Best and Worst Memories

So, I thought I'd do one final post to highlight our best and worst trip memories from this awesome European vacation!
Obviously, those who have followed the blog know most of the events and highlights, but I thought this might be fun. So, I'll start with the worst first and end on the good notes!

The #1 worst part of the trip most definately is when Ben got lost at the Venekoten lake. I was so worried about him and so relieved when we found him. Interstingly, my Mom had had a dream before this happened that he got lost in Paris! Maybe getting lost in Venekoten was to prevent this from happening which would have been much worse. In Paris I put a piece of paper in the kids' pockets with my German cell phone # on it, but thankfully they never got lost!

#2 was that Ben had to be sick with a cold for the second half of the vacation. It made it more difficult for all of us, but especially for him. I don't know how many tissues we went through with his abundantly snotty nose, and then the nightime coughing at the end which made sleeping difficult. Of course, as is true with most sick kids, he was more grouchy and irritable as a result, too. In the end, he was a good little trooper and we still did a lot!

#3 disappointment was that neither Germany nor the USA won the women's soccer world cup :-(

#4: the bad weather caused us to cancel our day trip to Switzerland (Luzern) which we had really been looking forward to.

#5: we missed the Tour de France finish in Paris by about 4 hours ... it would have been awesome to be there!

#6: Having to be evacuated from the Eiffel tower after standing in line for an hour!

#7: Not seeing the catacombs in Paris - we just did not have time for all we had hoped to do, but still we saw and did so much!!

Now, the highlights, best memories, in no particular order!

Meeting my new neice, Marion!

Meeting my new nephew, Bela!

David and Almut's wedding!

 including the peacocks :-)!

and the dancing :-)

The white cliffs of Mons Flint in Denmark and swimming in the Baltic Sea.

The castle in Heidelberg.

The vinyards in southern Germany

including the snails :-)

The cable car up to Schauinsland.

The Rodelbahn coaster ride.

Riding the metro in Paris was a memorable experience!

And you could not beat the Eiffel tower by night!

Of course seeing family and friends was also very special. Some relatives I had not seen for a very long time or had never met the newest additions! Well, all good things must come to an end. I hope you all enjoyed this blog. It was fun for me to share these experiences with you! It's good to be home!

Sunday and Monday: Home ... Brussels to Helsinki, Helsinki to Chicago

Since we all got to bed so late Saturday night, we decided to scratch any plans to go anywhere Sunday moring in Paris. We had hoped to visit the catacombs, but it would have been cutting it too close with our return trip, especially knowing that the Tour De France was coming into Paris that afternoon. We predicted if we waited too long to get out of the city it would be a traffic nightmare.So, we had another huge breakfast at the Mercure hotel, packed up, and left around 11 am or so to head to Brussels for our return flight. My Dad did all the driving this time, which was just fine with me!! One thing we decided during this trip is we need to get a GPS! It was so nice to have Maria's when we drove down to southern Germany, and to have my Dad's going to Paris!
On our way, we stopped in some small French village for lunch. The weather was lovely, sunny and 70s or so ... figures it gets nice when we're leaving! We ate outside at a restaurant in a marketplace. Daryl ordered some random dish off the menu because it had a very funny name. We joked about how he may wind up with pigs feet or chicken gizzards or eel or something. Well, when the foor arrived, he would up with this cold ham loaf in gelatin - it looked so gross, but he ate it :-), fortunately there were also lots of fries!


Daryl's mystery lunch!



Just as we were leaving, Daryl and my Dad watched this elderly gentleman with a walker fall and hit his head into the side of a car in the parking lot. It happened so fast, Daryl said her knew he was going to fall, but it was too late to do anything to stop it. Well, the poor guy seemed to be unconscious and was bleeding from the forehead, laying all twisted with his walker under him, so of course being a nurse, Daryl went to help. It was hard, because we know no French, but Daryl used napkins to put pressure on the bleeding wound and I grabbed an old blanket from the trunk of the car to put under the side of his head to stabilize his neck somewhat (Daryl was using his knee). Of course a group of people had gathered by this time and within a few minutes the ambulance arrived and the paramedics took over. I was proud of Daryl for helping out. It was one of those unexpected events you couldn't just ignore and keep going.

After taking the long lunch break, we got to the Brussels airport just about in time! We took a 7 pm departure to Helsinki, Finland, arriving there after 10 pm, which was 11 pm local Finland time. The sunset from above the clouds was really beautiful!

Fortunately we were all used to staying up late and the airport Hilton hotel was only a walk away. Being the frugal people that we are, we had never stayed at a Hilton before ... wow! The only reason we flew via Finland in the first place is that it saved us about $400 PER TICKET to go on Finnair. It actually made our flight quite a bit longer. Daryl pointed out we were closer to Moscow than Hamburg when we were in Helsinki! Anyhow, the savings on the flight justified the Hilton hotel :-) and our room was pretty impressive! We even had our own personal sauna in the bathroom!! Must be a Finnish thing!

airport Hilton hotel in Helsinki

Daryl wearing the hotel bathrobe and slippers
 in front of the sauna in our bathroom!

We would not have minded staying there longer, but of course, the next moring after another gourmet breakfast buffett, I decided to blog about Paris rather than taking a sauna! Then we had to catch our flight to Chicago, which required going through security at least 3 times ... I'm sure everthing is extra tight right now due to the Norway attacks. At one point, the whole airport observed a moment of silence and all activity froze in observance of the tragedy. It was actually pretty impressive, how all the activity and noise just fell silent for a minute.
The return flight was 9 hours, but pretty uneventful. Thanks for the book, Lauren (Sophie Kinsella: Can you Keep a Secret?). I read the whole thing on the trip and enjoyed it, reminded me of the Pretty Woman story a little! We had cool views of icebergs along the way over Greenland, etc. Also a clear view on the bridge from Michigan to Upper Peninsula, then a nice view of Chicago coming in. We could have spent the night at LaQuinta where we had parked the van, but even though it was midnight European time, we just wanted to get home. So we tackled Chicago rush hour traffic (left there right at 5:30 local time!) and made it home by 9:00 pm in Middlebury - not bad!

The Eiffel tower by night!

Well, I had to stop my last blog kind of abruptly, but here are a few more photos of our climb up the Eiffel tower.

the line waiting to go up the Eiffel tower

the ladder up the elevator shaft!

the Arc de Triomphe

After that, we got back together with my Dad and walked along the Seine for a bit. We walked up one of the really ritzy streets (George V) up to the Champs Elysee. In some of the windows there was jewelry with insane price tags, like a watch for 71,000 Euro, etc. We then took a metro back to the hotel because the kids were exhausted.

We let them take a late nap (7:30 - 9 pm!), and then headed back into the city around 9 pm, because we wanted to see the special twinkle lights on the Eiffel tower. They illuminate it for 5 minutes every hour on the hour from dusk until 2 am. We knew we were cutting it close to catch the first illumination at 10 pm, so we took a cab to the metro station, caught the metro downtown, one change of trains, then we overheard other US tourists talking about trying to see the lights, too, and so they told us to get off at a different stop (Trocadero). We rushed up to the street level and when we came around a corner, the Eiffel tower was in a magnificant view, just perfect! There were street musicians making music, vendors selling drinks, and lots of people! Then I saw some people climbing up over this little wall (actually it was a dry fountain) to a roof-like platform, so we did the same. We sat/stood on the edge of this wall and had the best view. In fact, I overheard a young couple, who had brought supper and a bottle of wine say that we got he best seats in Paris! The guy told the girl "they probably won't stay long", and sure enough, after we left, they took our spot!!

 We made it just in time ... a few minutes after we got there, the twinkling began! It was fun to watch and we took lots of photos! Alex commented that there would be not better place to be on our last night in Paris and he was right!

 After the twinkling stopped, the boys wanted to walk back down under the tower while it was lit, so we did. Even without twinkle lights the regulat illumination is impressive. We bought some more souveniers (vendors are everywhere peddling their trinkets!) and took some more photos ... is there any other structure that lends itself to photos better than the Eiffel tower? Wow! We did not get back to the hotel until close to midnight again!!

Fortunately we had stopped at a French "Pharmacie" and bought some cough supressant for Ben, so we all slept much better.

Saturday in Paris!

We had a rough night with Ben coughing terribly from about 3 am until about 5:30 am :-(. We tried lots of things, even made him hot herbal tea in the night and eventually got back to sleep. However, that kind of blew our plans of getting to the Eiffel tower early to avoid long lines! Instead we took it easy in the morning and had a GREAT breakfast at the hotel ... really impressive spread! Daryl commented that my Dad was trying to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, but really all of us ate a lot!!

Then we headed back out to the city. My Dad decided to sit out the climbing of the Eiffel tower, so we agreed to meet him again later and we went to get in line. Even though it was a long line, this is what the kids had really been looking forward to, so we were willing to wait. The line for the stairs to the second level were better than the elevator all the way up lines, so we bought tickets and got in line. Well, after about an hour in line it looked like a storm was blowing in, the sky was getting really dark. Suddenly the security personnel told us all to clear out the area, there was an evacuation order. It was like "you're kidding me, now that we've been in line this long!" The lady told me we could either try again later or get a refund, could not say how long it would be closed, but the whole area needed to be cleared!

We assumed it had something to do with what had happened in Oslo. We had heard about it on the morning news and surely security everywhere was tightened because of it. So we cleared the area along with thousands of other tourists ... it was weird to see the whole square under the tower clear our so fast, when it had been crawling with people. Everyone was coming down the stairs and elevators, too, the whole tower had to be cleared out! Alex was so disappointed and it didn't help it started pouring rain and storming, thunder and lightning and all. We also hear several explosions, like security was detonating some type of explosives. There may have been a bomb threat or something, kinda scary!

We stood under a tree for a while while Daryl found my Dad, then we walked around trying to find a place to take shelter and have a bite to eat. Well, good luck, everyone else had the same idea of course! We wound up soaked, but we did find a place to eat.

The good news was we went back later and we did get to climb the Eiffel tower! It was great, and the sun was out!

More later, gotta go now!

Friday, July 22: PARIS!

Wow, the weekend in Paris passed in a whirlwind, but I'll try to catch up! We left early and drove to Paris with my Dad. My Dad had added me as a driver to his insurance (but not Daryl, since he did not have his birth date with him), so I actually drove the second half! Yes, that means I drove into Paris all the way to the hotel! It was not too bad at all, quite a ways outside of the city in the La Defense area. We arrived at the hotel around 1 pm and got going right away to see the city. After some hassle with the ticket machine, we did buy Metro tickets and went to the Montmartre district first.

on the metro

We walked up to the beautiful Sacre Coeur basilica with its sweeping views of the city. Unfortunately it started to rain, but we took shelter inside the church, which was beautiful to walk through.They were trying the prevent tourists from taking any photos, but I thought it was just flash photos that were prohibited until the very end when a guy actually put his hand right in front of my Dad's lens and said no photos. Well by then we had a lot of good ones :-)

We also got the first good view of the Eiffel tower from the distance.

When the rain let up, we took the metro down to the Seine river and since it was still sprinkling on and off, we decided to take a boat trip to see the sights from the river, sheltered from the rain. It was a great boat tour, we saw everything and as you can see, the weather cleared up nicely!

Hello France!

After the boat trip we walked to Notre Dame cathedral. The evening sun was just at the perfect angle, giving us stunning photo opportunities! Alex enjoyed feeding the friendly pigeons from his hands!

the famous gargoyles

Then we had supper at a nice Thai restaurant and went home to the hotel. It was about a 20 minute walk form the metro station back to our hotel, but the kids were real troopers, getting home after 11 pm.

 It was a long day, lots of walking, but a wonderful experience!