Iceland

 Greetings from Iceland where the sun sets at 12:03 a.m. and rises just a few hours later at 2:55 a.m.  So far our only difficultly has been packing carry-on luggage for a cold dip in the geothermal lagoon in Reykjavik where the temperature is 46, closely followed by our next stop in Madirid where the temperature is in the 80s.  

We only had 10 hours in Iceland, hardly more than a stop over and certainly not time enough to experience an entire country.  However it was long enough to leave an impression on us.  The scenery is eerily pretty.  It looks like a moon scape.  Lava rocks dominate the landscape and in the distance you see mountains or water.  

After landing, we picked up our rental car and headed to The Blue Lagoon, a natural hot spring.  The Blue Lagoon is a huge tourist attraction.  It's a spa built on/around a huge geothermal lagoon.  The water is 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit?), before it is pumped up from 2000 meters (6500 feet) below the earth.  Our admission included a silica facial mask treatment and one free drink.   Is it really day drinking if you have a beer at 9:30 a.m. even if you haven't been to sleep since the night before? 
After our dip at the Blue Lagoon we headed to Hallgrímskirkja Church.   It’s the tallest building in the country at 244 feet and serves as a Lutheran parish.  Thankfully they have an elevator that goes to the top where we had some beautiful views.  
We leave Iceland tonight and head to Madrid.

  

2023 Trip

 We’re taking a family trip!

We are going to Iceland (just 10 hours), Spain, Portugal and Morocco.  We leave June 20th and Cathy and I will return on the June 30th.   The girls will continue on to Scandinavia.  

Home Again, Home Again

Home again, home again Jiggidy Jig!

You may have thought you were done receiving these ramblings from me but surprise!  There are just a few loose ends that we wanted to clear up about our trip.  

First and most importantly a huge thank you to Kathleen.  She not only pushed us to go on this adventure but she also made all of the travel arrangements from airlines to all of our train travel, to the VRBOs, the AirBnBs, the reservations for tours and the hotels.  She also served as our navigator on busses, trains and while walking.  Thank you.  We look forward to your return to us from NYC.  

Secondly, there were some photos that I thought were worthy of sharing that did not make it to the daily email so I've included some of them.  

Lastly there were some items that I learned during our travel that I found kind of interesting.  I'll feel foolish if everyone reading this already knows these things.

The official Languages of Belgium are French, German and Dutch.  Flemish is not really a language.  It is Dutch dialect. 

At least in London (maybe other places too) you can tap your credit card to use the subway.  No need for subway cards or tickets (Billetts).

There are places (London and Paris) where you may have to rescan you card or subway receipt to get OUT of the subway.  It seems they sometimes charge according to how many zones you crossed)

There were many places where we were only able to use credit cards, no cash.  Perhaps it's a Covid thing.  

We spent 2 days and two nights in London and during the entire time we never used English money (pound sterling) only credit cards. 

The ratio of the Euro to the dollar is almost 1 to 1.

The ratio of the dollar was $1.20 to the pound.

In London we had to scan our room key (card) to get the hotel elevator to move.

In an Amsterdam hotel we had to place our card pass in a receptacle by the light switch for the room lights to work.  

December 5 & 6 is the night when children in this area of Europe receive gifts.  Christmas is more of a family big meal holiday.

One of the people who helped Ann Frank and her family did not die until 2010.

Twice I was equally embarrassed and grateful when a young woman offered (insisted) that I take her seat on the subway.  One, I was hauling luggage to the airport and she was just going a few stops and the other time I must have just looked old and pitiful. 

In a somewhat related note, there is nothing in subways that would would come close to meeting the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act.   Therefore, there are not a lot of senior citizens who take the subways. 

We rode trains in the Netherlands 3-4 times and never had our tickets checked.  

Thanks for putting up with these almost daily updates of our trip and as I said earlier (and I'm talking to you Bruce Ruzicka), none of this will be on the test.  

Canals of Brugge

Market in Brugge

Father Christmas or Pere Noel

Canal in Amsterdam

Burg Square in Brugge

Coronation Chair in 
Westminster Abbey

Yup, they still have them in England

Street decoration in Amsterdam

London

We leave for home tomorrow, so we wanted to milk our last day for all it was worth and I think we did.

The first stop was at Buckingham Palace and the Queen Victoria

Queen Consort
Camilla

Memorial.  Both are truly impressive.  The day continued with a walk along St. James Park to Westminster Abbey.  We were part of a small crowd that attended a communion service lead by David Hoyle, Dean of Westminster.  Of course

Queen Victoria Memorial

the church is amazing.  As we walked along the outside of the church I questioned a couple of police officers as to why there were so many of them outside the church.  The first said, "There is a private event going on inside".  

We walked a little further and I asked another and this one said "we're waiting for the Queen Consort to come out".  So the three of us walked to the other side of the street, waited three minutes and got some great photos.   

We also took some good pictures of the

Westminster
Abbey

London Eye, Big Ben and of Parliament but were not so lucky getting photos of number 10 Downing Street.   

After a nice but quick lunch we walked to Trafalgar Square and attended a play in the West End. Agatha Christie's "The Mouse Trap" has been running

🏃

continuously for 70 years.  We left the theater and headed directly to a Double Decker I’mBus tour of London's Christmas lights.  The day ended with a walk along the Thames river and a stop at our last Christmas Market in Europe.

Big Ben

Trafalgar Square

Christmas Lights
In London

Travel & Travel Tips

Bikes in Amsterdam

We left our hotel in Amsterdam at 6:50 this morning - long before sun up (8:34 a.m.) to give us time to catch our train to London.  As always, we gave ourselves plenty of time for our walk to the train station, especially today as we knew we were traveling outside of the European Union.  As we waited at our assigned platform we were notified by a rail employee that we had entered the platform from the wrong entrance.  Long story short, because of Brexit, our trip today was treated more like a flight.  We had to have our luggage screened and our passport validated to enter the UK.  All this was done in a different part of the train station and we ultimately were not allowed to board our scheduled train  Thanks to an exceptionally helpful person in Amsterdam, we were able to book a train to Brussels, where another kind person credited our tickets and put us on the next train to London.   

There were two lessons learned: Train travel to the UK is different and there are still nice people in the world.   

We eventually made it to London and found our hotel in time to drop our bags and head to a

Fish & Chips in London

pub for some fish and chips.  Like I said earlier we are leaning in to the cultural stereotypes.

After dinner we walked to Covent Garden to see its extensive Christmas light display.

Gardens

Covent 

Amsterdam

 

Church of our Lady

We started our only full day in Amsterdam by walking to the Anne Frank Museum.  If you've been there you know it's a very moving experience.  We spent 1.5-2 hourstouring her secret quarters where she, her family and their friends spent two years in hiding.  For some reason I was surprised to see her father, Otto, in an interview and the interview was in color.  The same was true for a few of the people who helped hide them.  Otto Frank was the only member of his family to survive the holocaust.  He did not die until 1980. 

From there we walked to the Church of Our

Padding for kneelers

Lady for Mass which was said in Dutch.  The congregation at the 1:00 Mass was specifically people from Suriname.  Of course there wasn't much we understood but the church was beautiful.  Suriname is in South America and had been colonized my the Dutch so it seemed to make sense. However, I was confused when the Mass started out with a song sung to the tune of "God save the King" for reasons I still don't understand.  The Kneelers in that church haven't changed in hundreds of years accept now they have a piece of cloth padding you can put down on the kneeler before you kneel.  Finally we experienced the rare Catholic reverse wave.  Meaning the people in the back knelt down first, then people in the middle and finally people in the front.  As most church goers know, it's usually just the opposite. 

Seven Bridges

After Mass we walked to one of the canals for a canal tour.  The tour was 75 minutes long, was informative and allowed us to see sites we would probably not have walked to.  

The last stop was one that every tourist has

Cathy embraces
her heritage.

to see when they visit Amsterdam, The Red Light District.  It was only about a 20 minute walk so off we went.  There isn't much to say about the area that you haven't already heard except in my opinion it just seemed much sadder than I expected.   I did learn from our hotel guy that there are actually three areas in the city were prostitution is legal.  Two small areas and the famous red light district.  Our hotel is in a nicer area but happens to be only blocks away from one of the smaller areas.

Erin made it home safely and Buddy was excited to greet her.  It truly was very nice of Bill to stay with Buddy at Erin's house while she was gone.  

I would be remiss if I didn't

Bikes are
EVERYWHERE 

mention the bikes of Amsterdam.  Before coming I read that there are literally more bikes in Amsterdam than there are people which I now believe to be true.  They are everywhere and they are ridden by everybody from young to old.  People carry everything oin bike carts including groceries and children.  We even saw one man bringing home a Christmas tree on his bike.  

Brussels and Amsterdam

 Brussels/Amsterdam

It was hard saying goodbye to Erin as she left at 6:50 this morning.  It was also hard to say good bye to Brugge.   We truly enjoyed our time there.

Grote Market

One of the great things about traveling is the unexpected.  Our itinerary called for a 2 hour wait in Brussels as we changed trains heading for Amsterdam.  Instead of wasting "all that time" we stowed our luggage in the train station and headed into Brussel's city Grote Market (Grand

Nativity

Place).  I'll try to attach some photos.  The views were amazing and with the huge Christmas tree and the nativity scene in the square it was truly spectacular!

View from our window

Outside RijksMuseum

We made it to Amsterdam later in day but still had time to walk the suitcases to our hotel room and then walk along one of the canals to the Royal Palace on Dam Square.  From there we took an Uber to Rijks Musuem.  It was closed of course but in front of it was a skating rink, part of Ice*Amsterdam  (artificially cooled as it was too warm) and

Royal Palace

plenty of Christmas lights.  After a simple dinner at Leidse Square we headed back to our hotel.