Europe

Europe-that is the most creative I can get with this jet lag. So, bear with the stiff commentary as you peruse the pics. There is a bigger album on Facebook, but these are my faves and the stories behind them.

Here's my lame photo of a Buckingham Palace Guard. They no longer stand out front for you to get a close shot. This picture is the very type of picture Andy was philosophically talking about one evening asking "why is it that someone else's pictures aren't good enough? We have to take our own crappy picture like we are trying to prove that we were here." Maybe so. See!

Holding my breath. I thought, "Oh, these are so cute. Take a picture of me inside one." Big mistake. I thought it was a telephone booth, but in reality it was a toilet.

The British Museum. Super cool with way too much to see. We saw the mummies first and everything else just didn't seem to measure up. I mean how can you compete with this guy?

Big WHO?

My favorite shot of Stone Henge.

This is the closest we go to it because it hadn't opened yet. It appeared to be opening as we were leaving, but at that point I just didn't want to pay to go walk in the stones. They were cool, but I'm no mystic, I'm a cheapskate.Danny & Emily took us to Yorkshire. It was a super cool town with it's wall still intact.
It was great to spend time with family.

Skipton Castle (not in Yorkshire)

A real live dungeon that housed prisoners! At my house we like to call it the nursery.

This is a mid evil toilet...and my two nieces...and you know what is going to happen next, right?

Gotta love kids. Nap time with Uncle Andy was a big hit, though there wasn't much of a nap.

Cricket. Why do they play in white? Obviously they don't do their own laundry.

From England we flew into Paris, got out of there and drove to Belgium to see Brugge (or Brugges). On the way we entered a toll portion of the freeway and realized we had no Euros. Small panic. Thankfully, the way they have rest stop/exits we were able to get off and visit an ATM before we came to the pay station. Whew! You'd think as much as we've traveled that we wouldn't do stupid stuff like that, but actually maybe that is the product of so much traveling.

We went on a canal tour. It was really lovely.

Belgium has probably my favorite cuisine: chocolate and waffles

Frankfurt at night..this is when we arrived. I really liked Frankfurt. I can't adequately explain it, but it had this awesome Euro-trashy atmosphere that was just what I thought a big city in Europe would/should be like. It was great.

Frankfurt hostel-competing for the top spot in worst Hostel experiences. Fortunately we got our money back. It wasn't the building, it was the crazy European "kids" who apparently don't need sleep. We went to sleep (and I use that term very loosely) and woke up (as if we were asleep) to them partying. Speaking of immature people, I couldn't help myself. I just thought these exit signs were funny.

Driving the Romantic Road

Rothenberg, Germany

View from the city tower

Neuschwanstein-This is the castle that purportedly inspired the Disneyland castle. I've never been there. But, it was a dream of andy's to visit, so we did. It was very cool. The King that built it was insane (maybe) and there are mysterious circumstances surrounding his death, maybe suicide, maybe murder. The sad thing is that he only got to live in the castle for like 40 days before his death and it wasn't fully completed.

In this pic I am standing in the castle that Kind Ludwig (the builder of Neuschwanstein) grew up in--his boyhood "home."

We walked across this bridge as you will in a few pictures. Unfortunately the side of the castle was being renovated.My cute husband--isn't he handsome?

You can see the yellow castle in this pic. Scenery fit for a king.

We decided to hike out down a waterfall gorge. It was really fun and not as treacherous as it looks, just a little slippery.

Dachau Concentraion Camp. It was a sobering experience. The saying means sometihng like "Work makes us free." It was a taunt to the prisoners because they were told that if they worked hard enough they could gain their freedom and reference to the Nazi regime's mentality that the world needed to be freed of the Jews.

Apparently the crematorium was kept going 24/7 and in the few months before the camp was liberated by US troops things backed up, so when the soldiers arrived there were just piles nad piles of bodies. Not until those last few months did the locals start to suspect that something was amiss. Linderhof-another palace built by Kind Ludwig. He wanted it to be like a mini-Versaille.

No wonder people questioned his sanity. He had this grotto built. It is actually pretty cool and people do stranger things with their money today, but back in the day i can see how people would have been thinking he was cuckoo.

After leaving Linderhof (which is outside Munich) we drove through the Austrian Alps to Lucern, Switzerland.Waterfalls everywhere. It was like a fairyland this time of year.

Famous bridge in Lucern. I absolutely loved Switerland.
It was beautiful, clean, and the temperature was just perfect.

After Lucerne, we went and stayed in Lauterbrunnen. It is up a canyon and gorgeous. We took gondolas up to the Schilthorn. There is a rotating restaurant where a James Bond flick was filmed. along the way there are stops at little carless towns.

Dizzying sight.

We actually stayed in a hotel in Lauterbrunnen, but we could only afford the attic room. Hilarious, huh. It was actually cozy and just perfect for what we needed. See the seperate beds. That was par for the course our entire trip, but I can't complain. But for noisy neighbors I actually slept really well! :)

We ahd some time on our hands so we thought, "Let's go out to eat somewhere nice and have some authentic swiss food." We got a referral to this place, acnned the menu and saw that they specialized in Rostee-a traditional swiss meal consisting of different variations of potatoes and cheese. I found one with swiss cheese and an egg, "great" I thought. (If you can't tell, this is going to go very poorly.) When the waiter walked out I thought, Ihope that smell I am suddenly being assaulted with is not our food. It smelled kind of like sweat. Of course it was our dinner. Their definition of "swiss" cheese is not the kind I get at the store. I tried to hold my breath and I did eat some, but it was just really unsatisfying. Andy loved it and ate mine too. For those of you who know me, I'm not a picky eater, so this should be saying something.

Ah Paris. Unlike Lucerne, not clean andvery crowded. It was cool though and I'm glad we spent 2.5 days there so I could appreciate it.

We got our food stolen at the hostel. This is the other experience that competes for Worst Hostel Experience and ehre our complaints were met with a shrug. So, I think the Paris hostel takes top honors. I had purchased us a yummy dessert (cream puffs in chocolate mousse) and we'd eaten half of it Saturday night at dinner. I decided I would be mature and exercise some self restraint and save the rest for Sunday. When I was making dinner, Andy asked me, "hey, shawn where did you put that Coke you bought me? And, how much dessert did we have left yesterday?" Me, "Oh no...You have got to be kidding me!" I was pretty much as mad as I am capable of getting. No one takes my chocolate! Monday morning I wasn't suprised to find that our sandwich bread had been eaten too.

Visiting the Lourve. I was suprised at how I felt about actually seeing the Mona Lisa. It was complicated. It was more awe inspiring than I thought it would be. However, the portrait is quite small and you can only get as close to it as I am in this picture, so I am sure some of the artistic genius that makes it the most famous painting in the world was lost on me.

Arc 'd Triumph. Crazy small world...I met a girl here who went to East Forsyth High School.

The Statue of Liberty Sister Statue. It was suprisingly small, but cool to see the symbol of friendship between our countries reaching out to one another across the ocean.

Visiting Versaille with everyone else in France.

By this time I was really quite over looking at palaces. The grounds were amazing though.

Famous Hall of Mirrors

One last look at the sparkling Eiffel tower. I will say that this did not fail to impress; it was amazing. The first time I saw it, it was night and I was standing at the base and I heard a loud gasp from all of the people as it started to sparkle-unforgettable.