Authentic summer Germany-exploring the Rhein River Valley - Fiefdoms,Dammen, Hemmen, and Food!

Not that we were starving on our due course south in Europe, but Germany symbolized our arrival to a higher order of gastronomic experiences in central and Southern Europe that are more commonly known to Americans-heavy sauces, bratens, wursts, and bierhauses. It also provided us with time to slow down our pace and feel authentic German river country.

Our train ride from Amsterdam to Kamp Bornhofen, Germany was lovely and hardly eventful but for the small oopsie when Ivan decided a run to the train's bistro kart 5 minutes prior to our arrival in Düsseldorf where we had an important connection to Koblenz. I should mention that train travel in general provides a very quick but effective lesson in various languages you have to understand well enough to know when to get on and off. It turns out Duisenburg is just a small suburban stop RIGHT before the train pulls into Düsseldorf, something not quite clear on our Eurail Rail Planner app which, by the way, is mostly spectacular for travelers!

As we imagined Ivan suddenly darting from the kart back to our train compartment to gather his belongings to get off, we stood at the open door to the platform contemplating our situation-Do we get off the train with Ivan's belongings with the hope that he jumped off the train?  Do we stay on assuming he knew he had to get his things first? With few exceptions, trains run VERY on time in Europe, and this was no exception. SO...we stayed on and waited for Ivan to storm through the train door from the kart, but instead found later that he had in fact jumped off the train with the hope we did the same.😅

We figured out our cell phones finally worked and coordinated a reunion back in Düsseldorf after the kids and I shared a fun mommy-kid ride to Koln (Cologne). 

Next we arrived in Koblenz, a fairly large city along the River Rhein and mixed with modern industrial office buildings right outside the station, it contains middle age cobble stoned streets now lined with everything from boutique shops to H&M. 

They are cute, but it was hot and we really just wanted beer. We found it at Altus Bierhaus which unfortunately didn't contain the expected amount of small town German authentic beers - maybe because Colorado is so good at small brews we expected it here. However, it did the trick and we got our first bite of schnitzel, wurst, and pommes frites - as big in Germany as it is at McDonalds.:)

Arriving at Kamp Bornhofen - Along the fiefdom dotted Rhein are beautiful medieval castles where all the little barons built all their little castles to charge all the little ships tariffs for passage (only later to battle it out and eventually lose to a more centralized shipping tax method). We were happy to stay in the highest castle on the Rhein-Castle Liebenstein-run by the current owners, Klaus and Anita, since 1995. Along with its neighboring Castle Sturrenburg, these castles preserve the medieval heritage important to Rhein country, right up to the costume for knights in shining armor and strange artistic renderings of the fallouts that must have occurred between the brother barons. 

Upon our arrival with few words Klaus brought us to our rooms in the castle turret, and left us there with no explanation. Not that we needed one, but we were suddenly thrown into imagining the castle in medieval times housing its fair maidens and men during sieges. I found early the next morning that my desire to walk around the castle trails outside its walls would not be realized as Klaus did in fact lock up all the doors and big iron gates to prevent passage outward. We were honest to god locked inside a castle! The operation is clearly authentic and not to be bothered with 5-star hotel service (not unlike most of Europe thus far where service is generally terrible compared to what we expect in America.) So, we learned not to expect too much and that allowed us to slow our pace to wait for checks, ask for water, and practice the native language (by now we've been exposed to Icelandic, Dutch, Belgic/Flemish, afremch and German.)

Along with some fabulous and very rich German food followed by beautifully served eis (ice cream) dishes, we enjoyed our time as a family "slowing down" (those who know me will appreciate this is a growing moment). We hiked the one mile steep trail down into Bornhofen, a trail laden with tributes to Jesus and ending at a beautiful Catholic Church. 

We stopped for a (large) bite to eat at the Garten restaurant served by a lovely old German lady and seated next to a German grandmother with her beautiful blue eyed little grandson. He was entertained largely by the two hungry American teenagers who, just by being themselves, made this kid laugh through most of lunch. 

We walked off our meal along the river trail where we skipped rocks toward the busy barge and tour boat-filled waters of the Rhein and found the godsend apothecary to treat Isabelle's unfortunate hornet sting that originated in Amsterdam and swelled to the size of a dinner plate by the time we arrived at the castle. 

Our experience was delightfully slow, a needed break during our tour. Rhein country is simply lovely to be in and look at, and the people are adorably authentic German. 

Next Stop: Bern, Switzerland!

Puzzles, Chocolate, and Locomotives

During our stay in Oslo, I felt that we needed to do something a little more physical than just walking around and going into every shop that Izzy found something appealing in. I expressed this opinion to my parents and they told me "find something then". This is when I stumbled upon "Sherlocked" the #1 escape room in Amsterdam. An escape room is an activity in which you are locked in a room, (usually very spacious) and are left to find clues and work as a team in order to escape the room. In "Sherlocked", you are locked in the office of H.P. Berlage; an architect in the Secret Society of the Crossed Keys. I'll refrain from spoiling the puzzles. I will say however, that if you don't work together, it is impossible to escape. We did not escape.

After we escaped via time limit, we hopped on a train to spend the day in Brussels, Belgium. As we walked through the busy street on our way to city center, my mom felt it necessary to stop in every chocolate shop to get sweets for the rest of the family in Italy. Eventually we made it through the minefield of cocoa and made it to the beautiful city center which contained two large castles, and many other buildings coated with golden decor. We decided to sit down and eat lunch at a French place where everybody seemed to be smoking. It made me consider that America wasn’t as bad off as some other people when it came to health.



After the train ride back to Amsterdam, we collapsed in our beds and had a good night of sleep. The next morning, we went to a breakfast place that served exclusively toast appropriately named “Toasted”, and I would definitely recommend it. After breakfast, we hopped on our bikes to spend the rest of the day exploring Vondelpark. We rode around a little bit, and then decided to set up a picnic. We made our way down to a grassy area and dumped out our bag of food. As we unpackaged all of the meat and cheeses, dogs of all shapes and sizes started to greet us. Izzy named one Mr. Schnitzel for obvious reasons. We finished up our day with a bike ride around the park 3 times, and collapsed in the beds.

From a teenager’s point of view, they were a great few days. Originally I had thought that Belgium would have been bland and boring, however, it turned out to be a nice experience with some good chocolate.

Busy Lively Lovely Amsterdam-A treat for eyes and spirit

-Ultimate inadvertent photobombing territory!-

This city just makes you feel good. There is life on every corner-in shops, bicyclists, mopeds, and people. 

The city doesn't seem to sleep. Our travels around Amsterdam are not over but thanks to our location in the Overtoomse Sluis neighborhood in West Amsterdam, we are spitting distance from amazing places to visit, wander, and observe the natives in their natural habitat. We are along a main tram line and within a ten minute bike ride of Amsterdam Centraal and a billion more places to spend time shopping, canal-hopping, or hanging out with a Heineken and people-watching along the Red Light District. Ok, we pretty much bolted through Amsterdam's famous sex-hued streets as the kids were only slightly entertained but mostly embarrassed that we'd even trek that direction with them in tow.:)

We opted on our second day to journey on foot so Izzy could spend time taking photos in Vondelpark and we could slow our pace after our exhilarating bike ride throug Amsterdam's Nine Streets and all the areas in between.

-Vondelpark-

 As far as biking in Amsterdam, it's not a matter of whether you are brave enough to fall into order--or chaos- with bike freeways that run alongside the many canals. You have to do it. When I asked Izzy what she thought of biking here, she smiled and laughed hysterically-it made both kids happy to ride through Amsterdam.

 It's the easiest way to get around the city. The bike rules and everyone knows it so the few drivers on the road go slowly and the scooters are trying to figure out whether they are bikes or vehicles. The chaos is acceptable in this city where multimodal transportation options are the norm-Denver is still learning and growing to be a terrific biking city. Bikeways are separated from pedestrian sidewalks and from the vehicles on busier straats then softly combined onto the smaller cobbled pathways that everyone shares. Once you are sitting atop your upright city cruiser (we have four of them graciously offered by our Air BB hosts as transportation) you start pedaling and immediate fall into the pleasantry of the simple journey through the cobbled neighborhood to the Overtoomse, the busy east-west street that bisects our quiet residential high density townhome neighborhood from Vondelpark. The park is a favorite place already, full of yoga-goers, bootcampers, pot smokers (no we don't need any of that since its legal in our state:)) and families often lying down staring into the partly cloudy skies or looking off into the many lakes and water sprays through high tree canopies that shape the park's multiple pathways.

-Father and Son-

We wandered though the park and right into a fascinating survey of Henri Matisse at the modern art Stedelijk Museum. While I would never fancy myself a lover of fine art or the stuffiness of wandering an art exhibit to grasp meaning in each piece, I've found the art exhibitions in Europe do a really lovely job of teaching viewers about the foundations of the artist's early works to the more mature pieces that become familiar in elementary art class education. 

Art class for the day: Matisse fell ill later in his career, preventing him from standing to paint on the canvas as much. Instead, he adapted cubism, pointillism, and fauvism forms to create his unique chosen forms of paper cutout art-the Matisse you might know with bright vivid colors, somewhat abstract shapes resulted from the work of his asistants who would paste up the cut forms and poise them at his directive to create works like Oceania. It was then Matisse's eye for brilliant original colors that finished the pieces to create happy, fun and accessible pieces that even made Andy Warhol exclaim he "wanted to be Matisse." While I know I enjoyed the exhibit more than my family, they never howled once and let me enjoy that moment-another victory in family vacation.

We continued to cruise via canal taxibus, another way to traverse Amsterdam along its beautiful flower lined canals. 

We hopped on and off following a cruise around the Eye where the Amstel River flows out to the sea and where architecturally speaking, Amsterdam turns into an entirely different landscape of modernist forms and water industry. 

-not sure who tried this first-Amsterdam or Oslo-

Amsterdam is really the most lovely city to explore in depth. There is so much to see! Tomorrow, it's off to Sherlocked!-an escape room adventure that will truly test our ability to function as a family of four-Weeeeee!!!! If we make it out alive, we will head out for a day trip to Belgium.:)

Our introduction to Amsterdam

The flight to Amsterdam was only 2.5 hours. We landed around 10:00 PM, which was still light enough to see from the air that the entire country seems to sit on the surface of the water, allowing the tides to enter deep into the city and return to the sea at will. We found our own entry an easy one as well, due to Deirdre's confident route finding on the public transit system. We arrived at the door of our AirBnB, lugging our packs, and feeling ready to grab a quick bite and sack out. Ten minutes later, we had finally figured out how to unlock the door and, in the process, had fully announced ourselves to the surrounding neighborhood as loud Americans of low IQ.

We spent another ten minutes figuring out the lights and the sleeping arrangements and depositing our stuff and then struck out in hopes, albeit dim, of finding food. To our surprise there was - wouldn't you know it - a pizza / Surinamese place still open around the corner. We happily ordered, only to find they couldn't process our card; something to do with a hoked up credit system in the Netherlands that can't handle anything foreign. The proprietor knew where we could find an ATM, but his description of the route in broken English was no better than the gyrations of a honey bee to us, so he offered to have his employee, who was probably his nephew as well, transport one of our party on the back of his mo-ped. I mounted up behind Akmed and off we went, bottoming out the suspension on every bump. He was an expert pilot and we were there in 5 minutes, back in 15 and eating our pizza's back home again by midnight. We all thought the whole episode was hilarious and a sure sign of more adventures to come. We hit the hay around 1:00 AM, and I don't remember the rest. 

Observations of the world's 4th wealthiest country and the heart of Oslo

Our time in Oslo was as busy as one could expect for the family of an urban planner.

Well deserved down time.:) the family that blogs together stays together...and I'm sure that's what they are all doing here...

We stayed Oslo's St. Hanshaugen neighborhood along Waldemar Thranes Gate,a street bookended by Norway's Kaffebrenniet (like Starbucks), an assortment of wonderful pastry shops and Deli Luca (like a 7-11 convenience store with fancier food and no gas station).




With many blocks of beautiful midrise density housing through the neighborhood to downtown, the neighborhood hosts a younger crowd and and can best be explained as Oslo's RINO (for Denverites).

We found there was so much to do between museums, outdoor sculpture parks and waterfront activity that we abandoned our plans to zoom out of Oslo and made it a study in City life. We saw a terrific exhibit at the Munch Museum comparing Munch and VanGogh-their paths never crossed but they were like twins from birth in their use of color and retreat from established forms.




We were also humbled by a visit to the Nobel Peace Center-on exhibit was Malala. Not only was I again sobered by her great bravery and young wisdom but torn inside to view on exhibit the outfit she was wearing when she was shot on the bus.

Observations on the street-

Traversing the city of Oslo on foot and via transit provides an even clearer picture of what we noticed to be a lack of social stratification in Oslo, an observation confirmed by our Air B&B host, a 38 year old Indian journalist and her Danish husband Esben. Mala explained that Norway is the 4th richest country in the world-this promise has brought a multicultural infusion of people, business, and youth seeking the awesomeness that is so often found in every big metropolitan city like Denver😘 Other things found in big cities-like poverty and visible suffering-were almost nonexistent until you got to the Centre station where Romanians have come to seek better fortune in begging. Apparently this is not received well and Norwegians don't know how to act in the presence of outward suffering-according to our hosts it's big topic now.

While Oslo's transit system is tops, it's lack of street life and activation of public space in important downtown areas that link the Royal Palace to the business district and the piers to Oslo's CentreStation transit hub might compromise its metropolitan desires.



The Opera House-




Centre Station Transit and Shopping-

Unless you are traversing the newly built luxurious western waterfront with 20 similarly fashioned restaurants and bars, there is a dearth of casual eateries and desirable public hangouts north into the older downtown.




There is a lot of potential for more greatness yet to come for Oslo and I hope more of Norway's oil cash could be funneled into activating the downtown's fabulous historic structures along the many gates leading to the Centrum (streets and blocks) as well as ensuring the increasing diverse social classes all find a place here.

The wealth is evident along the Oslo waterfront's western bank and on the steep banks of the Oslo fjords. 1000 SF Summer homes -along with their very small 10 sqM bathHouses go for millions on the fjords.

These houses were built at first for the women of Oslo to have a place to bathe away from the men on the fjords. Now they are idyllic little highly desired million dollar summer teen hideouts dotting the base of the fjord banks.

On our boat tour around the fjords our young Jordan doppelgänger tour guide provided great insight into the history and culture of Norway, the Country's strong Christian foundation and strong resistance to other religions lent to renaming Oslo to Kristiana for years before the country realized its future was destine to be built with a growing non-Christian population despite the fact that there is little to no separation of church and state even today. Now, the exceptionally rich and Christian royals and their friends own their own private little islands around the fjord. The current infusion of oil money from Norway's Statoil Company is building Oslo's eastern bank with thousands of glass encased multifamily structures resulting in rise to an eclectic and somewhat confused architectural landscape. Our tour guide mentioned that the new buildings are being expressly designed to create better public spaces. Framed by the Oslo Opera House, an amazing white geometric multi-elevated building atop the waterfront, I am sure these new buildings will add to the cool vibe.

We loved our stay, our walks in the rain, our endless days (sun up at 3:30am and down at 10:30pm) and our transit rides up and down the city streets. Oslo's heart is still growing and I look forward to its evolution. It was also our first international travel experience as a family of four and needless to say, we worked out a few kinks (no, it had NOTHING to do with Deirdre's strong will to control the transit plan for the day...) to ensure everyone's experience will be of their own making. It's beautiful to have our kids traverse the continent with us and we look forward to our next adventure in Amsterdam and surrounds!

Oslo, day 1

We finally made it Oslo late last night. Izzy says the Airports in Iceland and Oslo look like Ikea's. They are efficient and well layed out. We could learn a thing or two from these Norsky's.
We are rested again, but at this time of year the sun comes up at 3:30 AM and goes down around 10ish, so my circadian rhythm is still off by half a beat.

The city ignores the sun for a few hours, so I lay awake for two hours with only the squawk of ravens and the sunshine. The kids were even slower to get moving, which was expected. They have trouble keeping up with their elders. We brunched at Kaffebrenniet, which is hip and tasty. There are a lot of young people in rolled up shorts or skinny jeans and tee-shirts, riding bikes or strolling. The men are pushing strollers as often as the women and nobody seems to be in a hurry. We walked West to the Royal palace and then on to Frogner park, busy with families relaxing and full of sculptures depicting people in all stages of life and relationship with each other. We took our pictures with them, adding ourselves to their commentaries.

We made the mistake of hitting the most touristy part of town for Lupper and after giving up waiting to be seated at the first place we tried, wound up having American style pizza. The waitress assumed we were Norwegian and said something very strange. When we looked at her uncomprehendingly, she tried English; "What would you like to drink?" Wow, that was not what I would have guessed. For all I knew she had asked something about our level of skill playing a game involving a cat, a beanbag chair and waffles.

After eating we hit the Nobel Peace Museum by the water front and learned about Malala and I managed not to weep in public. Then we climbed to the top of the city's fortress and watched a cruise ship set out from the harbor as the sun sat low, setting the boats and buildings off in brilliant colors and high contrast. We hiked home and played volleyball on a nearby soccer pitch until 10:00 PM. Phew!

We made it to Reykjavik for our Blue Lagoon Stopover!

Quick flight to Iceland and here we are...arriving on July 26th after a smooth 6 hour journey, we deplaned to a surreal moonscape shaped by volcanic mountains in the distance and enveloped in an overcast and rainy blanket of a new country. Adventure awaits at the Blue Lagoon, a geothermal pool and spa favorite of tourists who find themselves hovering in the middle of the northern Atlantic en route to Europe. Iceland is beautiful and so are the people-we look forward to our two day stopover upon our return to Denver in August. For now, I can't imagine a better way to begin our adventure than to SIT STILL and enjoy a warm thermal pool...after all, it's only 50 degrees here.) 

The pool is a cozy 100 degrees and offers the benefits of a mineral dip accompanied by freely accessed vats of  pasty white silica gel (like yogurt) to spread all over your body. In fact, swimmers (American, Icelandic, German and Canadian as we observed) applied it with wreckless abandon assured by other visitors of its miracle skin-softening qualities but nobody was really sure it did anything other than test your own ability to spread the stuff evenly-or-not onto your pasty white body. One guy even dipped his whole beautiful bald head in it and proudly walked around the lagoon feeling he was among those of similar ilk.

The most enjoyable part was observing  this beautiful cultural soup of language and bodies and smiles sharing the pot for this moment. Now...on to Oslo-the heritage homeland of Ivan and the kids.