Day 5: Well day 5 was full of shopping. We first went to the Volvo dealership to have them work on the GPS. We picked the kids up from school and went to IKEA. I have always wanted to go to IKEA and it was well worth it. I now have a favorite store; the good thing is we don't have one or we would go broke. We then went to the "Walmart" of Europe, Carrefour. That is were we bought all of our "cheap" chocolate. What I mean by "cheap" is it travels well in a suitcase. All fine chocolate melts at room temperature, so we had to get the cheaper kind so that we could bring it home with us.Later that evening we went to Le Plaza de Brussels. We visited the King's palace, King's park, and everything that went with the Le Plaza including the Manneken Pis (the little peeing boy, he is often dressed in some kind of costume, like Santa for Christmas.)
Manneken Pis Le Plaza in background Kings Palace (one of them)
Day 6: Koln, Germany (or Cologne)
Randy served his mission in Berlin, Germany (which is not even close to Koln) so we wanted to at least set foot in the country. Hopefully someday we will be able to take the trip to Berlin. Koln is the home of the largest cathedral in Germany. This cathedral was absolutely amazing! After walking through the main area of the Cathedral we decided to walk up the bell tower. While paying we see a sign that say "30 mins" one way. We should of believed the sign. It was well worth the time and sore legs though. You will understand when you see the pictures.
We also went to the Roman-Germanic Museum. During WWII the Germans were digging a air raid shelter and found the remains of a old Roman Empire. This, too, was amazing. The pictures we took don't give it justice. However, you will get the picture. It you want to can visit this website
Roman-Germanic photo gallery. My favorite part about the museum was the thousands of oil lamps. It reminds me of the story of the Ten Virgins.
We also bought our Cuckoo clock in Koln. It is pretty awesome!
Koln Dome Self Portrait The stairway of the Dome
Day 7 and 8: Paris, France
We went everywhere! I can't even begin to tell you all the names of everything we saw, so I will give you the highlights. The weekend we chose to go to Paris was actually the weekend all museums are open from 7pm to 2am free to the public. Unfortunately I do not have the pictures of this yet, but as soon as I get them I will post. When we got there we went to a public park and walked around until Randy's bus arrived. (There was not enough room in the car for everyone so we put Randy on the bus.) After picking up Randy we started our journey. Luxemburg park was first. At Tuileries park we sailed boats with the kids, listen to a orchestra, and enjoyed the beautiful buildings and gardens. We saw the St. Michael fountain (patron Saint of France). We visited the Notre Dame. We got to go to the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa and many of the famous painting and statues. It was amazing!! After that we walked along the Seine river and look at the Eiffel tower from a distance. We ate Schwamas (Greek wrap is the best way to describe it ) We walked around for a while and visited all the places Jake could take us to on foot. There is no way I can remember everything we saw....I will need Jake and Mikala's help with that. At about 11:00 we left to visit Napoleon's Palace. We we arrived we walked up a cobble stone drive to a magnificent castle. We walked in and immediately you get the feeling that someone lives here. I know that sounds crazy, but it was the middle of the night and we are in Napoleon's home.......if you get my drift. This place was unbelievable. Every inch of the walls and ceilings were painted. It looked like wallpaper it was so perfect. We did not get to see all of it (since it was the "free" night), but it was amazing. We got to see his wife's room, the dance hall, a meeting room, and a chapel. In the court yard they had a group of actor's/fencers re-inacting a fight, very cool. We get to the hotel at about 1am.
The next morning we head out to Chatelet to meet Jake and look around. One request that Randy and I had was to visit the Champs Elysees. I guess the number one reason we wanted to go there was to see/stand where the Tour de France completes the tour every year. Champs Elysees is a Avenue much like Time Square, without all the "lights", with museums, luxury shops, and cafes. We got our picture in the middle of the street with the Arc De Triumph in the back ground and just looked around. We visited the Mercedes and Pegout showrooms, then headed for a closer look at the Arc De Triumph. After that we went to the Eiffel Tower. We have some good pictures of this, so keep a look out. We walk up to the second level. We were going to stand in a line for an hour for 12 euro/person (18 bucks) to take an elevator, but then realized the line for the stairs was MUCH shorter and only 4 euro/person. So we walked up all 700 steps and saw the entire city of Paris. Well worth the 4 euros. From there we went to Montmartre area. This area is very quaint. We went to a little square were everyone was doing caricatures and paintings. This community was on a hill and everywhere you went you had to climb stairs. I was a very beautiful area. The Montmartre area is known for the Sacre-Coeur Basilica. All I can say is it was BEAUTIFUL. This basilica could be seen from anywhere. I bet it was the highest in Paris. After eating some delicious crapes we headed back to Brussels.....this time Randy came with us because he missed the bus. Not to big of a deal, Lindon just sat on Mikala's and my lap.
Tuileries park and boats Napolean's palace Champs Elysees and Arc De Triumph
Eiffel Tower Eiffel Tower Sacre-Coeur Basilica in Montmartre
Day 9, 10 and part of 11: Florence and Pisa, Italy
Italy was our favorite. It was beautiful and the people were so nice and they would actually speak English. The only complaint we had was it rained the entire time we were there....but we had a ton of fun. We flew in to Pisa and took a bus to Florence. We checked into a very cute hotel room and took a nap....we were beat! After about an hour we headed out to check out the city. The street were narrow and full of people. The first night we headed for the Piazza Della Chiesa de S S Annunziata. This was once a orphanage ran by nuns for the children that were abandoned by their families. We got us some gelato here in the plaza and feed the birds. The gelato was wonderful. We had some everyday we were there. Before we called it night we went to the Chiesa di Santa Maria del Flore. I have never seen anything like this before. The stone it was made of was colored a dark green and mauve. Again, it was beautiful. (I think I need to pull out my thesaurus and get a new word.) The next morning we went to every place we could go by foot. We went to the Fortezza Da Basso, Piazza Della Indipendenza, Chiesa di San Marco, Chiesa di San Lorenzo, the Bargello, Ponte Vecchio, the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum and finished off at the Piazzale Michelangelo. The Piazzale Michelangelo and the Da Vinci museum were our favorites in Florence. The museum replicated all of Leonardo Da Vinci's sketches. It was really neat to see all of his ideas and inventions in "real life". The Piazzale Michelangelo looked over the city of Florence. The view was awesome. The pictures speak for themselves. All you could see were red roofs and green trees!
We had plans to go to the Accademia Gallery to see the statue of David but we were denied entrance when we got to the front of the line. We were told "you did not buy those tickets from us!" Which was a lie! I bought them straight from their website about 2 weeks before we went to Italy! I have been arguing with them since I got home, through email, about getting a refund but they refuse. So I guess I will have to dispute it on our credit card. It was over $90 to get an "English"tour.
Later that day we took a train to Pisa. We got there in time to check-in, eat and go to bed. We woke up early the next morning and walked to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Very cool! That is about the only thing to see in the the city of Pisa but of course we walked around just to soak in a little more culture. We ate some gelato and headed to the airport.
View outside our hotel The orphanage Chiesa di Santa Maria del Flore
window
One of Divinci's Us in the rain At the overlook! That is beautiful
inventions Florence!
Statue of David Awesome hot pink Smart car
Leaning Tower of Pisa View of the river in Pisa
Back in Brussels we gather everyone to gathered up everyone and headed to Bruparck. There are several things to do at Bruparck. Our intentions were to go visit Mini Europe and eat dinner. However Mini Europe was closed so we went the the Atomium. The Atomium was a structure that was build for the World Fair in 1958. We got to walk up into all the balls except one, the restaurant. From the top of the Atomium we were able to see Mini Europe, so we killed 2 birds with one stone.
The Atomium
Day 12: We were not as active the last few days of our trip. We woke up late and hung around the house for a little bit. Once we all decided it was time to get out to the house we went to Waterloo. This was a very neat! I watched a "light show" detailing the every move made by all involved, a movie, a wax museum and the Lion Hill monument. The battlefield has no houses or business on it (except the visitor center), and they strictly use the land for farming. We walked to the top of the Lion Hill monument overlooked the entire battlefield. We walked to the top and enjoyed the peace and quite.
Later that evening we played tennis with Jake and another member from their ward. There are no pictures of this activity. Sorry, this is one thing I would rather forget.....I am not much of an athlete, if you get my drift.
After tennis we pickup some Indian food. This was by far my favorite meal of the whole trip! It was delicious!
Lion Hill Me on top of the monument
Day 13: We first went back to Le Plaza de Brussels to pick up some soccer jerseys for Brayden, Elston, and Vaughn. While we were there we made sure we had more waffles and crapes so that we could remember how they tasted when we went home.
Before we left Randy and I wanted to go to Cinquantenaire Park and get a good look at what essentially could be Brussels Arch of Triumph. Mikala sat in the car while we were suppose to walk around the park and get a good picture of the Arch, but we got distracted. We saw a museum that we thought we would just see how much it cost and what it was. We walk in and found out that it was FREE!!! We love free, so we decided to take a look! This museum was amazing!!! I would have to say it was my favorite part of the trip. This was the Royal Army and Military History Museum and it was full of every airplane you could think of, from every country. They had a section for cannons, tanks, boats, and my favorite, airplanes. That was just a small section of the museum. We would recommend this to anyone that just happens to visit Brussels!
On the opposite side of the Arch was the Autoworld, automobile museum. I really enjoyed this museum as well. They had automobiles dating back to the late 1800's to future cars. It was really neat to see how everything has evolved to the cars we drive today.
Too end our trip we visited the castle of Beersel. It had a mote and a draw bridge. Very cool! This castle was first mentioned in the 12th century. They believe that this is one of the oldest castles in Belgium.
The Castle and us
Day 14: Travel day....need I say more. Well we woke up at 4:30am Belgian time, on Saturday, to catch the train so that we would make our flight out of London at 11:15am. The London airport was out of control. I will never complain about DFW again! The flight was great and we arrived in Amarillo at 8:00pm Saturday night (which is 4:00am Sunday morning in Brussels!) We were tired but recovered much quicker than we thought.
I hope everyone has enjoyed the horribly long blog! I know that some of you have been waiting for the rest, and for those waiting, I wanted to give all the details I could. One thing I realized after returning was that I am so grateful to live in the United States. We are very fortunate people!
