Pumpkin Picking and Schloss Prunn

What is the fall without a trip to a pumpkin patch to pick out a pumpkin?

We are luckily that in our church area there is a man who is American, but has been living in Germany for 20 years.  He decided a few years ago that there were enough American's in the area, that starting a pumpkin patch would be profitable.  We are terribly grateful to Brother Grosser, because of him we are still able to go and pick pumpkins for carving, even in an area that doesn't officially celebrate Halloween.

 One of our friends we knew in California was staying with us for a visit...so we brought her along.

 Hunter found his pumpkin right away, when we first got there.  It is small, but a long shape, cute and perfect for a Hunter boy.  He carried it around the whole field, and even after we put it in the wheel barrow; he would check it, point to it and say "That's mine".

Complete ownership.

 Jack never really decided on one.  He kept throwing them like balls.  Luckily, none broke, but we took one home that I am sure he bruised up a bit.

 It was a success...10 kids later and 10 pumpkins found (we had other friends we know in Germany with us too), and we are now off to the next part of our day!

 I couldn't resist.  

Cora looks so cute all bundled up in the scarf and hat Aunt Trudy and Grandma O. made for her.

Nice and cozy!

 Schloss Prunn

 Schloss Prunn sits on a cliff above the Danube.

It is very picturesque, especially if you can get a picture of it from the river side.

 Here is the "draw bridge" over the "moat" to get in the castle.  Look at the picture above and you can see it is quite a drop.  You can imagine the state of my heart when I look over and see Jack (there in the gray pullover) walking along on those uneven boards outside of the fence barrier.  Freaked me out!  Luckily, Matt got to him quickly and pulled him back over to safety.  From then on, we had a hand on that boy...he had no freedom.

This was a very cool castle to visit.  We did a tour inside, but it was incredibly low light, which my camera does not do well in.  So no pictures turned out.  But the kids got to see several rooms, the pedigree of the Prunn's (one of the first Prunn men had two wives and 32 offspring...there are a lot of Prunn's in Germany), the Chimney, the huge fireplace where cooking takes place (I think we fit all 10 children in...you can see where the tale of Hansel and Grettle comes from), and they got to try on some Knight's Armor.  It was a fun Fall Day!

Oktoberfest

This is our last fall in Germany, we think, and you can't live in Germany without attending an Oktoberfest at least once right?  Well, that is what we thought anyway.  Now I admit, it probably wasn't as much fun for us because we don't drink alcohol   but we had heard it was a fun place to visit with the kids...

I don't think that was completely accurate.

However, we went, stayed for about an hour and then left.

Too many severely drunk people tripping over my huge stroller for my liking.

 The girls learned about Oktoberfest in their host nation class at school.

This is the world's largest fair celebrating this countries beverage of choice...beer.

We did find some tasty nurnberger wurst and the girls have always wanted these gingerbread hearts that "sweethearts" give to each other during the fest.

Matt bought each of the girls one.  

 One of the many beer tents at the fair grounds.

These are three stories, with three floors, and you need a reservation weeks, maybe even months in advance to even get a seat inside one.

We stayed outside.

 There are tons of fair rides, that are practically amusement park rides.  I am talking roller coasters that go upside down, and mouse-trap type coasters, huge ferris wheels...you name it!

People turn out in the best bavarian attire also.  Which means Drindle for the ladies and Liederhosen for the men.

We went on some rides, at some food, and then left.

Oktoberfest...done!

The Boys Birthday!

*side note*

This fall marks 4 years since I started this blog, which means I am very close to capacity.  I know it's because I post too many pictures, but that's what everyone wants to see anyway right?  I also have a huge problem picking the ones I want to post...so I always err on the side of too many.  Anyway, this is just a warning that my blog site address may change soon, so be looking for the warning :)

Back to the Boys Birthday!!

I can't believe they are 3, they were so excited.  We like to make a big deal out of birthday's here, and treat it like Christmas.  The night before a birthday, the birthday fairy (not really...but sounded good!) comes, and decorates and leaves out all the birthday gifts on the table.

When the boys saw this they loved it, and somehow they knew it was their "irtday"as they called it all day!

"it's a irtday, yay!"

 They were big helpers with making their cakes!

Which turned out wonderfully yummy.

You just can't go wrong with peanutbutter and chocolate!

 The crazy gift unwrapping.

Matt and I gave them "strider" bikes.  Bikes without peddles, so you learn to balance and push with your feet.  They aren't quite coordinated for them yet, but they are getting there.

soooo....

 Some of their favorite gifts were their guitars, which they call "arr, arr's"

Thanks Uncle Quinn and Aunt Nicole!!

and.....

Their new super hero capes!

Thanks Aunt Trudy (and soon to be Uncle Oz).

Aunt Trudy still found the time to sew these bad boys capes, even in the middle of planning a wedding. She sure loves you two!

They had a great day, blew out their candles this year instead of spitting on them, and really enjoyed having the day be all about them.

and.they.knew.it.too!

The Crown Jewel: ATHENS

The crown jewel of our trip...and the main reason we wanted to come to Greece is ATHENS.  

We were very worried about making this port.  With all the unrest and strikes, you never know if your ship will be able to dock or not.  We even had some friends that got redirected to Turkey because of a strike in Athens, so they didn't even make it that trip and had to come again.  Luckily for them, their second trip the strike occurred the day after their ship docked.  So they saw Athens that time.  So, I was very nervous, we didn't have time for a second trip to Greece, it had to be now!  Luckily the Cruise magic was working and Athens was as calm as can be.  We docked in Piraeus and then headed 6 miles to Athens.  Lots of people pay for the excursions.  Matt and I felt comfortable enough, after a year of traveling through Europe under our belts, to just do it on our own.  We walked to the metro stop (which is a very long walk from the Cruise concourse.  On the way back we discovered there is a bus that runs from the cruise concourses to the metro basically   Bus 843, and it is covered with your metro ticket.) and hoped on the metro to Athens.  From there it is just a walk up the hills to the ruins.  We entered the back way at the gate for the Theater of Dionysos.  There was no line at all, we paid and walked right in. Later, as we got to the main entrance for the Acropolis, the line was huge to get in.  They should have gone in the back way...and skipped all the lines! 

Here the girls are.  Sitting on the ancient Greek ruin of the Theater Dionysos.

It was need to see seating carved out of stone, with backs and everything!

Some say this is where Greek theater was born...whose to say if that is accurate though.

The second amphitheater you pass is the famous is the Odeum of Herodes Atticus.

I think I spelled that right?!  

This theater (unlike the one previous  is still in use today for concerts and events.  In fact, this is the theater where Yanni performed his "live at the Acropolis" concert.  That is one of our favorite C.D.'s as a family, so it was fun to see where it was performed.  Luciano Pavortti, performed here as well!

Here is the front of the Theater.  What you would see as you entered if you were coming here for a concert or something.  It would be a mighty majestic setting for a concert, that is for sure!

Now we face the mad crush of people as we head up the steps leading to the Acropolis...

But first we will take in the view.

Below is the Temple of Hephaestus.  This is located in the Ancient Angora regions of Athens.  One of the places where the Prophet Paul walked and preached.

 At last!

What we came to Athen's to see!

The Parthenon and Acropolis (which is the whole area)

There were cranes and workers everywhere.

I guess they are always working to keep the structure in tact and sound so people can keep on visiting

 Poor Jack, doing the head flop.

He wanted to nap so bad!

 Erechtheion

Amazing!

 Parthenon

Amazing Again!

 Cora likes to practice "balancing" on anything she can find.

 Figuring out what's next, among all these ancient treasures.

 We decided to walk back down the hill, paid for super expensive frozen lemonades!  Made a quick stop inside the Museum of the Acropolis, and then walked the tourist street and bought some souvenirs   All this led us to HERE.  

The Arch of Hadrian.

This guy has been all over.  We had already seen remnants of his reign in Rome, and England, and now we saw his Arch in Greece as he tried to combine the two great, ancient, empires.

 The Temple of Olympian Zeus.

This place was massive, and it sits right in the middle of this deserted field with a view of the Acropolis behind it.  Seeing all these grand architectural feats is truly inspiring!

After partaking of Ancient ruin greatness, we headed back up through the tourist section.  Grabbed some fabulous (and I.mean.fabulous!) Greek food to go, and headed back to the metro.  After arriving back in Piraeus  we got smart and asked around.  Found out about Bus 843 and saved our feet another mile walk back to our Cruise ship.

It was a truly amazing day, of a truly amazing Cruise.  

We loved how worry free it was, the built in relax time and all the fun places we were able to see!

Montenegro

Kotor, Montenegro

This was our last stop of the cruise, before arriving to our disembarkation port of Venice.

I thought it was kind of a different port to stop in.  Montenegro is an off-shoot country like Kosovo and Croatia, so it is fairly new to it's own independence next to other countries in Europe.  We went quite a ways inland, up this very narrow, very deep Fjord.  That part was very majestic.  I was planning on paying a taxi to take us to one of the world famous beaches...but when we got there the plan kind of started to change.

 Kotor is this really cool, medieval city, complete with an intact city wall, many medieval market squares or plazas, and a fortress up on top of the side of the mountain.  You can kind of see the outline of it on the top of the ridge behind this little church.

Here is a portion of the city wall...it goes around the city, and then up the mountain side enclosing the fortress that sits above the city.

 I thought Matt should open up a law office here too...give this guy some competition :)

 So remember that fortress up the side of the mountain.  Well, Matt thought it was so cool, and I guess it is one of the big things to do here in Kotor.  He wanted to hike up part way to the fortress, just to get part of the experience... so we started.

This church was probably half way, so Matt was like, we are almost there...let's not stop now. 

So we pressed on ward...keep in mind that I thought we were going to go to a beach.  So we are lugging two bags full of beach and snorkel gear with us!

 More stairs....

Matt in his element (with one of the beach bags...)

We finally made it to the top!

That was a lot of stairs to climb.  Probably 500 at least we thought!

 The Venetians had conquered and ruled Kotor for a time, back in ancient times.

Look above Hannah, past all the graffiti and you can see a venetian lion...the symbol of Venice.

 This was taken from the cruise boat.  You can see St.John's fortress on the top of the front ridge if you look close.  At the right there is a prominent round ridge, then look directly left of that.  Then if you follow the line down, it looks like a shadow, but is actually the old city wall leading from the fortress down to surround the port city.

Here is a closer picture of the fortress, there up on the ridge above the old city wall.

We later googled it, and the climb was NOT 500 steps like I was thinking.  It was over 1300 steps ONE WAY!  We traversed over 2600 stairway steps that day.  

No wonder we were tired, and no wonder we had no time left to find a nice beach.

We lugged those two beach bags around for no reason...

 ...well almost no reason.

We still couldn't resist a small dip in the fjord.  We heard that water is very warm, and it was...just like bath water.

The girls found some crabs crawling around that they enjoyed following for an hour or so.

It was a very unique place to visit, and not one we would have seen if our ship hadn't stopped here.  I am still amazed that we all made that climb with minimal complaints, and minimal soreness.  

Our kids are troopers!

Santorini, Greece

All my life, well ok, really since I worked as a Travel agent in 1999, I have wanted to go to Santorini.

My co-workers traveled all through the Greek islands and would regale us with stories of their adventures.  I decided then, that one day I would go to the greek Islands...specifically Santorini.  Santorini is said to be one of the islands that gave clout to the lost city of Atlantis theory.  It was one huge volcano and then the center just blew out one day.  Essentially destroying the island.  All that is left now is a narrow ring, or lip, outlining where the Island used to be.  The center of the crater, if you will, is now ocean.  But a new volcanic island is starting to peak up in the center.  We heard it was a great place for snorkeling, but that is not what we came for.  We came to see Oia (ee-haw).  The postcard of Greece with it's classic white buildings and blue domed churches.

Amazingly, people have been able to eek out a living on this rustic, ancient ring of a volcano.  The towns are all built on the tops of the cliffs, many times down the sides as well.  Nothing is flat, so it is a hike to get anywhere.  We started out in Fira...to get there we could ride the Donkey's up (having a child deathly afraid of riding a horse...we thought that would be a bad idea, especially with cliff like drop-offs on one side), hike 587 steps up, or ride the cable car.  we opted for the cable car.  You can catch a glimpse of Fira outside the window of the cable car we rode up in.  Think ski lift, but x5.

Once in Fira, we were still about 30 minutes from my goal destination of Oia.  We needed to catch a bus to ride to the other side of the island.  This sounded simple, but we fought hard to get on that bus.  I have never been inside a mosh pit, but this is what I think it would be like.  Or that one Christmas when  "tickle me elmo" was huge, and all those people would shove their way into stores at opening to get one.  About a hundred people, trying to shove their way onto one tiny bus...Crazy.  At some point I got on with a few of the kids, but Matt and the rest had gotten separated from me by the crowd.  The bus driver was like "no more, we are full".  Matt pretty much told them that the rest of his family was on that bus, and we (the ones on the bus) didn't have any money to pay, he had it.  So the bus driver kindly let the rest of my family on the bus.

Above is me, finally on the street in Oia...so excited.

We got there in time for the famous sunset.

It was so fun to walk around in this town.  So unlike anything I have ever seen before.  All we did is walk around, watch the sunset, shop, and eat nuts.

They had some amazing roasted pistachio nuts that were to die for.

 Classic Greece postcard

I loved my time in Santorini, and we have like a million more pictures which I will put up on my facebook page.  For now, these are just a taste of the coolness Santorini has to offer.
A funny story, we met this family on the cruise boat a couple of days later.  We kind of talked about different things we have done at the various stops.  Santorini, naturally came up, since it is one of the highlights of the cruise.  They said they went to Oia, like us, and asked how we went.  We told them we waited in the excruciatingly long cable car line, then fought for the bus, and ended up in Oia.  They said that down on the docks, they hopped on one of the speed boat tours they offer there.  Kids were free (which they were not for the cable car), so for not much more then we paid, they were jetted of to Oia's side of the island, bused to the top, and then brought back to the docks for the cruise.  Snap!  Live and learn I guess.  We would have saved so much time if we had checked out the speed boats and compared prices.  Next time right?!
It was still magical for me, and I am so thrilled we got to go!