Happy Birthday Grandpa

Happy 90th Birthday, we wish we were there to celebrate with you.

Warsaw and the war

We went to the Warsaw Uprising Museum today.......http://www.1944.pl/en/ More on it later but for now, see the video that they made to show the destruction. Something like 80% of the city was destroyed.

Check it out....

Dzien dobry!

Today was full of polishness, which surprisingly is a lot better than it sounds. We visited the Wilanow Palace, on the outskirts of Warsaw. Built in 1676, and one of the few things which survived the war intact. Built for the Polish King John III, and moved from one family to another until 1805 when it first became a museum.

The guy who did the sculptures must have been drunk. Just about everyone one of these looks as messed up as this one.

 We moved on to a Palace of another kind, and stoped by the Palace of Culture and Science. Apparetntly in this part of Europe they call any big building a 'Palace'. And this is big!!! The tallest building in Poland, and the 8th tallest building in the EU. A gift from the Soviet Union to the people of Poland. Pretty much all of the city was destroyed as the Nazi's left during the war, so this was about the first big rebuilding to occur once the war was over.  Looking out over the city you can see all the Communist style buildings, just boring and square. We went to the observation deck on the 30th floor which gave a unique view of the city. 








Check out the new stadium built for Euro 2012. Makes the olympic stadium in London look pretty sad.




The food here is pretty fantastic. The giant beer helps too. One word of advise is that if you order food that is just called 'meat' there will probably be some stuff that you don't want to eat. I had some unidentified organs with mine which nearly resulted in a whole different problem.

Even managed to find a Mexican place which surprisingly was the best in Europe so far. I got out ordered but Kristen didn't finish all of her enchiladas, so I got to help out. I know I had said something similar when we were in Brussels, but its just sad how London has dropped the ball on Mexican food.

Check out the ice cream cones!! They are just magical. I have had 5 since arriving yesterday. That's probably five feet of ice cream.

Change of Plans

This time yesterday we were packing our bags planning on going to New York City for Kristen's grandfathers 90th birthday. Sssshhh it was a surprise. Happy birthday Ed!! Anyway a bit of a travel disruption has rolled up the east coast and put a damper (pun intended) on our plans. No thanks to the 'customer service' of british airways, we changed directions and made our way to the heart of Europe. Since my sister is in Warsaw and we were suddenly sans vacation destination, viola Poland. So now we sit here drinking polish beer and eating perogies.
Our last trip was on british airways and while I didn't give them the credit at the time, I am longing for them now. We flew Wizzair out of London Luton. Wizzair is a bit like a poor mans southwest airlines. Yeah hard to imagine. And Luton reminds me a lot of Northwest Arkansas Regional. Think of NWA with a city of 7 million within 40 miles, and the same facilities. Its the kinda airline and airport that Cousin Eddy would love. So long story short spring for the extra $$$ and get the 'extra legroom' seats. I would just call them the 'legroom' seats. I can't feel my legs and back is killing me.

Its 90 here, wearing shorts for only the third time this year, other than when we were home visiting.

Hampton is putting on a show again. Had made a hit on the internet before we even left the country. She is gonna have her own TV show soon.

http://instagr.am/p/LYXXw/

Want to thank everyone for all their kind words and thoughts and prayers for Turbo. We said our good-byes to her last Friday, and just now bringing myself to write this. I could go on and on forever about how great she was, and how much I miss her, but words don't really do her justice. Some of my favorite moments....

Zoo Lates - Food

Kristen groupon-ed us a deal on late night zoo tickets. I guess they close the zoo early and kick out all the kids, and then have the adults only Zoo Late. We didn't know much about the event, and let's be realistic, the only reason we were going was so that Kristen could get her penguin fix.

Since the last time we had been to the zoo, they had opened the new "Penguin Beach" exhibit, which had something like 100 penguins. 

 We made a quick stop past Kristen's friends the goats, but since it was adults only they had closed the "children's petting zoo" so Kristen didn't get to say hi like she really wanted.
 



Anyway, long story short was a pretty neat event and had a pretty good time. They had all these food stands set up, and a beer garden and a silent disco and stuff. I managed to find "Mexican food" and wasn't too disappointed.

Was quite surprised with the number of adults who had gotten their faces painted. Also quite humorous was the silent disco. They gave everyone headphones and sent them a roped off area of a park in the middle of the zoo. So there were a couple hundred people dancing and generally enjoying their own personal drunkenness with no audible music. They were clearly in their own world, clueless of all the sober people watching them wretch and wiggle to music that wasn't there.

Kristen got her fill of penguins, I got my fill of Mexican food. Everything started to close at 9 so we missed our friends the otters, but Kristen made it up to me by getting me dessert.


 By now it was quite a drunken debacle for about half of the crowd, who seemed to really be enjoying the carousel and other children's rides. Was funny so see girls with faces painted like lions and tigers and bears, growling at things, and generally making fools out of themselves. Gotta think that more than a few of them were going to look in the mirror in the morning with shock and horror, trying to figure out what happened last night. All in all a good time, and as much as I hate to say it some of the best Mexican food London has had to offer. (So sad)

Hampton the Internet Sensation

This morning Hampton's dog sitter posted a link on facebook to a new entry on her blog. I knew it was in Russian, but out of curiosity to see fun dog pictures I clicked on it. And to my surprise Hampton was the star!!!


 I was a bit concerned at this point being that everything was in Russian, I wanted to be sure that she wasn't trying to sell Hampton or anything. A Russian guy working with me confirmed that all was good and I was able to relax. I ran the website through a translator, and it is hilarious. Obviously there is something missed in translation but I think for the most part you get the point.

Here is the translation:
When I arrived mail with a question, let's see if we have a few days for the two corgis, I do not hesitate to say yes))) I used to love this breed in absentia. Seen alive a few times (but see the queen corgi, when we were in Windsor))). In the end, come to us only a corgi because the second ill (But this crazy miracle gave so much positive that the words to describe it is very difficult. At this elephant with absolutely crazy eyes look completely impossible without a smile))) It's very funny and crazy))) weighs the same as Jack, from her hair so much that the new carpeting is obtained only for 2 days) And this is her big balls love ) Not a dog, and the sea just positive))) Lots of pictures https://picasaweb.google.com/117324545999957096648/Hampton . It is, incidentally, comes to us again this Saturday)))

Here is the link to the actual website - http://ph-t-grapher.livejournal.com/110740.html

Her husband posted a pic over the weekend and got something north of 300 likes, and 50 comments on it. Again in Russian so not sure what the said but who cares. Happy that Hampton has found someone she can be friends with while we are away.

None of this has really hit me as overly strange, but the random Russian lady who has set Hampton's picture as her profile pic, is a bit weird. Oh well, I guess it is the price of fame.

Goodbye Belgium

Our last day in Brussels was a short one, but still had a few sights to see.

First was the Jubilee Park and the Triumphal Arch. Created to celebrate 50 years of Belgian independence in 1880.

Next we went to Brussels only remaining family brewery. Personally I would have expected in a country famous for beer there would have been much more but I guess it all comes down to the mighty InBev pushing all the local brewerys out. Anyway, we went to the Cantillon brewery. http://www.cantillon.be/br/3_1. Which only brews Lambic beer. Essentially, all of the CO2 escapes because it is aged in barrels, so it is a still beer. Think of beer wine and you would be pretty close to what it tasted like. Personally I was a fan, not sure how the rest of the crowd found it.

We made one last trip to the Grande Place for lunch and were off to the airport. As a final farewell to the city I polished off the last of my chocolate waffles while we were waiting for the bus.

I am not sure I got a good feel for Brussels while we were there, seemed to be one both ends of the spectrum for size a people all the time. While we got checked in and through security in about 10 minutes it took us 45 minutes to get through traffic to get to the airport. It was this type of small town/big city that kept throwing me off the whole trip.

Road Trip

More of a train trip I guess, but none the less left Brussels for Bruges and another day of sight seeing. Bruges is a special place because it wasn't heavily damaged during the way and still has most of it oldest buildings. Based on what we saw my guess is the tourist attractions around Europe would be quite different if it weren't for the war. The whole day felt like we were walking around a theme park or movie set. Everything super old and super cool.

As we stumbled into town, I was still hurting from the previous nights desert waffles and the mornings breakfast bonanza III, we heard a band and quite a bit of commotion. Just as we arrived the Assumption Day Parade was going by. We knew it was a national holiday, but didn't know anything about what was going on. I will leave it up to you to do your own Assumption Day research. No Sunday School today, sorry. The parade ended in the town square where we were dwarfed by the shadow of the. This is just one of three huge steples in the town. Must have taken some serious convincing after the first two to build the third. Seriously what town needs 3 huge spires? Either that or there were a lot of belgians with big egos who wanted a bigger one.

This lady looked like she could barely
hold her huge spear thingy

We took a BOAT RIDE!! Tour of the city which was cool, I couldn't help but wonder how many times the place had flooded, as the water came right up against the houses along the canal.

Kristen and Nicole had this Rick Steven's travel guide which they kept quoting from "Rick says this" or "Rick like that" took me half the day to figure out who the hell rick was. He did however lead us to a awesome waffle place. Before we ordered I told Kristen "just order something I will eat what you don't" she made some comment like "oh I am super hungry I will eat it all." Then she got handed this monster. So I ended up with my waffle and half of hers. Amateur!!

My sad plain waffle

Kristen's super waffle

The last real stop we made in town was the Church of Our Lady. Or course a huge tower, in fact the second tallest brickwork tower in the world, but the main attraction is Michaelangelo's Madonna. One of few of his works to ever make it out of Italy. Obviously the church must have know it was in Rick's book and that rich tourists were coming to look at it, because they were charging admission to see most of the church and the statue which they tried to block from view with a curtain and a tree. Well there was no hiding anything from Kristen and with the zoom lens on the camera we managed to sneak a peak.

More frites and waffles for dinner and dessert, and some more fruity beers and off to bed