Rodenbach House

We found a very nice house in Rodenbach about 10 minutes from work. The home was custom built by the owners. The landlady says it is too big for her and her son now and wants something smaller for about 3-5 years. Perfect for us as we will be here about 3 years. It has a nice sun room or "winter garden" as they call it.

Fussball - Kaiserslautern

After we arrived in Germany. Don started working and settling in. We stayed in a hotel on base and tried to find a house to rent, and all the other millions of things you need to do when you move.

The second weekend here, we attended our first Fussball (Soccer) game in Germany. Somehow we missed doing that when we were here the first time. Above is the Fan section. They are holding up knitted scarfs with the teams logo on them. They were very loud. The stadium, for this relatively small town, seated over 40,000 people that day. And this team is a losing team... at least this year. They have very loyal fans.

They dedicated this game to 3 companies in town that are talking about closing their factories in K-town. Two were American companies and the team let 4000 employees in the game for free.

They are called the "Red Devils"

Traveling to Germany - Feb 6, 2009

We drove our car from England to Germany. We took a ferry from England to the Hook of Holland. Then stayed overnight in Holland and drove on to Ramstein, Germany the next day. Above are pictures of the ferry.

Don's Going Away Party

The Military really does a nice job of throwing going away parties. Don had a lunch at the club and was presented with many nice gifts. Above is his boss in England presenting a gift.

Tower Bridge

View of Tower Bridge

View from top of Tower bridge walkway

January

January was a busy month for us. Don got offered a job in Germany, back in Ramstein and it was an offer we couldn't refuse! So January was spent packing up and hitting London twice to say goodbye. We saw two shows: Wicked and Buddy Holly. They were fantastic. (In December we had gone to see Billy Elliot and got hooked on the shows.)

Big Ben with the London Eye in the background

Winston Churchill Statue

Christmas 2008

We spent Christmas in Ohio again this year. It was great seeing everyone. We split our time between Sandusky, Avon Lake and Dayton. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures!! Amazing. We'll have to do better next time.

End of Cruise

This was taken high up in the city of Barcelona overlooking the sea, with our cruise boat in the background....getting ready for the next set of vacationers.... unfortunately our trip is over. Although it was a very cold and rainy trip, we had a great time. On to the next adventure.....

Sagrada Familia by Antoni Gaudi

Barcelona has many buildings designed by Antoni Gaudi. They are very modernistic and use curves instead of straight lines. We got to see a few of the buildings via bus on the last day of our Cruise as we headed to the airport. It was raining hard that day so we didn't get to spend much time outdoors. Here are a few pictures of the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) Cathedral that is not complete yet. He worked on the Roman Catholic Cathedral for 40 years. Gaudi has since died, but the city is trying to complete the church, in Sept. they are supposed to be able to have services inside, but the building won't be completed until 2026.

The holy family

This is the newer section that is being built now according to his plans but with some updates.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving they had a formal dinner night and served Turkey (it was an American Cruise line) They even had a ice sculpture in the shape of a turkey.

Naples - Pizza!

Since we were in Naples, home of the original pizza, we had to stop and taste one!
Kiln that they made the pizza in...

Ummmm good

Pompeii pictures

We made it to the ruins of Pompeii and took lots of pictures. It's amazing the extent of the city they had.

Mount Vesuvius in the background. (With clouds not smoke!)

Pompeii

Don and I spent the next two days exploring the ship and port cities which was restful.

On the fourth day we stopped in Naples, Italy and decided to make it on our own to Pompeii. The taxi drivers were out in full force as we exited the ship, but we made it through them and went to look for the city bus... which would take us to the train to Pompeii. None of us knew any Italian so it was quite comical. The last picture is the "boys" trying to buy the tickets for the bus to the train station.

When we got to the bus, we didn't quite know where to get off and one of our shipmates was from the phillipines and she started asking questions of another philippino (in Tagalog) on the bus... she took us to the right station.

Then we had trouble finding the right train and an elderly train station attendent took us under his wing and led us to the right train.... at least we hoped he was taking us to the right train... we figured if he headed for an alley we'd run the other way! The second picture is us waiting for the train and still not knowing if he led us in the right direction! Of course when we got there, he held his hand out for a tip!!!

We did make it to the right train and found out there were two Pompeii's, fortunately we got off at the right one.

Ship

We got back to the ship and explored some more... The dining hall....

The Stairs on one end of the ship

The promanade with shops and bars

We returned to our room at night to towel "figures" (most nights) I left my sunglasses in the room and the maid used them in her artistic endeaver.

Eze, France

The second portion of the tour was to the village of Eze. It is high on a cliff and dates from 2000 BC. At one point it was a commune. Now it has 2 hotels and restaurants and many artist shops. It has windy stone streets and no cars. (Couldn't fit!) The last picture is the view of the Mediterrean from the bus on the ride up the mountain and the first picture is a view from the top.

Villefranche, France

We boarded on Saturday and spent a rocky night at sea... and landed in Villefranche on Sunday. We had several choices of tours and decided on the port city and a small village called Eze. Above are the pictures of Villefranche. It lies between Nice and Monacco.

Boarding the Voyager of the Sea

We took the Royal Carribean ship line this time and above are some views of us boarding and exploring the ship. It is the largest ship in the world (excluding the QE2) and had a wall climbing room and miniture golf, your obligitory pool (one for adults and one for kids) and on and on.... It was beautiful. They even had a Old town in the the middle of the ship with shops and restaurants.

Mediterranean cruise - Thanksgiving week

For Thanksgiving, we went on a cruise with some good friends on the Mediterranean. We started in Barcelona, Spain and spent the first day exploring the city of Barcelona. We took a gondola ride up to get a great view of the city.

November 2008

At Lakenheath they are constantly finding burial sites from thousands of years ago. Don and I took these pictures of the British archeological team uncovering skeletons dated about 5000 years old. This location is near the housing area on base and as they dig for various projects, they often find a white powdery substance which alerts them to another burial site. They then call in the archeological team to evaluate and dig up the artifacts and move them elsewhere. Each county has it's own team and our county has over 30 people employed full time to deal with all the sites!!!