Reflections on our 1st Year in Holland...

It's hard to believe, but today marks our 1-year anniversary since our big move to Holland. I'm sure it sounds corny, but we decided to recreate our first night with drinks at the Boulevard Hotel (where we lived for 5 weeks last year) and then dinner at the Italian restaurant in Scheveningen where we ate on our first night. We put the pressure on the girls by asking them to think of the highs and lows of our past year (rather than the highs and lows of the day like we usually do at dinner). The list is long, but here goes:

Lows:

* Missing our friends--call us! visit us! write us!
* Missing Adams Elementary
* Missing our house, especially our new screened in porch and firepit
* Missing the creek behind our house
* Missing the crickets and frogs singing in our yard
* Stinky scooters passing by while biking
* Our horrible washer/dryer combo (after almost 5 months of no dryer, we finally got a new horrible combo unit)
* Can't have a pet in our rental house
* Rain, wet, damp, windy rain

Experiencing Technical Difficulties...

Sorry to all who have checked my blog in the past week and have found nothing new. For some bizarre reason, I've been unable to post anything from my home computers. Definitely suspect it has to do with my carrier after trying multiple machines with different browsers, but the language barrier makes it hard to figure out what to do.

I'm at a friend's right now, but forgot to send myself the photos I wanted to upload, so you'll have to make due with this apology. Thanks for your patience! Hope to be up and running soon.

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.