Made It Home!

We made it home late last night. It was a great flight until Orlando International was closed due to severe rainstorms and lightening, and we flew around waiting to see if it would open but had to divert to Tampa to land and refuel! We got into Orlando almost 3 hours late....so that made it a 12 hr flight!

We were a little jet lagged today but not too bad. I hugged my kids again and again! 

We are so grateful for a wonderful and safe trip, and that our kids were in such great hands with grandparents! Thanks again for your amazing love and support!

Hope to write again soon, we already know our next destination: Italy!

Last Day Until USA!!!

Today was our last day of sightseeing for our trip. In the morning we were able to go just a little ways out of town to visit an open air museum, which was a collection of working windmills, a cheese making shop and several other museums/demonstration centers to learn about Dutch life. My favourite was the wooden shoe shop! They had examples of many types of clogs including some with boot tops attached, with spikes one the bottom for ice and with beautiful scrolling decorations for a bride!

We also loved the windmill. The one we saw was built to press nuts or seeds to harvest the oil inside. They look so cute from the outside but inside they are very powerful! 

A fun surprise was meeting a nice woman named Sarah who lives in Jacksonville and is in Europe for work. She's a Tenn Vol! But we really enjoyed sharing our old SEC football stories with her and swapping travel stories. 

Later we went to a history museum about Amsterdam, I love hearing about how the Dutch built their great city on a marsh with poles supporting the buildings and how they continually push back the sea to gain more land. Much of Amsterdam is actually below sea level!

Then we went to the Anne Frank House. Wow, it was a very moving experience. It's amazing to me that those 8 people hid inside for 2 years. But after someone betrayed them they were all sent to camps. Only Anne's father survived the war, Anne died of typhus at a camp just months before the war ended. It also made me think of the great things young people can do. Like the Bible says, don't let people look down on you just because you are young!

Ruben and I are definitely ready to get back to the states and see our kids. This trip has been indescribable and we are so blessed to have seen new sights, meet interesting people and learned a little about life beyond our norm. 

Thanks for following along on this great journey! Hope another one will happen soon!

Amsterdam!

We traveled by train from Frankfurt, Germany to Amsterdam today. Ruben had to say goodby to his BMW, we really enjoyed the freedom and fun of zooming around Germany in our car! But our train ride today was much better than our last trip. We had a much faster train and it was very comfortable. And I do love the massive train stations in Europe. They are enormous and beautiful, and bustling with activity. And speaking of activity, Amsterdam is packed with people all running in different directions. I had read that London was like that, that it made you feel very small, but I feel more that way here. But everyone has been very friendly and helpful. A nice man on the tram volunteered information on how to use our transportation cards. And our hotel innkeeper is wonderful! She's an adorable little old lady who turned her home into a hotel, with help from her daughter. She lives in an addition in the rear. There are only 6 rooms in the hotel, because the homes are so narrow they are basically 2 rooms wide! But most buildings, including ours, have are 5 stores. We are on the 4th floor, and must travel up this beautiful, narrow and steep spiral staircase. Another reason we needed to pack light!

Our room overlooks a canal. It is quaint and lined with trees and ancient-looking little boats. We will do a canal tour tomorrow, as well as visit the Anne Frank Museum and an open air museum just outside of town showcasing Dutch traditional life. 

Out trip has been amazing but we really miss the kids, and are definitely looking forward to seeing them soon! One more day of adventurers and we'll head on home!

Castles and Crusin' the Rhine

We took a wonderful river cruise on the Rhine today from our hometown of Bacharach to the nearby town of St. Goar. You can cruise the Rhine all day long, but the "romantic Rhine" is much shorter, and we just did the best part of that. In 40 minutes on the boat we saw 6 castles! They stand on the upper ridge of the land and I just can't believe I'm seeing such a fantastic and historical landmark! Some are now hotels, and some you are able to tour. When we landed at St. Goar we hiked up to their castle, which is ruined but open for tours. Sadly, Rheinfelds castle was once the largest and most important on the river before it got "Napoleoned" in a battle against the French long ago. We loved seeing its dungeons, storage cellars, holes to dump boiling pitch on invaders and impressive tower views. After heading back to Bacharach we went on a fun bike ride along the river and saw swans, ferries carrying cars across the river and adorable but minuscule little river houses with gardens that we suspect nearby homeowners come down to enjoy when the weathers good. And I'll say again that our town is like an adorable fairytale land! 

We finished our night with the best dinner we've had in a long time-who knew you could find a gourmet restaurant in a tiny German town? We feasted on wild boar with spartzel (German little potato cake?) with a rich sauce and pan fried trout with almonds and the most amazing roasted potatoes. But dessert was even better-spicy jalapeño raspberry sorbet, a selection of rich but delicate mousses and excellent creme brûlée! YUMMY!!!

And then we hiked to the castle above us to help work off the calories! 

Getting ready for our last adventure-Amsterdam!

A Great Day for Ruben Once Again

Well Rubén had another top experience today when we both took the BMW factory tour. You don't even have to be a car enthusiast to appreciate the precision, design and cutting-edge technologies that the factory uses to make the cars. Most of the cars they produce at this location (there are maybe 8-10 plants worldwide?) are created from start to finish in the 5 story building, except for one high tech engine transported from another factory. First we saw the steel press room that cut and pressed large sheets of steel into car doors and other parts. Then we saw a few welding areas where massive robots (maybe 25 ft high) all converged on a car at once to perform up to 100 welds in 1 minute. Sparks went flying! Later we saw the robots paint the car bodies with a fine mist of paint with positively charged ions, while the car was made to have negatively charged ions so the paint adhered better. Then they got fitted with their engines and interiors. Another thing was that while this plant only did two models of cars, there were many variations of car doors, upgraded versions and sunroofs, etc. and they were totally mixed up in the line! The robots and workers just changed tools when a different model passed them. It really was amazing to see how efficient and sophisticated the plant was!

Then we got back on the Autobahn to travel about 5 hrs to the Rhineland. But on our way we had the interesting experience of not being able to find an open restaurant! We stopped at 5 in cities of various sizes until we hit the jackpot. Some didn't open until 6 and some just seemed to be closed because the owners had other plans! But we saw many beautiful, fairytale-like villages in our way through. Many half timbered buildings, old downtowns and churches that seem ancient. But at the same time, as we went we along, dotted between these sleepy looking villages were major industrial plants, factories and rail lines. And the roads are full of semis hauling goods. There is a huge amount of industry in Germany, even in the country!

Our next two days will be in the town of Bacharach, on the Rhine river. Our hotel is stately and creaky, but very comfortable. The Rhine river is famous for its medieval castles all along its banks that used to charge merchants for going through "their" part of the river. We will see many tomorrow on our Rhine cruise, but we have one right out our window! Bacharachs castle is now a youth hostel, and we have a perfect view to it out our window.

One last thing: you know toilets vary throughout the world, and Europes seem to be unique in the fact that rather than a little handle to flush, you have a large button on the wall above it. It's neat because the button is usually divided and you can flush with varying degrees of pressure and water in relation to your needs, saving water. But Ruben has pointed out that as the bathrooms get smaller...the buttons get bigger! Crazy!

Rubens FAVORITE Day!

Well today is Rubens favourite day by far as we visited the BMW museums and got our own BMW 3-Series GT rental and took a thrilling drive on the Autobahn!!! 

We began our day with a hearty breakfast at our hotel, German-style. (We have realized that's the essence of German cuisine: hearty and filling!)

Then we braved our third major city metro system to arrive at the BMW Groups headquarters and visitor attractions. You aren't allowed to tour the headquarters, a uniquely designed mini skyscraper in the shape of 4 pistons, but you can tour the Welt and Museum. The Welt (German for world) is a huge, cloud shaped structure of glass and steel that houses informative displays and actual models of all of their current models of cars, motorcycles, Rolls Royces and mini Coopers. (BMW owns those other brands as well.)

Ruben got to see his dream car, the i8! A bunch of the cars shown were 150K plus, though, beware! Don't get too excited about taking one home. (We certainly aren't!)

Next door was the museum, which had many interesting classic cars, engines and design info that was also presented in a stunning way. They love design at this company for sure! Some of our favourite exhibits were the jet engines the company developed in 1944-a technological feat years ahead of its time. Unfortunately some of that technology was used against the U.S. In WWII. But their jet engine technology was soon being used by many other countries and helped many companies advance. Another highlight was the clay model of a car that shows the point in the development process when an artist takes the designers vision, plops a huge pile of clay onto a special chassis and sculpts to bring the design to life. A life-size car made mostly from clay! 

Ruben also got a kick out of making me take photo with a minuscule car from the '50s, my next car, he says!

After the museum, we had a quick lunch on the front lawn where some food trucks had been set up to celebrate something. (Germans seem to work hard and party even harder!) We may or may not have had an ox sandwich, the language barrier was high during that intereaction. But it was great!

Then we picked up our rental car for the next few days, a BMW 3-Series GT! It ended up being the only one they had for us so we got a free upgrade. It's gorgeous and has GPS, super comfy bucket seats and a heads up display that shows important info on the bottom of the drivers windshield. We love it! We promptly took it for a spin out of town, and ended up driving a few hours on the Autobahn to a wonderfully preserved Medival city called Rothenberg. 

Driving the Autobahn was less nerve racking than I had thought. Yes, some people pass you at insane speeds (and you have to keep your eye closely on the rear view mirror as you edge out into the left lane to pass so a Porsche doesn't approach at a breakneck speed and run you over!), but mostly it's a regular freeway that has occasional construction and lowered speed zones. But those times that you are able to get your speed up is exciting! We went 190 today!!!! But in km, not miles! That's about 104 mph, still pretty high. We are driving very carefully though and it's great that this car is very similar to our 5 series at home so Ruben knows the car very well.

In Rothenberg we took the Night Watchmens tour which was an interesting mix of town history and insight into Medival life told with a bit of humour thrown in. We only got to see a little bit of this beautiful city so we may stop by on our way north tomorrow. 

This is Ruben. Yes today was my kind of art- precision engineering of beautiful machines that move eloquently at 100+ MPH. Monet, Di Vinci and Picasso have nothing on the German engineers...

I was able to dream a little with the beautiful BMW's on display. It is something to be going 100mph and have another vehicle pass you like you are standing still.....incredible.  The Autobahn rocks.  Tomorrow 150 mph......

A Fairytale Castle & Munich

We toured two castles in Bavaria today that were the home of "Mad" King Ludwig and his family. He was one of the last kings of Bavaria, and was frustrated by the fact that at that time the German monarchy was more of a figurehead than a ruler. He decided to spend tons of money building castles, including his dream palace Neuschwanstein, was later declared unfit to rule, and died under mysterious circumstances soon after. Hogenseangau, his boyhood home, was beautiful and cozy, if a castle can be that! The main rooms were much smaller than you'd expect. The castle had many painted walls (seccos) that depicted a romantic view of medieval court life and were striking! Then we toured Neuschwanstein, which is the castle that inspired Walt Disney. It was huge, regal, and amazingly perched high on a bluff to allow for gorgeous countryside views from any window. Unfortunately, most of the interior is incomplete because they ceased work when Ludwig died. But the ornate details in the throne room, hall and his bedroom were unbelievable! So gorgeous!

After the castles we headed by train to Munich. Our hotel is a very old building that was originally the elegant home of a wealthy family. The ceilings are 15ft and  have pretty crown moulding.

We walked to the city centre for dinner and were happy to learn that this weekend is the city's birthday of sorts and there was a celebration happening with craft booths, special food and drink for sale and a really great cover band (that sang mostly in English!). 

BMW fun tomorrow!