Day 6

Last night we realized that being cheap was going to cost us some time. I found these airplane tickets from Frankfurt to London that only cost 19 Euros each! So without checking where the airport was exactly (it said it was Frankfurt Hahn) I booked them. Then we realized that Hahn Airport is almost two hours away from where my mom lives! Luckily there was a bus out there so my mom didn't have to drive us. Actually, side note, my mom cannot drive in Germany, only Sister Hansen can because she has a Utah license and Germany recognizes those due to agreements the Church has made! If someone from another state wanted a license, they would have to take the class for 1500 Euros! Anyway, we had other plans for today but ended up in Frankfurt so that Dan and I could catch the bus out to Hahn airport. But it was fun to be with my mom and see this city. Below is Romer Square (the "o" should have two dots above it). We explored the shops around here and looked at the architecture.

Did you know most European cities are founded on sites that were once Roman cities? Well here are some Roman ruins to prove it is true of Frankfurt. These ruins used to be a bath house. They were setting up for a concert in this square and had built the seating right over the top of these ruins. Behind this is a church that was mostly destroyed in WWII but the people built it back up.

I love the human spirit that we see everywhere in these countries. Things are destroyed but life goes on and we will be stronger because of it. It's beautiful.

We stopped for lunch at a little cafe in that square you saw earlier. This was the apple strudle that Dan ordered. Yummy!
After the food, we had to say goodbye to my mom and head out for the airport. It was sad to leave her. I know - and she knows - she is is where she is supposed to be. But that doesn't make it easy to know there is another life happening without you somewhere else. I knew I was going home to my kids in a few days. She still has a few months! I cried on the bus for a few minutes, missing her. But then I was so tired, I fell asleep and didn't wake up till we got to the airport.

I will save you the agonizing details of me being cheap, but we did save money if not time!

Day 5

Today we went on a cruise of the Rhine River. The Rhine used to be the boundary between Germany and France. Short history lesson, Germany used to be lots of separate farm areas, the whole Lord and serf thing went on their way past most other countries. In fact, the First Reich (a gathering of all those areas of land) didn't happen until the later 1800's. And of course we know about the Third Reich. Apparently there will be no more Reich's because of that one. Anyway, all along this river were the ruins of the castle's that belonged to the robber barrens. And the villages are still there, using the farm land up and down the hills. The main crop is grapes. Interesting. Anyway, we had a beautiful weather day and I couldn't decide which pictures to include so I put a slide show at the end of the post. When we landed at St. Gore, we ate at this restaurant. I had pork with a slice of ham, a slice of pineapple and a cherry on top, all covered in hollandaise sauce. Pretty decent but super greasy and heavy. Dan had some kind of saurkraut and bratwurst. Then we went shopping at the little shops. There are several that sell just Christmas decorations all year around. I will do a post showing you all the stuff we got when we get home.
This is a picture of one of the barges on the Rhine carrying cargo. If you look closely at the back of the boat, you will see a swing set and a Little Tykes plastic play house. So little kids live on these boats! We saw one where the kids were out playing - wearing life jackets no less. What an interesting way of life.
It was a beautiful day. On the way back on the boat, I had a little nap followed by a chocolate ice cream bar. And I was with my mom the whole time. Perfect.

Day 4

This day was Sunday, a much needed day of rest after Paris. My mom and her missionary companion, Sister Hansen, drove us around a bit. They live in a suburb of Frankfurt called Bad Vilbel, this is their city hall. Cute, huh?

Then we drove out a bit and passed a large flower garden where there were flowers growing and you could go pick the ones you wanted and put some money in the box on the honor system. That is one thing about Europe, there are flower shops everywhere: in the train station, the metro, on the side of the road, you can buy them in all of the little grocery stores. They definitely appreciate beauty.

On to the Frankfurt temple. It's small and simple but in a beautiful area, far outside of the actual city. After the temple we went to see her offices and then to church. The thing that impressed me the most about church was the group of little old ladies. Think about what they have seen in their life time! The rise and fall of Hitler, the building and destroying of the Berlin wall, and here they are, still at church. They were beautiful. Second most impressive were the number of people who could speak fluent English! Several of them have been educated in the U.S. but most of them realized they needed to learn English as the common language in Europe. My mom said when she goes to conferences that include young adults from different countries, they use English. It makes me want to at least learn French and teach the kids, too.

The senior missionaries had a get together that evening, their stake president spoke. He was born and raised in Frankfurt but went to school in Colorado, where he met is wife. He went on to get a masters degree in chemical engineering and is working on a fiber that is as light and thin as a spiders web but will protect like Kevlar. Amazing. Anyway, about 10 years ago, he and his wife moved back to Germany with their four kids and the wife didn't speak any German. Neither did the kids. Now they are all fluent. Amazing.

Day 3

I know you will forgive me for being tardy on this post since at the end of Day 3 I was with my mom. So I haven't posted until now because I didn't want to waste one precious second of being with her:)

The following pictures came at great personal sacrifice because I thoughtless took them without asking the permission of the boulangerie lady. With our language barrier I couldn't tell her that I had to take these pictures or my peeps would never believe how amazing their concoctions looked and that's the least I owe them since I can't help them taste one. She, on the other hand, couldn't tell me what a rude arrogant American I was. So even though she had already repeated our order to us - she gave us the wrong thing! We ordered two quiche, warmed up and she give us some baguette with ham and cheese on it and a crusty look to go with it. When we walked outside and reazlied what had happened, we walked back in to explain, because we just COULD NOT leave without some of that quiche! But she wouldn't take the wrong order back and she made us pay for the quiche. So please thoroughly enjoy these pictures:)

Next on our agenda was a treck up to Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart). Had I known then what I do now, I'm not sure I would have gone. First, it's a long way from anything else in the artsy district. Second, as you can see from the pictures, it is at the top of a very high hill! So we take the metro out and at the stop we see an elevator. It has a line so we think we can handle the stairs. Crazy! Apparently we were at one of the deepest parts of the metro line and it took us several minutes to get to the top. Then we had three more steep sets of stairs till we got to the actual church. As we are walking over to it, we see a little shuttle car that gives you a lift to the top of the hill. Wish I had known that because my calf muscles were killing me the rest of the day. It's a great view of the city and the church is spectacular inside. Then we walked around and didn't really see much of the artsy stuff (we didn't make a big effort to find the Moulin Rouge) so we decided to try the Eiffel Tower again.

This pictures of Sacre Coeur in the distance is from the top of the Arch de Triomphe.

When we got the the Eiffel Tower, we talked to a guy who didn't want to let us up because we should have used our ticket on Wednesday. Dan explained to him, in French, that the police would not allow us in. So garcon says we should have come back the next day. They go back and forth for a minute before the guy realizes Dan knows more French than he knows English and he let's us through. Then we get to the ticket taker and our bar code won't scan so Dan has the same conversation with her. Then she looks at the date on our ticket and her eyes get big and she starts talking really fast (in French) and all I hear is le bomb! So we're not sure if it was an actual bomb or just a threat but we're glad everything worked out. So we ride up to the first level (which you can also take the stairs to for less money) and then we get in line to ride up to the very top. The ticket taker there needs to have the same conversation with us as the other two have. Clearly, they are not communicating in their staff meetings. In the end he lets us up and the view is better than from an airplane. You can look at the same stuff for as long as you want and even buy champagne if you have a mind to. But I am still of the opinion that it is not romantic. There are just too many people there! And a lot of kids from America, I mean jr. high and high school. We decidede 17 was a good age to think about letting your child out of the country without your supervision. That can be a separate post, too. Anyway, my favorite picture from the top of the Tower is the one of the Louvre. Look carefully for the pyramid in the middle of the biggest building in the picture and the green garden leads right to it (that's where we sat the other day and had crepes). But it's so big, this is the only place I could get a picture of the whole thing.

Then at the bottom of the Tower I tried out the timer on my camera. Not bad:)

By then, we had only a few hours left in Paris and decided that Sydney would LOVE the earrings we saw at the top of the Arch de Triomphe. So we went back, climbed 300 stairs up and back to get the earrings (which I'm not showing you a picture of yet because Sydney is reading this blog and I want them to be a surprise).

Then we went back to our hotel to get our stuff and stopped one more time at the Boulangerie (the nice lady was back) and ordered two baguettes, two pain au chocolats, a pieace of noir chocolate cake, a chocolate sac (which is a ball of merangue covered in chocolate ganache that is about 1/2 an inch thick, and then all of that dipped in a hard chocolate shell) AND the last quiche. The lady laughed at us when we kept adding to our order and Dan told her it's because we were leaving for Germany in a few hours. We had a feast on the train ride!

This is Gare de Est (East Train Station) and in the very front of the picture you can see a row of bikes. The Mayor added these as part of the public transportation system a few years ago. You just scan your metro card and the first 3o minutes are free. You park them at your destination in a simmilar rack. Very cool.

Then one last picture of an outside cafe. Actually they are all outside and inside because you can smoke outside but not inside. So if you want to sit outside you can, but be prepared for the smoke.

Then we got on the train and it took us 4 hours to get to Frankfurt. The French countryside was beautiful, lots of little villages and every one with a church in the middle of it.

I'm pretty good at describing all these experiences that are surface stuff. I'm not going to be good at describing my reunion with my mom. So I'll just say imagine that you haven't seen your mom for over a year and now you are back in her arms. Just like that. It was heaven.

Day 2

I won't make you jealous with the delicious breakfast we had at the boulangerie, I'll just skip right to our outing and save that for a Food in France post.

Google is an amazing thing - especially when you have internet access on your phone. We didn't want to pay for the guided tour of Notre Dame today (which was actually free to us because we bought a museum pass but were too dumb to read everything that was included) so we sat down and googled it and discovered all kinds of amazing facts. Really, for the number of times in my life I have done a report on Notre Dame, I should have already known a lot of it. But the most interesting thing to me was that during the French Revolution, most of the church was destroyed! We heard the same thing at Versailles yesterday. The revolutionaries were just upset with everything so they destroyed and looted it. It tells you just how desparate they were, that they had no recourse to change their situation other than to destroy everything. Lucky for us that we have a democractic system. Now if we would just use it before we get as desparate as the French did!

I digress. They destroyed everything at the church except the rose windows. There just are not words to describe how intricate and detailed and beautiful they are, all three of them different. When you walk into the church, even though it seems to mostly be a tourist attraction, there is still a reverence, a respect that does not exist at the other attractions. It is still a building that was built to worship God and you can tell.
This is the north window, you can't see the detail and the sheer size from the picture. The rose window that's on the front of the church is obscured by the organ pipes inside, so I couldn't get a good picture of it. But it is the most beautiful.

After Notre Dame, we went to Musee D'Orsay, which does not allow photography, and saw the originals of several famous paintings by Renior, Van Gough, Gougin, Monet, Manet, etc. The pictures are of course amazing but what is really amazing to me is the history that you're standing in front of and the fact that they are all in one place. There were seriously huge fire extinguishers everywhere!

This is Dan's dream house. It is in the garden at the Rodin Museum and is quintessential French country. (They were setting up for some kind of party, thus the white tent structures). We ate our picnic lunch here of brie, baguette and apples. After resting our feet, we looked at the sculptures around the garden.

The Thinker is not as big as I thought it would be and there were A LOT of naked statues.

From the Rodin Garden, you could see the top of this building, which is not a church but Napoleon's tomb. I don't like Napoleon, hadn't even given a thought to where he was buried. I assumed it was some unmarked grave on Elba. But no, I underestimated him. He of course is buried in this mammoth gold building. You walk into the building and in the center, under the dome, is a circular railing. When you look up at the dome, the inside is just like the ceilings in the castles, with a mural of Napoleon being received in Heaven and framed in gold. When you look down, there is a MASSIVE marble coffin, it could seriously fit 10 Napoleon's in it. Napoleon designed this whole place and made sure that even in death, people would bow to him by having to look down over the railing. Pompous.

Luckily, the gardens outside were beautiful to see. Actually, come to think of it, there are gardens everywhere with people just sitting in them reading, kids playing. I really think the French enjoy their leisure time more than we do.

Next we went to L'Orangerie which is a museum designed specifically to hold Monet's Water Lillies. Wouldn't you know my camera battery died right after I took this picture. There are two large, oval rooms with canvases on each wall. Two long, two short. You sit on a bench in the middle and silently enjoy them. They are beautiful, probably my favorite pictures. Possibly because my favorite color is the bluish purple in the one above.

The L'Orangerie is located on the corner of a park that is sort of like Central Park, though not as big. You can see the Eiffel Tower from where you sit at the water fountain in the park. The kids can play on the play grounds. There are four little outdoor cafes you can eat at, or drink your coffee, or smoke your cigarettes. We chose to eat crepes. I discovered that if you order a chocolate crepe, they don't spread Nutella on it, they actually put melted chocolate on it! I'm not talking Hershey's syrup, I'm talking actual good candy bar chocolate! It was yummy. Then we headed to the Louvre, which is on the other end of the garden.

First, it is massive and gorgeous all at the same time. I can see why putting the glass pryamids out front would have been a source of huge conflict. They are so opposite the rest of the surroundings. But they are iconic at this point.

There were thousands of people there but it was so huge it didn't really bother you - until you got to the Mona Lisa. Seriously, the rest of the gigantic museum has hardly anyone in it, just a millions tourists loooking at ONE picture! Sure, it's nice. Smaller than you thought, partly because it's being displayed on a huge wall all by itself. There is a even a guard right by it, though I don't think he had any nunchuck skills to defend the painting if need be.

After we saw that, we looked at mummies, sarcophogi, stone tablets - Dan loves old things. The older the better. It is amazing that some of this stuff lasted long enough to get put in a museum. But I was on the hunt.

Side note: I don't even know how many times I watched Top Gun before it occurred to me that Maverick and Goose were not flying those planes. Not like I didn't know subconsciously, it's just that the movie was that good that I didn't think about it.

Fast forward to the Louvre. I love the Da Vinci code. And I am sorry to say that after visiting the Louvre, I realized that Da Vinci code the movie was not filmed there:( Duh. But it was so Top Gun for me after that. I wondered what else had been fabricated for that movie. So I went in search of the final resting place of Mary Magdalene and just when I felt I had searched the whole museum and my feet hurt so bad I had to give up...

This place actually exists! I'm sure Mary Magdalene is not here because neither is the Rose Line disk from the movie. But it was cool. This is actually in the underground entrance to the Louvre - the entrance that has a Starbuck's and an Apple store right by it because it's part of an underground mall. All I can say is at least they didn't ruin the sanctity of the above ground beauty by sticking a mall there!

We got on the metro and headed back to our hotel. Right around the corner from our hotel was this little crepe shop where we stopped and ate dinner at. Remember my camera battery is dead at this point so I couldn't take pictures of the amazing food we ate but I will try to do it justice with words. First, they have a TGIFridays type deal where you order an appetizer, entree, dessert and drink for one price. Deal. So I ordered: pinapple juice, a salad, a crepe, and mousse. Just kidding. It wasn't that simple. The pineapple juice was but the the salad was thus - a very large bowl that looked like it only contained cubes of swiss, blue cheese, tomatoes, and walnuts. Underneath all that there actually was lettuce and a tasty vinagrette dressing over everything. I am a huge fan of blue cheese and this was so bleu. Even the swiss was something to marvel at. I ate and ate but could not finish that salad, especially with the little basket of bread sitting there, too. After the salad we sit there for no kidding 20 minutes, because that's how it's done. You are there to enjoy yourself, your meal. The waiters are not going to hurry you out so they can make more money. Next comes the crepe. Mine had spinach, cream, gruyere and an egg. It was called the Popeye. Really. But they had mixed the cheese in with the crepe batter so that when it cooked, the whole crepe tasted like toasted cheese. Then they put the spinach and cream on top, fold the corned in toward the center and crack an egg on top. Most of the egg cooks but I didn't like the runny yolk. The rest was heaven. Much later we had dessert - Dan had creme caramel (like a broulee) and I had of course mousse au chocolat. It was so rich it tasted like the inside of a candy bar, very dark and luscious. It was a perfect end to the day.

Day 1

Let me just start by saying thank you to my Dad for financing this trip and thank you to my sister, Erin, for babysitting my girls while I am gone - I couldn't have left them if it weren't for you.

For those of you who don't know, my mom is on a mission for our church over in Frankfurt. Well, she's based in Frankfurt but her actual assignment is to provide training for all the couple missionaries in the Europe area who are in charge of the Centers for Young Adults. The centers provide a gathering place for young, single LDS people to meet together and learn and have fun. So mom travels all over Europe to do this. When she first left, my dad said he would like us kids to go over and pick her up at the end of her mission (18 months) and have her show us around Europe. Part way into her mission, mom said she did not think traveling more after her mission sounded like fun. So we are all taking our turns going to visit her and traveling around Europe ourselves:) My sister went back in March, we're here now, and my brother and his wife will go in October. So without further ado, here is a travel blog of our trip - I promise it's interesting:)

First, it took us about 24 hours from the time we left our house in Phoenix until we checked into the hotel in Paris. When I booked the flights, I didn't think a seven hour flight was a big deal, seeing that we have driven from Phoenix to Dallas (17 hours with four kids in the car) several times. But it was still hard. Especially when you walked past First Class and saw the three year old sitting there. Jealous! We had a layover in London that lasted WAY too long because of weather but it was seriously like being stuck in the fanciest mall ever! Tiffany's, Prada, Gucci, Louis Vitton, Harrod's, and what airport would be complete without Starbuck's. Didn't buy anything, just looked.

We finally made it to Paris - on Bastille Day! There was a giant party going on right by our hotel, it went on till all hours of the night. But we were so tired we slept right through most of it. Early the next morning, we were awoken by some nasty sounds in the street outside our room. We looked out to find some party goer yacking his guts up right by this little fountain. Gross!
But now we are awake and going so we take a cool picture of the other stuff we see outside our hotel room and get going to the Super Marche to buy breakfast. Three interesting things: 1) People bring their dogs everywhere here, even into the grocery store. 2) You can't buy toothpaste in the grocery store, you have to walk over to le Pharmacie. 3) You CAN buy Lay's, Kellog's, Dannon, Old El Paso, and Bertolli pasta. We could have had Cocoa Krispies for breakfast! Instead we had baguette, yogurt and fruit - how French.

We took the train out to Versailles - the palace King Louis the XIV built in the late 1600's. At first I was a little jaded, having grown up in Vegas and seen so much of this in my life time. But when I really thought about what an accomplishment this was from 300 years ago and how much money this would have cost, I was just blown away. I couldn't even get the whole thing in a camera shot, no matter how far away I stood!

This is the front of the castle, the courtyard below is massive. Look at all the gold leaf!

This is the famous hall of mirrors - on the right are windows looking out on the gardens and on the left are exact replicas of the windows only they are mirrors. This is the room the balls were held in. The level of detail on all the plaster work is incredible, especially knowing that someone produced it all by hand. No wonder all of Europe was intimidated by the French, Louis knew how to party!

This is the gate to the palace, the whole fence out front is gold, just couldn't get a good picture.

Everywhere you looked, there was Louis! On every door, in every painting, fresoed on the ceiling, just everywhere! Seriously vane.

This is his bed, with a fence in front of it. Every morning and every night the important people came to tuck him in and wake him up - but they had to stand behind the fence. Geez, next time I complain about my kids coming to wake me up, I'll remember Louis.

Amd this picture is for every mom who has ever showed up at a public place only to have the day care kids in their matching shirts show up. This is a day care group on a field trip to VERSAILLES!!! Only they wear matching orange hats. Awesome.

On the way back to the train station, we stop at the local patiserrie to get a chocolate croissant (au pain chocolat) and a napoleon (mille fois or thousand papers). DIVINE! No comparison to La Madeleine.

Next is the Arche de Triomphe - this is me across the street from it. Look carefully and you can see people on top of it - that's how massive this is. The traffic around the bottom of this is crazy, no lanes even painted on the streets, no stop lights. People just go where they want. Luckily they really do all drive tiny cars so it's a little easier. You have to go underground to get over to the Arche. When you get there, you can see the tomb of France's Unknown Soldier from WWII, it has an eternal flame burning on it just like JFK's tomb at Arlington National Cemetary. Guess JFK liked that idea and that's okay because the French really liked him - enough to name a street after him. But they also like FDR, Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln, and couple others I can't remember right now.

Up on top the view is spectacular! You just have no idea what the skyline of Paris looks like until you've been up there. First, you can see much of the older architecture right close to you, including the palace, the Eiffel Tower, the Opera House, Notre Dame, etc. But what you don't realize is that on one end of the Champs Elysse is the palace and on the other end is downtown with modern buildings and all. Also, there seem to be several downtown's - apparantly each quarter sort of has one. Anyway, at this particular tourist site, there were a lot of American's, so we had a couple on thier honeymoon take this picture of us. After today, I would not recommend a honeymoon in Paris - no matter how romantic you think it is:)

We had tickets to go to the top of the Eifeel Tower but when we got there, the police were clearing everyone out and standing guard with machine guns! No one would tell us why so I'll keep you posted if I find out what went on. After that we went to dinner - all the little cafe's everywhere were serving duck, salmon, and cheeseburgers (for 14 euros!). That says a lot about the tourists from America. They were EVERYWHERE! And the ads for our movies are on every billboard at every train station. Most of their TV is just American shows dubbed in French. And seriously, no wonder the French don't have a good opinion of us. For those of you who have seen the Unsinkable Molly Brown, most of the American's here are like her before she gets some culture.

The sites were amazing but this is People Watching at it's BEST! We think we are so different from everyone else in the world, but we are so much alike. Same problems, same successes, just in a different language. There are a few glaring differences, more French smoke than Americans. More French know English than American's know French. Also, not nearly as many tattoes. Maybe that's an American craze - they haven't got L.A. Ink on their TV yet.

Stay tuned for more tomorrow (hopefully it won't be so long).

1st Week of Summer Vacation . . . by numbers

Let me just say up front that I really enjoy my kids being out of school. I like not having to get ready in the morning and not packing lunches. I enjoy spur of the moment projects and outings and staying up late. But this week wasn't what I envisioned. Here is my week by numbers:

On any given day I had at least eight kids in my house from 8AM - 6PM. I babysit my neice and nephew and then two of my neices from Utah came to visit. Add a few friends here and there and on Thursday I was up to eleven! We spent ten hours swimming, did nine art projects, played eight board games, and seven video games. I went through six gallons of milk, five pizzas, four bags of cereal, three batches of cookies, and two movies. That makes one very tired me. There are still ten weeks of summer left but lucky for me I have three vacations planned, one that does not include kids! Wish me luck!