66. The Battle of Waterloo

In high school, I took AP US History and AP European History. Somehow I managed to forget most of it. Of course I remember spending weeks studying Napoleon and I'm sure at one point I knew that the last battle he fought was in Waterloo, Belgium, but it's tucked away somewhere in my subconscious. So this morning when it was announced we were spending the day at Waterloo, I had no clue what that meant. Now I know way too much! I saw the Waterloo monument, two informational videos, and the battle panorama. This is what I got out of the panorama:

 

 

Dead horse and Scaffolding

 As Mom put it "This is a big waste of money." But speaking of dead horses, there were a lot of war horses in the videos we watched. I think Arden had to close her eyes for these scenes. All I want to know is how they train horses to do somersaults like that. Seriously wouldn't want to be that stunt man.
 
When I hear the word "Monument" I think of a statue, or some type of large structure. I don't expect this structure to be on top of a giant hill, like in Waterloo.

 

I like to think I get a lot of exercise on this trip. I carry around 30+ pounds of stuff each time we leave an apartment, and spend most of my days walking around museums and old cities. None of this prepared me for the hike up those 226 stairs. There was a group break at stair 123 and by 200, I wasn't sure if the entire family would make it up.

If you look closely, you can make out Arden's form coming down the stairs. She is about 1/4 of the way from the bottom. I'll feel this tomorrow.

As the title says, this is the 66th day we've been backpacking Europe. The rest of my family has been traveling around for over 200 days. At this point it's hard to get everyone excited about seeing new sites, and they aren't as impressed with some things, like you might expect (flashback to Brody announcing that the day we saw the Eiffel Tower was "the worst day of his life.") Today though as we walked in the door after our day out, Brody, Arden, and Scarlet, saw something that they deemed amazing. A clean house. The friends who own the house we are staying at have a housekeeper. For the first half hour of being home, all discussion had to include a reference to the housekeeper coming today.
"Look how clean the counters are!"
"She even folded our clothes!"
"My room looks the same, but it smells a lot better!"
"The dishwasher is empty!!"
At least they're happy. We ended our day with a nice, nonviolent, soccer game. The girls team yet again pulled through for the win.