January 3rd - Blackhawks and Bye bye Germany

On our last full day in Germany, we took some time to visit my brother at work at the US Army Base in Ansbach.  Rachel had to take Sophie into her preschool, and Grandma and JJ went along, leaving Sequoia, Pheonix and I to pack our things and just hang about.

I was sitting on the stairs at the front waiting for them to come back when Uma Lina, Andrew and Rachel's landlord and neighbour across the courtyard came to say good morning.  Well, Uma (Grandma) Lina does not speak English at all, and the kids and I really didn't get much further than guten tag in the German language department.

I bought 2 bottles of Uma Lina's peach schnapps (comes complete with a pic of said lady on the bottle's label) and before I realised what was happening, we were being ushered inside her house for some morning tea while we were waiting.

Uma Lina's house

Peach Schnapps complete with photo on the bottle

The kids were offered juice and some homemade cookies and Uma Lina insisted I join her for a small glass of local wine.

Well, about 20 minutes later, and a few turns with the google translate app on my phone, I heard Rachel's car and we gave our thanks and made our way out....

Actually, I stumbled my way out (after a 2nd social glass of wine), and I am sure this was all before 10.30 in the morning!!!!

The kids had a ball climbing all over the Blackhawk!

We had a nice lunch in town, Sequoia had a haircut and I purchased some farht in a box before we headed home for our last night with our family...

Like all good things, our time in Germany had came to an end.  :-(  It was so great to see Andrew after such a long time, and a real pleasure to see him so happy with his family and his life.  It was hard to say goodbye to him, Rachel, Grandma, Sophie, and JJ, but they will be out to Australia for a visit in about April this year, so we won't have to wait for too long to give them all big hugs again...

January 2nd - Breakfast in Austria, Dinner in Switzerland (and a quick non-culinary visit to Leichtenstein)

Who has ever heard of the country Leichtenstein????  I hadn't either.  Anyway, we have now visited it and this is the beloved site of our first snow angels....(due to fabulous depth of snow).  Nestled between Austria and Switzerland, one of it's borders the famous Rhein, Leichtenstein is an absolutely miniscule country that appears to be mainly industrial, and is home to the best accessible snow that we have seen to date...


Andrew, Rachel, Sequoia, Pheonix and I set out at the most rediculous hour of 5am on Monday (2nd January) with a very full itinery to visit 3 new countries and also visit the famous Neuswannstein Castle (the one the Disney Castle is modelled on).

Austria is absolutely gorgeous!!!!
After our early morning start, Rachel, Sequoia, Pheonix and I all had naps....poor Andrew!  For some reason, we all suddenly woke up all at the same time and lo!  we were in Austria! 

The Hills are alive....!!!!

We took a quick pitstop just inside the border whilst we worked out where we would breakfast...watch out for that black ice!!! 

Our Austrian breakfast hotel

Nice setting, but we sure missed bacon and eggs, hey, kids???

Just gorgeous!

Once, our bellies were full, and our purses a little lighter, we ventured back over the border into Germany to check out Neuschwanstein Castle (the castle the Disney Castles are modelled on)

The little town at it's base is very sweet.  It would have been a very cold, slippery 15 minute walk up to the castle, but just because we wanted to have an 'authentic' experience, we took the horse and cart, of course!

Neuschwanstein township

On the cart....we sang 'Sound of Music' songs all the way up - much to the chargrin of the others riding with us!

Our relations!

Plenty of lovely views

Castle Entrance

Castle Model

Unfortunately, we could not take photos during the tour of the castle, but there are some beautiful rooms throughout...I could definitely live there!!!!

Next, we drove back into Austria and on to Leichtenstein, which is a tiny little country nestled between Austria and Switzerland, with the River Rhine along one of it's borders....better not blink or you'd miss it!

Don't blink!!!!

 At this point in our journey, we stopped to make snow angels...

Next, we headed into Switzerland for dinner...we found a little place not far from where the ferry would take us back to Germany over Lake Constance.  The chef was a friendly man who was happy to point us to local specialities on the menu.  The waitress and co-owner, quite frankly, would have been quite at home at the rally grounds back in Nuremberg...

The food was alright, but was terribly expensive (they obviously saw us coming!), but the highlight for me was downing two of those horrendous-sized steins of local beer.  I must admit that I staggered henceforth and I do believe my brother had to very chiverously finish the bit I left in the bottom of my glass that I had left.

The drive back to Goetteldorf was much fun with air guitar (to the fast bits of Bohemian Rhapsody) all around!

All in all, a fabulous day!

December 31st & January 1st - Paris to Goetteldorf via almost the Netherlands, aka broken GPS

After a super-early breakfast, we made a quick getaway from Paris in the pre-peak hour traffic.  All off to a good start, we made it to Metz, near the Germany border in fantastic time - we even took a little side-trip in the city of Metz (the autoroute bypasses) for some lunch and to seek out a wooden chair promised to Grandma (Jan, Rachel's Mum) for Xmas....and made our way back to the highway without much problem at all...

Then things just went.....well, wrong....

Somehow, we were just outside of Mannheim and what I have worked out is that we were on the right road, but heading in the wrong direction....

Unfortunately, somehow did not realise this for about 2 hours (?????) and we were halfway to the Netherlands (just outside of Koblenz) before I realised that the turnoff we were looking for was just never going to appear!

In my own defence, I will say that the weather was dreadful and I needed all my concentration on driving on the very wet roads (sunset starts soon after about 3pm, and once it started getting dark, I could barely see the lines on the road), and I left the navigation to my passengers, the kids.  They did the best they could, but we didn't arrive in Goetteledorf until about 8.30pm and I must admit I certainly was not all cheery, ready to bring in the New Year with any sort of bang...

Queue: food, shower and bed.

However, sleep was elusive.  Those crazy Germans (I repeat, those crazy Germans) do not have even remotely the safety bans on fireworks that we have in Australia.  A couple of, I believe, rival families had a fire-cracker war....mine's bigger than yours is, na na na na na!

No sleep for you!!!!!

The fireworks show I'm sure would have rivalled Melbourne's and Sydney's, mind you, no heritage buildings caught on fire in the finale, or so I believe...

The next day was very much a recovery day.  A leisurely breakfast and lunch, followed by some band music from a local travelling orchestra in the town square, and lovely naps :-)

At 1pm on New year's Day, we were treated to some light orchestral music in the Goetteldorf town square...

Apparently this local orchestra travels around to all the local towns around ?Ansbach heralding in the new year with some little known (to me) tunes.  The conductor did step up and gave a long and heartfelt speech, but unfortunately my translation remains....'German word, german word, yah, german word...and so forth'

It was lovely to have a restful day, with much of the entertainment coming in the guise of my gorgeous neice and nephew...

Whats not to love....

JJ eating...my favourite was the mash potato mohawk!

Cousin Sequoia was always on hand at meal times! Two beautiful girls!!!!

December 30th - Last Day in Paris

On Friday 30th December, we enjoyed our last day in Paris.  We decided, in wisdom, to take the Paris Underground, as opposed to the car, but the kids quite enjoy the train...

We headed off to our ''Meeting the French at Work' visit at a local Bakery/Patisserie, Au Grand Richelieu.  The Bakery itself is the oldest bakery in Paris and we learnt that in order for someone to buy a bakery, they must have a qualification and also 7 years experience.  It was also interesting to learn that in France, while pretty much everyone and anyone strikes from time to time, it is illegal for bakers to strike ever!  The French sure do like their baguettes!!!!!

Claude Esnault has been running the bakery for 42 years and was more than happy to share some of his craft with us.  We shared the tour with a family from Boston, and we all had a go of rolling a croissant and also scoring our own baguettes.

Claude with this Baguette Rolling Machine

Pheonix scoring his baguette

Sequoia's turn

Sequoia rolling a croissant

Baking away

Yum!!!!!!

Parisien Sequoia

 We were given each the baguette that we helped make and also a croissant and we were on our way....first stop the Louvre....

We ended up skipping the massive line to go inside the Museum and opted instead for a leisurely stroll down the Champs Elysee...however all three of us appreciated the awesome archetecture and also the sculptures that are exhibited throughout the grounds.

Notice the Ferris Wheel in the background????  So did we :-)  Of course we jumped on and enjoyed the awesome views....

Down the Champs Elysee

Eiffel Tower from the Ferris Wheel

 We enjoyed a stroll down the Champs Elysee where they had Christmas Market stalls all still set up, and then made our way to the foot of the Eiffel Tower once again....

Pheonix really enjoyed his time playing in the snow at the snowshoe place on Wednesday that he really wanted to spend some more time there.  I got the chance to enjoy a delicious mug of steaming gluwein (mulled spiced wine), and Pheonix spent some time making me a special gift...

For you Mum xxx

We then set off for our boat trip down the Seine....

The boat company was running quite behind schedule so even though we had paid to go on the boat that had been currently boarding, someone made an executive decision and just cut off the line even though the boat was barely full - we got to witness some of that famous French passion (a local went pretty wild with anger), which kept us fairly entertained until the next boat docked....

Our cruise down the Siene, was worth the wait...
I'll just post a few of the pics we took....it was quite wet and we were inside the boat (yay cause it was freezing outside!!!) so between the water-spotted windows and the window-flash, only a few of the pics turned out.

...but I am sure that you get the drift...lol
One thing that these photos will never be able to communicate is just how freezing it was!

Our homestay family were really lovely to us, but one thing I have learnt is, next time, we will go for the English-speaking family and I will know what questions to ask before signing up.

It really was quite awkward....Sequoia, Pheonix and I slept in the three children's room, who slept in their parent's room and Leila and Omar slept on the couches in the loungeroom.  The two younger children didn't seem to mind so much, but I got the distinct feeling the older child really resented us being in his space.  I keep telling myself that the children really would benefit from the money that we paid the family to stay with them, but it was just....awkward.

Maybe it is just me, but to me homestay is a little bit of a culture-exchange and I chose this family because meals are included and in hindsight, I had envisioned us all breaking bread together and muddling through the language thing around the table.  Alas, Sequoia, Pheonix and I were relegated to the tiny breakfast table in the kitchen all on our lonesome....

Also silly me expected that, included in the homestay, the three of us would each be given a towel.  I had left quite a bit of our stuff we were travelling with back in Germany at Andrew's and I will admit that I only had the one travelling towel with us (left in Germany, of course, as between hotels, family and friends, I never expected to have to use our own (bag-space was at a premium!!!).

On the first night we were there, I asked Leila for a towel before I went in to have my shower.  I'm not sure what happened, but before I realised, Leila had a big cupboard over the washer half unpacked and duly pulled out one towel (I must admit that it was a nice towel), handed it to me and then promptly packed everything back into the cupboard...

I didn't have the heart to ask for towels for the kids.

So, the three of us got to share the one towel for the 4 days we were in Paris.  I know, ewww!  I ended up paying Leila some money on the 3rd day, while we were out at Disneyland, to put a small load through the washer for me.  Unfortunately, the machine I thought was the dryer was not a dryer (still haven't worked out what exactly it was for!) and that third night the three of us got to share a slightly damp single towel off the clothes rack....hmmm

Here are the kids in our room just before we left...

I got to sleep on a trundle bed, which is currently out of shot.

December 29th - Paris Disneyland!!!!!!

On our second full day (29-12-11) in Paris, and we were off to Eurodisney!

Although our homestay family spoke only basic English and my French is pretty limited, one thing that Leila was able to communicate to me was not to book our disneyland tickets before we got to Paris and that she would get us a good deal on the tickets.  Unfortunately, this all fell through for some reason or another at the last minute and I found myself online late the night before we went looking for tickets. Especially after the massive line-up at the Eiffel Tower, I wanted to avoid the entrance line at all costs.  The website instructed me to print out the email tickets, but I was unsuccessful in linking either my iPhone or Laptop to Leila's printer in the morning.  For some reason, my email was receiving my messages, but I had not been able to send any for the past few days. Leila assured me that as the email on my iPhone had a bar-code on it, this would be sufficient proof of purchase.

Whilst we were getting ready to leave, Sequoia was struggling to put on a Paris fob-chain bracelet that she had bought the day before as a souvenir.  My hands were quite full, but she was really struggling trying to do it up with one hand, I tried to assist her.  Unfortunately, I had our GPS (George) in my arms and whilst I was struggling with the bracelet, he tumbled out of my arms and cracked on the floor :-(  Fortunately, Omar had given us really simple instructions on how to get to Disneyland the night before, so I was confident that we would get there without a problem.

So, we excitedly set off to Disneyland, arriving there about 35 minutes after we set out.

Entrance from the car

Well, this is where the fun and games began....
When we got to the gate, I was informed that I needed to have a paper copy of the ticket to be able to use it.  I was told to leave the children at the gate and then escorted to a little office inside.  Firstly, my iphone would not connect to their printer.  Then I tried to gain access to my Bigpond email account.  For some reason, my password would not work. I tried my entire repetoire of passwords with nil success except to find myself locked out of my account.  I then proceeded to the chat area of the bigpond website to request my password to be reset.  I conversed with someone (perhaps in Australia) and they informed me that they could not give me my password on the chat area but it had to be text messaged to me.  I gave them the phone number of the lovely disneyland lady who was doing everything to assist me.  However, our beloved major telecommunications company of Australia was unable to send the text to an international phone number.  I then, in desperation, got them to text it to my friend Steve back at home.  Unfortunately, when I went to phone Steve, his phone was switched off or out of service, so that was a dead end.  I tried to log on to the chat area again to have them resend the password to my parents, who by then I had contacted (on the Disneyland lady's personal mobile phone), but after 10 minutes, I still had not been connected to anyone and abandoned this avenue.
Well, by this stage, I went back out to the kids to let them know what was going on.  Pretty soon, it became obvious that it was all too hard and I really needed to get this sorted immediately.  I decided that the kids had waited for long enough so I would pay the entrance again.  However, we decided to just get the one park ticket and our helpful lady arranged for a special price for us.  (Original tickets for two parks cost $A219 and we paid the second time 90 Euro and I also gave the lady 10 euro for the use of her phone.  The kids by this time were pretty demoralised and quite frankly were asking to go home.  However, I overruled and to sweeten the deal, our helpful lady, Ameli, gave us a special pass to skip the queue for the best ride at Eurodisney, Space Mountain!

The fun finally began!!!! We proceeded to the exit of the ride and, skipping a line that was probably at least and hour and a half long, we got to choose where we sat (Pheonix chose the front of the coaster, of course, with me in the seat next to him and Sequoia rode right behind).  All I can say is WOW.  The ride immediately thrusts you up to the top of the building and then after a very pregnant pause, flew you around with 'outer space' spinning around you through the loop-the-loops and the corkscrews.  It was absolutely amazing!!!! 

We then headed off to explore the rest of the park...

In the whole debacle of the dropped GPS, Pheonix left his coat in the room at the house, so had to spend the day looking like a spaceman in my oversized coat that fortunately had been left in the car

Due to the sheer volume of people at the park that day, and the previous day's hours spent waiting in line, we saw only a few of the rides and attractions, but we all really enjoyed the Alice in Wonderland Curious Labrynth...

After some lunch and a wander, next stop was the train...

We continued to wander and look at some of the exhibits and then watched the parade, which Pheonix particularly enjoyed.  Being so close to Christmas, there were carols playing in the background and bubbles that fell like snowflakes throughout main street....
There were beautiful lights throughout the grounds.

It really was quite a beautiful and magical day, despite the crowds and debacles....

We set off home in all confidence, as we had found our way there with surprising ease.  Unfortunately, when we were very close to home, we somehow took a wrong turn and then proceeded to get more and more lost... without our beloved GPS in hand, we had no way of knowing where we were or where we were going....

Before too long, we really were hopelessly lost and I knew we really were in big trouble when we found ourselves outside the Moulin Rouge (close your eyes, kiddies!!!!)... I was quite terrified that we were going to find ourselves on that 8 lane roundabout around the Arc de Triomphe and I would spend the rest of my natural life going around and around and around, never to be heard of again.....

My mobile phone had not been in service all day, even though I had topped up the credit on the roaming sim the night before.  After driving around forever, I stopped and turned my phone on and off a few times, and as a last minute reprieve, I got signal and was able to call Leila to let her know that we were lost.  I then was able to bring up a map on my phone (data download) and with Sequoia navigating, after perhaps an hour literally creeping along in peak hour Paris traffic (it took us 10 light changes to get through one set of traffic lights and we even witnessed a slow-speed low-impact bingle between a bus and a taxi), we finally found our way home.

It took us 4 hours to get there!!!!!

I almost cried when we trumped up the stairs at our homestay and bless Leila's heart, she stayed up waiting for us and served us our meal at the crazy hour of 10.30 pm.

I really miss George :-(

Paris is a beautiful city, and I am glad that we got to see so much of it, but that was definitely not the best way to visit Disneyland, I'm sure.  Well, it is what it is, and the kids and I really did have fun, so we will just put it all down to part of our adventure!!! :-)