Summer 2015

Don’t forget you can double click any picture to make it larger.
I would also like to preface this by telling you there are hundreds of churches & castles throughout Europe.

As I promised in the previous post, here are pictures of our kids in Florida.

Collins & Collina at Baseball Game

        

Great Grandson Blake & Collins

Granddaughters Brittany & Lexi

       

Collina & Collins at the pool

Lexi, Brittany, Collina, Blake & Collins

        

 By the first week of June, we were in Illinois seeing our other three kids, five grandkids.  We were just in time to attend grandson, Tyler's graduation from Middle School.    

We also managed to get in a family gathering before we left on our trip.  Doug & Kerry were nice enough to invite the family to their house for a cookout.      

 

The boys are too cool to hang out with the rest of us

 

                 

















And more doctors, who said Collins had experienced a heart attack; he contends he was just a little fatigued. Seems he had one valve 100% blocked & a second 60% blocked; his heart, in such condition, objected to his spending 7 hours cutting down trees & limbs at our youngest daughter’s home. The VA, thru Loyola University Hospital, did a stent on the 100% one &, five days later, after promising to come back in two months for the second procedure, we were flying to Budapest to start our 21 day European river cruise.  As it turned out, when we came back, they did some more testing, the second valve was not blocked as much as they thought & he didn't have to have a second stent.

 Luckily, I had booked us into Premium Economy, which isn’t quite as good as business class, but was a huge step up from economy.  It gave us more room to move, which was especially important for Collins to be doing after having that stent.

Opera House

We arrived in Budapest a couple days early in order to adjust to the time difference & have a little more time for sightseeing.  We used the Hop On Hop Off Bus to get around & get the history of the City.  They are supposed to have a good bus system, too, but we didn’t use it.   

Budapest is actually two towns on either side of the Danube: Buda & Pest (go figure) which became one after a bridge united them around 1870. Interesting place with many contradictions, just some of which include: · WWII did little damage to the city yet many of the beautiful 200 plus year old buildings have facades in severe disrepair.

             

            

In addition, their large parks are clean but the grass & shrubs are not well maintained. It gives off a feeling of being old & tired. · With electric cable cars & most buildings in need of a strong power wash, one gets the feeling you’ve stepped back in time to the U.S cities in the 1940’s . · The streets are clean & we are told it is very safe. Since locals literally won’t even cross the street against a “don’t cross” signal, even with no traffic in site, I tend to believe this.

 This enclosed marketplace was 3 floors of all kinds of shops:  Food to eat, food for sale, especially fruit & vegatables, and all types of clothes, lace tablecloths, etc     

This bridge connects Buda & Pest

            

            

Sand dial hourglass starts at the beginning of the New Year


 



Meet the Staff

 

By June 20^th, we were on our Viking Cruise boat with 180 other passengers. It was very comfortable, the food good, service great, and our room, while somewhat small, more than fulfilled our needs. When you consider that we live in an RV, we really don’t require much space.  Over the next 15 days we traveled 1,200 nautical miles, passing under 285 bridges & through 68 locks (one dropping us 82’, or eight stories) & five countries.

Occasional Summer high-water from the melting of heavy Alps snow really plays havoc with the boats getting under some of the bridges. In some places we had less than 2” clearance. The ship lowers the wheelhouse & has to put all the railings, chairs, & sun roofs flat. Of course, passengers are not allowed there for at least half the trip.

Tagging

The old Iron Curtain countries have a recurring appearance of decay & massive “tagging”, although there are some repairs taking place.

This was quite a large baroque Trinity column, that was built between 1710 and 1713, to celebrate the end of the plague. By building this column, the citizens hoped the Holy Trinity would protect them from another epidemic. Residents of Budapest believed this column did its job, as the plague never returned!  We saw these in many cities

 

 

 

 

 




Leaving Budapest at night

We did an afternoon tour of Bratislava, Slovakia.

Michaels Gate is one of the best known and the oldest buildings in Bratislava. It was built in the 14th century as one of the four gates to the city

Government Building

Our next stop was Vienna, Austria.  Unfortunately, one day is not enough time to see this city.  We started with a visit to the Hofburg Palace.  Unfortunately we were not able to go inside. 

The exterior is so ornate & you can notice all the gold used in the statues on the buildings.  We found that to be quite common in most of the places we visited.

 

 

Our ship stayed late in Vienna that night & we were able to attend a concert of Mozart's music in one of the Hofburg Palace Ballrooms.  If you closed your eyes, you could picture the royalty dancing the night away.

The Schonbrunn Castle was built to rival the French Versailles, but the house of Hapsburg lacked the funds to totally out do France.  We were allowed to go thru some of the rooms here, but not take pictures.

 

We saw many RV Parks along the River

The centuries old buildings in those cities not occupied by the Russians are filled with flowers, well maintained buildings & present a feeling that you are stepping back several hundred years to a wonderful time. The beautiful buildings in Europe were mostly constructed in either the 12^th Century or 15^th/16^th Centuries.

Our next stop was Melk, Austria, where we visited the beautiful Melk Abbey.  It was built between 1702 & 1726 & holds countless Medieval & Musical manuscripts.  Altho part of the Abbey & the school were confiscated during earlier wars, it was returned to the Monks after WWII, and now caters to over 900 students of both sexes.

 

 

 

The Abbey Church

We saw lots of Swans in the River

Coming into Passau, Germany

Passau & St. Stephens Cathedral

The Catholic Church had major influence (& money) at these times & built numerous majestic cathedrals in even the smallest of towns, while the local governments were building huge castles & fortifications around cities.

Neue Residenz, was the home of the Bishop Prince

 Frequently the church Bishops were also the local government, hence the term Bishop-Prince. These folks were incredibly wealthy and wielded huge power.

St. Stephen's Cathedral is the second largest pipe organ church in the world.  It has 17,734 pipes & 233 registers.

Every town started around the cobbled “square” consisting of a Catholic church, a governing building & a beer house. Seems once you finished praying & dealing with the politicians you needed a drink or two. 

This denotes the flood levels & the year it occured

Many of the cities along the Danube have suffered devastating floods over the years.  Thus, they are in a constant state of repairing.

This bridge was built during the 12th Century, used by the crusaders on their way to the Holy Land & is now being repaired



 

Regansburg is one of Gernany's oldes towns

Between the 13^th & 15^th centuries, Europe experienced devastating plagues & occupation from the Turks (also known as the dark ages), thus reducing wealth & manpower needed for construction. After the 17^th century, Europe again experienced wars & occupation from the likes of Napoleon, the 30 years War of the Roses & the great world wars. But during those centuries of prosperity they build numerous incredible palaces and cathedrals. It doesn’t take long before your senses become aware of three factors: 1. The overwhelming beauty of the land & century’s old buildings 2. The friendliness of the locals 3. The History behind what you were seeing While standing in front of a town’s arched entry made of massive stone blocks & being told these blocks were placed there by Roman soldiers 2,000 years ago, ones’ life takes on a different perspective.

They had beautiful Hydranges

Downtown Regensburg

Regensburg was one of our favorite Bavarian towns.  It was everything we imagined when we thought of European Towns: Quaint buildings, flowers, open squares, outdoor cafes.

The churches were so ornate

Nuremburg

Nuremburg is surrounded by 13th century walls that are largely intact today.  It was actually a double wall system with a moat in the middle.  Today that is all green space between the walls, with walking paths, restaurants, etc.

These were called half timbered houses

Also known as the Kaiserburg Castle

Beautiful detailing & windows on the buildings

Even the government buildings are ornate

The Seehof Palace was built as a summer home for the Prince Bishop.  In addition to it's lavish décor, it had huge gardens with over 400 statues & benches.  Unfortunately, as time passed it fell into secular hands & eventually most of the furnishings & statues were sold to pay debts.  Today, they are in the process of restoring some of the rooms & much of the gardens

 

 

We stopped at a Brewery for a little beer tasting.  One of the beers was a smokey beer.  The first taste was a little odd, but with a couple more sips, I actually liked it.  Collins said no, he didn't care for it.

We also stopped at this small church.  Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of it.  It looked so plain on the outside, but took our breath away as we stepped inside.  There was also a cemetery in back with some very old & some current graves.

In this cemetery there were some of the same families going back several hundred years.

The tower is the only remaining portion of the witches prison.  The witch trials of the 17th century claimed about 1000 victims in Bamberg

The Michaelskirche (Church of St Michael) in Bamberg is a 12th century church. It stands on the top of a very high hill overlooking the town of Bamberg. It can be seen from nearly all directions.

Dirndl & Lederhosen - people still wear these on certain occasions

For 15 days we saw virtually no overweight locals. Anyone selling “plus sizes” in these towns would starve to death. This may be due to their diets (Don’t know how considering the desserts they had), as well as the hoards of all ages that ride bikes, or the use of cable cars (you still need to get to the cable car).

Wertheim was a fairytale type town with many restored timber houses, glass blowing shops, bakeries, etc

People tried to build their homes out farther than the neighbor's so they could have a window on the side.

One morning as we cruised the Rhine Valley, we saw beautiful homes & churches, lots of vineyards & castles in various states of repair.

They used to put people in the basket hanging from the tower as a form of punishment

We docked in Koblenz & took a tour of the Marksburg Castle.  It's the only hill castle on the Rhine River that was not destroyed.  Construction was started in the 12th century & it was lived in for over 700 years

Our stop in Cologne happened on what was probably the hottest day of the year.  The temps were well over 100F by late morning.  However, it didn't take away our awe over the most breathtaking cathedral we had seen.  The cornerstone for this was laid on August 15, 1248.  It took over 600 years to build.  It can hold over 20,000 people.  It is said to house the remains of the 3 wise men.  Repair and maintenance work is constantly being carried out in one or another section of the building, which is rarely completely free of scaffolding, as wind, rain, and pollution slowly eat away at the stones.



Cologne Cathedral

The wall of “Love Padlocks” on display on the Hohenzollernbrücke bridge in Cologne, Germany, painstakingly created piece by piece as an endless stream of couples have come to publicly honor their love.  40,000 padlocks hang on the bridge to date – a shocking number considering that the tradition only started in 2008. That means 40,000 couples – 80,000 individuals in all – have participated in this fast-growing, spontaneous collection. The padlocks have added over 2 tons of weight to the bridge, causing local officials to question how long the practice can be sustained.

Must not have thought that thru when they built it

A Park in downtown Cologne, where you are allowed to play in the water

Cologne has approximately 24 breweries & it's own style of beer called Kolsch.  It can only be brewed in the Cologne metropolitan area & must meet certain criteria.

On our last night in Germany, we had  traditional German food.  There were a lot of different kinds of sausage & many other good things to go with them.

Many of the staff dressed in tradional clothing

This ark was built by a Dutchman, using measurements from the bible, after he dreamt Holland would flood. This is a half scale model.   He has it filled with plastic animals along with a few live birds.

 

A significant part of Holland is situated up to approximately 7 meters below sea level. The Dutch don’t notice any of this though, because an incredibly innovative and intricate system keeps the ever-rising seawater from flooding the land. Even during spring tide, the Dutch are safely guarded from being washed away…

Kinderdijk windmills, about 19 in all, were built around 1740.  This is the largest concentration of old windmills in the Netherlands.

Making repairs

 Although some of the windmills are still used, the main water works are provided by two diesel pumping stations near one of the entrances of the windmills site.









When these windmills were in operation, whole families lived in them

Inside the windmill

Our final destination was Amsterdam.

In Amsterdam, next to the main train terminal, is a four story building we in the states would use for cars: they used it exclusively for their thousands of bikes.  We saw bikes with wheelbarrow type attachements in the front for small children.  Even their city & country roads have large bike lanes, reminding us of China. You had to watch carefully for the riders.  God help you if you stepped into their lanes.

 

 

 

There was quite a variety of houseboats on the canals.  Some were well kept with flowers & plants, and others looked like they might sink at any moment.

We wanted to go inside the Anne Frank House but there was over a 3 hour wait.  So we just took pictures & went on our way.

We used the Hop On Hop Off  Bus & Boats to get around the city for 2 days.  It gave us an overall view of Amsterdam.  We could have used another couple of days there to see the museums.  We didn't have time for those. 

We had left Snuggles in the care of our granddaughter, Katie.  It's the first time we'd ever left her, but she certainly didn't go for lack of attention.  As you can see, Katie had her all ready & waiting for us.

For those of you considering a like trip, here are a few recommendations: . You absolutely require a chipped credit or debit card.  Also, a thousand Euros will suffice for cash. . Fly Premium Economy. There are several sub-sections to this, so speak to Karen for more in depth details. . Fly in at least two days before your Boarding date. You’ll need it to recover from jet lag.

Late July:  Realizing we were going to be required to stay in Illinois for the better part of 6 weeks for follow up doctor appointments, we drove to Colorado & returned with the RV. As it turned out, while everything turned out fine in the end & Collins didn’t require a second stent, he was initially put on some medication that brought his pulse rate into the low 30’s (it’s normally in the mid 50’s to 60’s). They quickly took him off that.  Suffice it to say, he now thinks he’s in his 40’s again & all is well with the world.

Since we were still in IL , we decided to have a Birthday Party for the 3 July & 1 early Aug Birthdays.  Paula & Dave were nice enough to invite us all to their house.

We were also in IL long enough to celebrate my birthday on Sept 7.  Katie made me a birthday cake.  Pam is teaching her how to decorate.  We had a very nice dinner with the family at Pam & Aaron's house.

September 8th we finally left IL.  We're off to Door County, WI & the upper peninsula of MI.  Don't know where we'll go from there.  Right now, all we know is that we need to be in Lexington, KY Nov 7th for my mom's 90th birthday party.  We'll keep you posted.