Great Hikes

Yes, that is what our wonderful press is already calling it. For those of you I havn’t already talked to, we are safe and sound. I am back at work today after a day and a half off work! That was fun and different. The not so fun part was Wednesday when they shut our office at noon I decided to take light rail home. But of course there were delays so I stood outside in the blizzard for 45 minutes waiting. I was dressed for it but it was still no fun. It took me a total of 3 hours to make the normally 30 minute journey.
Unfortunately, our airport is still closed. I sure feel sorry for all those stuck people. Hopefully they all get out before Christmas.
We actually had a very fun day yesterday playing in the snow instead of going to work. We got about 2 feet at our place, some areas got more and some less. Here are some phots.

People struggling through the blizzard downtown on Wednesday afternoon.

Out playing while it’s still coming down.

What our vehicles looked like the next morning. Can you guess which one is our Jeep?

The view from our balcony. Talk about a while Christmas!

Our apartment.

So, I’ve decided I can hold on to my blog a little longer, under the pretext that we are going on a cruise next month. Granted, it’s a little tame after the rest of our travels but hey, it’s travel, and I can let you all know what 2 travelers like Dave and I think of a cruise. I’m sure it will be a blast since it is the Theisen’s 50th wedding anniversary and the whole family will be there, but the idea of spending a week on a boat still doesn’t appeal to me that much. Perhaps it was those years offshore with PGS, I don’t know.
Anyway, even though our official 2 years of travel have come to an end, there is at least an excuse to stretch the blog out a bit longer.
In other news, we are loving Denver so far. My job seems good, Dave has had several interviews and Molly loves the snow. I am taking the bus to work everyday which is cool (an extra 20 mins of sleep) and we are right next to the greenbelt where you can hop on a bike trail and ride practically forever.
I’ll just post a few quick phots from our first week here.

Tons of geese in the park near our place.

So we went to the National Forest where you can get a permit to cut your own Christmas tree. After post-holing a few miles in the snow, we finally found a suitable tree.

Molly loved hiking around in the snow.

So did I, really.

Here it is home and decorated!

OK, this is the last post about Europe, REALLY. I just found I had way more photos than I thought. So, after cruising through parts of Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France, Luxemburg, and Belgium we headed back into Germany for the conclusion of our trip.

Back in Germany we got a little snow.

This has got to be the coolest Burger King ever, it’s in a city called Freiburg.

This is the cathederal in Cologne. It took 600 years to build and claims to house a statue of the virgin Mary that works miracles, the oldest crucifix in Europe (from 900 ad), and a tomb taken from Palestine that houses 2 of the 3 wisemen. I don’t know if I believe the miracles and the wisemen but it was impressive.

The cathedral also houses the largest bell in Europe, which I am posing with.

This is where the bodies of two of the three wisemen are supposed to be housed after being removed from their burial spot in Palestine.

Cologne really is a beautiful city, and yes, they do claim to have invented cologne.

Ok, I had too many more photos to post to do it all in the last one. I had to break it up!

Too very nice Italian kids we gave a ride down the mountain to.

Gorgeous villa along the lake in Italy. This was typical Italian scenery, so beautiful but just too many people in the area.

So we had to go to Switzerland, where there are still more sheep than people. Small country churches, quiet walking paths, it’s very relaxing. It is strange how Switzerland is not part of the EU, though, and won’t use the Euro.

We’ve got to go back to Switzerland in the summer. This is a little country dairy where during the summer they tend the goats and make cheese right here. It’s so cool, you hike a few miles down a mountain trail and come to: a dairy! Unfortunately we were late, they’d already taken the goats to the valleys and shut the dairys for winter.

Then we went into France. Well, this part of the world is France right now, I think it’s changed hands about 20 times between France and Germany (after each World War, and who knows how many times before?). The area is called Alsatia, and it was wonderful. This castle was built in the 1100’s and has been restored twice, once in the 1800’s and once in the 1960’s. It was the most interesting and probably best restored castle/fort we saw.

More photos from the castle.

The dining room inside the castle.

Beautiful cathederal being restored in the town of Toul.

We visited some WWI battle sites. In the mist and cold I could hardly imagine what it must have been like for the soldiers here.

A cool Luxemburgish castle. I was quite excited to visit such a small, unusual country but I couldn’t find a Luxemburg T-shirt anywhere. I’d still really like one if anyone is visiting there soon…

This was one of the best suits of armor we saw, it was inside the castle in Luxemburg.

This is a monument to American soldiers for their efforts in liberating Belgium during WWII. After visiting countries like Luxemburg and Belgium I understand a little better why all of Europe is so interested in American politics. For us to remain a powerful nation is directly beneficial to them.

Ok, here is the finale. These are the last photos from our travels.

Ok, we couldn’t resist. We had to go to the highest mountain in Germany. You just take a cable car up, so it’s easy. Here we are at the top.

The view was pretty awesome!

This is an amazing church and monestery we visited, still in Germany.

This is Schloss Linderhof, which King Ludwig built as his ‘summer home’.

Ludwig’s boyhood home, not a bad place to grow up. They declared his brother insane before he reached adulthood so he could never be king but I guess Ludwig was the saner of the two. Was that castle full of lead paint or what?

This is the castle of castles, Neuschwanstein. This was also built by Ludwig and was still under construction at the time of his death.

Ok, now we are have crossed the border into Austria. There are plenty of amazing ruins here as well.

So at one point we got lost in Austria and I was driving down dirt tracks through the middle of cow pastures. But that was OK, look at the views!

Monument at the border between Austria and Italy.

See the road here? Definitely a bit of a stressful drive, and you can’t see around the switchback until you start around the corner. It was worth it though!

The view from the top!

So, we had one more stop before coming back to the States. Well, a long stop in which we traveled around Europe. We flew to Frankfurt and rented a car (They gave me a super cool VW Golf with the TDI) and took off to explore. It’s a good thing I liked the car since Dave’s driving license expired while we were in Africa so I had to do all the driving. It was a little tough at times, I had a little anger management problem after being honked at a few times. I don’t mind being honked at if I do something dumb, but I could not figure out why these Germans honk!

This is a concentration camp at Daschau just outside of Munich. It was pretty grim. This was not a place where many people were sent to the gas chambers but people were held here along the way and many died of starvation and mistreatment.

How can you top off a trip a like this? With diving in Zanzibar and Pemba, of course. After safari we flew to Zanzibar and got a room in the middle of the maze they call Stone Town. The buildings are all old stone with beautiful wooden doors but the streets run all different directions at crazy angles and everything looks kinda the same so it is a recipe for getting lost. We did a few dives in Zanzibar and walked around looking at the old buildings and stuff but everyone told us: for good diving you’ve got to go to Pemba. They were right. We took a crazy small 6-seater airplane to Pemba and not only was the diving amazing but the people were so nice. Eddie, one of the guys who works at the dive shop invited us to his house for dinner; Sharuk, a retired school teacher who owned the guest house we stayed in, was kind and helpful; and kids played with us in the street and helped me learn to count in Swahili. It was a beautiful relaxed place.
It was Ramadan so we had to buy food for breakfast and lunch and eat it in our room but that wasn’t so bad. There is also no beer on Pemba except in the one big resort, but we just had a good time diving and relaxing and didn’t even miss it.
In town I saw a store selling beautiful scarves and stopped to look at them. Suddenly, the shop was filled with women looking at scarves. I think they were curious to see what the white woman would buy. Turns out, I ended up buying a beautiful black scarf that one of the other women had her eye on and she was upset with me for buying it! Funny.
Pemba is also home to the ‘Pemba flying fox’ which is a large fruit-eating bat. We could see them hanging out in the trees in daylight hours, they just looked like a bunch of large dead leaves. In the evening when they would get active it was really amazing.
Pemba was actually closed to foreigners until around 1985. The only white people to visit during that time were medical personnel with the Red Cross, so in the more isolated villages some of the people still harbor a distrust of white people, thinking you might give them a shot or force them to take some bad-tasting medicine.

We didn’t know what to expect from our safari, we’d been so busy preparing for the climb up Kili we just booked a safari and didn’t do a whole lot of research. Luckily, it worked out fantastic. Since Melanie recommended Skova we went with him and had a great time. We saw 109 lions which even Skova said was a record. We saw the big 5, the rhinos were pretty far away but we saw 3 of them which is cool because they are super rare and endangered. Here are some photos from the Serengetti National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, and Lake Manyara.

I just wanted to add a quick ‘animal count’. I mentioned the 109 lions and 3 rhinos but I figured I should say we saw 6 cheetahs and 2 leopards. Three of the cheetahs were a mother and 2 cubs who were adorable but the lighting was bad and I couldn’t get a decent photo. As for other animals like giraffe and elephant, we saw too many to count. For zebra, wildebeast, and buffalo I’m sure the number was well into the thousands, and this was not even the migration season when things are supposed to be even more spectacular.

If you want to read the ‘caption’ of the photo click on it. That is one thing that has changed with this website.