Valuable Lessons Learned in Luxembourg - Part 2

* If only we had saved all those wine bottles from the Chateau, we too could have zip-tied our own cool piece of art. This particular one filled up an entire room in the new Luxembourg Modern Art Museum. The architecture of the museum was definitely as interesting as the art and often a lot easier to understand. Designed by I.M. Pei, who designed the infamous Louvre Pyramids, it includes an incredible amount of glass and has walkways over 13th century ruins.

* Not all train stations are created equally. We're quite spoiled in Holland because many of the stations have mini-marts and sandwich shops, but in Luxembourg we had several changes of trains in abandoned stations in the middle of nowhere. At least the scenery was pretty.

Valuable Lessons Learned in Luxembourg - Part 1..

* Carry a flashlight in your travel backpack so when your husband decides to go down dark windy paths through the canyon shown, you can really be brave instead of just pretending to be. (We're standing in the Bock Casemates, a series of defense tunnels built in 963 that housed thousands of soldiers under a castle until it was demolished in 1867. The 17K of remaining tunnels were used as air raid shelters during the world wars.)

* It would be a lot cheaper if we'd just give in and eat fast food. In our effort to eat real food on holiday, we eat a lot of Italian since we rarely can find any other food that the girls will eat or we can afford. Luckily, several of our Italian meals in Luxembourg were even better than we had in Rome.

Mommy, Why are We Staying in a Hospital?

After we checking into the Luxembourg City Youth Hostel (the red and white building on the left), Ashlynn asked if hospitals all over the world let people rent rooms. Unlike Jimmy, I never experienced hostel life in college. Luckily these days you only have to be young at heart to take advantage of very affordable accomodations (about $50/night for a family room in Europe is truly a steal). In addition to a fantastic location, clean rooms and breakfast, you get to:
* Make and strip your own bed
* Take military-style showers with 30-seconds of water at a time
* Shower in the dark when the timer light turns off
* Fight with your kids over who gets the top bunk
* Moon folks across the way from the WC with no curtains

Luxembourg City -- An Unexpected Jewel...

The train ride to Luxembourg was beautiful as we passed through the mountains awash in the colors of fall. We really didn't know what to expect when we arrived in Luxembourg City, the capital of this small nation of just 500,000 people. We were pleasantly surprised at what a pretty city it was perched on a hill surrounded by 13th century ruins. We enjoyed exploring several museums, especially the Museum of History and Art which has the largest and most spectacular 3rd century Roman mosiac floor we've ever seen. The weather was great, so we spent a lot of time walking along the river shown here.

What Cool Caves...

Our fall break began with 2 nights in Maastricht, Holland's oldest and most southern town. It wasn't as quaint as I'd hoped, but was impressed with the local museums -- art, natural history, and architecture. The high point (literally and figuratively) of our visit was a tour of the St. Pietersberg Caves. We took a short boat ride outside of the city, then hiked up a hill to the mouth of the man-made cave shown here. The cave dates back to Roman times for excavations of marl, a building stone. At one time there were over 20,000 passages for 220 kilometers; today there are still 17K accessible. During World War II, it was used as a bomb shelter. Our 1-hour tour was entirely in Dutch so didn't learn much of the history, but was amazed to see works of art on many surfaces (unfortunately, the digital camera's still in the shop, so no photos from the inside). We were especially thankful the old man who led the tour remembered his way back out since there weren't any Exit signs or fancy lighting like in the US.

Country Roads, Take Me Home...

In our 10 years in North Carolina, we never managed to make it to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the fall for the changing of the leaves. During our recent October half term break, we were excited to get to the mountains in time to see the fall colors. Can you guess where we went?

Look for the answer next week when we return from our long weekend away as we tag along for another business trip.

Each and Every Day You Will See a Cow...

I still remember when I heard DJs Jeff & Jer say that about cows on the radio in San Diego. I was pulling out of my driveway in a very urban area and I thought they were crazy. That is until I turned my head and saw a wooden cow planter on my neighbor's porch. Ever since, I have seen a cow almost every day. Of course, my odds of seeing a live cow increased greatly since moving to Holland since there are 1.2 million of them here. When we first arrived, the cows were in the winter barns, but since spring we see them regularly on our school commute and on bike rides. It's especially lovely since there's few fences with the irrigation canals acting as barriers. Keep your eyes open and see how many cows you see this week.

For the Love of Beer...

Gotta love a restaurant called The Big Beer (that is if you ignore the fact that "beer" is actually Dutch for "bear"). There's no doubt that the Dutch love beer:

* In 2005 the average Dutch drank 78 liters (165 pints) compared to 21 liters (85 glasses) of wine according to CBS (Central Bureau of Statistics)
* Heineken, headquartered in Amsterdam, is the 4th largest brewer in the world with 170 brands including Amstel
* Holland is the 3rd largest exporter of beer (after Mexico and Germany), exporting 60% of it's 2.5 million liters of beer produced
* Beer's obviously a priority since it's often cheaper than soda in both restaurants and grocery stores (a case of Heineken sells for just $10)
* Mini 5 liters kegs are sold at the grocery store for under $15 to use with a home BeerTender cold tap or for one-time use

When will you be joining us for a cold one?

A Carnival View of Leiden...

It was a shock to see the quick transform- ation of our quaint town into a carnival site. All the main roads of the centrum were closed and filled with rides, games and food. Jimmy and the girls especially enjoyed the view from the ferris wheel.

Celebrating Freedom...

222 years before America's Founding Father's were celebrating liberation from England, Leiden was celebrating liberation from Spain on October 3, 1574. The city had been besieged by the Spaniards for many years. The Prince of Orange finally decided to cut the dikes to flood out the Spaniards: "Better a drowned land than a lost land." Wikipedia doesn't mention how many Dutch drowned, but the strategy worked and the Spaniards fled. Since 1575 a celebration of Thanksgiving has been held on every October 3rd with a memorial service, market, parade and carnival.

Here you see that we liberated the kids from school and were on our way to our favorite canal restaurant for a good view of the parade.

The Big Bad Grandpa...

Ashlynn was very excited when she found out that I'd signed up her grandparents to be guest readers in her 1st grade class. Grandma was very professional in her reading of a story of how a princess invented pizza. Grandpa, on the other hand, was a total ham while reading "The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs." He quickly took on the persona of Alexander T Wolf in this 1st person narrative--"You can call me Al. In fact you can call me anything, just don't call me late for dinner." By the end of the story he'd worked the kids up into a frenzy and Mrs. Cross was quite cross. She had to threaten to cancel all future guest readers to calm the kids back down. Dad was excited that he'd be remembered as the grandpa who nearly started a riot.

One Groovy Grandma...

We were very excited when Grandma arrived after visiting family in England, although she seemed to have brought the rain. We saved much of the cultural sightseeing for when she joined us--the Anne Frank House (a very powerful experience), the Mauritshuis (an amazing art museum in Den Haag that specializes in Dutch masters), the Van Gogh Museum (Ashlynn enjoyed playing tour guide since she studied the artist at school) and a candlelight tour of a 17th century castle in a neighboring town. We also saved Veronica's 9th birthday party so she could help us celebrate with our friends. She was a good sport about everything we put her through. We were especially impressed when she climbed into the girls bunk beds to read to them (design note: we didn't pick out the lovely drapes and the Kerry - Edwards sticker was already on the used bunk beds).