Vacation Report: Slovakia

Slovakian Cheeseburger. Cheers to Bratislava!!!

Slovakia.


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Bratislava Castle.
Okay... I did NOT want to see this castle. I wanted to go to some castle ruins somewhere and some snakey train driving guy lied to me and told me we were going somewhere we were going to the ruins and we ended up here... at Bratislava castle. :) It was fine though, we got to ride a train and Poozie Loves Trains.


This is Michaela desperately trying to connect to the WiFi. She's getting pretty good with computers so if anyone could do it she could, but she couldn't. :)

From the Danube river boat.

Best Lunch ever. :)






Bratislava, which as Michaela knows is the capital of Slovakia, was small. It wasn't as extravagant or architecturally impressive as other cities we've seen. That was a nice way of saying "ghetto" wasn't it? :) It was great for the kids and I to do on our own. We ate at a McDonalds on the main square and fed pigeons and listened to a one-man-band. It was easy and for a mom traveling to an even more foreign country, easy is good. The highlight for the kids was probably the boat ride on the Danube River.

My favorite part was talking to all the American tourists who were being nice to my kids and me.

Vacation Report: Munich

Here Michaela!!!!!

It was during this holiday that I realized I am officially "done" seeing European cities. I have zero interest in it anymore. The cities are not bad and I'm not complaining... I just think I'm done seeing the "BIG" European cities. I'd rather hang out on a beach for a week or go camping or stay on a lake. ...so that's what I think I'll be promoting for upcoming vacations. :) Sound good Happy?

...and yes, we were supposed to go see friends in England this month. However, these two people are getting married in London... Will and Kate plus the Eight Million people who would be involved. :) It would have been insanely crazy there and Paul ended up having to work in Vienna so we had to postpone our England trip and tag along with Paul to Vienna. -Sorry Ingrid :(

On the way to Vienna we stopped off in Munich for a few days. We went to the Deutsche Museum which Paul has wanted to visit since the first day we came to Europe. We spent an entire day at the museum and didn't even see it all. It was HUGE and Andrea had had enough, and the sweet little angel let us know in her own little special way. (crying, flailing, kicking, spewing venom, etc...)It's 10:30 on the sun clock! It worked!
We watched a high voltage show. CRAZY LOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That night we tried to come up with something to do in Munich the next day and realized we didn't want to see the "sights". :) We went to Olympic Park, ate some crepes, took a little train ride, played putt-putt, and paid way too much money to see a small aquarium. We laid in the sun and fed the ducks pretzels which we kept buying from a vending machine. :) I enjoyed the sun and was happy to lay there all day... so we did.

We opted to leave Munich a day early (I told you we are bored of cities.) On our last day we woke up, went to a giant toy store where DADDY thought it was a Christmas Free For All. :) Then we drove four hours to Vienna ...in a car FULL of cute (read as: overpriced) German toys.


Look. I feed my kids veggies for snacks.

...and because this blog has turned into a "journal" for me which I will someday spend hundreds of dollars to print.... I have to write about this. :)

After we played putt-putt, which by the way... you weren't allowed to walk on the course. You had to stand off the side and we saw several other miniature golf courses and they were the same... weird. :)

Anyways, we were walking out of the putt-putt course and we saw an elderly lady who had fallen over and had landed on her face? and was bleeding all over the place. I had a first aid kit so I ran over somewhat happy to have use for the big thing I lug around everywhere, but my first aid kit was useless. (Note to self: get better supplies in my first aid kit... 18 sizes of band-aids with varying cartoon characters on them are not all that useful in an actual emergency.)

However, I did have diapers to use to stop the bleeding. This poor woman went through several diapers as I sat there throughly irritated with my German. I was terrible. I couldn't talk to her very well. I could tell her about my family "Ich habe vier kinder, Haben Sie kinder?"... which, maybe entertained her, but all I could think of is my grandmas and that I'd NEVEr want them to be in this situation. So we sat there with her until the ambulance arrived. I just held her arm and tried to talk to her... in my PATHETIC German.

I was happy my kids saw Paul and I help her though. Happy smashed our ice bottle up and we used our pocket knife to cut the bottle open and get the ice to make an ice pack with Kleenex; that mixed with the diapers... I think we really helped her... The kids were scared I think, it was kinda stressful... but I hope my kids took away some lesson from the entire event. They asked about her later, I'm sure she's fine, but I just wanted to go home and hug both my grandmas.

Vacation Report: Paris

Paris... Quickly because it's self explanatory.

We went to the Eiffel Tower again, but this time had bought tickets ahead of time... (Good Job Happy). We made it to the top ...the very, very, very top.

We will see the Mona Lisa next time. I didn't feel the need to do it so we decided not to push it. Ich habe four kids remember?

We visited the Montmartre area where the Moulin Rouge is and ate a WAY overpriced meal. FYI: Rooster does not taste like chicken... it's yucky. See, girls are better than boys. :)

Vacation Report: Belgium

Yes, we survived another road trip through Europe. :) It was fun. Well, parts of it were borderline torture, but for the most part the kids did awesome.


So here is Belgium. We have technically been to Belgium many times. Once we even stopped for lunch there. But it's always been, "Let's see how fast we can drive through Belgium". This time we power drove six hours straight to Brussels and actually stayed to check out the town for a day.

I now feel kinda bad for zooming through little Belgium in the past, irritated that it was just in our way in getting to the "cool countries". Belgium is a nice little town, full of friendly people who gave us free chocolate to try.

Belgium was an easy place to visit. Maybe because there wasn't tons of things I was supposed to drag my four kids to see. The highlight of Brussels wasn't even the capital building of the EU, although I think we walked past it. The main tourist attraction seemed to be a small statue of a boy peeing, "Mannequin Pis"... and a big, strange, ball building... The Atomium.


I think Belgium will be a place that we put on the "Repeat When Warm" list. :)


Hotel: :)