Prague: The City of Spires

The (early) morning after seeing Keukenhoff, we got in our new rental car, and drove to the Frankfurt Airport to pick up my 81-year old Grandma Emma. We roped her into coming on this trip with the promise that we'd end up in Germany with her German cousins (after 9 days of traveling). We searched through a few different terminals until we finally found her, patiently waiting. Life without cellphones can be a lot more complicated!

Then it was back in the car and on to Prague, where we were supposed to hook up with my Mom, Aunt Nancy, and cousin Brooke.

This is me, very happy that I didn't lose either my Grandma or Mom somewhere in Central Europe

We found everyone and our hotels (life without a GPS must have been REALLY complicated), and got started seeing Prague.
Prague is a cool mixture of old and new. It is one of the few important medieval cities (it was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire for awhile) that wasn't heavily bombed during WW2. So Prague still has a lot of cool, really old stuff...

The old Charles bridge, started in 1357 on the 9th day of the 7th month at 5:31 am...because palindromes (1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3-1) were supposed to be lucky. And it seems to have worked!

...Mixed in with some new, really cool stuff.

The dancing 'Fred and Ginger' building

Before our 3 days in Prague were up, we (including Grandma) walked all over the city, ate some really good Czech food (thanks, Mom!), and made some lasting memories (like trying to pick up poor Jacqueline after her night-train from Amsterdam...).

Next, we just had to make it to Vienna and find Erik, and our party would be complete!

We had a great TIME in Prague...yuck yuck.

Flowers, more Flowers, and Windmills

Update: Due to an enormous cloud of volcanic ash that insists on lingering over London, Rob and I have to spend a few more days away from home...which presents a great opportunity to catch up on the blog! Hooray for volcanic ash clouds...I guess.
After Belgium, we caught a train to Amsterdam to see the Keukenhoff Gardens, where my sister-in-law wants to have her final resting place. And, after visiting, I want to be right there with her!
Keukenhoff is a magical place of music, trees, water, swans, sculpture, and...over 7 MILLION flowers (with an emphasis on tulips).
I kept wishing I had Suzannah next to me, telling me what everything was called.
I slowly strolled through the gardens while Rob got busy taking flower pictures from every conceivable angle (and now, seeing the fruits of his labors, I'm glad he did!).
Then we took a break from tulips to walk through the Orchid house. And WOW. It's mind-boggling to see how much variety there is on this earth, just within the Orchid family!
My favorites were the ones with dangerously voluptous lips. They seemed to be calling to me, daring me to stick my finger in so they could take a CHOMP. Orchids aren't actually carnivorous though...right?

Can't you just smell these Lilacs?

After we had our fill of tulips, we took a drive to find some windmills, Holland's other national symbol.
If we had been a few weeks later, the fields behind the windmills would have been full of blooming flowers. But, you take what you can get. Now we have a reason to come back!

P.S. The tulips will be in bloom until mid-May, so if you have some cash to burn and need a little extra spring in your life, DEFINITELY take a trip. If not, watch Rob's awesome slideshow and start planning for next year. :)

Crepes, Chocolate, Waffles....and good company to boot.

Before we said goodbye to our fun traveling companions, we made 2 more stops.

First, we went to visit Mont Saint-Michel, a little island monastery off Normandy's coast.
The monastery was built in the 8th century when, legend (and Wikipedia) has it, St. Michael the Archangel appeared to the local bishop, Aubert, and instructed him to build a church on the island. Aubert ignored him until St. Michael burned a hole in the bishop's skull with his finger....and that's the reason thousands of pilgrims, over hundreds of years, have made the arduous pilgrimage to Mont Saint-Michel.
Before leaving France, we managed to eat the most delicious crepes ever in a little creperie in Brittany, which happens to be the crepe's birthplace. Who knew Emmentel cheese, wild mushrooms, and cream could lead to such a party in my mouth? Of course, they got eaten before any pictures could be taken.
The last stop on the trip was Bruges, Belgium; a fairyland of canals, really good chocolate, and really, really good waffles. I'm already trying to figure out how to make them myself...so, when I get home the kitchen is going to be busy!
We stayed at a hotel in Oostende, a beach town outside of Bruges. None of us could resist a long walk on the beach at sunset, and some very cheesy (awesome) pictures resulted. But it sure was fun!
Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye and set out on our lonesome...it's a rough life.

D-Day Beaches

We're finally at another hostel with internet...so here's the next installment of our journey:

After Turkey, we traveled the next leg via car with 5.5 of our good friends. The 3 Wiggies, the 2.5 Lewises, and the 2 Ellises jammed into a car and drove from England to Normandy, France via a ferry across the channel.
Actually getting to the ferry was quite an ordeal... it involved missed trains, lots of traffic, picking up Rob at a random train station, getting lost, and a delayed ferry. So obviously, we were pretty happy to finally be on the right track.

A view of the white cliffs of Dover from our ferry

After we made it across the channel we had to drive through some late-night hail storms, figure out how to get into our locked hotel building (which required a miraculous encounter with a random Portuguese security-guard), before finally getting to bed by 3 am.

But the next morning we woke up to see blue skies and the beautiful beaches of Normandy. It was totally worth it.

Omaha Beach, site of some of the fiercest fighting on D-Day

We did some exploring of the hills overlooking the beach and crawled into an old WWII bunker. I experienced minor claustrophobia, which made me very glad I didn't have to sit in there day after day, waiting for an invasion.

We also visited the nearby Pointe du Hoc, a cliff enclosed outcropping that overlooked both Omaha and Utah beaches. The Germans had stationed artillery in this key defensive stronghold, and so it became an important US point of attack on D-Day. Colonel James Rudder led 226 U.S. Rangers on a daring climb up the sheer cliff faces to take the position. After seizing the cliffs and repelling multiple counter-offensives, only 90 men remained of the initial 226. (Allied ships and planes gave the Rangers cover by bombarding the cliffs, and now you can still see the humongous craters).

Heather is 6' tall...so those were big craters

On our way to the American Cemetery, Verlan and Rob decided to get some first-hand experience storming the beaches of Normandy....they shed some clothing, ran into the freeeezing water, and then tried to sprint back up the beach. It was sobering for Rob to imagine running that whole way while being mowed down by machine gun fire.

Then we got to the best part of the day. The American Cemetery was extremely moving; rows and rows of white marble crosses overlooking the beaches the soldiers died to win. The museum discussed some of the individual life stories of these heroes, many of whom were just teenagers with bright futures and loving families, and paid the ultimate sacrifice to secure a few meters of land half a world away.

And...the FOOD

I love it when a day full of sightseeing leaves me with an empty stomach and a great excuse to try a lot of new, delicious food.

Luckily, on one such occasion, we stumbled across a hustling, bustling fish market. We walked through the market and followed our noses (and a crowd of hungry men) to these guys:

5 minutes later we were happily munching a roll filled with freshly caught fish hot off the grill, lettuce, tomato, salt, and a squeeze of lemon.

The next day we worked up quite an appetite wading through the Grand Bazaar (fending off a lot of "Where you from?" and "You wanna look at some...carpets?"), so we headed to the Spice Market...a magical place full of spices, nuts, cheese, baklava, turkish delight, and free samples. We sampled a few things and wound up buying a bag of delicious honey roasted, sesame-seed peanuts. The guy we bought them from said they'd last us for the rest of our trip...but we actually ended up finishing them by bedtime...shows how much he knows.

And, because Istanbul is famous for their Doner kebabs, we had to make room in our bellies for a representative sampling of those too. It's a tough life, but we all have our trials.

Here is Rob making his "I'm about to eat another delicious Doner" face.

Istanbul was definitely one of our favorite stops this year.

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

After our great week in Scotland, we caught an early flight (thanks again for the red-eye shuttle service, Bill) to.... Istanbul, Turkey!

Getting from the airport (which turned out to be really far away from the city) to our hostel felt pretty overwhelming...until we discovered that Turkish people are incredibly friendly and helpful. We asked about 8 people for directions before the evening was over, and all were smiling and eager to help, even if we didn't speak the same language.

We stayed in a great hostel in downtown Istanbul, two streets away from this:

The Hagia Sophia

...and this:

The Blue Mosque

The Hagia Sophia (or "Holy Wisdom") was built in the year 532 by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and was the largest cathedral in the world for almost 1000 years. Pretty amazing that something that old is still standing!

In the 1400s, when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, the Hagia Sophia was converted into a Muslim mosque and became the model for future Muslim building projects.

Inside, we saw beautiful Christian mosaics that were plastered over when the the building switched religions.

John the Baptist

Right across from the Hagia Sophia sits the Blue Mosque. The mosque gets its name from the 20,000+ Iznik blue tiles that cover the interior. Apparently, the Sultan prohibited anyone else from buying Iznik tiles while the mosque was under construction. His strategy was very effective and the construction took less than 7 years.
As luck would have it, our friend Ingrid (and her friend Katie) also happened to be in Istanbul at the same time so we ended up touring the Blue Mosque together. We took off our shoes, and did a lot of ooh-ing and aah-ing staring at the ceiling with major cricks in our necks.
Rob and I also went to see the huge, underground Basilica cistern: basically a giant water-tank that was built in the 6th century to provide water for the palaces of Constantinople. These days, you can walk through the cistern on wooden planks, while listening to eery music, dodging drips, and taking pictures of the 336 gigantic marble columns that support the roof.