It's really great to see you and the Family taking advantage of your time there. When I was at Rhein Main in the early 80's, so many people that I was stationed with never got out of the Frankfurt area. I (like you) took full advantage. One place I have yet to hit is Berlin since the wall came down. Maybe next time..... Sorry we couldn't get together for that beer while I was there!

We're trying to take advantage. With kid(s) it's a little more difficult, but I think we've done pretty well!

Yeah, sorry we couldn't hook up. Let me know if you come out this way again!

We did go to Munich for Oktoberfest (THE Oktoberfest) and it was nuts. Glad we did it and enjoyed our time, but it was just too for us. Guess I am getting older! I'll dig up some pics! I want to go back to Munich to see the sites tho...

Berlin is also on the list. We better get crackin after this baby get here!!

As promised, more pictures.

First Oktoberfest, which ironically starts mid-Sept.

My buddy Charlie and I enjoying our Fest Bier:


Our group plus three random people who wanted in:


new Hats!


Our group after the purchase of a Bavian hat!


Next up is trip to Garmisch, Germany near the border with Austria. This village has a military resort in it, so you can get some comforts of home, but still get away and see the beautiful sites!

Day one was headed to the top of the Alpspitz, where the AlpspiX is located. This is a platform that clings precariously to the cliff edge over a 3200ft drop off! The floor was open grating and it took a lot of will power to get me out there! But I didn't want any regrets!






Next, we walked up the Partnachklamm Gorge. This was a feat for both my 3yr old son and 37wk pregnant wife, but they both did excellent and it was beautiful! Of course, the best pictures are on our real camera, which is MIA, so you'll have to suffice with my cell phone pic:



Google was kind enough to provide a few more:


what it can look like in the winter


Before we came home, we visited the Ettal Basilica where I picked up a 6er of their beer (quite good too) and we toured the outside of the Linderhof Palace. Sadly no cell phone pics of any of that. The Basilica was amazing, but we didn't have the time to take the tour of the inside of the Linderhof Palace but I can tell you not to go after they have winterized the place. All the fountains are removed or covered up and it doesn't look like much.

No plans for the remaining part of this year, but I am sure once we get used to having a second child around, we'll find some place to go!

That gorge looks beautiful

We took our first ski trip of the year to Chamonix France. What a beautiful place!!! It is incredible! Skiing was just ok due to lack of snow and warm temps. I think it was above freezing every day. But we still had a great time!

Riding up to the top of the Brevent gondola:




At the top:






Yikes!

We skied this the day before when it was socked in with clouds. You could barely see 30ft in front of you. You're on a narrow trail with lots of switch-backs. Quite unnerving to say the least, but we all made it down safe and sound - several times :-)!



A couple vids of my son in lessons:




Then on the way home as we crossed into Switzerland, we were blessed with this incredible view! That's NOT a lake.

Great Pictures! The camera I had in the early 80's could'nt come close to those pic with your cell phone.... nice!

Nice pics. That place is truly amazing.

Wow, so cool.

Been a while since I've updated. We done a ski trip or two, but nothing that I haven't already showed you, so we'll skip that.

We had some cousins come from CO and we were to meet them in Venice.

Ever seen the alps from the Air? Truly spectacular!


Out the window of our apartment there was the leaning tower of "Un-pisa". I don't recall the actual name, but most of the towers like this in Venice leaned. It is a group of 120 island connected by over 400 bridges, so I can't imagine the foundations are that great:


We toured both the Island of Burano (Lace) and Murano (Glass). Burano is beautiful!






Murano was neat, and we got to see glass blowing live. I watched a master make an amazing horse from molten glass in less than 10 minutes! But not much else to do there.

Back in Venice, this is the world Famous and oldest Venetian bridge, The Rialto.


A birdseye view of Venice:


An amazing place for sure! No cars, just lots of boats and Gondola's. Yes we rode one, but it was at night and none of my pics turned out!

We came home and spent Mon-Thurs here. Our guests did book a couple of local tours.

Friday we left for Paris. I wasn't sure this was going to be a fun trip. I had heard that Parisians are not nice people and I knew it was a busy city. But it was something our guests wanted and I am thankful we did. I found the people very polite and pleasant and we enjoyed the trip immensely!

First, the ICE train is awesome. What amounts to a 4-5hr drive is cut in half using this train! More on that later! We did a hop-on, hop-off tour bus and that was great! Wasn't too awful expensive and we got to see a LOT! A lot of my pics are from the bus, but we did stop and see some of the other sites.

Notre Dame:


Arc de Triomphe:


Some tall tower...


Traffic Chaos! I was so thankful we didn't drive there and I'd recommend the same for ANYONE unless you've grown up driving here. It was and the city is trying hard to control it's pollution so this is only 50% of the cars!


View from the top of the Eiffel:


The Lourve where THE mona lisa resides among others. I did not tour, but since my wife had already done the tower on a previous girl-trip, she came here instead.


The Eiffel Tower at night:


And then on the hour it sparkles:


So the Ice train...here's how it cuts the travel time in half. Yes, that's 320km/hr which converts to 199mph! And it was such a smooth ride! Just book early and get the seats facing each other as that was much nicer than traditional seating.


It will be a busy summer so I'll try to keep up here!!

Awesome JD thanks for sharing your travels, which reminds me, this weekend I will actually get the Moab pics put into a photobucket album, I know I am so far behind (years behind) on it and I am so sorry, glad to hear things are going well


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Those ice trains are sweet. They don't feel like 200mph at all. Would love one to run from the springs to the ski resorts. Don't know if you are a soccer fan, but the alliance arena is a really cool tour.

The end of March we booked a USO tour to see Battle of the Bulge. If you have not seen the HBO series "Band of Brothers", I highly recommend you watch it.

The first stop was the beautiful American Cemetery in Luxembourg.


This is one side of two huge pillars like this. There are twice that many names. The other sides are maps of the military movements during the battle.




This one might sound familiar:






Next stop was the nearby and dreary German Cemetery.


After that we took a little ride to an amazing WWII museum. I am forgetting the name, but I have the pamphlets somewhere if anyone is ever interested:




Many amazing Scene recreations:




Then a huge room filled with vehicles and larger items!






We moved on to Bastogne to see the fox holes. People are allowed to get into and out of these holes, but that sorta preserves them as otherwise they'd probably fill in.




Picture of destroyed half-track:


Tank in the center of town:


The following weekend we headed back to the UK to see things outside of London. We pickup our Rental car, plugged Windsor Castle into the GPS and headed out. Let me remind you that not only do they drive on the wrong side of the road here, but also on the wrong side of the car. And we rented a manual Hyundia crossover diesel. So out we go trusting 100% on the GPS and it takes us to some location near downtown London, which has CRAZY traffic. No Castle in sight! We search again on the GPS and there are several other entries for Windsor Castle and none of them seem to match the small map of the area. So we cut our losses (a few hours!) and headed to the next attraction.

Here is our ride from the visitor center to some weird stones standing up on the middle of a field:








A replica so you can see the size:

I ducked under the tape and on the left side of this rock was a rope connected to it. If you pulled on the rope it would tell you how many of you it would take to move the stone. It was when I left the rock and got funny looks from others that I realized we had just crossed the tape. Oops!

Once we had our fill of what I think was an ancient sporting stadium, we headed to Bath where we'll stay for the remainder of the weekend. We got on one of those hop-on hop-off tour buses and saw some cool sites.

Famous Pulteney Bridge:


Cathedral:


A cool old Alfa Romeo:


MOst of the streets were built with continuous buildings:


It was near the end of our tour that we spotted a place we HAD to go to:

We don't get that opportunity very often, but I was disappointed that they did not make them fresh there.

A circle of houses:


Pulteney Bridge again:


Cathedral:


At night from our rented apartment:


On our way back to the airport, we left early to get back to the real Windsor Castle after doing some internet searching. This is where the royalty spends a lot of their weekends:




Here's the oldest part of the Castle:


The Central Garden:




My son got this guard to smile after he marched up there, turned around and stomped his feet. Darn cute!


Not our video, but to give you an idea of what my son was mimicking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yCLXQPYds8&t=0m41s

Look ma, this followed me home...


That is the loot from two of us. 2 cases of Westveleteren Trappist 12, (3) 6'ers of TW8, (3) 6'ers of TW blonde, (2) 12'er St. Bernardus Variety Packs, 12'er of St. B 12 and St. B Tripel, and a total of 6 new glasses! It was a long day. We left shortly before 8am and returned at 10pm, mostly driving! 670ish miles round trip.

Had to split the loot if half, but a stop another store yielded the Delirium stuff:

Oh and in the bag is Monk Cheese from St. Sixtus. Pretty tasty, but I had to bring something back for the family!

What a haul, jealous!

See edited post above from Wed Apr 16, 2014 2:45 am

Where are you guys planning to head next? My vote is Czech Republic.

Ha! Sounds like your wife has got European travel on lock down. I've got nothing else for Czech except make sure you hit the ATM for Czech Kronen and don't use Euro there. Unless things have changed and they've switched to Euros, the locals will generally inflate the exchange in their favor. But that applies everywhere.

I might have to send you some cash to pick me up some Czech bills. Back in 08 when I was there I spent all of my bills so I didn't have any to bring back with me as souvenir money.

The embassy will likely have a bank cage, or can point you to the best bank for exchange.

I saw my first Euro-bronco this weekend. We were in Holland for the tulips (yes again...reason:beer run above). Anywho, on our way home I see a late 70's bump side Bronco headed the other way. Not an EB by any stretch, but the second coolest Bronco IMO.

I understand there is an EB in Sweden. Might have to look that guy up!

ROAD TRIP!!!!
My inlaws came for a couple weeks recently, so we planned a big trip to show them Europe knowing they likely won’t ever be back.
We rented a van on Thursday, drove it to Frankfurt Airport on Friday, picked up our guests and screamed “HOLD ON!!” as we headed down the Autoboahn. Our little van was a late model Ford Transit Custom diesel. Not much power, but it got the job done and returned a trip total 35mpg! Mind you, that is 4 adults, two children and enough gear for two weeks!


We arrive in Prague that evening with enough time to unload all that gear up 102 steps, many times. I needed a shower after all that! We found a nice little restaurant and grabbed some dinner. We began our exploring the next day. The weather wasn’t super cooperative, with rain, but we donned our rain gear not allowing that to dampen our spirits.

First stop was the Eifel Tower of Prague. Some amazing sites from here, especially on a clear day, but we still managed some cool shots from the top. This one is of St. Vitus Cathedral inside the Prague Castle grounds.


From there we made our way to that Castle and toured the area, including that beautiful cathedral.


Main Hall:


One of many stained glass windows:


Wouldn’t ya know it, the Prague Beer Fest happened to be the same weekend. I didn’t plan that, I swear! But the girls were kind enough to oblige and we had a great time enjoying Czech beer and food!


The next day we made our way into the old town square. Along the way we found what would be a cool way to tour Prague if the weather were nicer.


We crossed the Charles Bridge.


And saw many other sites in the area.


More of the towering Cathedral


If you’re keeping track, we’re on day 4 of our trip and headed south to Cesky Krumlov, a cool little Czech village on a winding river. You can’t really drive to the downtown area, except to unload, which we did. Then as my FIL and I parked the van, my wife sends me a text saying we just checked into the wrong hotel. She had found a better deal and cancelled this one. UGH! We retrieved the van again and reloaded everything up getting a refund less a cleaning fee. Mind you, these are typical streets not made for cars, so it was some effort for all this, but we did end up in a nicer place. And we had wised up by now too packing a backpack for the following days clothes instead of unloading several hundred pounds of luggage each day. With all that sorted, we strolled towards the downtown area to eat at Papa’s and enjoy a well-deserved beer or two. Along the way we stopped at a look-out to view the Castle.


After a wonderful lunch with AMAZING service, we toured the Castle. My son had missed his nap and wasn’t too cooperative, so we took the family picture sans the little bugger.


It has been customary to keep bears at this Castle and that has been carried on for several hundred years. They can put on a bit of a show. This one looks like he’s stretching his hamstring.


I took this neat little pano of the old town square:


And then the Castle at night:


Day 5 took us further South into Austria and around Salzburg. We are beginning to get into the Alps. We ate lunch in a little town of Hallein, where we had stayed the year prior. From there we made our way to Berchtesgaden, Germany and continued down paths that we had already taken in a past trip. We prepared for this amazing view once again.


We took my inlaws up to Eagles Nest, which as you might recall, was a gift to Hitler before WWII. At the parking lot we spied some really cool Ferrari’s. Yep, two identical ones aside from color.


You can actually see the Salzburg Castle from up there:


Konigsee (lake) and the valley below:


There was still snow up on top, but it was a warm day and the snow was turning into water very quickly.


Family pic:


The next day we toured the Salt Mines, which was worth a second visit. But in the parking lot we spied this very cool Unimog:


We left Berchtesgaden just before noon and made our way to Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland. This would be a long trek and I wanted to peek back into Germany to top off the van’s fuel tank before making our dive deeper into the Alps. So we hung along the German/Austrian border and made our way to Garmisch, which is a town where Hitler held the Winter Olympics in 1936. This was a scenic overlook in Austria somewhere East of Innsbruck:


There is an American military resort in Garmisch, but my only goal was to hit the Esso and continue our journey. We did just that, heading West out of Garmisch only to find that the pass leading back into Austria was closed. We tried to reroute but using a GPS map as a paper map is difficult at best. We stopped at another filling station and the helpful and English speaking attendant got us back on track after selling us a Road Atlas. This meant back tracking to Garmisch and negating the whole reason I wanted to go there to start with. not to mention costing several hours of travel time. Murphy’s Law.

As we crossed into Liechtenstein, we were stopped by the first European Border patrol that I have seen. After claiming he didn’t speak any English he asked what our business was. Once he found out we were just traveling thru, he let us go on our way. Once into Switzerland, we ate a late and very expensive McDonalds meal and settled in for final long push.

It took some convincing for the hotel keeper in Lauterbrunnen to stay up late for us, but we were successful and we finally hit the sack around 2am after 14 hours on the road. Since we were behind, and we knew this was going to be the most beautiful destination of our trip, we changed our plans and stayed two days here instead of one. That would pay dividends for sure.

We stopped at the tourist office to ask what the most cost effective way would be to access the sites we wanted to take my inlaws. In doing so, my wife rolled her ankle on the sidewalk and severely sprained it! Ouch! After quite a few minutes, she gathered her composure. We bought cable car tickets and headed up the Murren side of the valley in hopes to peak at the world famous Schilthorn. Here’s a view from the gondola:


After a short train ride up the valley we stopped for a break in Murren, to include a beer in this scenic village.


We rec’d bad news when we discovered that the higher two gondolas accessing the Schilthorn were closed due to high winds. So we had no choice but to go back down, a little deflated.

Here’s my attempt at an artistic photo on the ride down:


Once down on the Valley floor, we made our way up stream to Trummelbach Falls. My MIL wanted to recreate a picture we had taken on our first trip to the area. With my wife’s ankle a bit sketchy, she stayed at the bottom with the baby as I took my son and inlaws to the top and *that* spot. This is from one vantage point looking down the valley:


We grabbed some pizza to-go for dinner and enjoyed that at the hotel along with a couple beers and some card games.

The following day we drove to the top of the valley to see if we could get all the way to the top. The heavy fog was burning off, but we didn’t have much hope we could get to the top. But wouldn’t ya know, it was indeed open so we quickly got our tickets and headed up. They had a live cam at the ticket booth of the top showing it was above the cloud cover! The fog began to burn off fast allowing this shot of the fresh snow from the overnight storm. The green/white contrast is something my camera couldn’t capture in its splendor.


Finally at the top of the Schilthorn, we were blessed with this incredible view of the famous peaks, Eiger, Monch, & Jungfrau (left to right). The Lauterbrunnen Valley still blanketed with fog below.


The 1969 James Bond film “In Her Majesty’s Secret Service” was partly filmed on this location and they have added quite a few props. My son is doing his best 007 impersonation.


Another family photo with a spectacular backdrop:


Day 7 of our journey has us leaving this beautiful valley to trek thru the Alps to Chamonix, France. We left midday to allow us to take our time and take in the majestic scenery. We avoided the major highways and took smaller mountain passes hoping none would be closed. Again, we were blessed with clear and open roads as we made our way South-West into the French Alps. Late afternoon we checked into our apartment and just kicked back that evening. The next morning was clear and we were treated to more snowcapped peaks.




Here’s is the view from our apartment of Le Glacier des Bossons on the opposite side of the valley.


We spend the next couple days touring the town and seeing the sites. The weather was perfect and made for a nice enjoyable time.

This brings us to the 9th day of our excursion where we began our travels North in the direction of home. But first, we stopped off at Chillon Castle on the banks of the serene Lake Geneva on the Swiss/French border. We were surprised at how much of the Castle you get to see. Often times, you only see a small percentage of a castle, but it seemed like we got to see the majority of this one.

This build site was selected for its natural moat:


Fish-eye view from the top of the tower:


Another artistic photo attempt:


We grabbed a bite of lunch and continued our trek North into Germany for our last vacation stay in the Black Forest. There we toured the World’s Largest cookoo clock and did some shopping in the town of Triburg before we completed our trip home.

After 2,880km (1,790 miles), I was wiped and glad to be finally sleeping in my own bed! We took one more day-trip to another cool Castle a couple hours from here and did a little touring of the city of Trier where Porta Negra, the Roman Bathes, and a Roman Coliseum exist among many other historical sites.

We celebrated my son’s 4th and my FIL’s 50-something birthdays Friday night and I took them to the airport Saturday morning. It took a few days for us to catch our breath and get back into the routine, but we enjoyed our trip and I hope my inlaws take back with them memories few people get to make.

JD, those are some really awesome sights.

Hope your wife's ankle is doing better.

Thanks for sharing, what a trip! Your pics bring back some wonderful memories.

I'm behind on my updating and I am hoping some of you are still enjoying these. I figured I'd better catch up before we take our next trip. This fall will be with two sets of family coming to visit along with a few other trips we have planned.

Also, we asked for an extension and our request was granted. So Uncle Sam is letting us stay here an additional year, which means we won't be moving until summer of 2016 and also that I can bore you with more travel reports... ;-)

But first, I have to make a confession. I made yet another Belgian Beer run:

So only about 40% of that is mine, but I see a few more of these in my future, especially as our PCS date approaches. I have yet to find a better beer than what I have found in Belgium and there is a very high concentration of them there.

Back to the trips. Late June another family and us headed out on a road trip. We returned to Normandy, but this was our friends' first time. We booked an apartment on the beach near Arromanches and that worked out GREAT! I can't think of a better way to wear down two energetic toddler boys!

We did some touring as well. I'll hit the highlights. We visited a WW2 tank museum, which had more than just tanks. But here's an amphibious one:


This is a truck that could be used to haul it:


We took our friends out to a gun batterie:


Monday we had hired a guide and our friends watched our son so we could go without boring him. First stop was St. Mere-Eglise, which is where a paratrooper John Steele got his chute hung up on a church steeple where he played dead for two hours hoping the Germans would just leave him. The took him down and took him in as POW.

St. Mere Eglise was one of the first villages liberated from the Nazis.

Inside so many of the churches are tributes to what the troops of many countries did to free France from Hitler. And many of those are in the form of stained glass windows:


Here is Liberty marker 0 in St. Mere Eglise marking the start of "The Path of Libery" leading to Bastogne. One every KM for a total of 1,146.


Our guide then took us to Batterie de Crisberq, which is a huge one (20+/- guns). Some of the guns had a 15 mile range!


Next stop was Utah Beach. Here too is another Liberty Marker 00. The local mayor thought this should be the start of the Liberty Route, but plans were already made to start in St. Mere Eglise, so he made it own, 10% larger and put it here and added a 0.


We then stopped at a small church where three clergy were caring for wounded soldiers. There is still blood stains on the pews:

The story goes that the church was hit by some sort of ordinance, which d a hole in the vaulted roof some 25ft up. The pieces came down hitting one of the caretakers in the head. He patched himself up and continued helping the soldiers.

The following day was our turn to watch the kids while our friends toured. I wore the two boys out on the beach as we made castles, hunted sea shells and played in the water. While they were napping I was watching for the tide to go out so I could get closer to Artificial Mulberry Harbour. You might recall from my first trip here that the amount the tide rises and falls here are some of the most extreme in the world. So I was able to walk out to what was once 15ft underwater. This artificial harbour was built by the British to supply the ground forces during the war. These concrete boats were secretly made in England, towed into place and the plugs pulled so they sank.


This is when they were getting setup:


So my wife really wanted to ride in a tank at the museum, but when we went originally our friends did not want to, so we went back on our own to try. Unfortunately we were still unable to go for a ride in a real tank (takes minimum 4 adults), but we settled for this. Notice the real tank in the background.

I let my son drive a little and he did pretty well for a 4yr old. The controllers were like you'd find in an older bobcat.

http://youtu.be/-Fy8Q7pYteM

We left the museum to meet up with our friends in St. Malo for a nights stay. Here's a beach shot from the walled city:


From there we drove south into the heart of France where the Loire Valley has been cut by the longest river in France. Here there are many Chateaux's, which are just fancy French castles. The first we visited was Chambord:


Amazing Architecture:


Spiral stairs:


The centerpiece of the Chateaux:


Next was Cheverny. I am realizing now I never did get a good picture from the front, but here's a cool one from the rear, which doesn't look all that difference than the front anyway.


This one is famous for their hunting hounds. Here they are preparing to feed them, which is a scene to watch. Youtube will help you there if you are interested. Notice the raw steaks, dogfood and other hound friendly foods on the lower level.


One of the more awesome Chateaux's was the Chenonceau because it spanned a river, which made it quite a sight.




Family photo from the back side:


We "base camped" (read: rented apartment) out of Amboise, and here is the Chateaux D' Amboise. We were to watch a lazer show there one evening, but they had to cancel the show due to rain. We never got to go inside.


We made the long journey home spending some astronomical 120+ Euro's in tolls, but that includes the whole trip. Still, that is Autobahn robbery if I've ever seen it!

There is still more we'd like to see in Normandy, but we're not sure it is worth a third trip. The Loire Valley was impressive, but we also believe we've seen our fill of Chateaux's. So I think we can officially check Northern France off our list.

We haven't explored Northern Germany all that much, so we decided we should.

We stayed in Mitte, which is a good location to see what the city has to offer. First stop was the Radison blu to take advantage of the concierge there. And also to see the worlds largest cylindrical aquarium:


We bought hop-on, hop-off bus tickets and away we went. Here is a govt building.


And part of the Berlin Wall:


The Berlin Cathedral was very close to the apartment we rented:


The weather was setting up to be very hot, and my son came down with a fever. So we pumped him with some meds, kept calm and carried on (so they say). We walked down to Brandenburg Gate:

This was a day or so before the big Soccer Finals game, so they had things closed off for huge public viewing areas. Futball is all they really have, so they are into it big time!

Over to the Holocaust memorial:




My son was feeling pretty miserable, so we decided to split up and my wife went to the flea market while I hopped on the bus and rode it back to the apartment. Little did I know, that was going to be a two hr ride. And foolishly, I had the backpack, which had everything a baby may need for the day, except the baby, who stayed with my wife. So my son and I made it back to our apartment, I gave him some more meds and put him down for a nap. Meanwhile my wife was also making her way back to the apartment carrying our daughter who had wet her diaper so much it leaked all over my wife. Redeeming our shortcomings, she got a ride on the city bus and what took me two hours, took her 15 minutes. With the heat, this might have been one of those days we should have stayed in, but we knew we needed to get Berlin done, so we pushed onward.

After naps, we rewarded my son with a visit to Legoland. This is a very small one compared to the theme park ones, but he still had a great time.


Near here was a promo for the new transformers. It's so cool to see my son liking the same things I grew up with. Optimus Prime:


The next day we booked a bike tour. Their earliest tour is at 11, which is fairly late when it's going to get into the mid-90's! But we went anyway and it wasn't as bad as we thought it might be.


While on this tour we saw Checkpoint Charlie:


A different part of the Berlin wall:

Notice the rounded top. The story goes that East Germany claimed to have drainage problems and in a gesture of good faith, West Germany gave them a bunch of sewer pipe. Which East Germans proceeded to install on their walls to make them harder to scale.

Here is a Guards "nest" that was along the wall:


I didn't know that the wall was actually two parallel walls, with varying distances between. This gap was known as no-mans land offering no cover and you would get shot if you were caught between these two walls.

Pretty amazing and recent history to be seen here. Worth the trip, but we also feel we've crossed Berlin off the list.

Awesome stuff JD. Keep the pics coming!