The Rest of the Europe Trip

On the last two days of my trip, I hung out in Waterloo just doing random things...aka normal, everyday life for the Cripps.

Brady with his iPad - he loves Minecraft and You Tube videos showing how to build things in Minecraft - it is way over my head :)

Brady was excited about some chocolate eggs with prizes in them that Julie brought back to him from Austria (well, the airport in Vienna).

Reagan and Scott - you can't tell from this picture, but Reagan is Scott's mini me - she looks a lot like him.

Julie and Reagan petting the goats. We went to this park/zoo place and walked around there for a while with Reagan on Wednesday morning. It was a huge place, so we walked along what we thought was a path inside the park. Turns out we must have left the park property, because this guy came and closed a gate literally two minutes after we walked through it. So, we had to walk all the way around the property back to the car.

Playing with bubbles and dancing around to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

Reagan, Brady and Addi - prior to this trip, I had only ever seen Brady - Addi and Reagan were both born after my last visit to the Cripps in Toledo.

On Thursday I watched Reagan for a couple of hours - she really enjoyed her lunch :)

This is a picture looking out from their kitchen - I think they have a pretty amazing backyard.

Thanks Scott and Julie for letting me come to Europe to visit you. I had a great time and you know you are good friends with someone when you can hang out after 3 years have passed and still be able to have a good time and great conversation. Maybe I will be back to visit you in Europe before your rotation is over??? :)

A Day In Bruges

Julie and I arrived back in Brussels after our Vienna trip on Monday night. On Tuesday, Scott was working and Julie had some classes to attend. Scott and Julie suggested I either take the train to Antwerp or to Bruges. I knew people who had been to Bruges, and I had heard it referred to as the "Venice of the North" so that is where I decided to spend the day.

It was about an hour and a half train ride from Waterloo - Scott dropped me off at the train station on his way to work and I was in Bruges by about 10am. The main city is about a 15 minute walk from the train station, so there were a lot of people doing exactly what I was doing. Scott and Julie had a travel book on Bruges, and it had a section titled "A Day In Bruges" so I focused on those highlights.

I went to the Markt (Market Square) first. The city of Bruges has two town squares - the Market Square is the commercial center of Bruges.

As I was walking from the Market Square to Burg Square, I went into a little shop with that sold cuckoo clocks. These reminded me of my grandparents...many years ago when they travelled to Switzerland, they brought us back a cuckoo clock which my mom had in our house when I was younger. She actually just got it refurbished so it is "cuckooing" again. These are expensive things...anywhere between 500 and 1,000 euros!

The second town square is the Burg Square - this is where administrative Bruges exists.

Bruges has a medieval history...as is evidenced by all the architecture.

The canal district.

This is why it is known as the Venice of the North.

I stopped at a coffee shop along the canal and had a cappuccino.

Most of the coffee shops are actually called tea rooms.

This is Bruges most famous landmark, the Belfry.

I decided to climb up to the top - a total of 366 steps. This "wheel" is what causes the bells to ring. Every 15 minutes it starts turning in a circle, and the notches on the wheel are what signal the bells to move.

The carillon (musical instrument in a bell tower) in this belfry has 48 bells, ranging in size. Bruges still employs a full time carrilloneur who ensures the bells operate properly (which is every 15 minutes). The carrilloneur also gives concerts.

The Market Square from the top of the belfry.

I walked through a few more shops while I was on my way to find a lunch restaurant. The guy who was working in this shop gave me a few samples of these cookies.

My amazing lunch in Bruges. From my Bruges book, I was trying to find a place that was recommended in it (after my overseas travels, I have found it is best to go with a restaurant recommendation). I think the place I was looking for closed down, because I know I was in the right spot. However, I did find this place, Lunchboutique. It was located on a quiet street and I ate outside on the cobblestone road.

My train back to Brussels left at 3:30pm so after lunch started walking back to the train station. A great day wandering the streets of Bruges, and it is somewhere I would go back and stay a night since I didn't get to see it all.

VIENNA

On Saturday morning, Julie and I got up bright and early (or dark and early) as we had a car picking us up at 5:15am to take us to the airport for a 7:20am flight from Brussels to Vienna. Once we arrived in Vienna we took the CAT (City Airport Train) from the airport to the city center. When we were buying our CAT ticket, we were debating on whether or not to also purchase a 48-hour subway pass and fortunately someone else who was buying a ticket told us we should also purchase the subway pass. After arriving at the train station on the CAT, we jumped on the subway to our hotel. The hotel was not too far from the train station so it was easy to find.

We immediately headed to the Schonbrunn Palace which was within walking distance of our hotel.

It was a warm day - I think we both wished we had changed clothes.

The side view of the palace from the garden.

Playing around in the mirrors.

The maze - we were unsuccessful in getting to the center without taking the shortcut. We thought we had walked every path but once we got to to center we realized we missed a route.

Panoramic of the palace from the back.

There was a restaurant on the palace grounds so we decided just to eat there. We both ordered pumpkin soup which was amazing.

We then walked back to the hotel so we could shower and get ready for the opera. We were happy to see our luggage waiting for us at the hotel. When we arrived earlier in the day our room was not ready and the guy told us to just leave our luggage in the lobby.

Julie had bought tickets for the Wiener Staatsoper, aka the Vienna opera house.

Cheers!

Drinking a glass of wine before the opera started.

The view from our seats.

It was pretty amazing.

The cast of Manon, which is the show we saw. It was all in German, and initially I didn't realize every seat had their own personal translator screen if you needed it. Someone pointed it out to me after Act 1, and it made the rest of the show even better when you knew exactly what was going on.

The opera house at night.

Sunday morning we got up and had breakfast at the hotel. We took the train to the city center so we could figure out what we wanted to do for the day. Julie stopped to get some bread in the train station - lots of bread!

We then went to Stephansdom, or St. Stephen's Cathedral.

We took the train to go to the Freud Museum and as we were walking through that neighborhood we thought this sign was funny - Hollywood American Pizza. Because Hollywood is known for their pizza...

We ended up having pizza for lunch, but it was not Hollywood American pizza. We found a local restaurant instead, and there actually were locals eating there.

After lunch we headed to the Freud Museum, which I thought was very interesting.

I liked this quote - "If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death."

This was at the Danube River. We took the train from the Freud Museum a bit out of the way so we could see the river. When we got off the train, we saw a bike rental (like the bikes available in NYC, Denver, etc.). My credit card worked fine and I got a bike. Julie's cards however were not working - she tried both her Europe cards and her US cards. So, after probably a half hour of messing with the machine, I put my bike back and we walked the river rather than riding a bike.

After the river and a wrong turn on the subway, we made it back to the city center and walked through this park.

We had a nice dinner on a patio before going to the Hotel Sacher for the famous Sachertorte. Since neither of us were huge chocolate fans, we did the Sachertorte and a Viennese apple strudel.

We concluded that the desserts in Vienna were not our favorite. The Sachertorte was pretty dry (although I think Europeans eat drier cake than we do in the states) and the apple strudel was cold. I was thinking it would be more like warm apple pie.

The Hotel Sacher is across the street from the opera house, and they have a live stream broadcast outside of the opera house. We stopped to watch the end of that night's opera show.

Monday was our last day in Vienna. We got up early and headed out to go the Leopold Museum. The featured artist was Egon Schiele - this is his self portrait. As you can tell, his art was a little different.

It was a rainy and colder day in Vienna so we decided rather than dragging our luggage through the city and trying to find lunch we would head toward the airport and have lunch there before our 3pmish flight back to Brussels. Vienna is a city I would definitely return to, and I had a great weekend hanging out with Julie.

We talked about a trip to the wine region of France for next year..let's see if we can make that happen :)