Europe Trip - the end

We would have stayed at our boutique in Tongeren longer, but they were booked up for the weekend, so we went to a golf course in Genk for a few days. Johnny got a ride into work, so I got to drive the rental car.  It was a lot of fun, actually.  Germans and Belgians are excellent drivers.  I went into a city called Hasselt on my way and spent the day in a fashion museum.  I really enjoy being able to go through museums at my own pace.  And this one came with the added bonus of nostalgia for the Costume Museum in Bath.

While we were in Genk, we drove into Maastricht, which is in the Netherlands, which is where Johnny had been working.  We would have stayed there the whole time, but there was an art festival and all the hotels were booked.  Hence the hotel in Tongeren.  Also the reason why our Tongeren hotel was booked that weekend.  Anyway, this is one of about 75 squares in Maastricht that look pretty similar.  This particular church was hosting an antiquity book sale as part of the art festival.  We were going to go in because me and old books are a match made in heaven, and because it was rather chilly and a little rainy outside, but it was ridiculously expensive just to go inside.  And since we weren't planning on actually buying anything, it seemed like a bit of a waste.

So we walked around the city instead.  It was lovely.  And there were about 200% more bicycles in The Netherlands than Belgium.  They are very good to cyclists there.  They have their own lanes, which means they can go really fast, so you really have to give them the right-of-way, even as a pedestrian.

After our weekend in Genk, we went to Ghent.  It was one of the coolest cities.  But I didn't take my camera out with me because by then I was a little worn out with all the walking.  So I spent some time recovering and relaxing in the hotel.  But I can turn your attention to Facebook to see all the Ghent pictures Johnny tagged me in from his phone.

We did ride the train into Paris one day because Johnny had to meet with a customer and it was a good halfway point.  We didn't have time to see all of Paris, of course, but we did go to the Dali museum.  He's one of Johnny's favorites.  And then we wondered around Montmartre, which is the artistic part of Paris and home to Sacre Coeur.  It's quite hilly, actually, which may have been what wore me out, now that I think about it.  I did get to impress Johnny by ordering pastries in French at a shop, and I'll take that any time I can get it.

Ghent was the end of our Europe trip, so we drove the rental car (a Ford Mondeo, in case Dad's wondering) back to Frankfurt, enjoying the Autobahn, flew to Heathrow, then on to Johannesburg on a mostly empty flight with very amusing flight attendants.

All in all, a great Europe trip.

Europe Trip - Tongren

We drove from Frankfurt to Tongeren, Belgium.  It was a gorgeous drive.  It reminded me of driving through western Virginia.  Only in every city there would be ridiculously old churches on the hills.  Awesome.

We had a great hotel here.  The best of our whole trip.  It was a little boutique, with only 7 rooms, which is probably because the rooms looked like this:

Pardon my mess, it's just the camera bag and 37 pillows from trying to sleep while pregnant.

This is the bathroom.  I had to walk through a second sleeping area to get here.  That is a heated towel rack.  This is way bigger than my bathroom at home.

This was the only downside to our room.  At least we were only on the second floor.  I felt like I took my life (and my unborn child's) into my hands every time I went down these stairs.  Luckily, we didn't have to carry our luggage up them, they have a dumb waiter they use for cleaning supplies.  I could have gotten a better picture, but my fear of heights kicked in.  Sorry.

This is our view from the hotel.  It was an awesome church.  My last day there I went inside and took some ridiculously blurry pictures, which will not be shown.  

Another view of the awesome church.

It was market day our first day there.  This is just the plant section.  They had clothes, lots of food and produce, and even fabric.  I would have taken more pictures, but I was in tourist mode, not photographer mode. 

I love the old buildings in Europe.  Also, I thought it was cool that all the kids had to wear safety vests as they were walking to school.  

Tongeren is one of the oldest cities in Europe, certainly in Belgium.  It was a Roman stronghold.  And they have an awesome museum that goes through the history of the town from early man through the end of the Romans. After I explored that, I went on one of the walking tours of the city.  I saw remnants of the old wall.

This was a section of the town built in the 1200s by a group of women called the Beguines.  They were not nuns or housewives, but opted to devote their lives to service.  They built hospitals and churches.  It's a pretty cool, little known bit of feminist history.

The church out our window wasn't the only one.  There was one in the Beguine.  And this one, recently remodeled, to St. James.

Europe Trip - Frankfurt

So in my attempt to not just improve my photography skills, but avoid the brain farts that so often mess up my photography sessions (sorry to everyone that's happened to), one of my goals this year is to only shoot in manual mode.

I was trying to take a picture every day in January, but my camera was commandeered to take online posting pictures for our small business, so I had to give that up.  My first chance to really take my time and get reacquainted with my camera was on my trip to Europe.  I will give background:

Part of Johnny's online MBA program is excursions that take place at the end of every semester at various locations.  Half are domestic, half international.  It is required to go to two of these in the two years of the program, however, you can earn credit for going to additional excursions, and you can go to as many as you want.  We decided early on that Johnny should go to as many as we could afford, both financially and temporally.  We also have had access to the list of locations for awhile, so we could plan out which ones Johnny wanted to attend.  The one in March (after Johnny's last semester) was scheduled for Johannesburg, South Africa.  We decided that we would go to it together last year.  So when I found out I was pregnant, we had to do some calculations to make sure I could still go.  Then we had to do some work finagling because they like to take advantage of Johnny already traveling.  In this case, the "while he was at it" involved his annual trip to Europe.  Not really close, but close enough for the company, I suppose.  So after a little debate, I decided to tag along.

That is how I ended up being gone for 18 days without the kids overseas.

Now on to the subject of this post: Frankfurt.  We flew from Dallas to London, then on to Frankfurt.  The cross-Atlantic flight was not nearly as long as I remembered.  I didn't get a normal amount of sleep, but it wasn't horrible.  I was however, sitting in a middle seat next to someone with BO (no, it wasn't Johnny).  When we got to Germany, we got our rental car, found the hotel and met up with Johnny's boss, who was coming on the Europe trip with us.  At dinner we talked about what I could do with my time, and I decided to take a taxi into the city and see the older parts.  I had quite a time getting Euros to pay the driver, so I started out with an adventure.  I ended up wandering around, eating lunch in a park, and wandering back to the Roma Platz to get a taxi back.  On my way back, I stumbled upon this amazing cemetery.  I kind of have a thing for cemeteries, especially old ones.  This made the whole day worth it.  It started with this wall:

It wraps all the way around the cemetery.  I was about halfway when I took this picture, so the opposite side is twice this big.  Plus there are the other two that I didn't get a good look at. 

I noticed the squares which have names of Jews killed in the holocaust. 

I thought it was a beautiful memorial for the city to put together, but then I noticed that the wall surrounded a cemetery.  The gate was locked, but I did get pictures.

This was the largest section to the left.  There were smaller, later plots to the right, and a walled-in section.

Close up of the old headstones.

Then I saw this plaque.  I left this picture large, so if you clicked on it you could read it (hopefully).

As to why I haven't been blogging much.  I'm sorry.  January went by quickly.  Johnny had a birthday, and then I caught a stomach bug and was in bed for three days.  I thought I was going to die, but I was too weak to blog a goodbye.  Then I've had four trips to plan- first Johnny was gone for two weeks to Asia before this Europe/Africa trip.  He was home exactly two and a half days between, which means I took care of the details of that and the kids' trip to Utah to the grandparents who watched them while we were gone.  And then we had exactly one week after we got home before we left on a road trip to NC to watch Johnny graduate.  And in that week, The Captain had a birthday.  So we've been busy.  Also we bought a minivan.  And I tried to get some nesting done before I started traveling since I knew my time would be short when we got back.

Anyway, those are my excuses.  Now you can look forward to picture post updates for a few weeks.