May 5, 2013

Whew!  It’s tired out!

Let’s see… we last left you on Friday.  Friday was another cool, windy day.  We went on a bus to Strasbourg.  We drove by the European Union buildings.  Strasbourg France is the location of the EU Parliament.  We got off the bus in Petite France and walked through the charming streets to the Cathedral.  This is a beautiful church.  It took them 300 years to build this Cathedral.  They started in 1176 and their astronomical clock was added in the 14^th century.  We were able to see the clock and we were amazed that they had the abilities to develop a clock that knows not just the time, but the seasons, the weather and so much more, and it still works! 

More random Gothic stuff on the Cathedral!

After the Cathedral we spent time walking the streets of lovely Strasbourg.  We had lunch at a nice place.  We were walking along and I see a big button hanging over a doorway.  Sure enough, it was a fabric and notions store.  That was fun!  Then on our walk back to catch a ride with the shuttle bus I found an embroidery store.  Diana, this one is for you!  Can you imagine?  Two fabric/embroidery stores in one day? 

Back to the boat for a nap and then a nice dinner with new friends. 

Saturday we didn't go on the Black Forest tour to the cuckoo-clock factory.  We were so tired!  A morning to sleep in was very nice.  We then went for a walk in the city of Breisach.  And we found another fabric shop!  What are the chances?  

Then a walk up the big hill to see the church.  However, it stopped spitting and actually started raining.  We were weary and stopped for a minute.  I turned around and said to bc “This looks like a nice place.  Let’s go in here.”  What a find!  It was a very cool little tapas restaurant hung over the cliff with a marvelous view of the Rhine.  We had a very good glass of red wine, caprese, bread and Parma ham.  Perfect lunch!  This place had the most unusual art. 

We went back to the boat rest a little before our afternoon tour.  Promptly at 2pm we went to the reception desk to turn in our keys to get our bus ticket.  The program director was a little put out with us because we hadn't heard the news!  (We were having a lovely lunch in town and didn't hear the latest lecture.)  We weren't going to Basal, Switzerland as the river was too high.  Ok… How do we get to Basal tomorrow morning?  They’ll bus us!  It’s about an hour’s drive.  Perfect.  Actually, it’s pretty much the way this vacation has gone!

At 2:15 we got on the bus for the WWII memorial tour.  I’m so glad we did this.  It was amazing. We went to a small but really nice museum, then to the memorial where the guide showed us how the Germans, French and Americans fought the battle in Alsace.  There were many, many casualties.  The area went from French, to German, back to France, back to Germany and finally the Americans liberated the villages that we were driving through.  We saw the spot where Audie Murphy held off the Germans and pushed them back into retreat.  It was very emotional.  We walked from the bus to the Audie Murphy memorial walking by a couple of soccer fields filled with young people playing soccer.  Imagine, the Germans were within yards of Audie Murphy when he jumped up on a burning tank, turning the big guns on the Germans, pushing them back.  And now, kids are happily playing soccer in the calm, beautiful fields….

We had a lovely final dinner with our new friends.  We hope to see them again in future travels.

Today was a long day.  We got up at 6am (!!) to get a bus to Basal, Switzerland.  At the airport we rented a car, after finally passing through customs, with no checks of our luggage or passports, from France to Switzerland.  Bc started driving and luckily we have Francine our GPS gal.  The names of streets are hard to pronounce let alone read as this is the German area of Switzerland!  We headed to Wynau and Murgenthal to see if we could find the graves of my ancestors.  My great grandparents, who I knew very well, emigrated from Switzerland in the early 1900s to Galveston, later settling in Santa Barbara.  We found two cemeteries but they were very “new”.  Most graves held people who had died in the last 20 years or so.  However, it did feel very special to walk on the streets that my great grandparents must have walked. Their last names were Pluss and Lemp.

Here's a covered bridge built in 1863.  About 20 years before my great grandparents were born and probably used this bridge! 

Here's a view of the scenery as we drove from Basal to Geneve.

We had a lovely lunch at a restaurant.  They all speak German in that part of Switzerland.  It’s hard for us to understand German.  But people are very nice and help us out.  We had a great cup of soup and a salad sitting at a communal table with the locals. 

Back on the road to drive to Geneva.  Francine said we would be at our hotel by 3:30pm.  Perfect!  We can write the blog, rest and enjoy the evening!  We made great time and were very close to Geneva when we found our freeway had been closed due to an accident.  Francine recalculated and took us to Geneva via back city roads.  We followed her instructions to go over the bridge to our hotel (about a half a mile away) but the bridge was closed due to a marathon!  There were many Gendarmes (police) guarding the blockades, so bc pulled up and I rolled down the window to ask one of them how to get to the Hotel Longemalle.  He said “that was a red light.”  I said “huh?”  Yup, we had not only gone through a red light, but pulled up next to a cop and asked for help!  He told us how to get back around to another bridge to get to our hotel.  The traffic was horrible!  We waited sometimes through 3 signals to get through an intersection.  The streets are not in a grid formation.  They are all X's and Y's with lots of one way streets thrown in.  Then add all the confusing signals and it was overwhelming!  Then Francine started getting all huffy because we wouldn't go over the bridge that was closed.  Long, long story short, we drove for almost 2 hours in a 15 block radius until they finally opened the closed bridge.  We went around and around.  Guess what?  We couldn't find our hotel because they had closed the street in front of the hotel for construction.  Ok, closed freeway detour, marathon closed bridge detour and closed street construction detour.  We finally called the hotel and said “Where are you?”  We pulled the car over (parking is impossible!) and a guy from the hotel walked over to us.  We gave him the keys, he moved the barricades, drove our car through the construction mess, unloaded our bags and then took the car somewhere to park it.  For only $50.00 a day!  By this time it was 5:30, we were exhausted, so that actually sounded like a good deal. 

So, mom, you are right!  You can’t get there from here!  Here is the view of our hotel. 

And what makes you feel less stressed out after a day like that?  A walk along the lake and this:

All I can say is good night!  Love to all… bc and gc

May 2, 2013

Hi!  We’ve been busy!

Wednesday May 1^st we docked in Koblenz, Germany.  We went to Marksburg to tour a 700 year old castle.  

It was difficult walking, but so worth it.  The pavement, if you can call it that is stone and a very uneven surface.  

We climbed stairs seeing the kitchen, bedroom, chapel, the torture room as well as the blacksmith’s area.  It was cold, but it didn’t rain.  

We came back to the boat and we walked around Koblenz.  We came across some sort of demonstration.  We think it had to do with Solidarity.   But here is a fun statue.

And the tulips are beautiful!

For lunch we had German food which was various sausages, sauerkraut, potato salad and loud oompa-pa music.  The food was good, especially the black forest cake for dessert!  The afternoon we relaxed and I was able to beat bc at cards twice!  Nice! 

We had signed up for an extra event, a traditional dinner in Rudesheim.  We got on the mini train and it took us to the restaurant.  The mini train was very mini and wasn’t very comfortable.  The restaurant was nice.  We had a great salad, soup and wine.  The oompa-pa music was so loud that we could hardly talk to our table mates. 

After we had our main course, bc and I left as I couldn’t stand the noise anymore.  When we left the restaurant we found ourselves in a lovely village of many quaint restaurants and shops.  We ran into some friends from our boat and they told us they had walked into the village and told us which way to go to get back to the boat.  We proceeded to walk back to the boat.   The walk through the village was so pleasant.  So much nicer than the mini train. I was just so glad to be away from that loud music!  We found the shore and a boat and asked what the name of the boat was, and it wasn’t ours.  Then we found a Viking boat, it looked just like ours.  We went to the front desk to turn in our id cards for our room keys, when a guest standing at the front desk said “You can’t be in room 209!  I’m in 209!”  We were at the wrong boat, again.  We left that boat and continued down the shore.  We found our boat, yay!  That was easy…

This morning we arrived in Mannheim.  We got on a bus and went to Heidelberg.  We went to another castle.  This one was magnificent.  We’ve been in a lot of castles in Ireland, Scotland, France and now Germany.  The Heidelberg castle took 400 years to build and is a mix of various architectures.  This castle was built for the granddaughter of Mary Queen of Scots.  I remember being in the castle in Edinburgh, Scotland where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to her only child, King James.  This was his daughter who was married off to a German King.  Various wars caused lots of damage to the castle and finally in 1764 it was struck by lightning and set ablaze.  Now it is a large tourist attraction.  It is still quite impressive.

We spent a few hours in the quaint village of Heidelberg.  We had some lunch at on outdoor café and walked along the cobblestone roads and enjoyed all the shops.  It was a pleasant afternoon.

We got back to the boat around 3:30 and I took a much needed nap!  Now we are relaxing before having dinner.  We are enjoying this cruise and we’ve met some very nice people. 

We miss you and send our love, bc and gc

April 30, 2013

Hello!  We boarded the Helvetia Sunday afternoon.  Our luggage followed us on the ship and we were shown to our cabin very quickly, without ever showing any identification or documents.  It’s like flying around in the EU.  Once you are in, you’re in!

We enjoyed a lazy Sunday afternoon, unpacking, checking out the ship and relaxing.  This is a lot bigger than the 8 person barge we left but much smaller than other cruises we have taken on Oceania.  There are about 190 passengers on board.  Most of the passengers are from the US.  It’s a long boat with 4 floors.  We have a lovely big picture window.  It is so nice to be able to see out; except for the times we are docked right next to another ship or within easy view of the dock.  But that isn't too often. 

Monday was a morning tour to walk around and climb up a windmill in Kinderdijk.  We looked outside and saw the wind blowing very, very hard, the rain falling sideways and said to each other “nah, we don’t need to tromp around in the cold to see a windmill.”  So we relaxed, played cards and stayed warm.  Several people told us we didn't miss much.  After lunch we sailed for Cologne, Germany.  There are so many interesting bridges and buildings.  The sun came out and it was a nice afternoon. 

I took a nap and we played cards, learned about Dutch cheese and had a wonderful dinner.  The evening entertainment was a man who plays the piano with electronic drums.  He sings all songs, Willie Nelson, Elvis, Billy Joel and etc. the same way, with an Eastern European accent.  Those of you that are Ombudsmen and go into 6 beds know what I mean.  Kind of odd, but its ok. 

This morning the boat docked at Zons to let us off, and then took off to dock in Cologne.  We rode a bus to Cologne.  I don’t know what they pipe into the buses, but I fall asleep every time we got on a bus!  In any case we got to Cologne driving through beautiful scenery.  They have a neat tour system on this boat.  You give up your room key for a bus token and id card.  Then you go find your bus and get on.  In each of our rooms we are given a “Quiet Vox.” It’s a small listening device with an ear phone.  The tour leader speaks into his speaker box and you can hear him perfectly.  It’s so nice to not miss anything because the tour leader doesn't yell loud enough, or you aren't close enough.  Nice idea.  In any case, we met our tour guide and walked to the St Peter and St Paul cathedral.  This cathedral was begun in 1248 and finished over 600 years later. Talk about job security! It is magnificent.  It had some damage during WWII but they have been rebuilding it.  They currently employ 60 people to maintain the cathedral.  It is made of limestone and is very dirty from pollution.

See that gold coffin in the nave?  That coffin holds the bones of the 3 wise men.  Well, at least we think so.  They hold someone's bones and for centuries people have been coming here to worship these bones of the 3 wise men.  

Luckily, some people saw that the war was not going to end well for Cologne and they took down the beautiful stained glass windows and hid them.  It took 50 years to put the windows back up.  

And the newest stained glass window was just installed in 2008.  It is so pretty.  The Archbishop doesn't like it because it’s too “modern.”   Oh well, everyone else likes it, especially me.

You gotta love all the random stuff on these Gothic churches. This is a door handle.

We walked around Cologne with our guide and learned more about the architecture.  During WWII there were 286 bombing runs on Cologne.  These bombings pretty much turned Cologne into nothing but rubble.  When the guide told us the number of bombings I thought “Well, if Germany hadn't bombed and/or invaded France, Poland, Holland, Czechoslovakia, England, Italy and etc. there would be no need to bomb Cologne!”  So, because very little was left standing in Cologne the head guys decided to just build whatever they could, fast after the war.  So beautiful architecture wasn't really a focus.  What was built were typical buildings of the 1950s and 60s.  Boxy…

The Romans settled here 2,000 years ago and in Cologne anything  new being built takes forever because they find some archaeological site. Here's a dining room floor dated 50 AD.  Wow!  It's in amazing condition.  

After our tour was over we walked along the shore of the Rhine a bit, did some shopping and had some lunch.  Here’s a shout out to our soon to be daughter in law Joy.  You would love the beer here!

For lunch I had a pizza-like dish.  It’s a very thin cracker crust with a crème fraise, then goat cheese, honey and rosemary.  It was delicious.  BC had a very typical German meal, Rheiniseher Saurbraten.  It is beef that is marinated in vinegar and a sweet raisin sauce for a week then cooked.  It comes with delicious red cabbage and a potato dumpling.  We washed this all down with a Bavarian beer.  All while sitting along the shore at a small café. 

I forgot to mention when we were in Amsterdam that Queen Beatrix is stepping down from her throne for her son Wilhelm Alexander today.  Everything and everyone was dressed in orange and ready to party!  This will be the first time Holland will have a King in about 100 years.  They've had Queens for a century.  Queen Beatrix asked us to stay on, but we hated to miss our cruise.

Tonight is a big deal here in Cologne.  It is, as best as I can tell, “the day before May 1^st. “  Young men who are in love go to the forest and cut down a birch tree and decorate it with ribbons.  Then they plant it in front of the window of the home of the young woman they love.  The bigger the tree the more he loves her.   So tonight will be a party night.  We will have a front row seat as our cabin window faces all the cafes along the shore.  We may go out and have another beer this evening.  BC says my tree will be the biggest, most decorated of all the trees!  I can hardly wait!

So you might find us out tonight "Party Fahrten!"

This afternoon we are warming up, sending out laundry and relaxing.  We wish you a happy “day before May 1^st!” 

love, bc and gc

PS.  Here's a picture of us with Greg the Chef on the French Barge Cruise with our profiteroles for our anniversary and bc's birthday   

April 28, 2013

Friday, Saturday and Sunday…..

Friday was our last full day on the barge.  It was cloudy and would later rain pretty hard in the afternoon.  But we got off the barge in the morning and had a nice walk and waited for the barge to catch up with us.  We ended up in St Leger. 

For lunch we had a traditional French buffet.  Frogs legs, snails, couscous, pate, Parma ham, cheese, salad, fruit, beet root salad and if course more wine.  We did try the frog’s legs and snails.  I regret that I didn’t take a picture of the frog’s legs with the snails.  The hardest part of eating the frog’s legs was the mental picture I had of a frog.  It just grossed me out!  But as they say, it tasted like chicken!

In the afternoon, in the rain, we went to Chateau de Chamirey in Mercurey.  The wine cellar was so beautiful.  Wonderful lighting, pretty caves.

Then we tasted some of their wines.  This was so much fun.  We tasted 10 wines and they were all good, some better than others, including premier and grand cru’s.  This was a fun way to end the cruise. 

Here is a picture of our crew at our gala dinner party. 

Saturday was a travel day.  We drove to Paris which was about 3 ½ hours, then onto a plane for a 40 minute flight to Amsterdam.  Amsterdam is a lovely city.  You know how you go to a city and it’s just so fun, welcoming, interesting?  Seattle is that way for me and now, so is Amsterdam.  We weren't able to spend more than 1 night in Amsterdam, but we will come back for sure. 

We stayed at the Grand Hotel Amrath Amsterdam.  It is so interesting.  It started out in 1913 (100 years ago) as a monumental shipping house on the Prins Hendrikkade.  We were typical tourists taking pictures of all the architecture, iron work and windows. 

This morning we got up and went to the Anne Frank house.  I am currently reading The Diary of Anne Frank (last I read it I was 12).  The tour sure brings the book alive.  It is a well-run, well laid out tour.  And so sad, knowing they lived in the tiny Annex for almost 3 years.  Never going out, breathing fresh air, being able to talk and walk normally.  The group was betrayed in August 1944.  Anne eventually died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945.  In her diaries Anne continued to write of her fears of being found out.  I can only imagine her horror at being sent away and losing her family.  We had a nice walk about town, stopping to have a coffee, hot chocolate and a croissant.  Oh, and we also wandered by one store front with an “interesting array of products”, no pictures allowed.  Again, Amsterdam is a lovely city.  It will be nice to come back some day. 

We are now on our next adventure, cruise on the Rhine River.  We are on a Viking Cruise on the Helvetia.  We have a lovely cabin, and are ready to enjoy this leg of our trip.

We love you and miss you.  Hope all is well with you.  Bc and gc