Alright, this is getting ridiculous. It has been way too long since I've been a blogger, and I definitely want to get the rest of our European adventure documented. So here it goes!

The Asplunds and Paxtons invited us to head over to Heidelberg with them one weekend. I had read about this little German town and its castle before heading over and wanted to see it, so we were excited to have some tour guides take us over.

We met up with everyone and headed out. This was our first experience on the autobahn. Yes, Germany does have some roads that don't have speed limits. For the most part, it is like driving on any other freeway, but we had a few iffy moments with people speeding by to pass and get places. They very much follow the stay out of the left lane unless passing.

After a few wrong turns down the steepest and skinniest roads ever, we arrived in the Altstadt. One of the things that surprised me about Frankfurt was how different it was from Vienna. Heidelberg reminded me a lot of Vienna. It had a the same charm and great feeling. We wandered around the town and made our way up to the castle.


While the missionaries decided to take the tram up the mountain, Matt and I opted to make the hike up (exercise and save money, alright!) We climbed up the trail, which was pretty much a 90 degree angle. Once we made it to the top, we realized that we went up the place and made it in the back of the castle. No wonder it was so steep. We finally met up with the missionaries and started exploring.

Castles seems to be everywhere in Germany, but I'm really glad we made it to this one. It is huge and in great shape considering. They started building it back in the late 1300-early 1400s and kept adding on for the next few hundred years. It is huge!

We went into one of the building and read about how important wine was to one of the princes who owned the castle. He had quite the storage system. We were pretty surprised when we came across this barrel.

Us and the Asplunds

Pretty big, right? That's what we thought until we went around the corner and saw this baby.

It was so big that you couldn't even really get a picture of the whole thing! You could go up those stairs and then walk across the back before heading down another set of stairs. That's a lot of wine! I was up top exploring when I saw Matt frantically motioning for me to hurry down. At first I was a little worried something was wrong with one of our senior missionary friends (just kidding! They aren't THAT old ;) ), but I got down, and he kept pointing at me and saying "Meine Frau..." to an older German couple. Gotta love Matt Man, he's got that German thing down. It turns out that nothing was wrong with them, they simply wanted to know if it was worth climbing the stairs. Since he couldn't understand them, he had them wait for me instead of asking pretty much anyone else there who could have communicated with them, haha.


We wandered around exploring some more before Matt and I somehow convinced everyone to go down the mountain with us instead of taking the tram. We were pretty convinced if we headed down this trail, we'd make it. It took a little longer than we anticipated, and we had to sneak through a under construction section to get back, but we finally made it.

Old clock. This was pretty cool, but it didn't have the right time. We couldn't figure out what we were doing wrong...

Matt and I wandered around the gardens while the rest of our party rested. It was definitely a little slower paced than the rest of our weekend trips, haha.

This was pretty cool. Part of this tower's wall just separated and fell down. You can now see inside the tower plus the part that came off.

Me, Matt, Sister Paxton, Sister Winley, Elder Asplund, Sister Asplund, Elder Paxton

Other trip highlight includes stopping at multiple ice cream shops and getting a few scoops at each place, seeing a wedding part come out from the city hall and hearing the crazy bands that played and seeing some great traditional goodies.

Delayed

We've been home from Germany now for 18 days now and we've had 0 nights without something going on. Things have been crazy, but it is good to be home.

Did I ever mention how the night before we were leaving, my computer got a nasty virus. Talk about bad timing, right before I left and had to use it every day for work. Luckily, my office had an extra one that I could take in its place. Because of the said busy-ness, our computer is still not fixed. This means a lack of blogging. One day (hopefully very soon) I'll get to the rest of our trip.

I Love to See the Temple (or Should I Say Tempel?)

Frankfurt is the Church's European headquarters. The offices (and specifically the building where Matt works) is staffed with many senior missionary couples. Because of our connection with the Asplunds, Matt's driving with the Paxtons and then having the second in command legal guy be a missionary, we've been fortunate to interact on a regular basis with these great couples. It really has been a fun experience and has made me excited for when Matty and I will one day serve.

Anyway, the group invited us to tag along to an English temple session that they arrange monthly for the missionaries. I went on the stake temple (tempel auf deutsch) trip while in Vienna and had some of my greatest memories staying in the temple housing and experiencing temple work for a weekend. Ironically, I also met our dear friend Katharina while there, something we didn't realize until we were friends in Utah for awhile. I was excited to come back and see the other side of the temple.

The outside layout is a little different. It makes it seem very sprawled out, but in reality, it is very small inside. It was neat to have such a small, close feeling. This is sure one temple that is hard to get ga picture though, but Diane (Asplund, and I'm never sure if I'm supposed to call her sister or not...) did a great job.


We had to rent clothes and were shocked to find out how much it costs to rent! We keep hearing how ridiculously expensive water is here (and the crazy things people to do conserve it and save money, there could be a whole post on that alone), so it must have something to do with that. Side note: In church that Sunday, they were talking about how it wasn't a sacrifice to attend the temple because it is slow close, Matt and Elder Paxton got a good kick out of telling each other that it is not a sacrifice unless you have to pay the high rate...

Sister Paxton and Sister Asplund showed me where to go and were talking with the lady to help me get what I needed. The sweet little worker was obviously flustered with all of the English. I switched to German, but she still seemed confused. I figured there was one of two things going on 1) My accent is just THAT bad. While this is usually probably a good guess, I was communicating fairly basic things, so it seemed unlikely she wouldn't be able to pick out what I was saying; or 2) She was just hearing English since I am obviously not a native German speaker. I shared my story with Matt later on, and we had a good laugh about it. He was nice and assured me it was probably option 2. After the session, I went to return my clothes. I spoke German, and got a little bit of a confused look again, then the lady said "Merci!"

No wonder the poor woman was confused! She had some women speaking English, another speaking German with a horrible accent and she speaks French!

Minding the Gap

Once in London, we met our good friend Angela and her sisters. Their dad is stationed outside London, and much to our excitement, Angela happened to be over visiting them and came into town to be our own personal tour guides. It was great to have people who knew what was going on and to just follow them around.

We started out with Big Ben and the Parliament building. It’s amazing how you walk out of the “Tube” and bam, it’s just right there! It was fun to watch Matt because he had never seen it, and we didn’t tell him it was coming.

After Big Ben, we walked over to Westminster Abby. We were going to go inside, but the line was ridiculous (I wonder if it is more popular with all the wedding hoopla??), so we decided that the outside and the church next to it was sufficient before heading off to Buckingham Palace.

We got to Buckingham Palace and had about 30 minutes before the changing of the guard, so we staked out a spot and waited. While it was cool, the ceremony was probably about 20 minutes too long. I think it would have helped if they would have had a sign somewhere outside the gates that explained the symbolism of everything, but what do you do?

I kept waiting for the queen to pop her head out and give a wave (William and Kate were still on their honeymoon, but they might have been even better!), but sadly she was nowhere to be seen. Matt thinks I’m crazy, but I really think she just do that occasionally. Really, what is it going to cost her? Just a minute or two of waving, but think how excited it would make people? I bet it would help the economy by encouraging even more people to come by!

Erin, Kelly, Angela waiting for Harry to come out and find them

Yes, we rocked the tied sweater around the waist look for the better part of the day.

Next, Angela’s sisters decided to that shopping would be more entertaining than running around with us, so they left, and we headed over to Trafalgar Square. Once we felt like we had seen that, we walked over to Covent Gardens and tried to find a place to eat. Sadly, the place Angela wanted to go was no longer there, but we had a good time checking out the shops and street performers.

So I'm not sure what this is, but being the new-found picture taker that I am, I took a photo because it was cool

Hello Trafalgar Square (I think, oops...)

This photo is quite monumental. Matthew, on his own accord, said "I need a picture with one of the red phones." Wait, seriously? This is from the kid who just a few weeks ago said, "It's amazing how quickly a perfectly good moment gets ruined by taking a picture..."

In case you forgot how long until the Olympics, Trafalgar Square has a clock that fills you in (down to the second!)

Oh hey Ben!

This was probably Matt's favorite part about Trafalgar. Ship in a Giant bottle, it was pretty cool, but a little random. Maybe there is some significance, we just didn't know what it was?

After that, we were about ready to eat the first thing we could find, but luckily decided to hold off. We made our way over to the Tower of London and went to a delicious fish and chips place (and it came with free ice cream, score! It was called cornish clotted, we had a good time trying to decide what it tasted like. Sidenote: I looked it up online to make sure I had the name right, and it says the fat content on the stuff is so high that in America, it is classified as butter! No wonder we enjoyed it, butter and ice cream!). So I knew I wanted to try the fish and chips, and was excited to eat them, but man, the fish was tasty. I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed it. We climbed up and at it with a beautiful view of the castle.

Next up, we headed over to the Tower Bridge. We decided it would be great to go up and see the great view of the city. We were pleasantly surprised to learn that more than just a view, they also have a small museum with information about the history of the bridge. We spent quite a bit of time up there. On our way to the engine room museum, they told us that they were raising the bridge for a boat to pass under. We rushed down and watched it lift and lower. What a cool thing! It was a perfect preface for the engine room museum which showed us how they originally used steam and water pressure to work the bridge. Matt especially had a good time with this, since he is in heaven when figuring out how things work.

View from the top. Notice the castle. Pretty cool.

Engineer Room Museum

That's how it works!

More of how the bridge works

Bridge lifted for a boat

Playing with some of the demonstrations to show how things worked. I guess Matt is really excited about me being able to turn a dial that lifts him up.

Apparently I was heavy...

People occasionally do stunt jumps across the bridge (and one time a bus? I don't think that one was supposed to happen). Notice Matt and I have matching expressions. We're a special family... (and funny how the meaning of special changed)

After that, we were getting pretty tired (remember, we didn’t really sleep the night before and started walking around 9 a.m. with pretty much only our short lunch break). We had talked about going to a show, but there was no way we would have made it through, so we decided to head back to the hotel.

We made our way to Liverpool Station, grabbed some traditional “pasties” for dinner, said good bye to Angela and Co., and headed out to our hotel for an early bedtime and early flight back to Germany the next morning.

Thank you Angela! We had a fabulous time exploring London with you!

London Bridge is Falling Down

Last weekend, we headed out to London. We found a great deal on flights, but sadly, it was from the airport that is an hour and a half away. We found a bus that would take us out, but in order to make our 6:30 a.m. flight, we would have that leave on the 3 a.m. shuttle. When we looked up what time we’d have to leave our apartment to get to the train station (where the shuttle left from), it said we would have to make a bus that left at midnight. Gotta love the limited night schedule, especially outside the city where we live (midnight is the last bus into Frankfurt from where we live, so we would have to leave at midnight and then sit at the train station for 2 1/2 hours). We decided it would be best to go into the Asplunds’ apartment (which is located right by the stop we needed), and try to get some rest. This allowed us to wait until the 2 a.m. city bus.

We headed in around 9 the night before. We had a great visit before the Asplunds headed to bed around 11. I tried to get some sleep while Matt took advantage of their phone plan that can call the United States.

When 2 a.m. rolled around, we had quite the adventure getting to the airport. Let’s just say the “loud Americans” have nothing on the Germans at 2 a.m. We were also surprised to see how many people were out. The buses were packed! It’s kind of funny because we’ve commented multiple times on how few people we see around (especially since it is such a big city). Apparently they all just wait until the wee hours of the morning before they come out.

After a few bus transfers (and getting to the train station to see that the shuttle was full, Matt was ready to head home at that point; luckily they had a 2^nd bus driver available, so we were the first ones on the second bus), we made it to the airport and to our gate. The bus was ridiculously/disgustingly hot, so neither of us slept much; we did sit behind some deaf Asian people. It was very interesting to see how animated they were and how their signs were different than American Sign Language. One of them kept very enthusiastically fanning himself, which I appreciated because i also benefited from the cool air. Between that and pressing myself to the cool window (matt didn't think it was worth the weird contortions to touch as much window as possible, I tried not to think about who else had done the same thing...) we were able to survive.

We landed and were pleasantly surprised that despite it being five minutes after the scheduled departure time, the shuttle was still there. We decided to wait and catch the next bus, since we would be early to meet Angela and we could go get some breakfast (and let's be honest, the airport has free bathrooms). We got our food and realized we should probably get down to the bus station. We got there a minute before it was supposed to leave, and it had already gone! What?! How did the bus before leave ten minutes late and the next bus leave five minutes early?

This time we learned our lesson and sat where we could see where the next shuttle would arrive. We hopped on (matt didn't realize we were driving on the wrong side of the road) and were on our way! I'm realizing how much I enjoy all the bus/train rides because you get to see so much of the country. England was no exception and had some beautiful scenery and landscapes. Luckily, once we actually arrived in the city, things weren't quite so "adventurous." This is getting long again, so I'll have to do another installment (that includes photos).

The Netherlands Continued...

The next day, we had a few hours before our train headed back to Frankfurt. We set up a wake up call with the front desk, so we'd have time to actually see the City of Amsterdam; or at least we thought that we set one up. We're not quite sure what happened, but we definitely didn't get a wake up call, so we slept in a little later than we planned. Luckily, we still had time to wander around and get a feel for the city.

The city definitely redeemed The Netherlands for us. What a neat place! It had some great architecture that was made even neater with the canals that run throughout the city.

View as we walked outside the train station.

While I've been doing pretty good with actually taking photos, I am a little disappointed with my lack of pictures of Amsterdam. It was really a cool place, and I only got a handful, none which i feel like really captured what the city was like.

We had planned on renting bikes since that is such a Dutchlike activity, but when it came down to it, we decided we enjoyed staying on two feet and watching all the other tourists on the very obvious rented bikes with big signs and advertisments all over. It was pretty cool to see how bike friendly of a place it is. There are bikes EVERYWHERE. I kind of wished we were there during rush hour (on a weekday), so we could see what it is like. One of my favorite things was to see a multi-level parking garage, but for bikes!

How'd you like to have to ride your bike up to the top of that?

We made our way over and saw the palace and the big town square outside, the two big cathedrals and just enjoyed seeing the beautiful city. We also went to the place that Anne Frank and her family were in hiding, but we didn't have enough time to wait in the long line to go inside before we had to catch our train.

Royal palace. Apparently the royal family is from the House of Orange, hence why so many of the things from the area are orange.

Anne Frank's House

All in all, the Amsterdam trip definitely had a lot of things go not quite as planned, but it was great! It was great way to start of our travels while we're here.

Oh Amsterdam

Oh man, so behind! I'm going to be good and try to catch up for the past couple weeks.

After Matt got the internship, we started thinking and planning where we wanted to go visit while over here. One of the first places that I knew I wanted to go was to see the tulips in The Netherlands. I started researching and finding out where to go and how to get there. I was pretty excited to see that tulip season goes until late May and the website of the big place said things are still in full bloom come May.We decided that in order to be safe, we'd go the first weekend we had available. We started to worry a little because so many of the people here in Frankfurt told us how worried they were that the tulips would be gone, but we checked the website again and it said it is still going strong.


That morning, we took off early to catch our 6 o'clock bus to the train station. Once there we wandered around and wondered why train stations always have the dome roof until our train arrived. Before we knew it, we were on our way!

Matty is excited and ready for his first experience traveling by train

A few hours later, we pulled into Amsterdam and headed out to Kuekenhof (where the tulips are). We hopped on the waiting bus and watched as a few people run on a giant hamster wheel. Apparently they are having people run in that thing nonstop for a year as a cancer awareness/fundraiser thing? The bus driver was super friendly as blasting all sorts of tunes while singing a long. I figured she was so happy because she is such a frequent visitor to the tulips.

After a short bus ride, we excitedly entered the park. We were surprised to see so many tulips lining the paths but not actually planted. We figured they were just replacing some of the tulips that had seen better days. We were surprised though that after the entrance, the boxes disappeared and there were no tulips!

So instead of thisand this

We had

This

and this.

At first we were sad, but then we decided to try and have a good attitude about the whole situation. It was still a very beautiful place. We ended up spending pretty much the rest of the day there wandering around, looking at the other flowers they have, seeing the windmill and learning about how windmills work and why they were so popular in The Netherlands.

I guess the park was started by tulip farmers as a way to show people the different things they could do with the flowers. It is a pretty good idea. They had a bunch of fun photo spots and a large variety of different types of things to see.

Wooden shoes anyone?

Oh you know, just hanging out on a boat will a bunch of flowers

Look what we found! One of the few survivors...

Just envision what this looked like two weeks before. What potential...

This was pretty cool. It was a one-man-band, only without the man. It had some power source and then it played the drums, flutes, and other instruments by itself. One of the employee's job was to stand behind and and switch out the book/music. Make sense? Probably not, but it was cool.

Back of the "music box"

So this post is getting really long. We'll have to do the rest of what we affectionately call our "AmsterDAM Tulip" trip in another post.