt.

This was just the first neat building on the way over to "Museum Island"...we saw beautiful building after building after this- apparently they rebuilt more than I realized! Suprisingly, the picture below is actually a Protestant church...again, beautiful.

Following a lot of these churches and museums, we saw most of the sites associated with Hitler- the place where his bunker used to be, the place where he and his comrads would do their plotting, the memorial to the Jewish people killed in concentration camps, etc. Below is a picture of the memorial where Hitler did the burning of the books- it is a glass floor in the middle of the square, and below you can see an empty library, with rows of empty shelves to symbolize where the 20,000 books could have been had Hitler not destroyed them.

We also saw a lot of stuff associated with the Berlin wall- the part of the wall still standing, Checkpoint Charlie, etc., and of course heard all of the history associated with it.

We passed a fabulous chocolate shop full of chocolate sculptures...

...and I really wanted to try something...

...but we bought a little chocolate bar instead. We also passed the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby over the balcony. Not exactly historical...but I took a picture anyway.

At the end of the tour, Ben went back to our hotel to check some things online, but Carl and I went to a concert we saw setting up earlier that day that was taking place in the middle of a square between all these beautiful churches and buildings (a "desecration" to ruin such a fabulous square with a concert, according to Terry). We sat at a cafe on the corner where we could hear. Carl went to get a closer look- and who does he run into? Yep, Terry the tour guide. He bought him a coffee and we had a nice little chat. Turns out Terry knows a lot about music, because he knew every song that played. He also speaks 12 languages...wow! I told him I couldn't even name 12 languages. We had the server take a picture just so Ben would believe our crazy stories about Terry.

After we left, Terry even followed us down to the subway...we think he must have been lonely the way he kept turning up everywhere we went. Whatever the case, he made Berlin a fabulous experience for all of us. Before going, I thought Berlin might be a little boring, but it turned out to be one of my favorite places I've visited so far. Thanks, Terry!

Capri & Rome

We're finishing up our trip here in Paris and we wanted to give you an update. We forgot to mention that we went to a mass in Pompeii in a church. My dad thought it was beautiful and quite an experience, like he was in the movie The Godfather (even though we had no idea what they were saying). The next day we caught a train down to Sorrento which was beautiful, my mom would've loved the shopping, but everything was so overpriced. Dad completely blew his budget buying mom a purse (Hint: mom you need to pretend to like it for at least a month even if you don't). The next morning we went to the Isle of Capri via a ferry where we caught a cable care halfway up the peak then we had to hike the rest. Dad almost collapsed on the way up, it was pretty brutal with the heat and incline. This was where Tiberius, the third emporer of Rome had his palance, overlooking the deep blue beautiful ocean. Once we were at the top, we realized that it was a bust. On the way back down, dad even said "Turn back, there's nothing to see" to a group of tourists. We then caught a boat to the Blue Grotto, we both thought it would've been a great place to snorkle but it was frustrating not being able to get into the water.

After we finished that, we caught a ferry, which turned out was headed back to Naples instead of Sorrento. So we had to take another ferry back to Sorrento to get our luggage. We then had to catch a train to Rome and arrived at the subway about 2 minutes before the subway system closed. We found our hotel pretty easily which was 4 blocks from the Vatican.

I overslept the next morning but made it to the airport the next morning. We came back, dropped off her luggage and began an all day walking tour of ancient Rome with a guide who wished he lived there himself. We started with the Circus Maximus, the balcony where Mousilini gave a speech, saw where Paul was imprisoned (one of our favorite things), then went to the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. We went back to the hotel and freshened up. Megan had only gotten 3 hours of sleep or so but she made it through the day. We then took Rick Steeve's self guided tour starting in Palac de Campo. From there we wondered the streets of Rome under the stars to Place de Navona.


We then worked our way around to the piazza in front of the Pantheon and had the most unbelievable Italian dinner with 2 pitchers of wine between the 3 of us. There was an Egyptian Obelisk in the piazza and an Italian opera singer. After dinner we walked to the Trevi fountain and got a Gelato (Megan's biggest wow moment of the trip). We finished the evening at the Spanish steps and caught the metro back to the hotel.

Dad has enjoyed narrating these last few posts, but our trip is over, so the Berlin/Paris posts won't be written quite the same.