Sally

Amsterdam with the girlfriends

2008-04-18T16:10:31Z

A couple of girlfriends convinced me to go back to Amsterdam one weekend late in 2005, so I did. It isn't terribly difficult to push me into traveling anywhere. I learned this time that there is a parking lot where you can leave your car and take a fifteen minute train ride into the city, and the lot is under 24 hour watch by a guard. AND it's cheaper than parking on the street, especially when one gets booted. Oh well.

I wasn't there long enough to do much other than go the Heineken Museum, which is lots of fun, and the Sex Museum, which is boring. I didn't take many pictures because I've been to the city a few times and didn't feel the need. I hope you'll be able to distinguish which photos are from the beer museum and the porn one.

Warning, these are NSFW (not safe for work). Photobucket has already pulled a picture of a naked plastic Marilyn Monroe, but not one of a (fake) man flashing museum goers. I'm going to upload it again and see if they're still offended by breasts and not a penis.

I don't think I would really bother posting these at all, to tell you the truth, except that in some ways Amsterdam has to be seen to be believed.

Prague (with Josh)

2008-04-18T15:47:38Z

Josh and I went to Prague over MLK weekend (January) in 2005. I had been a couple of months before, before but hadn't seen all that I wanted to see. More importantly, though, I thought Josh would really enjoy it. His paternal grandparents were Czech Jews, and though Josh strongly resembles his mother, he has a lot of his dad's characteristics as well. The first time I was in Prague I walked around the city and thought "This is weird... everyone looks like Josh." And when Josh and I went together, he walked around the city and thought "This is weird... everyone looks like me." As a side note, there is Kentucky Fried Chicken everywhere. We now refer to it as "PFC".

We took the train through Dresden into Prague, which is a beautiful trip. In the city we just walked and stopped at places we found interesting, like the church on top of the hill and the bridge. We spent a lot of time in the Jewish quarter, taking in the museums (where some of the few relics from pre-war Jews exist, thanks to the Nazis protecting them as artifacts of an extinct race) and the synagogues. We bought a big crystal to hang in our window from a street vendor; now that we've moved back to the US, it's still hung in our place, and serves as a nice reminder for us. The guy told us it was "good feng shui" and I have to agree.

One day, we took a day trip to Kutná Hora, where the famous Kostnice Sedlec. It is an ossuary decorated entirely in human bones. You can read more about it on Wikipedia. The short version: in 1278, sacred earth was brought to the cemetery, which made it a popular burial spot. Around the time of the Black Death they ran out of space and built a cathedral to house some of the bones. There is a chandelier made of every bone found in the human body, a coat of arms, and stacks of bones in the four corners of the chapel. It is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen, but fascinating, and quite memorable. We paid the extra dollar for the right to take pictures, and wow, I don't know if I would believe it without seeing it.

So here we go, this is Prague. There are a lot.

View from the train:

Around Prague, the bottom of the hill

Around Prague, the top of the hill

From around the St. Charles Bridge, my favorite spot in Prague

The Jewish Quarter

The Ossuary

I went to Amsterdam and all I got was robbed and booted...

2008-04-18T15:12:12Z

I haven't updated this in almost a year... having a baby will do that to you, i guess. Anyway, I will press on with updating my photos from 2005 and 2004. A few folders are missing (namely pics from New Orleans and one or two other places), but I do have them someplace now and will post them eventually.

So next up, pics from Amsterdam with Josh and two friends of ours.

I went to Amsterdam and all I got was robbed and booted...

Well, that wasn't quite all, but we did get our car broken into (causing one of our traveling companions to lose her entire backpack, including her passport, her laptop, and many other things) and it also got booted, to add insult to injury.

But we still had a surprisingly good time and learned some valuable lessons. we took a boat tour and did a couple of the things tourists do in Amsterdam, such touring the Red Light District and the Anne Frank Huis, but not a lot of the stuff you're thinking of. We stopped in Haarlmen (which Harlem in NYC is named for) and decided that if we ever went back, we were staying there next time and taking a train in. It was April, so on the way home, we stopped to see the tulips in Lisse, parking the car off the road and wandering through the fields. We probably weren't supposed to do that, but truly, it was amazing. The smells and the colors were incredible.

So here it is: a smattering of photos from our trip.

A pub on our street

This is the bar where I was introduced to Leffe, the best beer ever. Seriously.

Darts

Worthy of MySpace

Josh and me

Amy and a street performer in the square

A street

A full bike parking garage. It seems like the Dutch bike everywhere, not just in Amsterdam. There are even bike highways.

From the boat tour

Another from the boat tour

"Coffee" shop

Haarlem

Haarlem

Haarlem

And tulip shots.

Trier (with Gwen)

2007-05-10T12:53:45Z

This was our first trip to Trier, when our friend Gwen was visiting from the Hamburg area.

Lunch time at the Ren Festival in Kusel

At the Porta Nigra

The downtown cathedral--more modern than most of the ones I've seen in Europe.

Art exhibit in the church

Defaced pedestrian zone sign

The park

Frankfurt

2007-05-10T12:35:19Z

We took a day trip to Frankfurt for Josh's 24th birthday, July 28, 2005.

London

2007-05-10T12:23:23Z

After the WGYF conference ended, I went to London for a week with Josh. We got engaged at the London Eye halfway through the trip. London is my favorite city in the world, and this was the first time I had been back since my study abroad in 2001.

Trafalger Square

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Tower of London

Outside the Tower

A Beefeater tour guide

Henry VIII's suit of armor

Tower at night

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Painting of the Tower from the tube station

The Tower Bridge at night

From the bridge at night

Houses of Parliament

The Eye, where Josh and I got engaged

St Paul's

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Madame Tussaud's
Josh with Britney Spears

Little Mozart

Jamie Oliver, the owner of Fifteen

With The Beatles

Josh re-enacting Abu Ghraib

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We were in town for the Notting Hill Festival, which had a Rastafarian theme:
The neighborhood

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These guys just reminded me of ourselves.

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Around London:
Our first night in town, with our friend Liz, at JD Wetherspoon's on Edgware Road (my old street)

At King's Cross

Picadilly Circus

Right after we got engaged

Westminster Abbey

10 Downing Street

Josh and I outside Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace

Convent Garden

Street performers in Convent Garden

Haagen-Dazs restaurant in Leicester Square, where we celebrated our engagement

Harrod's

St Paul's Cathedral

British Museum

Another shot from the British Museum

Victoria

Poster in the Hammersmith tube station

Fifteen--To officially celebrate our engagement, Josh asked me what place I wanted to eat at in London that I couldn't afford, and that was definitely it. We had a seven-course meal with some of the best food I've ever had.

WGYF

2007-05-10T11:15:41Z

A couple of my photos from Lancaster, England. These are from the World Gathering of Young Friends (aka Quakers), August 2005.

WGYF

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Some photos from Pendle Hill

Brugge

2007-05-10T10:55:01Z

One of my favorite places in Europe is Brugge, a small town about an hour west of Brussels. I went there with Kat when we went traveling, and took Josh there a year later when I had a weekend off from work.

the Town Square:

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Pictures from the Canal Tour

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Around Brugge

This is the only Michelangelo statue outside of Italy, Madonna and Child

This one is from outside the opera house (the character is from Mozart's Magic Flute)

And the rest are from around Brugge:

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From the top of the Belfort

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And one shot from the ride home, when we stopped in Spangdahlem to get gas:

Oktoberfest 2005

2007-05-09T09:48:17Z

From our day in Munich for Oktoberfest

wedding pictures from Germany

2007-05-09T09:38:11Z

Pictures from around Kaiserslautern, around our wedding (March 31 2006).

From downtown

The "Mexican" restaurant, with our out-of-town friends

Driving in Landstuhl

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Pictures from the Pfalz-Museum downtown

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From the legal ceremony and the castle

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From the reception at the Burgschänke

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We bought all the flowers we used from a stand near the Ramstein gate. I love the flower stalls.

From the hotel:

Glasgow and Dublin

2007-05-03T17:55:54Z

Glasgow and Dublin pictures found!

Glasgow

This was taken from the ninth floor of my hostel. It was featured on Travelpod while I was in the hospital giving birth to Raley, so I missed it's big day. Oh well.

Other shots of Glasgow in the morning:

And I had some fun talking to Ben Lee that night (very unfortunate picture of me, but so it goes):

Dublin

Christchurch Cathedral

The park at Dublin Castle:

The club the show was at (just three blocks from my hostel, yay)

The Bad Ass Cafe in the Temple Bar District

Trinity College:

Trier (with Lori and Mark)

2007-05-03T17:32:32Z

Some pictures from Trier last winter, with two of our friends.

Around Trier

We thought this was amusing.

Giant sundial?

Sweet Moses!

With Josh.

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Pictures from the Roman Museum

A neat-looking mosaic.

Detail.

In the courtyard

More old stuff.

Notice anything unusual?

Bears and pinecones for fertility

A mummy

Close up of mummy skin

An old archway

Model of ancient Trier

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Roman Ruins

From behind

Detail

Detail of the arches

Josh and I again

And Lori & Mark.

Ukraine

2007-04-23T10:14:11Z

Be warned, dial-up users: this post has some videos--which aren't working properly at the moment--and LOTS of pictures (about 100, so maybe five times the amount of most of my posts).

Last summer, Josh and I went to Ukraine for a week to visit our friend Liz. Liz and I have been friends for over ten years now (it seems like such a long time ago!), and we had a chance to see her while she was teaching English through the Peace Corps. A mutual friend of ours, Bryan, was also visiting, so we got to have a nice Guilford College reunion while 6000 miles from North Carolina. It was great to see friends and spend time with them in such a different place.

Josh and I left Kaiserslautern on the 4th of July, scheduled to take a train from Munich to Budapest to Lviv, but those plans were quickly thwarted when our first train was seven minutes late for a four minute connection. Our train to Budapest had already left, and we had to re-route to Lviv, losing all of our seat reservations (and our sleeping car). The next train would send us to Bratislava, then reroute us through the rest of Slovakia until we arrived in Lviv. We had seven hours before our train, so we took a day trip to Dachau, which is about forty-five minutes from Munich on the S-Bahn.

We have no photos from Dachau, but there isn't much to photograph. Some of the buildings have been turned into museums, including the dormitories and the showers. Many of the buildings have been torn down, but a lot still remains, including the building where people were gassed and carried immediately to the ovens in next room. The site looks like something right out of Life Is Beautiful, which is the only visual comparison I can make. We wandered around the concentration camp for quite a while, thinking about Josh's family. We're less clear on the details than I thought, but we do know that my father-in-law's parents were both concentration camp survivors, and seeing one for the first time was a very memorable experience.

A photo of Salzburg from the train, to break up the narrative:

We had a different kind of memorable experience when we caught our connecting train from Bratislava. The ticket that was supposed to get us through Hungary wasn't valid (unlike the EU, rail systems in Eastern Europe are independent of each other). We had none of the local currency on hand, and of course they didn't take credit cards on the train. Josh somehow explained the situation to a man who barely spoke English, and we ended up paying for our fare in Euros. We spent the night in a sweltering train compartment with four strangers who closed the window as soon as the train began moving. That was our first introduction to the eastern European superstition that drafts will make you sick; though it was easily 90F in the compartment, they had the windows closed, and we didn't feel arrogant enough try to argue with them or open it ourselves. We spent a rather uncomfortable evening sweating profusely and trying to get as comfortable as possible on the bench, without falling all over the other people in the car.

Paying for our next train wiped us out of cash completely. The next afternoon, our train stopped at the Ukrainian border. We didn't wake up right away, or deboard right away, essentially having no idea what was going on. I went to check things out and realized that we were at customs, and sent Josh back to get our things from off the train, in case they wanted to inspect anything. And oh, am I glad we didn't just leave our things in the car, because the train left. As it turns out the railways in Eastern Europe aren't standardized yet, so when trains cross at the border, their wheels don't fit on the rails anymore. A new train was coming to take us the rest of the way.

When we finally made it through customs, we walked into the lobby of the train station:

And I used the scariest toilet I've ever seen (this picture doesn't do it justice--and did I mention there was no toilet paper or running water in this bathroom? Ukraine is BYOTP):

Before our next train we had a few daunting tasks ahead of us: finding out when our next train was leaving, in spite of our inability to speak the local language or read Cyrillic; finding a place to buy currency with a credit card; and finding out if our ticket to Lviv was going to get us to where we needed to go. The first two were surprisingly easy. With the third, we gave it up and bought a new ticket, which fortunately only cost us a few dollars. Within a few hours, very relieved, we were on our way to Lviv.

And we slept for much of the way. Apparently I slept next to a rather nasty foot.

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Eventually we got off the train in Lviv, and met Bryan, Liz, and Liz's boyfriend Ben with no trouble (something we were grateful for after an adventuresome trip), and took a tram downtown to our hotel.

The maids didn't actually look like this:

From the stairwell:

We spent two nights and one full day in Lviv, trying out Ukranian fare and visiting the city hall, the open markets and the churches.

The downtown square:

From the city hall:

Lions outside the courthouse (if you touch them, they say you will come back to Lviv some day):

From the Greek Catholic church in Lviv (a sect I didn't even know existed):

Some shots from a hill we climbed the second day:

And Bryan trying on my glasses at dinner:

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Ben left before we went Sokal, the city where Liz was working. Lviv has about a million people, and Sokal is considerably smaller. It seemed like Liz knew everyone in town (and she probably did know a good number of them). She had booked us a hotel room in an unfinished building with a spa on our floor (which we went in one evening), a nightclub downstairs, and a family of stray cats living in the stairwell. It was a pretty great set-up, on a big road within walking distance of Liz's apartment.

The church, next door to our hotel:

I can't help it, I found the kittens adorable, especially on the last day when they came into to our room to play.

Sokal, from Liz's apartment:

Some birds built a nest of nails on Liz's balcony:

Liz, outside her school:

And outside the new chain grocery store in Sokal:

We met a lot of the people Liz had befriended:

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Liz also worked with some local organizations in town, helping them write grants. One of the women she knew very generously volunteered to drive us to the next oblast (state) to visit the churches. Unlike a lot of the gothic cathedrals in Western Europe, these were so beautiful and colorful, with more paint that stained glass. That was one of my favorite parts of the trip.

Church #1:

Outside Church #2, which was considerably smaller (someone took some time out of their day to let us into this one--the warmth and hospitality of the Ukrainian people really was astounding to me):

Church #3 was less ornate and still beautiful--I asked the priest (through Liz, who translated for us the entire time we were there) why they had streamers up. His answer: "Because they're beautiful!"

Church #4, across the street:

Church #5 is an old monestary. Women weren't allowed in this one without proper head covering, so we stayed outside in the courtyard, which was gorgeous:

I did get one photo of the inside, from the doorway:

There was a stork nest built on a telephone pole outside the grounds (the first I saw of many):

On the way home, we stopped at a memorial. During more restless times, an entire congregation got barricaded inside a church, which was then set on fire.

Stuck behind a herd of cows on the ride home (video worthy only because that kind of things has never happened to me before):

A woman with her haystack--I had never seen actual hay STACKS before going to Ukraine, either; just the hay bales that are so common in the US and Western Europe.

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We visited some of Liz's friends outside of the city, where we were fed until we were stuffed full of incredible food (and sometimes vodka). Again, the hospitality factor in Ukraine is extraordinary. Everyone treated us like family.

Some photos from our walk:
An old synagogue in Sokal. There is another one, which has since been turned into a nightclub.

Josh and Bryan picking cherries.

From the bridge:

This was also the first time I had ever seen cows and ducks and other farm animals just hanging out in the street, instead of in a field or a pen:

With Oksana, one of Liz's friends, and her boyfriend:

Later we went into the country to visit some of Liz's friends' relatives.

This woman is somewhat of the town grandmother, if I recall correctly. She was making a traditional Ukrainian outfit for Liz, so we stopped by her house to have her fitted.

While we were there, she insisted that we try on old hats, which was fun...

And we posed in front of a portrait of Shevchenko, a poet who is quite adored in Liz's region:

At another house, we had a "snack" (which was really like an enormous dinner), followed by a few rounds of vodka, per tradition. I need to ask Liz to remind me of the specifics, but there are several rounds of traditional toasts, and they keep going... I can't say I really minded, because that was the best vodka I had ever tasted in my life.

After eating, they showed us their farm (this is, according to Liz, the typical life of most Ukrainians--raising their own animals and living off their own land, not much running water, an outhouse in the back).

Josh being silly:

Two shots from the ride back to Sokal:

Our last night in Ukraine, we went to the club downstairs from the hotel (with some of Liz's friends) and watched the final match of the World Cup, which ended in a nail-biter shootout between France and Italy.

Josh, relaxing in our hotel room before we took the bus back to Lviv:

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The Lviv train station:

We arrived in plenty of time to catch our train, about two hours early. We were still a bit anxiety-ridden from our trip out, so we were most unhappy when the train pulled up and they wouldn't let us on. With Liz in Sokal and no one speaking any English, we couldn't figure out what the problem was and why we weren't allowed to take our seats; we eventually understood that they wanted us to go downstairs to the ticket counter and do god-knows-what, with less than ten minutes before our train left. We never figured it out--Josh came back up and said that the line was enormous, and I guess they gave up on us figuring out what they wanted us to do because they let us on the train. I was definitely relieved, having no desire for our return trip to be as exciting as the trip out, especially since we were scheduled to arrive only a few minutes before my first day of class started back in K-town. No more unscheduled stops and rerouting, plz.

We stopped in Krakow to change trains, where I took this:

At the Ukraine/Poland border, they collected all of the passports on the train, which was nerve-wracking--one of the number one rules of traveling being that you NEVER separate yourself from your passport. We had no idea what the hell was going on, or how we were supposed to get them back, or if we were supposed to get off the train. Eventually--perhaps an hour later--they came back through and handed them back. The woman didn't speak English, but she did speak German, and I was incredibly grateful to have even minimal German skills to communicate with her.

Josh and I definitely recognized the benefit of having a blue passport, where they had us cut through a mob of non-EU citizens, something which definitely expedited our journey through customs. I don't think I had ever been so grateful to be an American at that moment. After that border crossing, we had a relatively easy trip--we got our night train through Prague (therefore leaving the EU again before coming back into it) and had no trouble getting back through Germany. I even got back in time for class, though I hadn't changed my clothes or showered in two days.

Going to Lviv and Sokal was a really incredible trip. Many more things happened than I was able to write about, such as trying all the wonderful local food, visiting the local library (a new addition to town), visiting the church in town, shopping at the open-air market, visiting the city museum, enjoying the spa on our floor, having a bottle of homemade sugar vodka express delivered to us ... I learned so much about the local customs and politics and traditions, met some fascinating people, saw new and beautiful things and had an amazing time with some old friends. Definitely a trip to remember.... and I will remember to make sure I have a translator again, if I ever have the chance to go back to Eastern Europe.

Barcelona

2007-04-19T12:50:40Z

We went to Barcelona on Columbus Day weekend in October, 2006. This was both the first trip we took with Baby Sebastian in tow, and the last one we took before knowing we would be parents pretty soon. (We found out that I was pregnant the day after we got back.)

Unfortunately, some of our pictures from this trip have also disappeared. I hope that Josh, the master computer excavator, will be able to uncover them someplace.

There isn't much to narrate from Barcelona. We did a lot of walking because Barcelona is a beautiful city, and we were enjoying the warm weather while our friends in K-town were freezing their butts off in the rain; lucky us. We spent a lot of time walking up and down the Ramblas, the port and Montjuïc, took a day trip to Sitges and played in the Mediterranean, saw the cathedrals and the Picasso Museum, drank sangria, ate tapas, and saw an opera/flamenco show. We both had a wonderful time, and Barcelona ranks up there among our favorite cities and one of our best vacations together. I love everything about Spain, from what I've gathered during this trip and the one I took to Segovia and Madrid in 2001--the atmosphere, the language, the architecture, the food, the beautiful scenery. If Josh could somehow get an assignment to ROTA, I'd be thrilled.

Las Ramblas:

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Placa de Catalunya:

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The Baroque cathedral:

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From the top of the big cathedral (an elevator! no steps to get the the top!:

Back on ground level:

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The Barcelona version of the Arc de Triomf:

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la Sagrada Familia, designed by Gaudí (quite modern considering the project was started in the 1880's):

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And a couple from Sitges, a beautiful beachside town (also famous for being a gay resort):

Paris

2007-04-19T09:25:50Z

Hello again, friends--I'm going to continue to work my way backward through all these photos I've acquired over the last few years. All the jumping around has potential to get confusing.

Without further ado, these are pictures from Paris in November 2006. For people who live twenty minutes from the French border, Josh and I have spent very little time actually IN France. I went there in 2001 during my study abroad and I wasn't terribly impressed with Paris, but I felt like I should give the city another try, and this time was fantastic (even being 11 weeks pregnant at the time).

Josh and I took a night train in, dropped our stuff off at the hotel, and went straight to the Louvre for the day. We do have some photos from there; unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea what happened to them. Check this post again some time, I may have recovered them. The Louvre is an amazing museum and there is so much to see, we tried our best to focus on the the things we like the most--Greek and Roman art. We got a glimpse at the Mona Lisa and at the Venus de Milo and some fantastic old jewels (which I always appreciate more than Josh; I've been fascinated by jewels since I spent four months working at the BX jewelry counter). We spent most of the day there and left exhausted. After a nap at our hotel, we took another very long walk across the city (stopping for dinner along the way) and went to the Eiffel Tower.

From the bottom of the North Pillar, we took an elevator to the observation deck.

From the two observation decks, you can get a 360-degree view of the city.

This thing is difficult to photograph during the day; trying to get it at night is impossible without a tripod.

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The next day we visited the Notre Dame cathedral. This was one of the few sites in Paris I had actually paid to see when I was there in 2001, and I remember feeling like the 400 steps up to the top were absolutely torturous. Somehow, five years older and definitely more pregnant, it was much easier to get up the steps this time--a testament to how regular exercise can improve one's general health and well-being, I suppose.

My favorite thing about Notre Dame is all the gargoyles that stare out over the city. They're barely noticable from the ground, but they add so much to the experience on the cathedral's walkway.

More views of the city.

Behind the Cathedral.

By the bridge that goes to Île de la Cité (the island that the cathedral is on).

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We took a long stroll through the Jardin des Tuileries, down the Champs-Élysées (why is it covered in trees? Because Germans like the march in the shade, so they say), past the scariest multi-lane traffic circle I've ever seen (the Charles de Gaulle Étoile) and to the Arc De Triomphe. I had seen it from a great distance (i.e. from the Eiffel Tower observation deck) before, but it is definitely larger than it appeared to be. Typical Napoleon. He included a large relief of himself on one of the sides.

After the sun was gone, we stopped at the Haagen-Dazs restaurant on Champs-Élysées for "dinner"--something we like to do when we're in giant cities that actually have full-service ice cream restaurants.

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On the walk home, we stopped and took some more photos at Jardin des Tuileries gate:

The Eiffel Tower is behind us in these shots. You may be able to tell that I had a tiny bit of pregnancy belly starting already.

The Eiffel Tower searchlight (which helped us find the thing that first night).

And we also stopped to take some more photo of the Louvre:

We stopped at the Louvre to take some shots (which I'm very glad for now, especially, as my first pictures from the Louvre have disappeared).

Another shot from outside the Louvre--the Eiffel Tower all lit up.

Cause video is fun.

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On our final day in Paris, we went back to the Île de la Cité to visit the Ste Chappelle, which is a beautiful 13th century church. It was built to house the Crown of Thorns.

The church is actually two levels; the main cathedral is upstairs. This is from downstairs.

The upstairs cathedral:

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We stopped for crepes (one of the things I will definitely miss most about Europe) and headed back to the Northern side of town, where our hotel was, and went out again to see two more places before our train left.

One was the Sacre Couer, which was within walking distance of our hotel. It was beautiful, I wish we could have taken photos inside. It had a magnificent view of the city from the hill. We walked a little farther and strolled down Pigalle, the Red Light district, for a little while, before it got boring.

And so, Paris, I'm glad I gave you another chance. We had a great time.

Keukenhof tour (with Lori)

2007-04-17T11:18:15Z

I don't feel like doing homework, to be honest (I'd call it "grad school senioritis" but really, I'm just an expert at procrastinating), so I'm going to celebrate spring with some more photos instead.

Last April, Josh and I took our first bus tour with Lori (Bern being the second).

The bus first dropped us at a cheese farm outside of Amsterdam for a Dutch breakfast--fresh bread and butter, eggs, coffee, and four kinds of gouda.

Moo.

In addition to learning about cheese, we learned a bit about how wooden shoes are made what what their role is in Dutch tradition--apparently, each family has their own design that they put onto the shoes, and they come in a few types, such as fancy wedding shoes, every day shoes, and farming shoes. Apparently a lot of Dutch farmers still wear them, which makes sense if you dislike being stuck in the mud.

Josh finds his size.

Too bad we didn't know about the shoe tradition two weeks earlier, when we got married.

I like sheep.

Off to town?

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Next we set out to Keukenhof, which is basically an outdoor tulip museum. Unfortunately, a lot the flowers weren't blooming yet because of the late winter we were having, but there was still a lot to see.

Garden statues.

Windmill

The farmer's fields

Stuck in a shoe.

A reflection

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And now for the flower power...

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And we stopped at a small, less touristy place to have dinner and wander around the beach for a while. I can't remember the name of the town, but it had bungee jumping and horseback riding, and we didn't have the chance to do either...

Bern, Switzerland (with Lori)

2007-04-17T09:10:22Z

These are from two months ago. The day before my birthday, Josh and I took a USO tour to Bern, Switzerland with our dear friend Lori (the fiesty redhead from the photos). It's about four hours from here, so it's a relatively easy day trip when someone else is doing all the driving. Bern is the capital of Switzerland; it was founded in 1191, so it's quite old.

Lori took these three photos, which were taken at a tourist stop with really tasty cheese.

A nice view from the hill.

An entertaining trash receptacle.

This bench was painted pale yellow and had holes in it to make it resemble something, who knows what. As for why we look as goofy as we do, it was early.

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Right outside the tourist center in Bern, there is a bear pit (bears are the city symbol, and yes, the city name is related to the Germanic word "Bärn").

I think Josh liked the bears the best...

Especially when they started doing tricks for food.

NSFW?

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Next we took a short walking tour of the city, where we saw....

A bunch of drinking fountains (the top level is for human consumption; there's also a lower level is for dogs)

This building, which I believe is some kind of courthouse--all the city crests of Switzerland are represented along the top

Lots of statues

Pretty views of the Aare River

The outside of the 15th-century Münster Cathedral

And the clock tower, called the "Zytglogge."

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After lunch, we split from the tour group and made our way back to the cathedral. After traveling in Europe for a while, even beautiful old Gothic churches all start to look the same, but the Baroque-style decoration made this one stand out for me.

Buttress detail.

Ceiling detail.

Stained glass detail.

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After a little internal debate about whether or not I should climb 300 steps at six months pregnancy, we decided to climb up the spyer. It took a lot of work, but it was worth it.

This was taken from inside the staircase.

Detail at the top.

The city of Bern.

A view of the Alps.

No cathedral is complete without scaffolding!

Me and the husband.

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We had a little time after our walk around the cathedral to investigate the Kramgasse (shopping area), also in the heart of Bern.

Lots of statues in Bern.

Taking a break by the Aare.

Posing with mother bear, father bear, and baby bear.

Trier and Heidelberg (with Jess and Allison)

2007-04-16T10:13:59Z

Josh and I had visitors last weekend, hurrah! Further commentary pending, these are some pics from their visit:

There's a US Cemetery in Luxembourg, which is about two hours from us. General Patton was buried there. Everyone else there appears to have expired before WWII ended. I'm not a huge fan of cemeteries, but it was quite pretty, and it gave us a nice excuse to take a road trip and visit Luxembourg again.

A bathroom sign that Josh likes.

It's a little hard to tell from this photo, but not all of the grave markers are crosses. They also have some shaped like the Star of David (though everyone who wasn't specifically Jewish got a cross).

This is from one of the fountains on the cemetery path--I imagine it looks really cool when there's water running, like the dolphins are leaping over it. They also had turtles on the fountain floors.

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These pictures are from the Porta Nigra, which is the old Roman gate to Trier. We didn't do much else while we were there, since we had already been to Luxembourg that day and stopped to visit an old German WWII bunker, but it was nice to finally go in it on my third trip to Trier.

31 weeks. (This is a well-traveled fetus.)

Roman arches

Just a view from the Porta Nigra, overlooking a church.

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We visited the Heidelberg a couple of days later. I took the funicular up to the Schloß since walking up 300 steps is pretty out of the question, being 8 months pregnant.

Believe it or not, this is the SMALL wine keg.

View of the city from the Schloß.

Josh taking a break (probably waiting for me to catch my breath as we walked back downhill).

The view of the Schloß from the river.

hey kids.

2007-04-16T09:31:30Z

Obligatory first entry.

All photos are copyright = me, unless otherwise stated. I'm considering selling a few, so please let me know if you take any of them.