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.

65. Museum Day

 In Brussels there is a Music Museum that has displays of about a million different instruments. You are given an audio guide that sometimes works and is supposed to play a piece of music using the instruments you are looking at. All of this happens automatically with the magic audio guide, so of course, 5 out of the 6 of us had to get ours replaced. This entire process has the iPod effect. Like when you see someone getting really into the music playing onto their earphones and no one else can hear what they're jamming out to. Brody and Dad were caught on multiple occasions having their own personal dance sessions in front of the instrument cases. You'd think it might get a little monotonous seeing a lot of the same instrument in one glass case, but they were pretty interesting pieces.

Not a normal trumpet

We decided this one was a crystal glass whistler.The pedal makes the glass spin and there is a trough of water underneath that keeps the rim wet. If only this were a hands on museum...

Baby violin

Piano

 We also checked out the comic museum. It started off really interesting, showing videos of how characters were sketched, outlining the comic strip process from start to finish, and introducing us to some of the big names in comics. Then there was just a lot of German/French displays and comic strips. We gave up on trying to translate, and just messed around.

Finally, it wouldn't be a day in Belgium without a Belgian waffle, so we made sure to swing by the same shop as yesterday for round 2!

64. Belgian Waffles

 Our first full day exploring Brussels, Belgium is here!! We started in the Grand Place and made our way around that vicinity. Belguim is known for chocolate and beer. So we went into at least 10 chocolate shops, including the very first Godiva store!

We never know what we are getting into with the Rick Steves city tours, but this one was a joy for all. "Oh, Rick is pointing out another famous chocolate place? I guess I'll just have to go in and see if they have some free samples..." Of course none of them had free samples, but looking around was enough for us to enjoy our time. What really kept us going was the promise of Belgian Waffles at the end of the day. Before scouting out a waffle stand we got in a lot of souvenir store browsing and saw Manneken Pis in a vampire costume.

This is Brody's sheepish look after being yelled at for mimicking the statues pose in front of the crowd. I missed that picture, but this one was still a keeper. Right next to the statue was the best Belgian waffle stand ever.

Brody was really into it. Mom suggested that we split them. Her suggestion was met with 4 blank stares. Share a waffle with my sibling? No way Jose. So everyone got their own, and everyone ended up with stomach aches. For a 1.80 euro, they are very generous with their servings. 

Brody and the girls took over the kitchen for dinner, making burgers - with dad on the grill - and french fries. A very American meal to compliment our very European day.

 

 

63. So Much Room for Activities

Tonight I played backyard soccer with Brody. Here is a list of what is and is not acceptable during the game.

1. Kicking the opponent: accpetable
2. Strong arming the opponent: acceptable
3. Tripping the opponent: acceptable
4. Grabbing opponents clothing: acceptable
5. Going out of bounds: what bounds?
6. Calling time out: acceptable. Only for Brody.

6 is actually Brody's favorite tactic. Whenever I take possession of the ball, he immediately hits the ground and declares "ref calls time out!"  It will be a miracle if we get out of this place without any grass stains. And just to set the record straight, I won the game 4 to 10.

 This week we are staying in my aunts College roommates house in Jurbise, Belgium. She has two kids and the house is fully stocked with food, games, and a huge backyard. After basically sleeping on top of each other in Paris, we hardly know what to do with all the room! When we stepped into the house we saw that the kitchen island was full of goodies left for us, the bookshelves are stocked, the wifi is great, everyone gets a bed, and there is a long board in the garage. We are living the life.

62. There's No Such Thing as Too Many Pictures

Today I found the filter settings on my camera. Just in time for the Friend Family Eiffel Tower Photo Shoot. In the end I'd say we got a nice range of pictures, from "Old Time Movie"to "Classic" to "Soft" all the filters had their fair share of usage. Over 60 frames later, all the girls had glamor shots.

 

As usual, we saved one day for the Rick Steves walk of the city. After which, Brody declared it was the worst day of his life. I guess 3 miles is his limit. We started at Notre Dam, and stopped into tourist shops along the way. We ran into a group of younger Americans walking around in all black outfits with Super colorful ties. Aunt Anne couldn't resist finding out who these people were. Turns out they were a choir from Michigan who sang at Notre Dame that morning! Of course I took that opportunity to mention the trip I took last year with the highly esteemed Purdue Musical Organizations where our glee Club performed at Notre Dame Cathedral as well. I think it was a start of a beautiful friendship. 

 After we slowly made our way toward the cathedral so Rick could tell us all the important parts of the cathedral.We took in the details as a whole and then took some time to look at certain parts of the facade. Like this saint holding his head. In the catholic religion, when people get their heads cut off and still move around a little afterwards they are called Cephalophores. This is a miracle and they become saints.

 Around the back there is a World War II Memorial that is underground. It is open at the top to show how it was like to be a prisoner during this war. Paris was one of the first places to be taken by the Nazi's, the family had an in depth discussion regarding how they should have put up a bigger fight.

 This year Arden is taking her classes online, and one is Photography. She made the mistake of telling us that the topic for this week was "People and Relationships." Of course it is our responsibility to help her out! We would point out great photo opps whenever we could. There was great emphasis on couples we spotted "Whispering Secrets" as Brody likes to call it. Today though, we just found a nice backdrop and let our inner Friend model side come out. Here's the best one.

 Our last stop was to the Arc de Triomphe. We took a pass on crossing all 10 lanes of traffic as Aunt Anne had done while visiting the arc and went for the underground tunnel. When we walked into the daylight we saw that something was happening. There was a military prep school all decked out and standing in lines. Then we noticed a lot of other military people about. I can't report what was supposed to happen, because an hour later all the further they got was more lines and a cleared out space. I feel we had the dedication to the cause standing around for an hour though. Our walk home was down a hoity toity shopping street. These are the types of places where I feel extremely under dressed and unworthy. That doesn't stop us from peaking in a few places! 

The rest of our night was spent eating baguettes - a habit that is likely to make it home with us - and going through Aunt Annes clothes to get a change in wardrobe for the rest of the trip. We are now decked out with new tops, travel pants, and a scarf that I am pretty sure Scarlet will wear every day and never get sick of. For only having two and a half days in Paris, I think we did a pretty good job of hitting the highlights!

61. The Day

Unimpressive fountain at the most impressive art museum...

It's here. The day that Brody has been dreading since we stomped down my Grandparents mile long ice covered driveway to head for the airport. Today is the day we see The Louvre. Every time we leave an art museum, Brody makes sure to ask "Since we went here, can we just skip the Louvre?" Before this day he spent hours coming up with ways to play hookie on the entire day. He Seriously went through all of the stages of denial when he realized that there was no way he could get out of going. The most prominent stages were Anger and Bargaining. "What if I get sick" "I'll just go get pastries with Mom while everyone else goes." "If some people want to go see the Eiffel Tower while other people go to The Louvre, I'll just go to the Eiffel Tower" and "I'm old enough to stay home alone, right? Luckily none of this had to happen, and this day, in fact, was not the worst day in Brody's life. All thanks to Aunt Anne.

As we got together under the glass pyramid with Brody sulking in the background, Anne announced that she and Brody were going to go on a scavenger hunt for the most famous paintings. Anything with Anne is fun, so Brody perked up a bit. Then she announced The Rules, and he was all in. I wasn't on their team, so I'm not sure what all the guidelines were, but the most important were a) don't look at art that isn't on the map and b) no learning. For more details see the blog Anne guest wrote here.

An hour and a half later we all met up and Brody requested MORE time to finish their hunt. I joined for the second half, but for the first, I let Rick Steves walk me through on one of his audio guides. I went to the Louvre Last summer with PMO, but didn't know anything about art. Now I'm semi pro on all things art.One of my new favorite types of art to see is the Neoclassicism. Otherwise known as Barely clothed people dying in weird ways. These pieces make me question the sanity of all artists of the time, but are also highly entertaining to look at.

 Most people go to the louvre only know ing one piece of art in there, Mona Lisa. At least that was me last summer. Before I go on, in case you have ever been mislead into thinking that the painting was average to large in size DO NOT BE DECEIVED. The thing is tinyyyy.

After walking through with Rick helping me, I still don't understand the fame of the piece. You can tell me all day about the mysterious smile or not smile, and the genius thoughts behind the colors. Sure we don't know who she is, where she came from, or what she's thinking. But I don't know that about any other paintings of people. Unless they're saints. I have those on lock. I bet most people walk straight past the 5 other Da Vinci pieces hanging right outside the Mona Lisa room. Whats wrong with those?  I really do try and understand art. But i just don't think it's going to happen.

Mom, Arden, and I also walked around the Napoleon Apartments. This is a part of the palace that wasn't turned into an art only place and has all the furniture and wall carpets that were used when Napoleon III lived there. I didn't even know this part existed! But I'm glad we saw it, because it's on the top of my Prettiest Palace list. Everything was gold and red. EVERYTHING. Especially the gold.

I even tweeted about it so all of my followers could appreciate the wealth of these people. Needless to say. I gave it a 10.

After a full day of running around the Louvre, we tried to score some free tickets to the Orsay across the street, but just missed closing time. You win this time Orsay, but we'll be back one day. To Brody's dismay we hiked all the way back home as opposed to taking the Metro. I think he dreams of having a segway for touring. Maybe if he would work a bit harder as a street performer, he'd get enough dough to afford one.

60. The Plan

Most days we have a half thought out plan that is made the night before. And, like most plans, they are outlined A - B - C - then D. On good days, the plan goes in that order. On days like today, the plan goes more like A - C - G - E - then D.

Today was another moving day. We had a car rented for Louire Valley, so first off, transportation was not my responsibility, but more importantly, we didn't have to worry about catching a train. This also gave us the opportunity to make a pit stop in Versailles before returning the car.

However, there was a deadline for returning the car in Paris, so when we saw the line to get into the Palace in Versailles, we knew our plans were going to need to change. After some finger pointing and laying blame on people for putting us in this change-of-plans situation, we decided to return the car, find a place to put our backpacks in Paris, and then take the regional train out to Versailles. By the end of this trip I'm going to be really good at handling situations that don't go as planned. Can that go on my resume?

Versailles in the morning

The rental apartment for the week - located just a block from what some might consider the red light district- wasn't available until this evening. So we looked for a place that Aunt Anne could get a hotel room where we could dump all of our bags. The Opera hotel made the cut. It was definitely worth the price with the giant king sized bed that was about the same size as the room. She made sure to steal their toilet paper to make up for it. Once we were free of our 30 pound bags, and full of pastries, we found the train to Versailles.

 

 

 

 

Versailles in the afternoon

If Versailles is The Worlds Largest Chocolate Chip Cookie, then we toured one single chocolate morsel. Not that it was a let down, but come on! The place is huge! It was built because The Louvre was too small for Louis XV! It should take more than 2 hours to see it all!

What we were allowed to check out was quite glamorous. For example the hall of mirrors that reflected the windows leading out to one of the many exquisite courtyards. 

 

There were so many people in this palace it was rare that a picture wasn't ruined by one of them. Still I thought they were worth keeping.

When we tour Palaces they are always set up to portray the great importance of those who lived in them. Here the room is set up to look like a dining area. This is where the king and Queen had dinner.

And this is where everyone sat around to watch the king and queen have dinner.

Although I feel entitled to see more of the Palace, it was one of the prettiest I've seen yet. We all had audio guides to show us around and tell us all about the artwork and the stories behind it. Of course 2 of them died halfway through, but we persevered! Sharing is a big part of this trip. I am even beginning to recognize some of the busts that line the hallways before reading their names! Mr. Bailey would be proud of my European History knowledge now. If only this trip took place before the AP Euro Exam...