Europe, part IV: United Kingdom (the end)

I guess by the time we got to England I was starting to feel a little worn. We were 5 days in, had been running on adrenaline, and I suddenly seemed to remember that I was 6 months pregnant.

We landed in London around 7 pm. We flew into London City Airport, which is really close to downtown, so it was about 10 minutes from the airport to our hotel. We stayed right in Trafalgar Square. We checked in real quick and then decided to see as much of London as we could at twilight. I must say...London was my very least favorite part of our entire trip, but at least we got to see it at night because it's way more pretty than during the day. We walked down to the river, saw Big Ben/Parliament, the London Eye, and even the National Gallery, which happened to look incredible with the sky the color it was. Then, for the first time, we ate at a McDonald's and went to bed. (We had gotten used to nice restaurants.) I was exhausted and I knew we had a busy day ahead.




The next morning (Thursday) we got up, ate our continental breakfast in the hotel and headed off to find the hop-on/hop-off tour buses. We paid, jumped on, and then quickly got off at Parliament. This was when I kinda started regretting going to London. It just wasn't nearly as neat as I thought it would be. The sights weren't anything like I thought. I was so disappointed! Spencer felt the same way but didn't want me to feel bad so we still tried to make the most of it. We rode around on the bus for a while and got off at St. Paul's Cathedral (where Charles and Diana were married). I am SO glad we paid the million bucks to go inside because it turned out to be one of the highlights of the day. The place was incredible! And huge! We climbed the 500 stairs to the "Whisper Dome," and then I sat there while Spencer climbed another 500 to the observation tower. This was a place where picture-taking was prohibited, but I had spent a lot of money to go in and I was sick of people telling me not to take pictures, so I got one (very discreetly) of part of the dome. It really was incredible. And I didn't use the flash. And I had time to kill while I waited for Spencer to make his way back down. No harm done, right?



We got back on the bus and made our way to the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.

We didn't care to pay to go inside what used to be a pretty gruesome torture chamber so we went inside the shop instead and got a couple "prizes." We bought Tyler a red double decker bus (and after we gave it to him he held it in his little hands for almost a week straight). Then, we loaded onto the river cruise and floated back up the dirty Thames toward Westminster. The only other places I really cared about (or so I thought) were Buckingham Palace and Harrod's, so off we went. In fact, we saw two helicopters come and land at Buckingham Palace while we were there. They didn't do the changing of the guard the day we were there (big whoop) but the flowers were gorgeous and I remember making a video of us for the kids and sending it from right there. (Have I mentioned how much I loved having Spencer's Blackberry - on "global" mode - with us so we could email the kids??)


We caught the bus to Harrod's and quickly realized that place was a little out of our price range. But, we were starving and got amazing sandwiches/wraps from there, which were not too expensive, and then I found the ice cream bar that changed my life. I know everyone is sick of hearing about Magnum ice cream...but it was MINT! Oh man, the mint crunchy bits were in the shell, and I sat outside on the ground and devoured it. I got lots of looks, either for sitting on the sidewalk outside of Harrod's or for snarfing ice cream, but I didn't care one bit.


We had about an hour left to check out and get to our rental car place so the bus should have gotten us back in plenty of time. Well, the driver decided to take a break and we were stranded for about 20 minutes in the freezing cold. We got off a few stops early and RAN to the hotel, had them call us a cab, and made it to the rental car place before it closed. We bid farewell (more like good riddance) to London, and then got accustomed to sitting on the wrong side of the car and driving on the wrong side of the road. Thankfully, it all came back to Spencer from 10 years ago and after a few minor scares, he was right at home on those scary round-abouts.


We got outside of London and stayed in a nice little hotel. The next morning (Friday), we drove up north and saw a few areas from his mission. This is in Warrington Square; he served here at the beginning of his mission, and has this same picture in his mission scrapbook. I don't know the full story about the Alice in Wonderland display...


We went to Liverpool, got rained on, walked around, went in a couple museums, and took a couple of pictures at Albert Dock, where hundreds of thousands of people boarded ships to America. I wish I knew more about my family history...I'm sure I have a few ancestors who were part of this. (And I can't blame them - I would have left England too!)


Then it was time for our last stop - North Wales. Spencer spent the biggest chunk of time on his mission here, and specifically in Rhyl and Prestatyn, and he hasn't been back since he left. After coming with him, I'm pretty sure a piece of his heart will always be here. The drive was beautiful - green rolling hills with TONS of sheep (Spencer: "There are more sheep than people in Wales."). We were staying in the house of a family he knew (they were out of town) and it was nice to be able to do laundry, even if they didn't have a dryer. I think we went to bed early that night. Seriously, all our travels were really (finally) catching up with me.

Here is a waterfall in Dyserth that was much prettier than I imagined...


When Spencer served in Wales, for 9 months, a full 10 years ago (!!), there was a guy in the ward who was a Priest. Spencer took him on exchanges 3-4 times a week. I guess they were good buds. Well, Lee still lives here with his wife Becky and two kids. On Saturday he and his wife took us down the Welsh coast to 4 different castles (ruins). It was so fun to be with them, and it was so fun for him and Spencer to catch up. We hit Conwy Castle...

(I know, we look weird)

Caenarfon Castle... (where the Prince of Wales is crowned)


The smallest house in Great Britain (not saying much as far as I'm concerned)...


Cricceth Castle...



And Harlech Castle.


We drove home through Snowdonia National Park. Lee and Becky went to collect their boys and we geared up for a night with some other mission people.

When Spencer got to Wales 10 years ago, he taught and baptized a family pretty early on. One of the sons was only 6 at the time, but I guess they became "family" to Spencer. He has kept in touch with them through facebook. We had dinner with them; one of the sons lost a baby daughter two months ago (pre-mature) so we were able to have a conversation about that. This family isn't active right now but I could see the love and admiration they had for Spencer. I could also tell that they will be back. As I sat next to Spencer with this family he loves so much that has gone through a lot, I just felt so much peace. I have always known how incredible Spencer is, but this just reinforced it. As the family was leaving (and we knew we wouldn't see them again), the wife hugged me for a long time and told me what a good man I have. That night was a highlight.

On our last day, we got to go to church in Wales. It absolutely shocked me how many people there remembered Spencer. I can't remember Elders we had two years ago, let alone TEN years ago! But he was there a really long time, and it goes to show me just what an impact he had on so many people. It was Testimony Meeting and he stood up to speak for just a minute. It was really nice.

At the very end of the meeting, one of the boys from the family from the night before (who had come to church that day) stood up to speak. I won't write what he said but it had us in tears. I know it made Spencer's day, and he has recommitted himself to keeping in touch with the family and especially with that teenage boy. After the meeting we had plans to leave and finally got out of there after an hour of talking in the hallway. :) What wonderful, humble, simple people.

I was ready to fly home right then as it seemed like the perfect end to our trip, but our flights weren't until the next morning. Spencer had two more places he wanted to take me - the Preston Temple (which was totally gated up!) and Downham. Downham is where Heber C. Kimball came on his mission in the 1800s. I guess he had great success here and all the Saints came to the river to say goodbye when it was time for him to leave. The story goes that they had to wash the tears from their eyes in the Ribble River (and the church has donated a nice bench to the town, which now sits along the river). I wonder if Spencer had a similar impact on the people of Wales, after having been there. Anyway, Downham was one of Spencer's favorite places as a missionary. Funny enough, we overheard a man talking when we were there. He said, "The Queen Mother said Downham is the most beautiful place in all of Lancashire County." Unfortunately, it was really cold when we were there and like I said, I was DONE and wasn't that interested in walking around. From there we drove along a beautiful road to the highway (passing lots and lots of sheep), and made our way to the Manchester airport Hilton.

Downham


The next morning we were up at 3:30 a.m. to catch our flight to Amsterdam, and then our flight to the U.S. We got in at 2 p.m. (bedtime to our bodies) and were just so excited to be home. 14,000 travel miles (by air and by car) later, it was time to be with our kids again. And boy, we were ready.

But man, we will NEVER do anything quite like this again, and I am so thankful everything worked out so could have the time of our lives before our lives get a little more crazy this summer.

Europe, part III: Swiss Alps

If we were to do this trip again, we would have spent another day here instead of going to London. We LOVED Switzerland. It was probably because we were in the most beautiful part (Interlaken) and the weather was warm and the skies were clear and blue.

After being in Schwangau, we once again took back roads to get to our next destination. It was beautiful countryside, though; it was probably the most picturesque drive of our entire trip. We also barely drove through a portion of Liechtenstein. We passed the most beautiful lake - Wolensee (sp?) and once again, pulled in to our destination at about 8 pm. Interlaken is super expensive, and we had found a hotel for the night before we'd gone on our castle tours. We ate dinner at a really yummy Italian place (sidenote: Switzerland has a great mix of German, French, and Italian people and food.). Spencer had done a lot of research about Switzerland and we were excited to take cable cars up into the Alps the next day.

Well, we quickly found out that there is a 4-day period every year when all the cable cars are shut down for maintenance. And, what are the chances - it was the exact week we were there! Spencer was so devastated, and we were all sad we wouldn't get to go up to Gimmelwald. Spencer did some more research and found that there was a train that could take you up to Jungfrau (the "top of Europe"). It was about $200 a person though. And it would take about 7 hours roundtrip. We had to fly out of Zurich that night so we didn't think we would have the time. We decided to drive up to Lauterbrunnen (the furthest into the Alps you can actually drive your car) and see if there were any other options.

Well, Spencer's mom must sure love him because she threw out a wild suggestion - why didn't we try to find a helicopter tour of the Alps?? We started looking into it and found that taking an airplane tour was a little bit cheaper (and maybe safer?). After calling the company we realized it would cost a small fortune. But Spencer was still SO bummed about missing out on doing cool stuff in the Alps, so he managed to talk us all into doing it. The next thing I knew, we were ALL signed up for a 1 hour scenic tour out to the Matterhorn!! Kathy and I were a little hesitant, and there were several times I told Spencer I would LOVE to sit on the ground and send him up and then hear all about it after. But the weather could not have been better (rare for that area in April) and I knew I would be missing out.

While we waited for 11:30 for our time slot, we drove to Lauterbrunnen. Gorgeous! There was ONE cable car running but it looked pretty dinky, especially compared to what we were about to do. Besides, we suddenly felt like our wallets were pretty tight...

I loved the red shutters on the houses!


We pulled up to the air field and met our pilots. They were jovial and super friendly. I not-so-jokingly (a few times) said I would really like to see some credentials! Somehow they got me on the plane, AND got me to smile!

We took off and were over the lakes surrounding Interlaken (Thun and Brienz) in a few minutes. I don't know how they are so emerald blue, but that was a remarkable sight. And my pictures are still pretty darn good for being taken through those thick plastic windows.



Love the reflection!

Then we turned and headed up into the Alps. We were over Eiger and Jungfrau within minutes, and I was glad we didn't try to take that train there, which would have taken 7 hours of our day (especially since we could actually see the train from 20,000 feet up). One of the coolest parts was seeing some mountaineers standing on a peak, waving to us! It was like being in a National Geographic IMAX movie! (And, you can see the Matterhorn in the background.)


Spencer and his dad looked like kids on Christmas. I knew the rest of our trip would pale in comparison... From a distance our pilots pointed out the Matterhorn and two other peaks. He showed us how close we were to Italy (oh so close!) and we headed toward the Matterhorn. That really is a distinct peak, and even seeing Mont Blanc was nothing compared to the Matterhorn. And the Matterhorn at Disneyland is nothing compared to the real thing! :) As we got closer and realized what amazing views we had, I was actually kind of glad we had chosen to spend our kids' entire college funds to see it. You only live once, right?



We almost felt like we could touch the Matterhorn, we were so close. And though you can't really see it well in the picture, the pilots showed us that there was a cross on the very top of the peak.


We headed back to the airport. Beautiful.


Here we are once we were safely landed. (I was really happy...)

After we were on the ground the pilots took the seats out of the plane and took a group of skydivers up. I really thought Joe and Spencer just might be persuaded to go do that next. I even said, "Well, what's another thousand dollars??" Instead, we just watched the group fall out of the sky.

We left, got some food, stocked up on some Swiss chocolate, and headed for the airport in Zurich. I, of course, had to have another Magnum ice cream bar.

A really bad traffic accident stopped us for about 40 minutes and we were nervous about missing our flight. Thankfully (?), airports in Europe aren't nearly as thorough with security checks as the U.S. (unless you're flying to the U.S.) and we had plenty of time once we got to the gate. And we kissed Switzerland (and our super fun travel partners) goodbye...

Europe, part II: Salzburg and Bavaria

3 days into our trip we found ourselves in Salzburg for the day. As we became big Rick Steves afficionados, we took his advice and signed up for a Sound of Music tour. He said he took it skeptically, but that it was the best way to really see Salzburg and the surrounding lake district and other areas. Right at 9 a.m., our tour guide showed up - Bruno. He was an awesome Austrian with a great sense of humor, who kept right up with Kathy asking so many detailed questions (it was so fun to have her along). He took us to some of the sights from the movie, recapped what happened in the movie, and then gave us the truth. We were the only people in our tour group - it was awesome. Here is Bruno and his van.


Here we were at Mirabell gardens. This is the place where Maria and the kids were out dancing, etc. in the movie. You can also vaguely see the Salzburg fortress on the hill behind us (we went up there too but it's not worth writing much about).


In front of the horse fountain at Mirabell Gardens.


We also saw where the Gazebo (I am 16 going on 17) is now. It's been moved a few times. And they lock it up because I guess people would go in and try to dance on the benches, like in the movie, and would get hurt.


We also saw gorgeous tulips everywhere! I took this picture for Emma. Every time we saw pretty flowers and fields we said, "Emma would have picked half of those by now."
(She is notorious for picking flowers, especially the ones at the temple...)


This was taken from up at the castle. The castle wasn't anything great but the views were really spectacular, and the sky looked pretty foreboding. This was the only day we had bad weather in our 11 days in Europe, and even then, it didn't rain for too long.


Part of the tour is a "pit stop" at an Alpine Slide in the hills of Austria. Spencer and Joe went down it. Poor Joe...his cart stopped when he was almost at the bottom. We laughed so hard as we heard him and Spencer try to figure out how to make it move. He should have gotten a free ride for having a defective cart! It was a fun little break in the car time for the guys. And taking an Alpine slide ride in Austria? I mean, who gets to do that??!!



This chapel was where the Von Trapps (supposedly) got married, in Mondsee. It might have been fictional, but man it was pretty. And the inside was so over the top it was just crazy!! We had a great time looking around and seeing just how elaborate it was. Here is the outside, and the inside.



We started on our way that afternoon to our next destination: Schwangau, Germany. We had several good laughs on our trip, and I still giggle when I think of the mix-ups we had with "deodorant" and "yogurt." I love Spencer's parents - they're such good sports.

We also laughed about the GPS. I could have sworn that in some secret location, the GPS voices were real people who were actually laughing at us. We saw more of the Germany countryside than maybe anyone EVER. It was unreal. The GPS just did NOT want us to take major roadways! One thing I noticed more and more was how every little town had lots of houses, pristine-looking, a church, and at least one crane. I don't mean the bird kind of crane, but a building crane. I'm not kidding - they were everywhere! It became the joke in our car. We had a great time driving, and it was a good thing none of us really mind roadtrips...

We got to Schwangau at night and happened to see the castles lit up. What a sight! It was beautiful. We went to bed, exhausted. (Who am I kidding, we were exhausted at the end of every single day.)


The next morning we picked up our castle tickets. We had to go to Hohenschwangau first, which is where King Ludwig grew up. Then it was time to go to Neuschwanstein, the "Disney castle." That one was crazy!! I can't imagine living in a place so decked out and elaborate! King Ludwig had the place built for himself but only lived in it 172 days before he died. We bought a couple souvenirs here for the kids. Also, the views of Schwangau/Bavaria were incredible. It was one of the most beautiful places we went.
(Also, you may notice the tissue paper sticking out of my pocket below... Kathy gave it to me to hold onto. You never know what you're gonna get (or not get) when you use a European restroom...)





Next up...Switzerland!

Europe, part 1: Germany

The drama leading up to this trip of ours was sometimes a little too much. We decided last fall that we wanted to go visit Spencer's parents (and other places) before we had another child. I won't leave my kids to go on a trip until they are at least two years old, so I knew that if we didn't go before having a baby, it probably wouldn't happen. We booked our tickets before I was even pregnant; it had to be planned carefully - after tax season (haha) and before I would be 7 months along. Luckily, the timing seemed to be perfect.

I was diagnosed with partial placenta previa, and there was the chance we wouldn't be able to go. (At this point, I was SO glad we had purchased trip insurance - SO out of character for us, and that we had used skymiles, meaning that we could cancel and not lose money.) I read up on the likelihood of placenta previa "resolving" itself, and it seemed likely that it would...but maybe not by the time I needed it to. I got a blessing, and then just had to wait.

The morning of my ultrasound I was really nervous. Tyler was up all night with an earache and I was running around trying to get him in to a doctor as well as get myself to my appointment by 8 a.m. When they hooked me up they told me the placenta had moved! I called Spencer to tell him and said, "Aren't you so surprised??" He said, "No." :) I called my doctor that afternoon, got the official clearance to go on our trip (this was 10 days before we were to leave), and got excited. I resumed my research and planning.

Then came a natural disaster. What were the chances?? I would be thrilled to never again hear "Iceland" and "volcano" together in the same sentence. The volcano shut down airspace over Europe for 5 days and once again, we didn't know if we would get to go on our trip. I became a KLM, CNN, SkyNews, and BBC junkie over those several days, and once again put our planning on hold. Long story short, we were able to fly out just a day and a half after they opened the airspace. What a relief.

Anyway...we flew through the night and arrived in Frankfurt at 4 pm the next day. I was silly in thinking I would be able to sleep on the plane, when I know quite well that I cannot sleep sitting up. It was a long night. At least the flight was nice and they fed us almost the whole time. I also watched Avatar on the flight over and was incredibly disappointed; maybe if we had seen it in the theater in 3D I would feel differently. We arrived in Germany and I was so swollen everywhere as well as completely exhausted. But we had tons of plans and needed to get adjusted to the 9 hour time change as quickly as possible. We decided we would stay up until 10 pm, suffering through the exhaustion.

Spencer's parents were great to keep us busy. There was not even time to sit down and fall asleep. We saw the church's offices over there, drove up to the temple, and went downtown to the Romer.

On our first full day (Saturday) there, the touring began. I had one place where I wanted to go in Germany, a castle called Burg Eltz. We have become big Rick Steves fans, and he says this is his favorite castle in all of Europe. It looked incredible in the pictures. We drove about an hour and a half to get there. It was very cool....but they were doing restoration and there were cranes and scaffolding everywhere. It is one of the only castles that remains (and has remained) intact and is decorated and furnished as it was 500 years ago. The tour was excellent.

After the tour we ate some traditional German food at the cafe. Then we drove through the Mosel River Valley on our way to Trier. This drive was stunning! The little German towns were so quaint and the hills on either side of the river were covered in vineyards. We just wanted to jump on a boat and float down the river. There were also castles at every turn. Too bad Spencer and I were taking turns falling asleep in the backseat of the car...

Trier was really neat, but it's all a little cloudy for me as I was quite the zombie. It's the oldest city in Germany and was once a Roman capital. The cathedral there is the oldest Christian church in Germany. When we went inside there were TONS of little kids singing. The place was packed and it was so fun to listen in, even though I couldn't understand them.

The only still-standing portion of the Porta Nigra, which is the city gate/wall.

We also saw the Basilica. It is the largest intact Roman structure outside of Rome. The place was gigantic. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed (this didn't deter me later in our trip, but it did the first few days).

The next day (Sunday) we went to church. The meeting was wonderful, and the only uncomfortable part was when a serious Frenchman tried to talk to me. Even though I'm sure he spoke good English, I couldn't understand a word he was saying. Then we left Frankfurt and headed toward Salzburg. We stopped in Heidelberg (the Harvard of Europe) for a minute, and then us girls convinced the boys that we needed to go to Rothenburg, a cute walled city with lots of cute shops, and where you can buy traditional German Christmas decorations/ornaments and souvenirs. I loved it here and wished we had had more time.

(The "crooked house"). All the buildings were adorable!

We saw this t-shirt and I just had to get a picture. When we got to Germany, I saw this sign EVERYWHERE. I guess I'm not the only one who has wondered where the heck this place is. Turns out, it means "exit" (freeway exit). But doesn't it sound funny to say? I got a kick out of the t-shirt.

Spencer drove on the Autobahn for a little while. Now THAT was scary. No speed limits on certain portions! Kathy said, "When there's an accident on the Autobahn, it's almost always fatal." Uh, I believe it!

Joe also brought out another side of me...we stopped at a restroom (or, a water closet), where you had to pay to go in, but then you could turn your tickets in for credit in the store. Joe brought us back some ice cream bars, called Magnum ice cream. Oh man, it was the BEST ICE CREAM ever. Unfortunately, I saw it in every city we went to, and had to have it. In fact, in Harrod's (London), I found the mint kind and honestly it was the best thing I have ever tasted. And now I wish someone would market it in the states. To be honest, I don't love ice cream all that much, but this was the BEST stuff ever. And I'm sure the baby loved it too, and I'm sure I gained about 10 pounds this trip just because of that dumb ice cream...

We got to Salzburg on that Sunday night, checked in to our hotel, and drove the 20 minutes north to Oberndorf. There is a tiny chapel there, marking the place where "Silent Night" was written. Spencer's granddad related a really neat personal story about this place that was in the church news right before he died a year and a half ago. I won't copy the whole story here, but we knew it was a special place to him, and we were excited to go see it. I'm so glad we did, especially now, after having gone to Spencer's mission at the end of our trip (more on that later).


And that ends our first two days in Germany (and partly in Austria)...