September 26, 2015

After only three days in Ireland, we have decided that Ireland has the nicest people anywhere in the world!  We have had such a great few days and everyone has been so friendly.  Not only are the people great, the food is AMAZING!  I’m really wishing that I could smuggle home an entire cow’s worth of Irish beef!

We arrived here from Madrid at about 10:00 pm on Wednesday night.  We had found a hotel right near the airport, so it was a quick (but still expensive) taxi ride to the hotel.  We didn’t really know much about the area, but apparently our hotel isn’t in the best neighborhood.  We heard this from a few people, but it worked fine for us…there was a grocery store right across the street and a bus stop with the direct line into town, right next to the hotel.

After sleeping in quite late, we got up and made our way into town.  We were originally going to do the Irish version of the “Duck Tour”, but found a hop on hop off bus for even cheaper and that way we could get around all day. (and you know how much we love hop on hop off buses since we’ve done about 6 of them now…lol).  The bus ride was nice and gave us an overview of the city.  They even included free tickets to the Little Museum in Dublin, which turned out to be a great little museum.  We saw lots of really interesting historical things and even learned some history.  I think the funniest story was about the Easter Uprising of 1916 (where Ireland started to fight for independence from England).  The battle went on day and night for a week except for 1 hour each afternoon when both sides stopped fighting.  The reason was because there was a flock of famous ducks that lived in the pond and the sides would quit fighting for an hour so the duck’s owner could go out and feed them safely!

They also had a copy of the Irish constitution at the museum along with a podium (actually a music stand) that JFK used when he gave a speech in Dublin just before his assassination.

Little Museum of Dublin

Irish Constitution

Podium used by JFK just before his death

Of course, with U2 being the most famous band from Ireland, they had their own section in the museum.  I always forget how much I like U2 until I start to hear their music.

U2 exhibit in the Little Museum of Dublin

We continued the tour for a while and saw lots of really neat buildings.  One of my favorites was this building with the red ivy all over it…I just think it’s really pretty!

Dublin

We found a really cool Museum called “Dublinia”.  It tells the history of Dublin from back when the Vikings founded the city all the way through English rule and to present day.  The museum was fun and there was lots for Hayden to do.  Both Hayden and Adam got to dress up like Vikings and Knights.  They had models of different types of houses that have been in Dublin and had little rooms showing life in the village during each time period.

Vikings!

Viking Hayden

Kind of looks like Frodo!

Adam got to play dress-up too!

Inside a Viking house

Sir Hayden

Sir Hayden, ready for jousting

Uh oh, someone’s in trouble!

Just outside of Dublinia is the Christ Church Cathedral.  We have seen A LOT of churches,, so we only went in to climb the tower, we didn’t torture Hayden by walking through another church.  I’m pretty sure he will never go in another church again after all of them that we have drug him through!  The view from the top of the tower was really nice.  You could see most of the city and it was a decent day outside, so the view was good.

Christ Church Cathedral

View from St. Michael’s Tower

Christ Church Cathedral

The last place we went on the bus tour was to the Guinness brewery.  Although I’m not a fan of Guinness myself, it seems like you HAVE to see the brewery if you come to Ireland!  🙂  It is a huge place and has a lot of history.  Back in 1759, Arthur Guinness leased the land for the brewery for 9,000 years at $45 per year.  Since then they have grown significantly and bought the land themselves.  I think it’s pretty awesome that he managed to get a 9,000 year lease!  lol

Guinness anyone?

After the bus tour, we had an AMAZING dinner at a pub downtown.  I had Irish Roast Beef with potatoes, stuffing, carrots and other veggies…it was so good!  The place was huge and I almost finished everything.  Even Hayden has been eating vegetables here!  He had carrots and cauliflower and cleared his plate…amazing!!

The next day, we slept in again and then went to Dublin Castle first.  The castle was cool, but smaller than we expected.  The majority of it has been destroyed and rebuilt over the years.  We did go through the medieval area, but it’s only a small portion of the castle.  There is only one of the towers left and some of the underground areas.  We did get to go through the rebuilt areas that they still use today and that was pretty neat too.

Dublin Castle

Dublin Castle

Throne Room in the Dublin Castle

St Patrick’s ballroom in Dublin Castle

Chapel in the Dublin Castle

After the castle, we visited a few different museums.  All of the public museums are free, so we went to the Natural History Museum and the National History Museum.  Both museums were nice and had great exhibits, but we were a little pooped out and came back to the hotel a little early to grab dinner and relax for a while.

This morning, we are heading to Galway for the Annual Oyster Festival and to check out the West Coast of the country for a day or two.

September 22, 2015

Just finished up our time in Spain by spending a few days in Madrid.  We were pretty low key and didn’t do much other than walk around.  We spent two days in the city walking around and hanging out.

The first day in town, we went to the Naval Museum, which was pretty cool.  The Spanish Navy has a very long history and did lots of exploring back in the day, so there was a lot to see.  They had everything from old weapons (which Hayden and Adam love) to maps of the Spanish explorations, to models of Christopher Columbus’ ships and even recreations of ships rooms/cabins.

Some serious weapons

A very BIG longsword

Now THAT’S a big gun!

Spanish exploration of the world

Naval Museum

The Santa Maria

The Pinta

Inside of the museum was also a special exhibition about famous ships around the world.  They had a pretty big section dedicated to the Titanic with some items that have been recovered from the ship.

Dishes from the Titanic

Items from the Titanic

The rest of the day we spent at a playground near our campsite and then had dinner at Hayden’s favorite place…McDonalds.  As much as I am not a fan of McD’s, I have to admit that it is easy, cheap, and consistent!

The next day we went back into town and walked around the more “touristy” area.  One of the first things that we saw was this government building with a big banner welcoming refugees to the city/country.  I couldn’t help but think that this is something that would NEVER fly in the US.  As soon as any government office tried to put this up, I think people would go crazy.  I think it’s really nice to see people helping each other and being understanding about the plight of all of those people trying to escape their war-town country.

Not a sign you would see in the US….

Right inside of the city, they have a re-built Egyptian temple that was given to Spain as a gift for helping to move the temple at Abu Simbel when the Aswan High Dam was constructed in the 1960’s.  The temple was taken apart in Egypt and rebuilt here in Madrid.  Funny story about it…the temple gates were rebuilt in the wrong order, but once they discovered this, they didn’t go back to fix it.  Hayden was excited for (yet another) Egyptian temple and to get to practice reading Hieroglyphics a little more.

Egyptian Temple

Egyptian Temple

Symbol of Horus

Hieroglyphics

Egyptian Temple

After the temple, we walked to the Royal Palace.  It was pretty cool from the outside.  We are a little “palaced out” so we didn’t go in, but just walked around the outside.  It was really pretty and they had a very nice public garden area where you could just walk around or relax on the benches.

Royal Palace

Royal Palace

Royal Palace

On our way back to the bus stop to go back to our campsite, we walked by a restaurant called, “Iowa”.  It didn’t really seem all that mid-western to me since they just served Spanish food!  lol

We are leaving Madrid tomorrow afternoon to fly up to Ireland.  We are SUPER excited to get to Ireland, but it’s a little bitter-sweet because this means the trip is almost over…it’s so hard to believe!!!

September 19, 2015

I haven’t posted in a while, but we have spent this week relaxing in Barcelona, Spain.  It has been fabulous!  We are staying at a campground right on the beach (literally a 2 minutes walk from our tent to the sand!).  We liked it so much that we ended up staying an extra day.  Adam may like it even more than Hayden and I because the beaches are “tops optional”.  lol

We got here on Sunday and spent the day getting settled.  Luckily, our travel luck seems to be changing and we made it here without any issues.  On Monday, we hung out at the campsite and spent the entire day at the beach.  The campsite even has a supermarket and a decent restaurant, so we had some Paella for lunch and got some groceries to make sandwiches for dinner.

At the beach

At the beach

At the beach

On Tuesday, we went into town to do some exploring on our own.  We found an Invention Museum online and wanted to check it out.  It was really neat and Hayden became inspired to be an inventor when we get home.  His first project is going to be a flying car that runs on bubbles.  We’re really hoping that it comes together because I’m thinking he could make some money with that!  lol

In that same area, we walked around the old part of the city and saw the original Roman walls and an original aqueduct, there was a lot of really cool history here.

We finished the day by finding a movie theater that was playing “Inside Out” in English.  I’m not sure what was better, the movie or the fact that the movie theater had caramel corn!  The movie was really cute, but the caramel corn was amazing!

Barcelona

Statue of Fluffy (not really, but it looks like Fluffy from Harry Potter)

On Wednesday, we did the Hop On Hop Off bus.  I know it’s a cheesy tourist thing, but even after doing it in about 5 other countries, I still always like them.  It’s such an easy way to see everything and learn a little bit about the city.  We spent pretty much the entire day on the bus.  We hung out at the beaches for a while and did most of the 3 bus routes.  We hit a bit of a snag when our bus broke down, but it stopped right next to a little shop that sold snacks, so Hayden got to use his newly learned Spanish…”Uno Churro Por Favor”  (one churro please) to get a snack.  He was pretty excited to speak Spanish and even more excited to have a churro.  lol

Christopher Columbus Memorial

Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona

On Thursday, we had an awesome day…we met up with Aunt Susan and Bob to do another day on the bus and to hang out together.  They were just finishing a cruise, so it was great to be in the same city and spend some time with family!  We had an awesome lunch of Tapas, and then found a really good place for dinner where we all had more tapas and paella…yum!  We went to the Sagrada Familia, which was amazing.  They have been working on this church for more than 150 years and its still incomplete.  It is huge and amazing!  Hayden got to help a guy on the street make huge bubbles (and he helped pop them), so he had fun too!

Sagrada Familia

Sagrada Familia

Hayden helping make giant bubbles

The second half of the day, we went to the beaches on the bus and spent a while hanging out there  The water is chilly (definitely not Florida), but it’s really pretty.  We had some ice cream and just sat around talking for a while.  The rest of the tour was nice, then we headed back to their hotel to drop them back off and got back to our own campsite.

Beaches of Barcelona

Barcelona Soccer

Barcelona Soccer

Barcelona

We were supposed to leave today, but decided that the beach was so nice that we would spend an extra day to just hang out and relax.  We spent all day today at the beach again and it was a nice break.  This week has been a good chance to recharge a little before we make the final month long push to get home again.  We are going to Madrid tomorrow for a few days, then flying to Ireland for a week and then our final week in London.  On Oct 6th, we will board the Norwegian Star and start our 13 day trip home on a transatlantic cruise.  I can’t believe that we are already thinking about coming home…time has gone WAY too fast!

September 14, 2015

We wanted to find one of the coolest castles in Europe to visit and this could definitely have been it!  The city of Carcassonne is over 2,000 years old and has tons of history.  It was an active city until about the mid 1600’s when it was gradually abandoned.  Luckily, in the 1800’s, an architect decided to study and rebuild it to the standards of how it would have looked during medieval times.  They did an amazing job and that is how Carcassonne is seen today.

Our luck getting here was a little better, but we still think we’re a little jinxed.  We made it to Carcassonne without much issue, but when we got to the town, we missed the last bus and had to take a taxi out to the campsite.  It was only a few km’s so it wasn’t too expensive.  The campsite was decent, but not much grass.  Unfortunately, it POURED down rain that night.  Thank goodness for our waterproof tent!  It was lightning and raining so hard that mud was splashing up all over the sides of the tent.  We managed to stay dry and the weather was fine from that point on.

We went into town the next morning to check out the castle and the village.  From the campsite, it was only about a 15 minute walk along a nice river.  The city looks amazing sitting on top of the hill!  This was the site that they used for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for the scenes that are supposed to be Nottingham Castle.

View of the entire city (castle)

The inside of the castle is restored as well as the outside, so it was cool to walk through everything.  We took the tour on the inside of the chateau where the people would have lived back in the day.  I think I would have been willing to live here!  🙂  There was a beautiful courtyard, neat rooms, lots of statues, and great views from every window as well as the city walls.

Inside of the courtyard

Town walls and towers

View from the town walls

View from the castle

View from the town wall

In one of the rooms, they discovered that the original walls had been covered over and they found the paint underneath.  In order to restore the room, they needed to carefully scrape off the wall covering, by hand, with a razor blade so that they wouldn’t damage the paint underneath…that’s a LOT of work!

1,000 year old paintings

The front of the castle looks just like you would imagine a medieval castle looking and the best part was that they had a restaurant right there where we ate lunch.  Probably one of the best views that I could imagine for lunch!  The food was awesome.  We had a traditional dish, cassoulet, which was really good…it is sort of like a bean soup, but with pork and duck.  I also got crème brulee…my favorite!!

Entrance to the castle

Carcossonne

Nice place for lunch!

After lunch, we walked though the shops and around the castle walls for a while.  There weren’t too many people there since the high season is over, so we had fun getting up on the walls and playing around.

Carcossonne

Hanging out on the city walls (just like in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves)

Cathedral inside of the city

Carcossonne City

We finished the day walking back to the campsite and going to bed early to get up to leave for Spain in the morning!  We thought maybe our bad luck was over, but in the morning, when there should have been a 7:56 bus, it didn’t show up and we had to walk to the train station (about 4 km).  It wasn’t the end of the world, and we made it on time, but we are hoping that our luck will change back again once we get out of France!

September 11, 2015

All through our time in Europe, we have been trying to find some kind of Medical Time/Renaissance Fair/etc.  We hadn’t been able to catch anything at the right time, but we finally found an awesome Medieval theme park in France!  We had to cut out our plan of going to Lyon, but it was totally worth it.  We found this place, Puy Du Fou, under, “Things to do with kids in France” and it was definitely worth the trip.  Basically, it’s a theme park that covers time periods from Vikings, Medieval Times, Roman Times, all the way up to the 1900’s.  It was a little out of the way, about an hour from the nearest train station, but we just rented a car for the day to get out there and then we were free to come and go as we wanted.  It worked out great!

The first show that we went to was a jousting/horse riding show.  It was awesome and even inspired Hayden to say that he wanted to start riding horses again.  The guys were crazy with the tricks that they could do on the horses…they rode upside down, standing up, would jump off and back on while they were running at full speed, it was crazy, but really cool!

Jousting Show

Jousting Show

The second show was based on the Roman Coliseum and the games that would have been held there.  This was especially nice for us to show Hayden since we went to the Coliseum in Rome, we could better explain that this is what would have gone on there.  They do a great job of making it real too..blood packets and everything!  They had lions, a tiger, lots of different animals and even a chariot race.  The show itself was all in French, so we didn’t fully understand the story line, but we were enjoying the show more than the story anyway.  🙂

Roman Show

Roman Show

Roman Show…Hayden liked the geese. 🙂

Roman Chariots

Roman Chariots

Roman Show

Roman Show

Roman Show

The third time period/show was based on a Viking Village.  Again, really cool!

Viking Show

Viking Show

Viking Show

The last show that we saw, (and Hayden’s favorite) was the Falconry Show.  Holy cow, they get those birds to do some amazing things!  I don’t have many good pictures, because they are so fast!  They had Falcons, Eagles, Vultures, Owls, and lots of other birds too.  They would dive, fly right over our heads and even sit on people’s heads a couple of times.  You can see in the picture below how close they came to us when they flew over!  Probably the funniest things that happened was when one of the trainers was throwing food in the air for them to catch and one bird grabbed it, but then dropped it…it came down and landed right on a guy’s head…gross!  (It was some kind of raw meat).  They also set one of the birds on the head of the guy in front of us, it was pretty funny.  Some of the birds would even come out of a hot air balloon that they had way up in the sky and dive all the way down to the trainer with food.  Their eye sight is amazing!

Falconry Show

Falconry Show

Falconry Show

Falconry Show

Close call!

Falconry Show

Along with the shows, they have villages from the different time periods set up in the park.  In one of them, they have a full castle set up that is really neat.  They have people inside in the rooms where they would have lived (i.e. Italian painter, a King and Queen, etc).  They also had shops set up around the villages with craftsman.  There were some really neat things that they made like dishes, jewelry, artwork, wood carvings.  The blacksmith was one of our favorites, he was making a sword

Puydu Fou castle

Blacksmith

We tried to get a reservation at the themed dinner, but it was already booked up (just like Disneyworld!), but it was just as well since we had a car and could drive to get our own dinner and save some money.  We went back to camp just before dark so that we are ready to take off for Carcassonne tomorrow morning.

September 9, 2015

Well, we have had nothing but bad luck since leaving Bayeux for Mont Saint Michel!  I think that we are cursed in France!!  To start, we left Bayeux and got on the wrong train that took us 2 hours in the wrong direction!  Normally, we do a pretty good job of double checking things, but this train just happened to show up on our track at the same time as our train was supposed to be there and we didn’t realize that this was a train that was running late and that our train would be about 2 minutes behind it!  We got on and made it all the way to the north of France before realizing we were on the wrong train.  There was another train heading back south, so we got on that and made it to Angers about 4 hours later than planned.  We did make it to the campsite and got settled in for the night.

The next morning, we got up to grab the bus to Mont Saint Michel.  Since we were leaving that afternoon, we needed to take everything with us.  We got loaded up and went to the bus stop only to discover that we missed the bus by 10 minutes and another one would not come for a hour and a half.  Our only choice was to sit at the bus stop or walk 9 km with all of our stuff.  We started walking and (with only a little whining – lol) mad it there eventually!  If you look in the picture below, you can see teeny, tiny, St Michel in the background.

Hiking to Mont St Michel

We did make it and it was a very nice place, but not one of our favorites.  I think if the day hadn’t been such a disaster, we may have liked it more.  My biggest complaint is that is was super touristy and very crowded.  We figured a week day in the off season wouldn’t be bad, but it was wall to wall people.  We walked around for a while, ate lunch, then took the tram back to the visitor’s center to pick up our bags.

Mont St Michel

Mont St Michel

Inside Mont St Michel

Inside Mont St Michel

Inside Mont St Michel

Inside Mont St Michel

Mont St Michel

Mont St Michel

We got to our bus stop and got the bus to Rennes where we will take the train to Angers (that is another disaster of it’s own that will follow tomorrow!)

September 7, 2015

Visiting the Normandy Beaches…wow.  It’s one thing to learn about the places and watching movies like Saving Private Ryan, but to actually visit the places and see what the soldiers had to overcome is pretty unbelievable.

We came to Bayeux to use this as our jumping off point to visit Normandy and Mont St Michel.  We were really excited about the campsite because they had an indoor pool next door that was included.  Unfortunately, we weren’t able to go swimming because they REQUIRE you to wear a speedo…seriously, only France would not allow swim trunks!!  There are very few people in the world that can pull off wearing a speedo and to require everyone to wear one seems like public humiliation to me!  lol  Although, I have to admit, I tried to talk Adam and Hayden into each getting one just so that I could take a picture…ha ha ha…they both refused.

Despite that disappointment, we had a good time in Bayeux.  We had already scheduled a tour of the American Beaches at Normandy and it was great.  Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and we had a small group, which was nice.  We visited Point Du Hoc, Omaha Beach, and the American Cemetery.  Point Du Hoc was crazy…I can not even begin to imagine being one of those Rangers that had to climb a cliff, while being shot at, to take over the bunkers.  Hearing the entire story of Point Du Hoc (although I’m sure I learned it back in ROTC, I didn’t remember quite a bit of it), despite all of the issues that they were up against to overpower the Germans is pretty heroic.

View from Point Du Hoc

Ranger Memorial

Beach below Point Du Hoc

View of the coast from a German bunker at Point Du Hoc

Grenade explosion in a German bunker

Bomb crater at Point Du Hoc

After leaving Point Du Hoc, we drove down to Omaha Beach.  This is another one that seems insane.  This huge coastline and we had to flight al the way from the water up across the beach and up the hills to take over the German fighting positions.  Again, despite so many things that went wrong, we managed to make it through, though not without thousands of people dying.

Hayden was getting a little historied-out by this time, so he made us a sand model of the bunkers on the top of Point Du Hoc.

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach

After the beach, we went over to the American Cemetery.  They have done a wonderful job with the cemetery, it is a beautiful place and certainly worth visiting.  The view is wonderful over the beach and the grounds are lovely.  They have a map up front that shows all of the allied troop movements across Europe that was very cool.  While we were there, a group was bringing flowers to be placed at the cemetery, so they had the National Anthem played along with Taps…it was a really good experience and even though Hayden didn’t really appreciate it yet, I’m glad that he will be able to look back and hopefully realize what an important place it is when he learns about WWII later in school.

American Cemetery in Normandy

American Cemetery in Normandy

American Cemetery in Normandy

American Cemetery in Normandy

Allied Forces in WWII

The first night in town, we were tough and camped, but after not being able to go in the pool and after being VERY cold for the night, we decided to pack it in and find a B&B to stay for the second night.  We found a very nice place with a retired couple that rent out rooms in their house.  It was a really cool stone house that was at least a couple of hundred years old.  They didn’t speak English and we don’t speak French, but we did find out that they used to own a farm and retired into this house in the city.  The next day, we hung out in Bayeux and walked around the town.  The church in the center of town is Notre Dame of Bayeux.  It was a lot like Notre Dame in Paris, just on a smaller scale.  🙂

Notre Dame of Bayeux

Notre Dame of Bayeux

Notre Dame of Bayeux

We went to the grocery store for lunch and had a nice picnic with a loaf of bread, a big chunk of Brie and a bottle of Cider (a local drink) by the river.  The view was great and so were the bread and cheese, but we weren’t really fans of the Cider.

Bayeux

Bayeux

Lunch by the river

Bayeux

From here, we are leaving for Mont St Michel.  We were originally going to do it as a day trip, but decided to stay tonight up there because we found a campsite that rents out trailers inexpensively.  Since it’s been pretty chilly, we are jumping on the opportunity to avoid tenting for another night.  🙂  I’m afraid a week of living in an apartment in Paris has made us weenies!