African Museum

The first Wednesday of each month is free museum day (after 1pm). In August we joined some friends for a visit to the African museum. Kherington didn’t make it through the entire inside, but really enjoyed the steps and the elephants outside.

Upgrade

...and since yesterday was so much fun, today we upgraded Kherington's pool:

Le Crueset

One of the best perks about living in Belgium is that we’re just an hour away from a Le Creuset outlet store! As many of you know Ryan collects baseball hats but since we’re here it doesn’t make much sense to keep collecting (the hats are downstairs in storage… the hat collecting will resume when we return) SO instead I’ve started collecting Le Creuset items! During sale months (July & January) we got an additional 30% off the already outlet price AND since we went the first weekend of sale month got an additional 10% off! I use the normal size pot all the item. Very very nice since it retains heat and our store is ‘energy efficient’ which means it turns on and off and on and off. It make boiling water or simmering stuff so much easier! We did give 8 of the mini pots away for the prize of our Dixon family banana (running race) so we are down to 4, but we plan on getting 8 more :)

Ommegang Dinner

Ryan’s boss was very generous and paid for us to attend a dinner and performance in downtown Brussels. The restaurant overlook the Grand Place (main square) where a 3 hours parade/show performed that included royalty from all over Belgium. In the ally below the restaurant we could watch the performers get ready. The coolest was all the people climbing up onto their stilts....it must take skill to walk around on really high stilts on cobblestone. To be honest the food was little ‘rich’ for my taste (I love Café Rio or Pei Wei kind of places), but it was fun to have a free night out.

Since you've been having Kherington withdrawls...

Here's some great Kherington moments:

Today we decided to go 'swimming'...well as close to it as we could...

And guess what...

...nope we did not get a dog...but we did dog sit one. I would have to honestly say now that we will never own our own dog. We'll just have to borrow one every now and again so she can get her fill.

Kherington is a very inventive girl. She loves playing the dirt and mulch that outlines the yard. She also has been loving the big pillows and reading books in the chair that she can now climb on and off of by herself, and digging through the cupboards that I recently baby proofed so she can have hours of enjoyment unloading. She not only takes stuff out of the cupboards but also puts stuff in. I found a dirty diaper this week :)...yeah, we ususally store them on the computer desk until I take them outside, but she now can reach stuff on the table so off it went.

Battle of the Bulge / Luxembourg

Does anyone remember what the Battle of the Bulge was aside from thinking it sounds familiar. Hopefully I’m not alone in that. We learned that there was a memorial a couple hours a way so we headed off for a visit. I’ve never been (nor will be) a history buff, but I now think I’ll actually remember this one.

We then headed down to Luxembourg to visit a castle some friends had told us about. The original plan was to go to Luxembourg, however we modified our plans based on how Kherington was doing. She was a trooper to spend as much time in the car as she did. We enjoyed climbing around the castle ruins. The castle was in a small, but charming town with a small river running through it (perfect for picnics).

Germany - Romantic Road

A couple days after we got back from the states Ryan took the week off and we head off on a road trip through Germany. The idea was to drive the Romantic Road which is a scenic route through Germany that goes through many small towns and takes you by many castles. Our plan:

Monday - drive brussels to Stuttgart (5 hours), spend night in stuttgart (Hotel Hansa Booked)

Ideas of what to do:

Porsche Museum - 9am - 4pm / free

Altes Scholoss (Schlossplatz) - medieval castle / Wurttemberg State Museum

Wilhelma Park and Zoo (20 euros after 4pm for family) - orchids, magnolia, crocodile pen, farm petting zoo.

Birkenkopf - A hill downtown with a cool view of the city center

Tuesday -

AM - drive 1 hr to Hohenzollern Castle (9 euros per person / 2 for parking)

*Stop in Tubingen – ancestry there (40 min into drive)…great gma’s fam

PM - drive to fussen (3 hours)

spend night in Fussen, (Hotel Hanselewirt Booked)

Wednesday -

AM - Neuschwanstein Castle/ Hohenschwangau Castle tour (9 euro for each or 17 combined, 4 euro carriage ride up, 2 euro ride down…or walk).

PM - hiking, ehrenberg castles ruins?

spend night in Fussen or drive to rothenberg (2.5 hours) and spend 2 nights there OR go to austria or italy? (No Hotel)

Thursday -

AM - drive to rothenburg (3.5 hours)

christmas shops, mideval heritage, eat a "schneeball" or "schokoladeball"

PM - Night watchman tour (rothenburg) - sounds really cool. 5 or 6 euros. Starts at 21:30 (9:30pm) lasts an hour...20:00 the tour is in english...meet at square in front of city hall. Spend night in roth, (Hotel Schwarzes Ross Booked)

Friday -

AM - Toppler Castle (rothenburg), drive to wurzburg (2 hours)

PM - The Residenz (wurzburg), spend night in Wurzburg or frankfurt (No Hotel)

Saturday -

AM - explore wurzburg or frankfurt, drive to frankfurt (1 hour)

PM - explore frankfurt, drive to brussels (3.5 hours)

So...it seemed like a pretty good layout. I had booked most of the hotels, but left some flex room depending on what we felt like doing...well, here's how it turned out:

Monday - drive brussels to Stuttgart (5 hours). We left later than planned and thus got in pretty late. It was kinda a rough start to the trip...lets just say Kherington and I were driving each other crazy :). At one point we stopped for gas and I saw this guy washing his car and wearing those wooden clogs for real...i didn't think people actually ever wore them on a normal basis! We checked into our hotel (Hotel Hansa...had free internet/breakfast and parking on the street). We walked around a little, but ended up eating dinner next door which was EXCELLENT. Neither Ryan or I had thought enough to learn any German and the people at the restaurant didn't speak english so we both pointed to two different things on the menu and figured out how to ask for some water. I love love loved my salad...i'm sure it was simple but it was so delicious...it had chicken with a basalmic glaze, fresh diced mozzerella, onion...i really don't know what made it so delicious but it was! After dinner we went back to the hotel and put Kherington to sleep.

Tuesday - In the morning the hotel had a amazing huge breakfast...the best breakfast put on by hotels of the trip :). We drove to Hohenzollern Castle, and made sure to driving through Tubingen where part of my ancestry is from. We couldn't see the castle until we were almost there b/c it was in the clouds. We hiked up a ton of stairs instead of paying for the bus up which was fine because our tour didn't start for awhile. We were able to explore the castle grounds and the bunkers underneath the castle on our own. The tour was rather dry, but we made it through. After the castle we took off for Fussen. Kherington was once again not the happiest to be in the car again. When we arrived we walked around the fields of dandelions (ryan refers to them as beautiful fields of weeds). I wish we had gotten earlier and had rented some bikes...maybe next time. Dinner was true German food at the hotel. Sleep was worse than the first night...not having a place for Kherington to sleep aside from our bed is not a good idea...won't do that again.

Wednesday - Breakfast at the hotel...Kherington was already a busy body...too busy to sit still for food. We headed off to the castles just a couple minutes drive away. Got tickets to tour BOTH castles (17 euros per person). Walked up to castle #1 and walked around while waiting for our tour. Tour starts, we get a great picture of the three of us outside RIGHT before entering. Then it is all downhill...Kherington doesn't want to be held. She wants to run around touching and pulling on everything. She is short enough to duck under the roped off areas...not good...well, the way this tour worked, the guide opens a door and closes the door behind you so there's no going back once you're in. You move to the next room, he opens the door and shuts the door behind...well, I end up holding Kherington she is SCREAMING. I try to get her to settle down, but no such luck. The guide KICKED US OUT of the tour (we would have left on our own had we known how to). We get back outside and Kherington settles back down...grrrr...so we hike up to castle #2. We decided to go see the views but not do the tour (it would have been with the same group we toured castle #1 with so kinda awkward). Lessons learned: first don't take kids on castle tours and second Kherington owes us 34 euros :).

After how horrible Kherington had been we know the rest of our week was going to be trouble so we revised...we canceled all our hotels (for free) and booked a hotel in frankfurt. We drove to Rotherburg ob der Tauber and explored. This and Amsterdam are my two favorite cities. This city had the city walls still entact and we could climb up and walk around them on our own. The town was so much fun to walk around and it had an AMAZING Christmas store. We tried to schokoladeball's...way way way overrated...i won't ever get them again. We had dinner there but decided not to stay for the night watchman tour thinking we had already explored what it would show us (we were wrong...we WILL go back to do it...it's inexpensive and everyone we've talked to says it's great).

We left for frankfurt and on our way our GPS broke! SO NOT COOL! We had trouble getting to our hotel...we stayed a holiday inn and they provided a free pack n play (best decision ever...everyone had a good night sleep for the first time of the trip)

Thursday - Since we had no GPS we didn't feel comfortable trying to explore frankfurt and then figure out how to get home so we got directions back to brussels from our hotel and headed off in the morning.

We were extremely lucky our GPS held out as long as it did as we would have been way way lost if it had broke any sooner. Neither of us know Germany's layout very well and we don't know German so being lost would have been horrible. All in all it was a really fun trip looking back on it. I think we should have waited a little longer after returning from the states to our sleeping patterns were back to normal...i think that would have done wonders for traveling with Kherington. Oh and one very cool thing we learned about Germany is that my favorite Europe candy, Tofiffee's, are only a euro in Germany :).