Day 3 of Julie's Amazing Whirlwind 11 Day European Vacation

Our third day of the trip was definitely more satisfying than the first two days. We got to Frankfurt an hour late and our luggage did not make it, but I got a stamp in my passport and we were finally on German ground. Tami was there waiting for us, we filed a report regarding our luggage and we were on our way. Our first stop was the LDS temple in right outside of Frankfurt. It was small and nestled in this little historic neighborhood. The statue of Moroni which you generally see on top of the temple was on top of a monument in the middle of the courtyard.

After we were done walking around the temple we got back in the car and headed to the Germany city Trier. It was about 2 hours away. Trier is Germany's oldest city. It is a historic city in west central Germany, just six miles from the Luxembourg border and 120 miles SW of Frankfurt.

In Trier is a city gate called Porta Nigra. Porta Nigra is the oldest defensive structure in Germany, the Porta Nigra was built in about 180 AD when the city was surrounded by walls. The Porta Nigra is the only one of four Roman gates that still stands in Trier. It was given its name (which means "black gate") in the Middle Ages because of its weathered color. .

A little blurry picture of Emily and I storming the gate.

When we got to the city it was just amazing. I had to take a picture of the church that was right next to where we parked. Everything seemed to be wonderful and picture worthy.

The other really cool thing was that since it was right before Christmas, the Christmas market was in full swing. There were so many decorations and lights that you didn't even know where to look first. The phrase Frohes Fest in the second picture means Christmas Fest.

We stopped at this street vendor and watched as he made magnificent sculptures out of wire. They were incredible.

I am not really sure what this really cool pink building was, but I loved it. It made me feel like I was in a Jane Austin novel. The grounds were beautiful even though it was cold and snowy. There was a reflecting pool and lots of statues that lined the walkways.

The other really cool thing in the city (and a lot of the other cities) was the cathedral there. This13th- parish church was one of the first churches built Germany . It stands right next door to the cathedral.

This is how we were feeling while we were there on our first sightseeing adventure.

We unfortunately did not have time to go the extra six miles to Luxembourg. After we were "done" in Trier we headed back to Tami's house. Tami then took us to a wonderful little restaurant called HunchenHausen. It was soooo good. The pictures of me reflect the fact that I hadn't slept or changed clothes in days. The meal was fabulous. I got Chicken Cordon Bleu which I thought I had eaten before. Apparently I had been eating an impostor version. What a great meal. I learned that you eat as soon as your food comes without waiting for everyone to receive their meal. I also learned that the drinks do not come with ice and they don't automatically bring water to the table. You have to ask for water and if you don't want to be charged for it then you have to specify that you don't want it bottled. (Fleicshings Wasser) Also --the best part--once you sit down that is your table for the rest of the night. There is no pressure to leave at any time. You just have to signal to the waiter that you are ready for the rechnung.

We were completely exhausted and I was beginning to fall asleep at the table. It was a wonderful start to a completely wonderful adventure.

Thanks Tami!!!

Day 2 of Julie's Amazing Whirlwind 11 day European Vacation

So are we having fun yet? I was able to sleep a lot on the flight to London. The plane was dark and quiet so that helped. When we landed in London it was 3 pm. We had missed our connection to Frankfurt so we headed (with all the other hoards of people) to the flight connections desk to rebook our flight.

The London airport is the craziest place I have ever been. The entire thing is made out of glass. You can see the insides of all the elevators and walls. So we went down and down and down and down the escalators and then got on a train. Then we went up and then down some more escalators (all the while not seeing a single shop or information desk)

When we finally came out to the area where we needed to be we looked over at a line that was at least 100 people long. We got in line and soon realized that we were going to be there for hours.

After about 40 minutes the airline started sending around employees with trays of snacks and water bottles. I guess hoping to appease the angry masses. Then we see one ray of sunshine. They were also having people walk the outside of the line (that snaked around like the line at an amusement park) and they were rebooking flights using a cell phone. Emily and I were still at the back of the line on the outside edge and we were one of the people with the golden ticket because they chose to pull us out of line and rebook our flight. The only problem was that there were no flights out that day so we were stuck here for the night.

We were told that we could get our suitcases and a voucher for a hotel and leave the airport. I guess the good news was that I was going to get an unexpected stamp in my passport.

We headed over to the customs and border patrol area (after waiting in another line to get our new boarding passes for our flight the next morning) We filled out the declarations form and got in line (do you sense a theme) to go through border control. Now off to find our luggage.

Our luggage was nowhere to be found and to make a long story of again waiting in line and waiting some more I will just tell you that our bags somehow got sent to storage so we just left them there to be put on our new flight the next morning. Now armed with a hygiene kit we headed to get our voucher for the hotel.

You would think that they would have this kind of stuff down to a science by now. It wasn't like we were on the first flight ever to be delayed. Well apparently we were part of a reinventing the wheel experiment because it took us 3 hours standing in line for them to print a voucher (taking all of 30 seconds) and send us on our way. I have no idea what everyone else was doing before us. Again saving some time and skipping over the waiting in line to catch the shuttle and waiting in line to check in the hotel. I will skip to the part where we finally eat (first time since raviolis at 4:30am) at the hotel restaurant. We were barely able to do this because it was now 10:50pm (yes it took us 7 and 1/2 hours to get out of that airport) and the restaurant closed at 11pm. Then up to our room take a shower change into the big white tee shirt provided in our hygiene kit and fall into bed in order to get up by 3:45am to catch the shuttle back to the airport and start all over again tomorrow.

Are you tired yet?

The First Day Of Julie"s Amazing Whirlwind 11 day European Vacation

Day 1--My adventure begins on December 20th. Emily had driven in the night before in order to spend Christmas with the kids and so that Steve could drive us to the airport. In the morning we got up and had Christmas morning. Santa is a pretty smart guy and knew that I was not going to be home on Christmas Day so he came early.

We woke up to a white Christmas because we had about 18 inches of snow fall the day before. This was a little bit worrisome because we were supposed to fly out that night, but since they had the airport completely open we figured that we should be ok. We had a great morning knowing that since church was cancelled due to the snow we didn't have any obligations until I left for the airport that evening. We opened gifts and had our traditional big Christmas breakfast/brunch and then headed out to play in the snow.

After playing in the snow I had to bite the bullet and finish packing. I had really put things off because I hate to decide what I am going to want to wear a week from now when I can hardly decide what I want to wear that morning. I checked the status of our flight and found out that we were delayed an hour. Not a big deal because we had a 4 hour layover in London so we would still be fine to catch our connecting flight into Frankfurt. ( can you sense some foreshadowing) We got to the airport several hours early and were able to check in just fine. The problem came when the person who checked our baggage told us to go to gate D23, the board in the airport said to go B44 and our boarding pass said D38. Now we had to find someone to ask where in the world we were really supposed to go. Of course there was no one to be found. We spoke with several other people that we had seen in line and finally decided that we would head to D38 since that was the most official. When we got there there were other people waiting for our same flight so we decided (nervously) to stay. There were still no airline employees to be found. Our flight was originally scheduled to depart at 10pm with an hour delay at 11pm. At 11:15 we decided that since nobody had come to board us and we were still in the airport we were going to have longer than an hour delay. (NOW WE ARE TECHNICALLY INTO DAY 2) At about 12:30am the flight crew showed up and they started boarding at 1:15am. (Apparently they were waiting at gate B44) Once we were finally on the airplane the pilot came on and said that we would be another 45 minutes until all of our baggage was on board. After about 40 minutes he came back on and said that two people had decided not to fly and they now had to get the baggage off the airplane so they could get their bags. It is a good thing that nobody could see who it was that was leaving the flight or their lives were certainly going to be at risk. At 3:00am we finally taxied and took off. We were now officially going to miss our connection. We did have some delicious Raviolis for dinner at 4:30 in the morning.