The Fall.

My new favorite film. Absolutely gorgeous visually and a sweet story. The cinematography is amazing! And the costumes are incredible! Set in the 1920's, an injured, heartbroken stuntman and a little girl become friends in a sanitarium in LA. He creates a story for her involving bandits and evil soldiers and a princess, while trying to get her to smuggle morphine from the dispensary for him because he can't go on without his true love. Even without the plot, the imagery is worth it. Love, love, love it!

Chalkboard walls.

found here at The Willows Home and Garden blog

In our next house, which will probably be a rental, I will make up for painting the walls by doing this. The possibilities are endless!

Road Trip.

The Gothenburg Ibis
The afternoon we picked up the car we made it to Gothenburg, Sweden. This trip we stayed at several Ibis hotels because they are affordable and everywhere in Europe. This Ibis happened to be a boat! It was nice and we had dinner there in the hotel and went to bed because the next day was going to be long. We got up early and left Gothenburg with our destination being Bergen, Norway on the fiords. We bought the Europe maps for our GPS and it worked perfectly! I was amazed. It would have been very difficult without it. And, we bought an audio book online and listened to it through our GPS all day. It would have been somewhat brutal to only be able to listen to Norwegian radio for 12 hours. Yes, that's right. 12 hours. I think that our top speed was 40 miles an hour. The roads were crazy, but there wasn't very much traffic so that was a good thing. And the tunnels! One tunnel we went through seemed like it corkscrewed down into the mountain forever. We just kept going round and round. A couple of hours outside of Bergen we realized that we had to take a ferry to keep going. There was some stress for a while because we didn't know how late the ferry ran and if we were going to have to sleep in the car to wait for it. Thankfully, it was still running and we were able to keep going. We had a hotel reservation in Bergen so we went straight to the hotel when we arrived and crashed. Long drive! I think I will save our adventures in Bergen for the next post because I have already gone on and on.

Malmo, Sweden.

It seems to be taking me a very long time to get through our trip. Oh well. Just to recap, we have already been to Amsterdam, driven through Germany and took the train/ferry to Copenhagen. After spending the night in Copenhagen, we took a train to Sweden over one of the world's longest bridges. We arrived in Malmo early, ready to pick up our car and begin our drive. However, the Hertz rental car office decided to not open until 3pm. So, we had some time to kill. It was so so foggy everything seemed like some kind of dream. And, we could barely see where we were going. We wandered into town and through it toward the old palace. Mike had been to Malmo before, so he knew where we were going. There is a botanical garden around the palace and it was just beautiful in the morning fog. The palace is a museum now and we went to the gift shop and then walked back to the square for lunch. It was cold and all of the restaurants have blankets draped over the chairs outside and heaters, so we ate outside. After lunch, it was finally time to get the car so we walked back to Hertz. Everything looked very different without the fog! We picked up our Volvo wagon and drove into the Swedish countryside on our way to Norway.

Copenhagen continued.

These things are hard to explain. They are part of the royal treasury and made from ivory and amazing! Most are from the 18th century and they are so intricate, with lots of little parts and pieces within pieces. Incredible.

The entrance to Tivoli Gardens.

Ok, so I found some more pictures from Copenhagen!

AZ State Fair.

Human bubbles. Hilarious!

All of the 'food' items on this table were actually rocks!
This little boy was four and he rode the flag around the arena and up on the platform and kept his miniature horse there through the Star Spangled Banner.

For the past few years, Mike and I have been saying that we need to go to the state fair. So, we finally decided to go on Halloween. There were tons of people and lots of things to see, including animatronic dinosaurs and an all indian rodeo. And, we ate a ton of cotton candy. Now, we can say that we've been to the Arizona state fair!

Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Harbor.
Somehow, I only have two photos from Copenhagen. I will check Mike's camera again.

We left our hotel in Luebeck Saturday, October 9 (according to my book) and walked to the train station. the train arrived and it was a small two car train. We thought, this can't be right because we are going all the way to Copenhagen. Little did we know... and let me tell that it is always good to get reserved seats on the train because this one was packed and I'm not sure that we would have had seats if we hadn't reserved them. As it was, we had to kick people out of ours. Anyway, the train went to the ferry port and then drove onto the ferry! Everyone unloaded and spent the 45 minute trip eating at the restaurants and shopping in the stores. The ferries are like cruise ships so there is alot to do. Then, back on the ferry and away into the Denmark countryside we went. We stayed at a new contemporary hotel called Wake Up Copenhagen and walked from there to the old town. Copenhagen is a big city with lots and lots of tourists. We had to walk past Tivoli Gardens (the oldest amusement park in the world) and it was totally decorated for Halloween. Very cool. However, it was closed for some reason, so we didn't go inside. We just wandered around old town and went to the old palace to see the crown jewels. There were some amazing things! Then it was down to the harbor for drinks by the water and people watching. We only spent one night in Copenhagen, so the next morning we took the train to Malmo, Sweden.

Germany continued.

The Holstein Tor at night.

Waiting for the laundry.

This is a model of the city of Luebeck built in the 1930's by school children!

Puppets!

Puppets!

In a store window. That is a real rose stem!

The fallen bells.

Door handle of the church.

Early morning in Luebeck on our way to the train station.

Okay, back to the trip. Our next stop was Luebeck, which nevermind what I said about Bremen earlier. Luebeck was really the important player in the Hanseatic League. The true star of the show. We drove our little red car there and got there after dark, but decided to walk to the old town for dinner. Luebeck really is a big city and the old town is big as well. There is a huge gate into the old part of the city and it now has a museum inside. We wandered around for awhile and finally found a restaurant. We have decided that restaurants are just better in Europe. It doesn't matter if it is the oldest, rundown looking place. The food is going to be good or great. When traveling, you can kind of just eat anywhere and it will be good. This restaurant was no exception. The next day we did laundry early and then went back to the old town. There is a puppet museum in Luebeck that is amazing! It was so cool and has puppets from almost every country in the world. Incredible. The church there is amazing as well. On Palm Sunday, 1942, the church was heavily damaged in a British air raid. The bell tower was hit and the bells fell to the floor of the church. The bells are still there as a remembrance. Almost everything in Germany was rebuilt after the war and you don't usually see things like this. Can you imagine the sound of those bells falling?


Next stop - Copenhagen, Denmark.

Team Edward.

I was just reminded by Rebekah of My Mouse and Me of a much better movie for Washington that First Blood. Hello, Twilight!!!

The United States of Movies.

Found here

This is kind of fun. I think that there are plenty of better choices for Texas, though. Hello, Fandango?! Urban Cowboy, anyone? Or The Alamo? Oh well. The rest of them seem pretty right on. I totally agree with Napolean Dynamite for Idaho.

Germany.

The red car is ours and Mike had to press a button to bring it down so that we could leave the hotel.
Munster.
The market. Look at the leaves!

Me admiring the pumpkins.

Bremen's Town Hall

The cathedral.

Bremen during the day.

An Art Deco conference room in a hotel.

I am the worst blogger ever! So, catching up with our trip. We left Amsterdam Wednesday morning and took a train to Dusseldorf, Germany to pick up our rental car. Then, we drove to Munster which had the best market ever. There were fresh meat vendors and flowers and fruits and vegetables. and the best pumpkins and gourds. Everything was beautiful. We ate at a food stand there (yum) and walked around the square. Then, we got back in the car and headed to Bremen. Bremen is an great town and the jewel of the Hanseatic League (we spent alot of time this trip in Hanseatic cities, so now we are experts). Anyway, it is pretty amazing because they became a power player in the 1200s and were in charge of ports as far away as Bergen, Norway (more on Bergen later). The old town is beautiful and there is one street called the Boettcherstrasse that was incredible! Brick buildings with quirky details like aquariums and art niches. Very cool and art nouveau. Bremen is famous for its Three Musicians tale and its statue of a donkey, dog, cat and rooster. It just occured to me that there are four animals, not three. Hmm. I should look into that. Next stop, Luebeck Germany.

Oh, the places we will go - Amsterdam

Mike's favorite beans

View from the hotel (Yes, we stayed at Best Western)

Dutch Windmill

Bicycle parking in Haarlem

'American Style Hotdogs'

Tulips!

We are back from two weeks in Europe! Actually, we got back on Sunday so I am a little behind. I thought that I would just start at the beginning of our trip and show you some pictures. So here goes. Starting with Amsterdam...

Amsterdam is very crowded. The streets are crowded, the museums are crowded. But, Holland is pretty. We took a train to Haarlem the second day there and it is a great town. Pretty square with a huge church and lots of neat old buildings. We also took a tour of a reconstructed windmill. Oh, and there seems to be a least two bicycles for every person in the Netherlands. So many bicycles! We only saw two people fall over though, so it seems to be working. We went to the Van Gogh museum (awesome except for the people) and I went to Anne Frank's house. I reread her diary on the way there and all I can say is, wow. You can actually go up the stairs and behind the bookcase into their apartment and walk through it. It is so moving and they have her actual diary on display! Amazing. I'm glad that I read it beforehand. No pictures there, but I did buy a book about the museum. We also took a boat tour through the canals as part of the conference. There are so many houseboats on the canals! What would it be like to live on a houseboat in a canal in Amsterdam?

Our Little Garden.

Remember the garden we built along the back wall of our yard?  I was pulling out some of the plants that were getting scraggly and found this!  A huge zucchini squash!  It was hanging over the wall into the rocks and we had never noticed it because we kept checking inside the garden.  I made stuffed zucchini last night and neither one of us could finish it, there was just too much.  I think that we are going to try pumpkins next!

Books!

Found here.

Great idea for a desk! One thing, though. What if you want to look at one of those books? Luckily there are many many terrible books out there that would be perfect to stack and glue to create furniture. This idea would be cool as a smaller coffee or side table too.

This is the reference desk at the architecture library at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Even cooler that it is at a library!

Treasure Box.

found on For Me, For You

This is the coolest wedding invitation I have seen! I love, love it! Can you imagine all of the hundreds of little things to tuck inside? And, the invites are printed on old book endpapers with the raw edge. How cool is that? These could be adapted very easily for many other occasions. The possibilities are endless!

Labor Day Weekend.

Fort Verde, doctor's house

Apparently, the doctors assigned to Fort Verde were also naturalists collecting specimens for museum such as the Smithsonian!

Montezuma Well cliff dwellings

Dinner - 5 cheese macaroni!! Intense!

V-V Heritage site petroglyphs

View from the top - Jerome

Mike found out at the last minute that his paper submission date was pushed back, so we decided to take a little trip. We went to Camp Verde just 2 hours north of Phoenix. The weekend was full of military forts, cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, and a little gambling. Sadly, it wasn't much cooler in the Verde valley but it was still nice and we can check several more things off of our 'to see' list. The petroglyphs were amazing! There are more than 1000 at the V-V Heritage site and very well-preserved. The chimney in the field is from an old ranch house that used to be on the land. Can you imagine? Just a short walk to the creek from the house and there is a huge wall of petroglyphs 400 or more years old?!

The cliff dwellings at Montezuma Well are pretty incredible as well. It is hard to imagine climbing up to these homes on ladders or ropes, but what a great view!

It was a great trip and we came home Sunday night to grill and watch movies in the pool. We don't have many pool days left and we have to make the most of them!