Monthly Archives: March 2008

Breakfast in the Netherlands, Lunch in Belgium and Dinner in Germany. All in a days trip.

So this is my brief post before we go to sleep and get on the plane in the morning to come home. We spent the weekend in the Netherlands and the afternoon today in Belgium. We got to Amsterdam on Saturday around noonish and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe. Spent the day walking around and then went to our hotel. We then ate in the local town there at a huge asian restaurant. Spent the night. Drove back into Amsterdam for some cheap and wonderful breakfast. Drove to Brussels for some good ole lunch at a really small fast food sandwich shop. There were 2 narrow streets that were just lined with restaurants and they had a guy in each one trying to get you to come to their place to eat.. It was all like 12Euro’s or more per person.. We went to this place and the 3 of us ate for around 12Euros TOTAL! It was a bit rainy and cold so we cut the trip early and got in the car to drive around and head back to the base for dinner. I officially hate Brussels traffic and ‘Lola’, our GPS. If you need a reference to what I’m talking about, please watch this.

So we are getting on the shuttle at 6:30am to go to the airport.  We’ll be landing around 9pm or so and I’ll do a trip end sum up on Tuesday.   Thanks for keeping up with us!

On Tuesday, Mom took us to see some castles. The first castle is just ruins but the second castle was gorgeous. On the way there we stopped at an “abbey”. Basically a monistary. We even saw a monk! It was sweet. What was most amazing about it was the sheer size of the abbey. I’m constantly amazed by the size of the buildings that have been built so many years ago without the use of modern cranes and such.

On our way to the first castle we saw a huge heard of deer eating some hay. Not sure if they are bred and kept or if they are wild. The have several deer stands in all of the fields to keep the deer out, so I have no idea about them.

Manderschied is where the first castle is. It’s just a bunch of castle ruins now. There’s actually 2 castles a couple hundred meters apart but its essentially the same castle. Couldn’t get in because they were closed, but got a neat picture from the road above.

The next destination is Cochem. Cochem is a bit larger of a town on a big river. It’s very “German” in that it has old buildings and style. Much of what you’d imagine in an old German town. And of course, it’s got a sweet castle! Which of course, was closed as well. At least it was open enough to get into the front gate area.

It was a neat experience.  Wish we could have gotten into it but oh well.  One day I should like to go back and see it from the inside.  Maybe in the summer when the climb up there isn’t so cold and wet.

I’ve just been plain lazy the last couple of days.  We went on another trip, Michelle and I, to a town called Trier.  I’ll have pictures up later but I’m just too lazy to right now.  I’ll catch up on it all tomorrow because Sat and Sun we’ll be in Brussels and Amsterdam.

I know that not all of you are Republicans, but thats OK, God still loves you   I just want to take a minute to congratulate Huckabee on the success that he had so far in the campaign and to thank him for giving me a candidate that I had no question about!  Congrats also to Senator McCain.  Good luck to you sir!

I apparently had some issues with my pictures and they weren’t showing up big when you clicked on them.  I fixed them all so you can enjoy them to their fullest!

Since it snowed and it was almost 3pm by the time we were ready to leave, we canceled our trip to Brussels today and decided to just do some more local things, like nearby castles!  The first one we stopped at is a little town that I can’t remember that has some old castle ruins.  It was all falling down and not maintained, but still pretty cool.  Then we went on to a town called Cochem.  This place is a beautiful town on a river that has a big castle on a hill that is gorgeous.  It’s well maintained and quite the tourist attraction…. accept today.  I guess it’s too cold this time of year and they aren’t open much.  We at least got to be in the court yard and take some neat pictures….after climbing a hill that is almost equivalent to climbing Flat Top in Anchorage.  Very calf intensive.  Anyways, I’m too tired to do up the pictures and post them tonight, so if you check this when you get home from work and in the evening, you’ll just have to check back tomorrow for the pictures!

We’re going to bed now though.  Tomorrow we’re going to Trier… for something..  maybe another castle..  I don’t know.

Mom woke up and decided to walk to work so we’d have the car, even though I said I would gladly take her to work.. At 7 we get a phone call to look outside and sure enough it’s the great white stuff falling from the sky! It snowed from 7 to about 11:30. At least a couple inches fell and stuck. Here are some pictures!

We were planning on going to Brussels today but with the snowy roads we might just take a local trip or something to a castle and do a Brussels trip later in the week.

Well we didn’t get out of bed until about 11:30 this morning, despite being up at 7:30… Mom had to work so we just planned a short 1/2 day trip back to the towns we drove by yesterday. Our first stop was into Dudeldorf which consisted mostly of just driving around and seeing the architecture and country side. Dudeldorf ended rather quickly, mostly because it’s a tiny town. The cool part about these towns is that they are so contained within themselves. The have definite beginnings and ends and don’t just taper out.

Our planned stop is a walking trail along the road that goes behind a hotel in the middle of no where, that follows a little creek. It has a nice pull-off where we parked at and got our stuff out for the walk. It starts back into the woods and immediately joins the creek. The creek is mostly a runoff from all the mountains and hills in the area and runs in a sort of man made area that eventually joins a full on river I believe. This place never seems to be dry, so it’s dark and wet all over. Trees have fallen and been cut to move off the path. Rocks are in place as steps to help you get up and down the path. Railings have been set up along the paths, somewhat secured, somewhat not… Everything is covered in moss and slippery! It’s a very pretty area, very much what I had imagined it being. The path led along the river for a ways then started to descend a bit. Through a series of steps and a bridge to cross it, we eventually notice that theres an area that has been set up with a shrine to Mary next to a waterfall. There are lit candles and plaques on the rock wall. It’s very pretty and all. We left there and went up to the upper path and got some pictures looking out across a valley at a town on a hill. Made our way back to the car and headed to Bitburg.

Into Bitburg we saw signs for a Bitburg Bierfest (Beerfest!) Of course after following the signs and making our way to the very back of Bitburg, we find it and see that it’s closed. Later we’ll find that it was last week. Oh well. We’ll sample the famous German beer another day I guess. We then headed to the main part of town, but not before stopping and at a McDonalds to view the out door playground area like none that I’ve ever seen.

Over in the main part of Bitburg we take a stop at the Walk Platz, which is basically like an outside shopping center. We sampled the German baked goods and took a quick walk because it was windy and like 40 degrees. Headed back to the car and was pleasantly surprised that we didn’t have to pay for parking. Across the street though, the gas prices… It may look low, but that is in euros and per liter… You can do that math to figure that out.

A little after 5, mom got off work so we headed back home. On the way we saw an awesome valley with a town in it and it just happened to have a pull off area to take pictures. So we did. And there was a train!

We parked back at the place where Momma is staying, and we parked by one of my favorite cars that I really wish I could get back in the states. You may have seen them, but if not…

Oh and the car behind it is Mom’s car. It’s a bottom of the line BMW that is quite common here in Europe, but would be sweet to have in the States. Anyways, the car is a Smart car and its about 1/2 the size of a normal sedan. It actually drives quite fast and is amazingly fuel efficient. Quite common here.

Anyways, that was our day today. We had dinner in the room and Michelle cut moms hair, and now we’re just going to hang out till we go to sleep. You guys have a good day!

C&M&T

Hello all you sleepers! It’s about 11:30 and Michelle and I are about to go out for lunch and a walk around the countryside. Yesterday was a fun day. We slept in, then Mom took us to lunch at a Thai place nearby and it was A M A Z I N G! It was so good that I think we’ll have lunch there again before we leave! The Thai place is next to a tiny little town called Dudeldorf. Dudeldorf has an arch way in town that has deep scratches in the sides of it. It’s rumored that the scratches are from the tanks that were too big to drive through it and scraped it all up during WWII. We’ll leave the validity of that up to the experts. Afterwards we visited several of the local towns including the big one, Bitburg.

Bitburg is also home to an American base but its being moved to Spangdahlem in like 6 years. Mom is also in charge of the Chapel over there, so thats what we did while we were there. We came back over to Spang and mom gave us the official tour of the base. It’s very big compared to where it is and it had some even bigger planes on the flight line.

The base is also home to some F-16′s and A-10′s, but some of them are out on duty.

At 5pm we went to the Chapel were mom works and had church! It was fun and quaint. It’s no Dean and the LifePoint band or anything.. It was good though. Afterwards we had a potluck dinner and socialized a bit. It was pretty fun. We drove the short 1/2 mile to the room and watched some Heath Ledger movies that the AFN (Armed Forces Network) were playing in honor of him, then went to sleep!

So here we are today, about 6am your time and you’ll be waking up soon. We are going to go get some lunch! Later!

Our trip to Paris was a long event, but so short lived. We left the base around5:30am and got there around 10:30 or so. Drove straight into the heart of Paris and parked like 1/2 mile from Notre Dame. So that was our first stop. Took some pictures and walked around inside. Went back to the car to get something we forgot, then went straight for the metro! The metro being the subway, which I have never been on a subway before… We hop on this bad boy and head straight for the Arche de Triumphe and end up at the Arche la Defense.. Not as old but equally as cool. We had some lunch and was insulted several times by our french waiter. Good though that he spoke english or we’d have never figured out what to order. After that we hopped back on the metro and went to the Arche of Triumph.. I’m American I don’t know how to spell the stuff. The Triumph is in the middle of a huge roundabout and all like 7 roads end at it. So it’s pretty cool. From there we went on a series of interesting metro rides to the Eifel Tower! We walked around and got some cool pictures before the camera batteries died. Too bad. At least we got some pretty good ones. All in all it was a fun trip, definately worth the 4-5 hour drive each way to have that experience. I’m rushing this a bit because its about 12:45am and we’re beat. Mom and Michelle are already in bed! So below are a few of the better pictures we took today. I have some video I might post up tomorrow since it’ll be a recovery day.