3 Capitals on the Danube-1st stop Bratislava, Slovakia

Lucky us, we got to travel the week after Easter, we flew into Bratislava.  The kids had me watch a clip of the movie Eurotrip, where they go to Bratislava and it is a total dump.  I am happy to report that the Old City of Bratislava that we visited was beautiful and charming.

We arrived just before sunset and got to stay right in the heart of the old town.  We loved having a nice dinner and walking around the old city...

The theater building was lit up beautifully.

Charlie liked this pig out in front of a restaurant.

This statue of a sewer worker popping up from the street was fun to find. 

The city added this sign after people had tripped or driven over the statue!

Happy wanderers..even Charlie which made it into a wonderful night...a tired little boy is torture!

The entry into an old bomb shelter which was now a tea house, it was fun but eerie to go down into it.

Checking out of our apartment, cool entry way into the old building, inside was nicely renovated, but many stairs to climb!

A hand painted Easter egg that was a gift from the people of Croatia.

We arrived on April 4 which was the anniversary of the liberation of Bratislava by Russia in 1945, they must have had a ceremony on the 4th, we walked by the next morning, here are all the flowers sent by countries around the world.

Here are the flowers sent by America..thought all of you American people would be happy to see this!

 At the restaurant we ate at there was this picture (of two heads on the wall). We didn't know what it was of..but as we walked around Greg found the two heads...they were on a cannon!

Good detective work I think!

 We walked to a breakfast place that had good reviews online.  Charlie thought the walk was way too long and had a bit of a meltdown on the way!  The menu was first in Slovak...we couldn't decipher any of it...I asked the lady if they had an English menu and luckily they did...we instantly found all sorts of breakfast foods we recognized!

We were surprised how much English was spoken.  It was very easy for us to get around here!

Our walk took us by the President's Palace and we must have just missed a changing of the guard ceremony at noon, they walked past us on the street...

 We then walked by the front of the palace and saw the new reliefs standing watch.

Looked like kind of boring duty, I felt for them!

Better view of the palace.

Leaving Bratislava we crossed what is known as the UFO bridge...you can see why...

Our next stop was for two nights in the countryside.  I knew I would need a break between all the big cities...Greg and the girls were not excited about the boring countryside..but Charlie and I were looking forward to it because we knew the place had bikes to ride and was by a river.

Happy Spring!

The girls both finished winter sports, swimming for Kelly finished with a tournament in the Hague. Greg snapped this picture at an earlier meet, we thought it was cool to see her name on the big board.

 Katie's team finished with a tournament at their school and they got second place. Here is her team getting their medals.

The best part about both of their seasons was great coaches who made the sports fun and encouraged the girls to do their best.  This hasn't always been the case so it was great to see them really enjoying it!

Charlie still does ice hockey, we have gotten to travel to a few local rinks for his games.  There are tons of languages being spoken on the sidelines.  After his one game they let all the boys do a shootout.  I got a kick out of this father yelling for his son on the other team..no idea what language he is yelling in..

We got to go to a fun St. Patrick's Day celebration at the park by our house.  Katie is just holding my cider!

 Greg was excited to see the Gaelic football & hurling, but Charlie was more thrilled to have a friend to double ride his bike with!

On actual St. Patrick's Day we headed for some local places, but it wasn't like the US, they were pretty quiet and no one was playing music.  Not like the lines out the door in Irish pubs!  The ones we tried were right by the EU buildings, the flags are pretty cool.

Charlie had some exciting things in his class...first a recycling project where they made things and sold them to the little kids and donated the money to a charity.  He made mini banjos...here is his advertising sign.

Here he is with all of his banjos to sell..he sold all of them!

He also had a music concert and I couldn't believe all the instruments the school had for the kids to play and that the teacher was able to teach them all to play different ones, very impressive!

Here he is playing the Glockenspiel...

We also survived Kelly turning 17...Katie couldn't believe she was that old! She had a Vine party with all of her friends. (if you don't know what Vine videos are ask a teenager and be prepared for them to show you about 100 of their favorites)   Greg was appalled that the party didn't even begin until 8pm...he wanted to sleep!

Kelly is now playing boys lacrosse for the spring, she has one friend who also is brave enough.  She is enjoying it but has the bruises on her arms and legs to prove its boys lacrosse and not no contact girls lacrosse.

Our last exciting adventure was checking out the place billed as the Greatest Pub in the World...it is about thirty minutes from Brussels in a tiny little village and its only open on Sundays.  Here is a picture from the outside inside it had zillions of Belgian beers to try.

I didn't take any pictures inside, but here is an article all about the place for any of you planning Belgium visits..https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2018/02/01/best-beer-place-belgium/

That is all the news that is fit to print...stay tuned for new adventures coming soon!

Sledding in a time warp!

We have had miserable cold weather...the worst in my book because its just cold without snow.

To pass the time and not freeze we went to an old windmill museum right in a neighborhood in Brussels.  The current exhibit was all about potatoes, and since Belgians love their frites, it was very appropriate. However it was all in French without English translations..so we got bits & pieces out of the exhibits!

 Most restaurants do bring the frites in little stand up cones like these below...

 We thought this was a cool idea but aren't sure it ever worked?

On Friday right before the kids came home from school, it snowed and it started sticking...we packed up our sleds, and a bunch of Kelly's friends that came home with her on the bus and headed to the big park that has cool sledding hills.  (Katie missed the fun because she was playing basketball in Frankfurt, Germany and was away until Saturday.)

The pond was partly iced over...Charlie had to go test the ice a bit...

 The sleds we brought down to the park were ones we had brought with us from the US...what I wasn't prepared for was to be the only people there with modern sleds...people were asking us where we bought them...most people had old wooden sleds...here are some photos of what we saw...

One kid was sledding on the white plastic sheet blowing in the wind above!

This kid looks like he is right out of an old Christmas movie

Charlie getting ready to do his next run...notice the sled next to him!

The snow only lasted for a day, then it melted...glad we didn't miss it!  I guess I could start a sled import business...if only it snowed enough here...and if I could speak some French...I start French lessons tomorrow- four hours a day for the next few weeks- off to get some rest to get my brain ready!

We find the castle from Frozen in Mont St. Michel, Normandy, France

We continue our 2018 trend of visiting UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and what a site Mont St. Michel is!  The Bay has the highest tidal range in Europe (like the Bay of Fundy in Canada) so like a good Coastie I carefully consulted the tide tables so we could see  the island at high tide.  (When it's low tide, the island is just surrounded by mud and you'd never believe the tide can come in so far.)

As we were dragging the kids out of their nice warm beds..I was repeating what Mark would say at the beach, "Time & tide wait for no man".    Teenagers are tough to convince, but we did manage to leave while it was still dark.  We passed an old windmill as we were close...you can see its almost sunrise!

 The car parking is on the other side of a long causeway that was only recently built.  Our goal of the Mont is what you see rising out of the clouds behind us in this picture.

 This gives you an idea of how far we had to walk, it was cold, there was a layer of frost on the causeway boards..but what a destination!  The girls said it looked like something out of a Disney movie that we were walking toward...like the castle in Frozen...

Charlie kept trying to flag down the shuttle bus driver by sticking up his thumb the guy would give him a thumbs up and honk, but he kept driving..we all had a good laugh!

 Getting closer...

 The sun is peeking through..

 All the trucks you see are bringing in supplies for the hotels and restaurants on the island.  They can get as far as that lot, then they have to unload everything and hike it up in little wheelbarrows.  Impressive organization to keep the cupboards stocked here!

 Arrival...

 Kelly really liked the unicorn sign on this place!

 The streets were super narrow and winding, the kids said it was like being in Diagon Alley in Harry Potter.  What most most incredible to me is that it was all real...not a theme park...

 A lower chapel...before we climbed, up, up, up to the steps of the Abbey.

 Clouds were surrounding the Abbey as we continued to climb.  The Abbey is supposed to be incredible inside, however, it was cold and very early and it wasn't open yet.  We decided that we had achieved our goal and we should escape before the crowds rolled in and our 8 year old melted down. 
"You gotta know when to fold em'", right?

 Kelly took this picture with my phone right before she dropped the phone and it barely missed falling into a hole and going out to sea...lucky for her!

 A view of someone's champagne from the night before, this is one of the hotel rooms right on the island, it is supposed to be cool to stay over for the night because once the crowds leave you have the entire place to yourself.  We got there so early we did have the place to ourselves, other than the few workers who were bringing in supplies to the hotels.

 Katie & Greg doing there goofy photos...

 Look how much more you can see now that the sun has come up...still freezing though, so we cheated and hopped the shuttle bus back to our car.  You can also see how much the tide has gone out since the time we arrived-probably about an hour before!

 Later in the day we sampled the local cider and I was super excited because it came in this mug, just like the picture I had seen in one of the guide books.  It was good cider...but not quite the Savannah Dry I have been searching for since we left South Africa!

The town our Air BnB was in was called Roz de Couesnon, and there was a scenic view point that showed the whole area.  This sign was at the top, I thought it was cool that I found an original "Coast Guard Station"...see below.

 The Coast Guard building they are talking about is the brick thing to the right in this picture. 

 We were sad to head for home the next day and had plans to stop in Rouen, but instead detoured to a beach town near the Black Cow Cliffs (called Falaise des Vaches Noires) we followed the highway sign that showed a fossil and a sea shell.  The sea shells were what lured me in but the big surprise was finding this bike rental place next to a dinosaur museum.  They rented every kind of bike rig you could imagine. 

 We decide on the triple bike...Kelly starts out as driver...

 Charlie picked out this green machine type bike..

 Greg replaces Kelly as the driver...they found their groove eventually but it was really hard-heavy bike! 

Next time we thought we would try the giant red octopus looking bike..we sat on it to test it, we needed two more people and we could have done it, it was super heavy!




























I did get to collect some sea shells and Charlie thinks he found some fossils.  Kelly and Greg enjoyed a nice long walk and talk on the beach.

We headed for home, feeling pretty lucky to have had such a great trip, we feel very fortunate to have seen such amazing places...I think the kids will never forget the early morning walk to Mont St. Michel!