Day 9 - Munich

Happy Fathers Day!

This morning dad let us sleep in, so I definitely took advantage and slept until 10 am.  We got up and had brunch at the hotel and it was amazing. 

After that, we got on the train to Dachau Concentration Camp.  After the camp was liberated it was put to other use until the 1960s when restoration was begun as a memorial to the people who suffered there.  Actual Dachau survivors assisted in the restoration to make it as realistic an experience as possible to that of the actual prisoners.  There are two barracks that were restored and now there are row upon row of foundations where the other barracks stood.  The camp was built to house 6,000 prisoners, but at one time there were over 30,000 people housed there.

The two-hour audio tour explains every aspect of the life at the camp and all the horrors the prisoners had to endure.  We saw the two crematoria and the baths.  The camp was actually 4 times as big as what is now restored as a memorial.  The survivors wanted to be sure that we never forget and we never let it happen again. 

We took the train back to Munich and walked around the city.  We were searching for the Hofbrauhaus.  It took about 20 minutes and we had to ask for directions twice, but we finally found it.  We realize it is a “tourist trap” but we had to go there and we weren’t disappointed.  There were tons of people there having a fabulous time and so did we.  The band was a hoot, taking a beer break between EVERY song.  Dad and I each got a liter of beer along with our sausage, saurkraut, and potato salad and mom’s cheese spaetzle, which we all shared.  Then dad ordered another liter of beer and later on ANOTHER liter of beer.  The waitresses can carry up to eight of those huge beer steins.

There were people scattered throughout wearing traditional German clothing and walking around like they were on display.  Because we ate so late in the day, we decided that we weren’t going to eat dinner.  So we came back to the Hotel and went to the bar to have more drinks.  Mom and me are having Baileys on the Rocks and Dad is having a Tawny Port while we watch the World Cup…man I LOVE soccer!!!

Sleep will definitely come quickly for us.  Tomorrow we are going to go visit Neuschwanstein (the castle that the Disney castle was modeled after).   Love yall!

Day 8 - Geneva to Munich

This is coming to you today with a heavy heart as I just received news from Sarah that my niece-in-law, Chrise Briggs Murrell,  has passed away.  We pray that her husband, Andy, and son, Drew, can find peace.

This morning was an early one.  I got up 4 minutes before my alarm went off, at 4:30 a.m.  We wanted to get on the 6:14 train from Geneva to Zurich, which would connect us to Munich.  Although the train station was only about a 5 to 10 minute walk from the hotel, we took a taxi because it was raining and I just didn't feel like I could deal...  No problems on the trains except that in total we were on trains for 7 hours.  I actually read almost an entire book. Kate caught up on some sleep.  She thinks she can't survive on "only" 8 hours a night. :-)

When we arrived in Munich, David was waiting for us, having arrived about 1/2 hour before (he will be with us now until a week from tomorrow).  We found our way to our hotel and after settling in, set out to show Kate around Munich.  We walked to the Marienplatz which is a huge area of shops and restaurants and the Glockenspiel is also located there.  We found a Bavarian restaurant and Kate and David had Bavarian food and beer while I got some nice ravioli.


Then we continued on our way walking down to and through the marketplace.  I always enjoy seeing the beautiful fresh fruits and vegetables displayed.  It is now asparagus season and everywhere there were displays of "spargel", the white version that is so expensive in the states is everywhere here.  Too bad we don't have a kitchen.

We then returned to our room where we checked out a little televised World Cup Soccer while enjoying a Premier Cru and artisanal goat cheese that Kate and I purchased on our wine tasting excursion.  Hoping that tonight will be an early one as I am tired.

Day 7 - Geneva

After breakfast Kate and I decided to go explore a little before our 1 o’clock tour. We walked across the Mont Blanc Bridge to the shopping area. We spent some time just walking and looking in the windows of all the watchmakers. There were a lot of the stores Kate remembered from her time in Paris and she actually bought a couple of tops in one of them. (She normally doesn’t like spending her money.) There was an Apple Store, which I was excited to see because I have been looking for a certain iPad attachment that I haven’t been able to find in any store…and of course they didn’t have it either. We did find a Father’s Day gift for David though. We walked back past the English Gardens and saw the flower clock , which, we found out later, is a symbol of Geneva – and we didn’t take a picture of it. Oh well…

We found a little café called Cottage Café right across from the hotel, and in the Brunswick Gardens. (By the way, these gardens were named after the Duke of Brunswick who died in Geneva in 1873 and bequeathed his fortuned of 20 million Francs to the city, part of which they used to construct the tomb that we posted a picture of yesterday. The city also used the money to build a museum and make other improvements to the city.) Kate ordered vegetable lasagna (and the guy said “It’s homemade, is that okay?”) It was delicious. I also had a delicious gazpacho, which was probably also “homemade”.

At 1:30 we started a tour. A bus took us around the city showing us the important buildings of Geneva. Geneva is an extremely important city because the European headquarters of the UN is here as well as the headquarters of the World Trade Organization and the International Human Rights Confederation and UNICEF, among others. We then had a walking tour of the “old city” which had a church built during the 11th and 12th century but when the Reformation happened, they turned it into a protestant church and all the paintings and everything inside was destroyed.

From there we embarked on a tour of the lake by boat. We learned that the fountain (Jet d’Eau) is in fact 459 feet high and is the tallest fountain in the world. The lake is 1188 feet deep. We rode around looking at various points of interest seeing some of the beautiful houses situated around the lake. It was a cloudy day, so we were unable to view Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Europe. We saw a beautiful built by the Baron de Rothschild. A member of the family still resides there. We also learned that the lake is called Lake Leman. The scenery from the lake is beautiful. Kate took a lot of pictures.

We would like to come back some other time and spend some time here to go to the UN and other buildings we saw today. Tonight we are debating on whether or not to eat at the restaurant in the hotel or order room service since we have to wake up early for the train to Munich tomorrow.  Hope you are all well.  

Day 6- Geneva

(Colleen via Kate's account) Today we woke up early in order to get on our 6:52 train to Lyon. It was quite chilly and raining fairly hard as we were sitting on the platform waiting for our train. The trip to Lyon was uneventful as at each stop the train filled up a little more, until we got there it was wall-to-wall people. The station is huge but they had a ramp and escalators so we had no problem with our (heavy) bags getting to the platform to go to Geneva.


We got on the train, put our bags away, and were sitting there, when an announcement was made and people started disembarking. Luckily Kate understood that they were saying there was a "technical incident" which caused them to cancel the train. We kind of wondered what to do for a while, but then went to the ticket office where the very nice young man informed us that there were no more trains to Geneva today and that we could take a bus. We were very skeptical of this because yesterday during our tour with Sue, Kate and I became extremely car sick.

While we were waiting for the bus, we realized we hadn't had breakfast, so we bought a couple of sandwiches to eat on the way. Sandwiches you get in France, by the way, are essentially meat, bread, and/or cheese. There might be some butter on there, but I didn't see any on mine. Mine was thin pieces of meat and bread, which was just right. When we went to the bus depot we met three young women who are cousins travelling for five weeks throughout Europe and told us that they were having trouble getting to Rome because apparently there is severe flooding in Nice. I had noticed we seemed to be having quite a bit of rain, but apparently Nice is having an unprecedented amount.  
The bus ride was very smooth, we didn't feel ill at all and the scenery was awesome.  As we neared the French border, the landscape became more mountainous and the towns in the valleys were gorgeous.  Kate tried to take a picture, but from a moving bus, it didn't work out so well.


We were dropped off at the train station in Geneva so we went and got some Swiss Francs at the ATM  and headed to the Taxi stand, where it was easy to flag down a taxi to take us to the Hotel, which was a short drive away.  The hotel has a beautiful setting across from the Brunswick Monument and has a view of Lake Geneva and the mountains which is quite breathtaking.  We also found out our room has "sleep shades" that at the push of a button go down to cover the windows.  We both think that is pretty cool.


Once we put our suitcases down, we went for a walk along the lakefront.  We noticed there are a lot of banks here and watch makers across the lake.  There is a Jet d'Eau, which is a huge fountain in the middle of the lake that squirts up about 100 feet in the air.  We sat on a bench overlooking the lake for a little while just taking in the scenery and then it began to get chilly and we headed back to the hotel, arriving just before it began to rain.  

Tomorrow we are thinking of walking over across the lake to the shopping area before our tour.  We will probably just eat dinner tonight at the hotel restaurant which overlooks the Brunswick Gardens and the Lake.  Right now we are enjoying some of the wine we purchased yesterday on our wine tasting visit.


We think of you all every day and hope all is well back home.  We miss you all, especially you, Sarah.

Day 5 - Beaune

Today was our designated wine tasting day and we were picked up at 10 am by our tour guide Sue Boxell of Burgandy on a Plate. She drove us to the Cote de Nuits area of Burgandy.  This area primarily produces Pinot Noir (Burgandy). There is a small percentage of Chardonnay (White Burgandy) but it is a very small percentage of the total in this particular area.    

The first place was in Nuits St. George. It was a distributor so it was just a straight wine tasting of one white and three reds. Kate had never experienced "spitting" during a tasting and this place had some pretty fancy spitting basins with water that would intermittently run to rinse them out.  

From there we drove through the vineyards of the Grand Cru wines taking pictures and just generally looking around.  Most notable among them was Romanee Conti vineyard. These are the most expensive wines in the world, costing around $5000 per bottle. This area of France is so beautiful.  Rolling hills, vineyards everywhere you look, and beautiful towns that were built in the early to middle renaissance.

Then we drove to look at Clos Vougeot which is where the Cistercians originally began planting grapes in the 12th century.  From there we went to Chateau Gilley for lunch which was a delicious three course affair.  The restaurant was elegant and inside an old Chateau room.  It was like a cellar and it had vaulted ceilings.  The place was gorgeous.  Outside it looked like there was supposed to be a moat that grass had grown into. 

We then proceeded to Geverey Chambertin for a tasting at the cave of a small wine maker.  This was such a treat!  He gave us four barrel tastings-one of which was a Grand Cru (which rarely ever happens).  Trying the wine directly out of the barrel was awesome.  Only one of them we tried was ready to be bottled...the others were in the final stages of fermentation and there was still a little bit of the malalactic acid, so you could smell it but the taste wasn't affected.  The Grand Crus are the most prestigious wine of this area, so when we tried it, we definitely were not letting it go to waste by spitting it out.  This man was so hospitable and the whole time he was talking I could understand most of what he was saying!  Of course I was intently staring at his mouth the whole time, but you start somewhere right?!

After this tasting, we had a cheese tasting.  The cheese is all from free range Goat's milk.  They had 100 goats and milked them twice a day (and we got to watch! It was so cool!).  They said that it takes about 2.5 hours each time.  They take the milk and let it sit for a day in a warm room then put it into molds where they let it sit between 1-2 days.  After that, they stick it in the fridge and let it age for various amounts of time (from a few days to a month) depending on the projected flavor of the cheese.  After explaining to us how the cheese is made, the lady took us to her house, which is a 300 year old farm house, and served us a plate of cheeses, varying in age.  They were all amazing, but I really liked the youngest, which was very light in flavor and very creamy.  I also really liked the oldest, which was aged for a month, and it had developed more of a moldy looking crust, but it was the strongest flavor and was definitely one of the best.  Needless to say we bought some cheese.  (But we forgot to take pictures)

We came back to the hotel and we thought our power was out, but it turned out to be a switch that was switched off.  We felt so dumb after asking the front desk to fix our power and they come back saying everything was fine. 

We decided not to eat dinner because we had a ton to eat today and it was a tiring day, so we figured that we would just chill at the hotel and sleep before our early train to Geneva tomorrow morning.  

Day 4 - Beaune

Mom and I had breakfast with dad and sent him off to work and we are moving on the the next place without him.  We took the train from Paris to Beaune.  We had a stop along the way in Dijon.  Traveling on the train was easy and fun, the only problem was our large suitcases.  I could carry mine, but mom was having trouble and someone had to help her carry it upstairs.  Mom can say our hotel in french! wow...   anyways, we got a cab to our Hotel Le Cep in Beaune.

We put our stuff down and went walking around the town.  We ate at a little cafe and had some real french onion soup.  It was just onion soup and came with cheese and bread on the side, much more to my liking than back home.  Then we explored the town.  It is really quite small.  They gave us a map and it makes it look a lot bigger than it is.  The church here was build in the 15th century and I was really excited to see it, but they are doing renovations on it so we couldn't go inside.  I saw an arch on the way to our hotel and I wanted to find it again, so we walked around the town looking for it.  The arch ended up being on the perimeter on the other side of the town as if it was an old entranceway to Beaune.  It is so pretty here.

Now we are just drinking Tanqueray and Tonics and relaxing before we go and eat Beouf Bourgignone.   Tomorrow we have a wine tasting at 10, lunch, another wine tasting, and then a cheese tasting, so expect a fun posting tomorrow!  Hope all is well in the states!

Day 3 - Paris

Well today was our last day in Paris.  I slept until 10 this morning and mom had to wake me up.  First we went to the Musee Pompidou, which is essentially a modern art museum.  It is not my favorite museum of all time.  As you can see the building itself is almost like a piece of art.  We saw some exhibits that piqued our interest and others that we weren't so fond of.  The Pompidou is in the area Les Halles, which is a huge shopping area.  It is really nice and if you ever want to go shopping, take the metro there.  

We only stayed for an hour or so then headed to lunch.  We went to the Marais to get some falafel, which is fried chick peas with different slaws, eggplant, and sauces in a pita pocket...and it's amazing!!!  (I forgot to take a picture of it before I ate it, but this is a picture of it when I was almost done).  I ran into my friend Emilie who I met studying abroad last year on the way to get lunch too!  Le Marais is the Jewish district in Paris.  Falafel is an eat-and-walk kind of food, so we walked around a little until we found a bench to sit at.  

We decided to walk to the Seine river and saw Notre Dame on the other side, so we walked over there.  It was further than we thought, so when we got there we sat down and played with our cameras.  We tried to take some artsy fartsy pictures while we relaxed.  We witnessed some policemen get mad at a bunch of beggars.  We sat and people watched for a while, along with a lot of other people. 

When we finally decided that it was time we moved again, we decided to walk down the Seine towards the Louvre so we could get some good pictures of the city before we left.  When we finally got to the Louvre, our feet and backs hurt so bad we had to sit again, which was about the time that it started raining.  (Here is my artsy pic of the Louvre).  We continued on our way to get a view of the Eiffel Tower so we walked to l'Orangerie, which is in the Tuileries and in front of Place de la Concorde.  

By this time, the weather really deteriorated and it was raining pretty hard.  We hurried with our pictures and got out of there as soon as we could.   We figured out that all the walking we did added up to about 8 miles, so it was decided that it was time for a drink.  We took the metro back to our stop for our hotel and relaxed for a while at the cafe on the corner and had some drinks. 

We are thankful that we have time to post this earlier than 11pm (our time) like we have the past two nights.  We are hoping that dad is off of work in time for dinner, but if not mom and I will just splurge :).  Tomorrow morning we are off to Beaune, which is in Eastern France and in the Wine country...so needless to say we are excited about that!!  Hope everyone is well back home!  Until tomorrow...

Day 2 - Loire Valley

Today we took a tour to the Loire Valley to see three Chateaux.  First we saw Chenonceau (my personal favorite).  I had been to Chenonceau twice before this trip, but this was mom and dad's first time.The tower to the right is part of the original castle that was there before they tore it down to build this chateau, which they built over the river that runs through the area.  The front is being renovated, so you cant get the full effect of how beautiful this place is.

This is one of the more homey castles in the Loire Valley.  There were two big gardens that are beautiful, one of which was designed by Catherine de Medici, and there was a hedge maze!  The maze is pretty short so it defeats the purpose of finding your way through, but it is still fun.  We ate lunch in the village of Chenonceau  then moved on to the next chateau.

The next chateau was Cheverny.  I had not been here before.  People still live in this chateau and use tours as a way to pay for the upkeep of the place.  It still has the original 17th century furnishings in it and was extremely decorated on the inside.  In the back it had an Orangerie, which is essentially a greenhouse.  The grounds were not as pretty as Chenonceau.  We had some pistachio ice cream there with big chunks of pistachio in it.  It was the best pistachio ice cream ive ever had.  Other than this, we werent as impressed with this place as the other places.

The last chateau we visited was Chambord.  I know what you are wondering and the answer is yes...they make the raspberry liquor, Chambord, there.  This is the biggest chateau in the Loire Valley.  this is not the greatest picture because they were setting up for a concert there.  The staircase is the most famous part of this castle.

It was designed by Leonardo da Vinci and is like a double helix.  It swirls all the way up the center of the chateau to the top and the two sides never meet, but come out on the same floors, just on opposite sides.  This place is very impressive because it is so huge, but we didnt have much time there before it was time to come back to Paris.

Tomorrow is our last day in Paris and mom and I are just going to bum around.  We will post again tomorrow.  miss yall

Day 1 - Paris

We arrived in Paris at 9:30 this morning safely.  We checked into the hotel and we ate lunch close by and then walked around the Luxembourg gardens and St. Germain des Pres area.  We came back and passed out for a few hours then headed to dinner at our favorite spot - Les Deux Magots.  Afterwards we went to this irish pub in the Latin quarter and watched the Americans and the English play soccer.  Upset we didn't win, but at least we didn't lose.  On our way back to the hotel, we had a nutella banana crepe...mmmmm!  We are all exhausted and this day has felt like the longest day and we have to wake up early to go to the Loire Valley tomorrow, so we are off to bed.  Tomorrow I will update and add pictures.  Love and miss you all.

Skydiving!

On May 29th, Sarah and I went skydiving at Skydive Spaceland in Rosharon (just south of Houston).  We had an appointment at 10am so we arrived at 9:15.  After almost 8 hours of waiting and a weather hold, Sarah and I finally got in the plane at around 4:30.  Sarah was not scared at all but I was freaking out a little bit.  I felt like I was going to start crying on the plane ride up there.  We rode up to 14,000 feet, which is the altitude we jumped at.  There were 7 jumpers each with a tandem instructor and a videographer.  I was the 3rd person to jump and Sarah followed right after me.  The scariest part was the plane ride up and standing on the edge of the plane door.  My tandem guy told me to scream as i was jumping out to make me feel better.  After you are out of the plane, the fear leaves and it just feels like you are flying.  There is no feeling of your stomach dropping or anything, you are just sort of floating in mid-air.  The free fall is about 65 seconds and you are falling at 120 miles per hour.  At 6000 feet you pull the chute.   The free fall and the chute ride are completely different.  As soon as the chute is pulled, it is extremely quiet and you can talk to the guy behind you.  It took about 10 minutes or so to get down after the chute was pulled.  We helped steer the chute and he would pull down one side and we would go into a spin.  It was super fun and the landing was easy.  This was the best experience ever and we want to do it again really soon.  Dad said that he would come with us and so did some others (Megan Tucker included!)  So we are holding yall to it!  It was AMAZING!!!! Below are some pictures from diving!

boarding the plane

sarah jumping

me jumping (and screaming)

me and my tandem instructor free falling

sarah and her tandem instructor free falling

sarah

me right after i jumped out of the plane

sarah after she pulled the chute

me after i pulled the chute

I did it!!!

so did Sarah!!!

I AM SO PROUD OF US, SARAH!  WE DID IT!