Grüße aus...Versaille

Our second day in Paris, Susan and Andrew climbed up to the top of Notre Dame, while I took a train to the Paris suburb of Versaille to visit the 17th century estate of Versaille!



I didn't know much about Versaille before going there other than it was big and beautiful and the home of French royalty. I learned that it was very big, VERY beautiful, and the home of French royalty, aristocracy and anyone that had influence with the king.



The palace of Versaille was originally built as a hunting lodge for King Louis XIII with the Louvre in the heart of Paris as his primary residence. Then Louis XIV decided to make the "lodge" his primary residence to get away from Paris then enlarged the palace, inviting all French aristocracy to reside there as well. It was his way of keeping an eye on his court!







But there were other parts of the estate beside the palace. It seems that the king needed yet another "get-away" cottage from his "get-away" lodge and so Louis XIV built the Grand Trianon.





But Louis XV felt like he needed yet another retreat from his retreat so he built the Petit Trianon. This was eventually given to Marie-Antoinette as her personal residence. She created a beautiful English garden (it's natural beauty is very different from the pristine organization of the other French gardens in the estate) and also a rustic hamlet which is absolutely charming!







I loved everything about Versaille...every room was stunning, the Hall of Mirrors was as impressive as it was designed to be, the gardens were inspiring, and Marie Antoinette's estate (the Petit Trianon and the hamlet) were completely charming. But I could certainly see why the French Revolution occurred! Versialle was like this other-worldly pocket of wealth and beauty and charm. Those living at Versaille didn't leave it much. Which meant it must have been a kind of gilded prison for them, too. Which might have been the reason for building one retreat after another, each one smaller and relatively simpler than the last, culminating in Marie-Antoinette's country hamlet. The hamlet is very romantic view of the simple life showing that they must have had a very warped view of the realities of the common Frenchman.

But I wonder what they would think if they knew that today, us commoners can get a glimpse into their gilded lives and wander through their gardens and bedrooms for the mere price of a modest admission fee!

You'll want to see all my beautiful photos of Versailles found here.

Parisian Museums

When my sister and her husband were here to visit, we spent a couple of days in Paris. The really nice thing about going to Paris with Susan is that she speaks French very well. This meant that I could leave her and Andrew to wander Paris on their own and I could get a few more of the Must-See items checked off my Paris list!

So, while Susan and Andrew went off to eat lots of French food and fall in love with the Eiffel Tower, I visited a couple of amazing museums and a gorgeous chapel!

Cluny



The ancient Romans had three large bath houses in what is now Paris...the only one that has survived lies mostly ruined on the grounds of the Cluny. The Cluny was built at the end of the Middle Ages as a little castle in what was then the outskirts of Paris. It was eventually turned into a hotel and then a museum dedicated to medieval art and to show off the ancient Roman baths.



I loved all the wonderful tapestries (especially the absolutely stunning Unicorn series representing the five sense) and medieval stonework and the tiny vaulted chapel.



Sainte-Chapelle



Sainte-Chapelle is a chapel, a very large chapel, built by King Saint-Louis IX between 1242-1248 to house a piece of the crown of thorns he purchased while on a crusade in Jerusalem. The chapel is known as having some of the most magnificent stained-glass windows in the world. And they lived up to their reputation! Absolutely magnificent!!





L'Orangerie



L'Orangerie is a museum dedicated to early modern art. It isn't very big but it's collection of Picassos and Cezannes and other wonderful artists was choice! It's highlight is Monet's last masterwork: two galleries with panoramic Impressionistic waterlily paintings. The galleries create a wonderful sensation of stepping into the painting itself.





See a lot more photos of these Paris treasures here!

A Day at the Races

A couple of weeks ago, Karl and I spent a day at the races!

He got some tickets from a guy at work and so, on 20 October, we went to the town of Iffezheim near Baden-Baden to the horse race track. It was so much fun!!!

There were races all day...one about every 40 minutes. We figured out pretty fast how it all worked. After a race, the winners were walked through the crowd to the winners circle where they were cooled down and photos were taken and jockeys were interviewed. Then the crowd migrated to the lead ring (at least that's what it translates to from German) where the horses for the next race were walked so everyone could pick their favorites for the next race. Ten minutes before the race a bell rang and we all migrated back to the track.

We never made any bets, but we would pick our favorite for the race by picking our favorite horse name! Some of our favorites were Poseidon Adventure, Art Attack, Stay Another Day, Forces Sweetheart, World's Mission, Zinderella, and Action Impact.

Karl and I never figured out where our seats were. Mostly because we loved standing right on the track rail! Most of the races started on the other end of the track...but when the horses came speeding past us towards the finish line...what a rush!!




These horses were so powerful! They were so sleek and athletic looking and so excited to race! Before the race, when the jockeys rode them out onto the track toward the starting gates, you could see in their steps how excited they were to start the race. Sometimes one would start a mad dash to the starting gate and all the other horses got excited and started chasing after him. (It reminded Karl of a big excited dog!)




I've always had a thing for horses. I'm still smitten!

See all of our photos here!

Introducing...

So...earlier this year I discovered a neat online marketplace called Etsy. What's so fascinating about Etsy is that only handmade items are allowed to be sold there. And there are some amazing shops on Etsy!

So...I had an idea. And after many emails, a phone interview, some paperwork, and some fees, I got a new visa in my passport allowing me to open a little online business.

So...for the past month or two I've been working hard on getting my shop set up with some beautiful items (which is the big reason I've been missing in action from this blog!).

And now...I'm pleased to introduce...

baby anne quilts!



I'm having a little Grand Opening event in my shop on Thursday, November 8th: a virtual Open House! Come visit my shop anytime that day and check it out! Just click here! And send your friends to babyannequilts.etsy.com!

The Harwood Inn and Touring Company

We have had a very busy month. And that's the only excuse I can give you for not writing for so long. It has just been busy around here. I'll let you know part of the reason we were so busy in this post, but my next post in the next few days will let you know the other exciting reason I've been so busy.

We had a lot of visitors here!

At the end of September, between Setember 22-29, some friends of ours came to visit. Karl got his graphic design degree with Nate. They got back in touch with each other recently, and he and his wife, Janell, came out from St. George, Utah to visit us! We had a lot of fun with them and did so much, including spending two days in Paris! Here are a few of the highlights:

A night at the Paris Opera House! We attended a performance of "Wuthering Heights" by the Paris Opera Ballet. And sat in the most uncomfortable chairs imaginable! The back of the chair only hit the small of my back. My toes couldn't touch the floor. My knees jabbed the lady in front of me, my back was being jabbed by the person behind me, and I was rubbing shoulders with Nate and Karl. Tip: When attending a performance at the Paris Opera, don't sit in the cheap seats! But the performance was gorgeous and amazing!!

Hanging out at the top of Notre Dame! We actually got stuck up there for quite a while. Because the staircase going up the tower is so narrow, it's only one way: either people are being let up or down. They let some people up the top for a while, and then they let people down. We were up there for a quite a while as more and more people kept coming up until we ran out of room! We kept getting scrunched up tighter, while the French employee kept yelling "Andvance!! Andvance!!" Eventually we got let back down!

Karl took Nate and Janell to Burg Eltz one rainy day. They loved the castle. They hated all the rain.

We wandered the cute little German town of Gengenbach.

And we did so much more! All of our photos (click here) show a lot more of our adventures!

Just a week after Nate and Janell left us, my sister, Susan, and her husband, Andrew, came to visit. They were here October 5-13 and we had a ton of fun with them, too, including spending another two days in Paris! Here are the highlights:

We explored the Heidelberg castle.


Susan and Andrew and I had lunch in the Luxembourg Gardens of Paris while gazing on the top of the Eiffel Tower.


We explored the beautiful town of Speyer.


We visited Burg Eltz and then explored Burg Thurant.


We hung out in Baden-Baden.

I've got lots more photos of our fun times (click here).

It was so much fun, as always, to show off our amazing home to friends and family. Remember, we are always open for visitors!

Zwetschgenfest! (And other fun things!)

Our town became blue this month!

Bühl has a huge festival every September called the Zwetschgenfest or Zwetschgen Festival. What's a Zwetschgen? It's a plum. Or rather a type of plum. (Bühlers don't like you calling their Zwetschgen plums.) These plums...I mean Zwetschgen...were a major industry for Bühl for centuries.



We visited the festival on September 7th where there were tons of carnival rides, food tents, the 2007 Zwetschgen Queen, and, of course, a lot of Zwetschgen.



The following week we were invited to pick Zwetschgen with some friends. We plucked ripe plums then make a tart with them. We were a fun group of Americans, Germans, Czechs, and Norwegians. It was a lot of fun!



Our neighbors also showed us where there were some Zwetschgen in our little village that we could pick. I don't think I've hardly eaten two plums in my entire life, but this past month has been filled with them!

Karl's company had another Stammtisch for their foreign employees on September 20th. We visited a local farm where, among other things, they harvested Zwetschgen! We also saw them make huge vats of sauerkraut, visited their pigs and cattle, and walked through their beautiful fields of corn, beehives, and fruit trees. We ended the walk in their little store where we ate a yummy dinner of cheeses and cold meats.



Nearby Baden-Baden had their own festival, too. On September 8th we visited their Medieval Festival. It had nothing to do with plums or Zwetschgen, but it was still fun.



All of our photos can be seen here.

Finally...a room with a view!

When Karl and I lived in Salt Lake, the view out our bedroom window was a brick wall. No really, there was a brick wall not two feet outside our window. (We nicknamed our bedroom "the cave" because we never got any natural light in there.)

When we lived in Michigan, the view out our bedroom window was a courtyard in our apartment complex. But our window was at ground level and anyone in the courtyard, or looking out a window across the courtyard, could see right in. So our blinds were closed a lot. Plus, our neighbors liked to hold their arguments out there (instead of in the privacy of their own apartment) so there was sometimes a lot of yelling and cursing outside our window.

But now...finally...

Just one reason why we love living in the Black Forest...

A couple of weekends ago (August 10-12) we had some friends from the Berlin area come visit us. Karl knew Andreas when he was a missionary in Berlin and he and his wonderful wife, Jeanine, came to visit us for the weekend. It's nice to have some friends who were once so far away, suddenly so much closer!



We had a wonderful time hanging out with them all weekend, but our favorite was taking them to one our new favorite things to do around here.

Some American friends of ours told us about this wonderful restaurant in the Black Forest. We drive through the forest a bit and then park at a certain place. Then we walk on a forest path alongside a forest stream surrounded by rounded, moss-covered rocks and tall green trees.







Eventully, we pass by a waterfull and then, a short time later, a biergarten comes into view. You can either keep going down the path, or stop and have some yummy German food (which is what we always do)!



As we eat we enjoy the view of the trees and the field of cows that opens up in front of the biergarten.



After eating, we head back down the beautiful path.

Grüße aus...London!

Karl and I spent a weekend (Friday July 20 - Monday July 23) in London! It was one of the cities we wanted to be sure and visit while we were here and when it was announced several months ago that the last Harry Potter book would be released July 21st, we thought that would be a good weekend to see London!

While we were there we experienced all the things that make London...well, London: the art, the tea houses, the Beatles, Shakespeare...

So, here's our very English weekend in London!!

London is...Art

Of course we visited several art museums...I mean I planned this trip after all. I had seen a lot of London 5 years ago when I spent three weeks at an Art History Summer School program at the University of Cambridge, so there were actually only a few of the big museums I hadn't had a chance yet to visit.

On our first day in London, I took Karl through a quick tour of the National Gallery in it's last hour and a half before closing. This is an amazing collection of the best of the best and I loved seeing it again. After closing we walked around the corner to the National Portrait Gallery which I had never visited before. We had a couple of hours to explore this wonderful museum of British portraits. We saw everyone from King Henry VIII and his wives to the Brontë sisters to Princess Diana to Ricky Gervais.

On our last day in London we visited the great British Museum. I most wanted to see the Elgin Marbles...these are the statuary and friezes from the Parthenon in Athens, taken by the British Lord Elgin 200 years ago. They were stunning! And the rest of the museum was pretty amazing, too.

London is...Cambridge

My study abroad at the University of Cambridge just outside of London was one of my best months ever. I completely fell in love with the little college town of Cambridge and its nearly ancient university! I've been dying to take Karl there ever since. So on Saturday Karl and I took a train up to Cambridge.

We walked around the old city center and explored a few of the beautiful colleges and then I took Karl to one of my favorite places in the world: the Orchard. We walked along a 2 mile path known as the Grantchester Grind to the little village of Grantchester where we wandered between some trees into the most wonderful tea house. The Orchard is just that, an orchard, where, in 1897, some Cambridge students asked to be served some tea. The little tea house is still a sprawling yard of fruit trees and lawn chairs.

This little, simple tea house has had an interesting history and has served some of the university's best known students. It even housed the great British poet Rupert Brooke who would punt (boat) up and down the Cam river between Grantchester and the university and drink tea in the orchard with his friends including Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and other greats.

Karl and I ordered scones, lemonade and a light lunch and sat in the most comfortable green lawn chairs under a tree for a couple of hours, reading and dozing. Time stops and worries leave you and you feel you have entered into a place that defines what it is to be English in all it's wildness and civility!

London is...Harry Potter





On Friday night we went to Piccadilly to the largest bookstore in Europe to attend the Largest Potter Party in London! We adore the Harry Potter books, but we had never attended a midnight book release party. We decided this would be our last chance so we might as well do it right...or at least memorably. We arrived at the bookstore a little after 9 pm to find a line of Potter fans wrapping around the bookstore...we followed the line, enjoying the different costumes and having fun...and three blocks later, finally found the end of the line. After a bit of debate, we decided to get in it. As the hours ticked by we watched the line get longer and longer behind us, chatted with a girl back-packing Europe from Washington state beside us, got to know a Swedish father and son also in line with us, and were entertained by musicians and fellow party-goers. It was actually fun sitting on the sidewalk in the chilly night surrounded by kids, teenagers and nerds in wizards hats...no really, we had fun!

Finally at midnight, the line eventually started to creep forward. And creep. And creep. And at 2:30 am...we finally walked into the bookstore and got our books! And yes...it was worth it!

It was interesting to see reports of the party later...apparently there were about 2,000 people in attendance, and I guess those in the front part of the line had a lot more going on than those of us in the later 2/3 of the line. But that's ok...the people at the very front of the line had been there since Wednesday so they deserved a little extra something. But we still got a glimpse of a lot of creativity and fun as we wandered down the line! Here's a report of the party and another one.

Oh yes...and we visited Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross station!

(By the way...the book was WONDERFUL!!)

London is...Shakespeare





On Sunday afternoon, we attended a play at the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. This theatre is a reconstruction of the original Elizabethan playhouse that Shakespeare wrote and performed for standing very near where the original burned down. And the whole experience of attending a play here is also very much like it might have been 400 years ago! Karl and I bought the cheapest tickets...which I think are the best seats! If you can call them seats. Because the cheap seats have no seats...we stood on the ground in the courtyard in front of the stage where the poorest of theater goers would have stood in the 1600s, gaining the nick-name Groundlings. So Karl and I were Groundlings for a fun performance of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. We stood right next to the stage, leaning our arms on it. One of the fun parts of a performance at the Globe is that the actors include the audience a lot...especially the Groundlings since we are right there at thier feet (in fact, Karl and I got fed cheese from one of the actresses). The play was tons of fun!

London is...Beatles

(Album cover image from wikipedia.org.)

Of course, I had to make a Beatles pilgrimage in London! On Sunday morning, Karl and I took the tube to a very nice quiet neighborhood where a trickle of tourists can be seen aggravating motorists as they repeatedly walk across a crosswalk...yes, my friends, we saw Abbey Road Studios!

We read a lot of the Beatles graffiti on the wall in front of the studios and took turns walking across the famous crosswalk that John, Paul, George, and Ringo walked across almost 40 years ago. How cool is that!

London is...Texas??

Yes, apparently, Texas has its own little history in London. Just down the street from the National Gallery, Karl and I found a restaurant called the Texas Embassy. Since we rarely have the opportunity to eat Tex-Mex, we had to go. So, on Sunday evening we had a Texas dinner! It actually wasn't that good...but it was the best Tex-Mex we've have in Europe! While we were there, we learned that when Texas was a Republic, they actually did have an embassy in London! And it had been located just a few blocks away. So, after dinner, we walked up the street and found the original location of the Texas Embassy! Cool!

Our trip to London was a lot of fun! London had so much more to offer that we just couldn't get to in a weekend...maybe next time!

See all of our photos here!