Venice (Anne Marie)

Between dropping in to bed exhausted each night and our sketchy access to wifi, we've fallen a bit behind on our blog.  We left off in Giverny and I'm going to catch up in Venice.  Uli will blog later about our adventures in between.  We left Berlin Monday evening, after spending a wonderful few days visiting with Uli's family.  Although we have a Eurail pass, this is the one leg of the journey that we decided to fly, because it was cheaper.  We flew EasyJet from Berlin to Venice.  It was quite the experience.  Patrick, you were right about the discount airlines--  No frills here at all.  The gate was in the basement and you waited in the hallway until you were funnelled into the "gate" area, like cattle to the slaughterhouse.  I am not a tall person and I barely had room to cross my legs. After an hour and a half flight we arrived in Venice.  There was the usual hustle and bustle of finding where to purchase the transit passes and museum discount cards.  4 line ups, one bus ride, one water bus ride and a 40 minute walk through Venice with our backpacks on our backs and our day packs on the front, we arrived at our hotel.  We were ecstatic to find it is air conditioned.  We got the girls settled to bed--I'm sure they were asleep in seconds--and Uli and I went out to Piazza St Marco.  It was magical when we walked into the square.  The cafes were still full with their tables out on the square and there were 4 orchestras playing.  Uli and I sat at a table and enjoyed a glass of prosecco.  

Tuesday the girls slept in and we had the marvellous breakfast buffet in the ivy covered courtyard of the hotel.  If we left the table to refill our plates we made sure someone stayed at the table as there were pigeons that would jump on the table the second you left.  We spent the day leisurely sightseeing and trying to stay cool as the temperature reached 39 degrees but was well into the 40's with the humidity.  We found a great little restaurant that served gluten free cannelloni and lasagna, so we sat down for an early dinner.  The service was slow, but we weren't in a rush.  Astrid was quite excited as she was going to have something to drink--16 is the legal drinking age here.  Britta was going to try to order as well--but decided against it. Astrid decided on a Blue Hawaiian.  She remembered me drinking them in Hawaii so thought that would be a good choice.  The waiter came out with a tray loaded with our drinks and placed Astrid's drink in front of her.  He then reached for Uli's drink on the tray and was suddenly immersed in a server's worst nightmare.  Everything moved in slow motion as his hand bumped the glass and started a domino effect with the remaining drinks on the tray.  Suddenly I felt very, very cool as a Bellini, a Pimms Royale and a virgin Pina Colada were all spilled right in my lap!  The cold was quite refreshing, but I could have done without the sticky!  We cleaned up as best we could and continued on with our dinner. I'm sure I smelled far better than I did before the drinks were spilled on me!  Anyways, life is all about the great stories you get to tell.  

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to wash up (and change) and then went to see a performance of Vivaldi's 4 Seasons.  It was unbelievable!  The girls were completely in awe--as were Uli and I.  We then strolled across the Piazza and decided to take a nighttime gondola ride.  It was the perfect ending to the day.  Relaxing in the gondola with our gondolier singing to us.  In our one hour tour we came across no other gondolas on the canals.  Magic!

Today, we toured the Doges Palace and the Accademia.  The girls were less than enthralled with all the religious paintings and found the depiction of the angels and naked little baby Jesus to be "just wrong and creepy"! I feel they may be reaching their museum threshold.  We are heading off to a Baroque concert shortly, then we are off to Florence in the morning!

Notes from Astrid:

Just to add to what Mom wrote about the religious paintings... I do not understand how ANYBODY finds those creepy-ass paintings beautiful.  Every single one that features Jesus (or anyone else) as a baby gives me the creeps and makes me feel violated.  Britta and Signa agree.  The only thing that kept us entertained in the Accademia was making fun of every painting and hoping that no religious fanatics overheard us.

Giverny Bike Tour (Britta)

I was so tired from staying up late and getting up early. We went for a bike tour of Giverny, but I thought it was only going to be a two hour tour. Turns out the tour was actually seven or eight hours and I was really confused about that and why nobody told me how long it was going to be. Apparently mom and dad did tell me but I guess I just wasn't listening. The bike ride was through the beautiful French countryside, and it was overcast, which was nice. Then it started POURING as we were cycling towards the town and I ended up giving my poncho to Signa because as usual she forgot hers, so I was drenched, but I love the rain so I was alright. We had a picnic and I had a delicious raspberry eclair. I offered a bite of this eclair to dad and he "misunderstood" me and shoved the rest of it in his mouth. It was quite the traumatic experience. We biked up to Giverny, where Monet lived and died, and we saw his house and his fabulous gardens. On the way back to the train station, we stopped at the graves of Monet and his families. (Plural because he had 2 families. He had 2 kids and a wife, then they moved in with another family and he had an affair with the wife of the man they were staying with. They had kids, and then they got married after wifey número uno croaked.). We went for dinner at Montmartre back in Paris and watched some amazing portrait artists. My shoes smelled really nasty after the rain and the biking. However, my feet weren't sore for once, so that's a bonus. Leavesden studios was really cool to see in London, but I have to say I enjoyed this bike tour even more. ( SO DID ASTRID, I ASKED HER WHICH SHE LIKED BETTER AND SHE SAID THE BIKE TOUR.)

First Day in Paris (Signa's Post)

The train ride to Paris didn't seem all that long even though it was nearly 3 hours. I read the entire way while Mom, Astrid and Britta slept for most of it (dad was sitting in a seat not too far away). Once we got off of the train we had to carry our bags to the hotel, you might think that we are just sissies and get too tired of carrying our bags, but trust me our bags were super heavy and we couldn't find the metro line that we had to take..... then we had to find where our hotel was. That added up to about and hour and a half with 30 pound bags on our backs. There are a lot of gypsies on the metro in Paris and also throughout the stations. It's really annoying when they shove their little cup into your face and expect you to give them money. We dropped our bags off at the hotel as only mom and dad's room was ready then we headed off to the Pere Lachaise cemetery, which is absolutely beautiful (and has plenty of shade!) Linda the tour guide was very funny. She made being dragged along to a cemetery fun. That took about 2 hours. After that we took the metro to take yet another tour around Montmartre. On the tour we stopped where Van Gogh lived with his brother for a short period of time and he told us why he was crazy (because every time he was done painting he would suck the paint brushes dry rather than washing them and they had a lot of lead in the paints back then). This tour also took about 2 hours and by then end of it our feet were so sore that my heels felt like they were permanently bruised. We went to a restaurant up in Montmartre called La Zebra. They had amazing food (but no a/c), then we went to a creperie where mom and I got a lemon and sugar crepe... yum. Once we took the metro back to the hotel when we were emerging from the underground the escalators were broken, the lady in front of me walked in the middle of the stairs and stuck out her butt... get your ass out of my face.... like really. Before we went to the hotel we made a quick stop at the Arc de Triomphe and dad took ten million bajillion photos before we had to hurry him up as we had been up since 5 in the morning. Back at the hotel our second room was ready. Astrid, Britta and I have a much nicer room than mom and dad, in fact their room kinda sucks compared to ours.

Last Day in London (July 21st)

Britta's Blog Astrid sounds like a man. Her voice is all scratchy from her cold and almost gone, and I am mocking her for it, which is fun because she can't do anything about it except for talk like a man some more, which is funny, or she can whimper like a dying pubescent boy with a ton of voice cracks. Since she wasn't feeling well all day today and could barely stay awake through breakfast, she chose to stay at the hotel, which sucks. First thing we did today was visit the British Museum of Natural History which is pretty much like any other museum except it is British and has a lot more neat rocks and art displays and stuff, so I guess it was actually a butt load better than most museums. We saw the Hope Diamond and the Tiffany Diamond, among others. Then we went to Harrods, which we essentially knew nothing about except that it was a nice mall. Well. Nice if you're a gazillionaire with no limit on your credit card. It was all this high end, hoitytoity fancy-ass shit and the only thing we could afford was meat and cheese. The meat and cheese was delicious though, and we walked around until we found a beautiful park to eat a picnic.  When we returned to the hotel, Astrid was chilling on the couch, but instead of sounding like a man or a pubescent boy, she had almost completely lost her voice. It was really warm out so I was sweating a lot when I sat down. Astrid told me I smelled bad, so I pulled off my sock and pretended to throw it at her asking if that was the source of the stench. She screeched, which is an awfully funny sound from someone who can't talk.  At 5pm-ish, we headed down to the Globe Theatre, the reconstruction of the original theatre where all of Shakespeare's plays were first performed. It was a 3 hour Macbeth play and we had to stand the whole time. It was so hard core that if you squatted or sat down you were escorted out. The security team was made up of a bunch of hardass grannies. The actors and actresses were phenomenal!!! But the actor playing Banquo looked familiar, and I realized he looked like Pippin from Lord of the Rings, just much more life size, in shoes, and with brown hair instead of red. I told Mom what I thought, and then asked her if she thought it was actually him. She said "NO WAY, GOSH" and I was like 'whatever, like you can see that much detail anyways, you're not even wearing your glasses.' Turns out, the dudes next to dad looked up who he was and he did play Pippin. I WAS RIGHT. Too bad Astrid missed it.  NOTES FROM ASTRID: Well obviously today was an extremely eventful day for me. I woke up with a sore throat and no voice, and after breakfast the rest of the "gang" departed and I slept in the hotel room for 4 hours. When I woke up I was starving and ate some leftover honey-roasted peanuts and some mints. I decided not to go downstairs to eat or get room service because my voice situation was highly embarrassing (I know this because I recorded myself talking and then listened to it). Then I read my book and surfed the internet on my phone. I even did some word searches on Mom's iPad and broke the high score (It got pretty heated). Later in the evening I started to feel a bit more energized so I did some sit ups on the hotel room floor. Pretty sure I am training harder than the Jr. national team. Just saying. The rest of the night consisted of taking a shower, eating oatmeal and chocolate and sitting there doing absolutely nothing. Although I think that's about a hundred times better than standing for 3 hours and listening to language that I can't even understand.

Leavesden Studio Tour & London Eye

We have decided to alternate who writes the blog posts and today it is Astrid's turn.... Today we woke up pretty early to get out to Leavesden Studios for 10AM. We had to take 2 trains and a bus to get there, and on the second train ride there was this Russian family sitting across from us and the mom kept chewing her fingernails and stared at me for the duration of the 20 minute ride which was really creepy so I was very relieved when we got off. Leavesden wasn't nearly as crowded as I had anticipated which was great because you actually got a chance to look at the props, costumes and sets without some asshole trying to push you out of the way (which has happened everywhere else we've gone so far). Personally I thought that the most impressive part of the tour was the huge scale model of Hogwarts Castle at the end. They used the model in the films for all of the flyover scenes and scenes where Hogwarts can be seen in the distance. To be honest I am too lazy to wrtie any other details about the tour, but if you ever go to London and are a Harry Potter fan, you absolutely have to see it. So far it's my favourite part of the trip! When we were done with Leavesden (4 hours later), we made a stop at King's Cross station to get a picture at Platform 9 3/4. There was a bit of a line-up but it was worth the wait. After that, Mom, Britta, Signa and myself went back to the hotel for a couple hours while Dad went to some bookstore. Obviously his feet weren't hurting. I think I would have killed myself if I had to walk around for any longer. Our hotel is super cheap and there is only free WiFi if you stand pretty much in the middle of the lobby, and if you want to use it in your room is costs 15 pounds for 24hrs. When we were relaxing back at the hotel mom got fed up with having to go downstairs whenever we wanted to use the internet so she caved and bought WiFi for 24hrs. It turned out that you were only allowed to have 2 devices logged on at a time, and when Mom discovered this she nearly lost her mind and called down to the front desk to complain. It ended in complimentary WiFi for our room and saved Mom a lot of time because she didn't have to write them a letter. :) After our feet started to feel a little better, we meet Dad by the Thames and went to the London Aquarium. Compared to the Dallas Aquarium that I went to 2 weeks ago, it was super lame so I went though it at top speed and didn't bother taking any pictures. The only mildly interesting thing that I saw were 2 crabs mating. What is it with me and witnessing animals mating? First lizards at Petland, next turtles in Dallas and now crabs.... :/ At sunset we went on the London Eye which was beautiful. However, the toddler that was crying at the top of his lungs for the entire time kind of took away from the experience a little bit. The last thing we did was take a short trip to Piccadilly Circus which didn't last very long because me, Britta and Signa were all exhausted. Random Notes: -The people here really need to wear deodorant because whenever they lift up their arms on the Tube to hang on to a bar a stinky tidal wave assaults everybody else around them. -I hold my breath a lot when I walk so I don't have to breathe in cigarette smoke. I guess synchro comes in handy for something. -At the Shakespeare play that we are going to see tomorrow night we don't have seats and have to stand for 3 hours. If you try to crouch down they kick you out, so I don't know how much fun that's going to be. It's hard enough to focus on Shakespeare stuff when you are sitting comfortably, let alone when you have to stand on feet that feel like they're going to fall off.

Our Aching Feet Part 2

In keeping with our plan to take the trains and tube, we caught the Heathrow connect to Paddington station and then walked to the hotel. We looked like a family of vagabonds with our backpacks slung on our backs! We left our bags at the hotel, as we were too early for check in, and headed out for Mme Tussaud's. In keeping with the theme of not being as organized as desired, we were 5 minutes into our walk, when we realized that we had left our booking confirmation back at the hotel. Uli sent us on down the road and he hurried back to the hotel to get the confirmation. Another 15 minutes into our journey down the road, we hadn't seen any signs for Mme Tussaud's. We were about to go into a hotel for directions when my cell rang and Uli confessed he had sent us the wrong way. Eventually we met up and made our way to the famous wax museum. I was wanting to find it totally cheesy and underwhelming, but I actually loved it--so did the girls and Uli. Britta got her picture taken with Morgan Freeman! For those of you who know Britta, she has long stated that she would like Morgan Freeman to play her in a movie about the story of her life! Signa and Astrid met Barack Obama. I got to cuddle in with Brad Pitt and Angelina did not even blink! I knew I had it going on! Uli got up close and personal with Nicole Kidman, but he said she was a snob and wouldn't even look at him. Her loss!! After a quick tour past 221B Baker Street we headed back to the hotel and checked in. Dinner at the hotel restaurant was quite good and we were impressed with their GF menu. After dinner the girls headed to the pool--chlorine withdrawal for 2 of them and Uli and I headed out for more of a walk. We took the tube and ended up down by Harrod's , walked past Albert Hall and through Hyde Park to the Wellington Arch and then the Marble Arch. Uli and I had to remind ourselves to look to the right before crossing the road. We gained great appreciation for drivers in Canada (and I've driven in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver) who will actually let you finish crossing the road!! We came upon what looked like quite a terrible accident on the route home, with a van flipped over on its side and ambulances in attendance. We continued our walk up Edgeware Road and passed more Shisha bars than I could count. I pass one every day on the way to Talisman, but that's all I've ever seen in Calgary--one. Literally every second shop had a patio with people imbibing in Shisha a la Cheshire Cat. NEXT DAY: Today was a wonderfully full day. After a great breakfast, we headed off to Westminster Abbey. Walking over the graves of the likes of Charles Darwin seeing the tombs of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots was surreal. The girls were enthralled. Astrid (a closet Monarchist and Will and Kate lover) loved walking along the aisle they walked on during their wedding. They were all impressed with the majesty of the place. As you may know, I love churches and graveyards. This had two of my favourite things rolled into one. I don't get much happier than this. The highlight of my day was when we were in the National Gallery. We were looked at a painting by Claude Monet and Britta turned to me and said "Mom, this is the original". Quite honestly I had to fight back the tears. Britta is an amazing artist and to see her amazement and appreciation made this trip worth it right then! We were heading to the Tower of London and happened upon the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. Once at the Tower of London, we joined a group tour and it was fabulous. Even the kids loved getting all the history surrounding the buildings. I grew up with my mom singing the Kingston Trio song The Ghost of Ann Boleyn to me. It scared the crap out of me but I would scream with glee when mom would sing "she walked the Bloody Tower! With her head tucked underneath her arm at the midnight hour!" I would cover my eyes and ask her to sing it again and again. Needless to say, I've been singing this ad nauseum in preparation for the trip. The girls would NOT allow me to sing it in the Bloody Tower, so I had to be satisfied with singing it on the cobblestones leading to it. Oh, how they loved me then! After a great dinner at an Italian restaurant--again with a great GF selection(and an amazing prosecco cocktail--prosecco, mint and lime) we headed to the British Museum . They were having a special exhibit on Pompeii and we were fortunate enough to have purchased tickets in advance. It was a very moving exhibit. Particularly the casts of the family--a mother, father and 2 small children. Our feet are killing us- Britta and I have blisters despite having broken in our shoes for 2 months. We're tired but happy and going to bed in anticipation of our magical day at Leavesden Studios tomorrow!

Our Aching Feet

The cards seem stacked against us. The night before we were to leave, the printer died. Yes, we've had it for 8 years, but really, was that the best time to choose to die? Uli ran off to Staples and hooked it up and away we went. For a while. Wednesday morning Uli wasn't working and planned to print off the last of the itinerary that we needed for the trip. Suddenly the internet was down, my computer wasn't work and the printer wasn't working. We lost a few hours of time trying to get it all sorted out and getting everything printed off. In the end, we just had to accept that it wasn't going to happen and we headed off for the airport a little less organized than we had hoped for. We got through security quickly. For once I wasn't scanned or searched--which would necessitate my insistence on them changing their gloves prior to checking me. We had an hour and a half prior to our flight and we were waiting in the lounge when lightening struck and the thunder boomed--it seemed like it was on the tarmac outside the window. This was followed by an announcement stating that all outside services would be stopped due to weather and to expect flight delays. Fortunately the storm passed relatively quickly and we boarded the plane only 10 or so minutes behind schedule. The flight was great with the exception of a bit of turbulence. After a meal, a drink and some meds--Ativan for us and Benadryl for the girls, we were off to a fitful sleep and arrived in London just after 1100 am.