A Change of Plans

Josh and I have been keeping ourselves busy thus far in 2014. It has been our goal to do something every weekend I am not working. We have been doing well in this "goal" staying busy. It has been fun to plan - a lot of work, but fun. I've got things planned out for us from now until August. Yes, August.

But.

A small change of plans.

I had a beautiful new niece who arrived in the world. We didn't know until she arrived if she was a he or a she - surprise! A healthy baby girl! My parents kept me in the loop of the labor/delivery, and my whole family sent me pictures. As soon as I saw pictures of her, I was struck with emotions. I was happy to know she was here, but I was also sad. When my older niece Zoey was born, I got to meet her and hold her within a week of her birth. When would I have a chance to see this little one? How different would she look when I finally saw her? There is so much I was going to miss. I hate that feeling.

So. To make a short story even shorter... I went home to meet her. It was a brief trip, much shorter than my usual trip. I had decided to keep this trip on the "down low" to focus my time with family. Part of me was sad - normally when I come home I try to see as many people as possible and catch up with my friends. This trip wasn't like that. I met my new niece Brooke. I got to play with Zoey. I had a chance to hang out with my brother and sister-in-law. I got to see my parents. And, as a wonderful addition, my aunts and cousins drove over as well. My family!! This trip was exactly what I needed to soothe my sad heart. Too fast of a trip, but wonderful.

After my whirlwind trip home... I stepped off the plane and back to work the next day. I'm currently attempt to get caught up on laundry, cleaning my house, and trying to get back on track... because we are off on another adventure next weekend. It was a brief interruption in our travel schedule, but so worth it!

Strasbourg, Colmar, and the Route de Vins

Continuing with our non-stop travel trend... I had found a killer hotel deal in Strasbourg, France. Strasbourg isn't that far away - only about two and a half hours - and many people do it as a day trip. We haven't been yet. There's no reason as to why, we just haven't gotten around to it. After three years it seems kind of silly to still skip over a "standard" day trip. As I was saying, I found a killer hotel deal, so I planned out a weekend for us. The plan was to spend the night Friday in Strasbourg, spend Saturday seeing Strasbourg, then on Sunday drive the Route de Vins to Colmar before going home. This got the most of our time and justified getting a hotel. I wasn't sold on doing a full weekend trip so soon after our cruise (I still haven't full unpacked), but I didn't want the deal or time to pass us by. Off we went.

After work and packing the car, we got a bit of a late start on Friday night. We didn't get checked in to our hotel until close to 10. Our hotel was... interesting. Quite basic. I had to remind myself you can't expect much when you paid the price we did. It was safe and mostly clean, so I guess I can't really complain.

Saturday morning we looked outside to find the sun shining. Sun during the winter in our part of Germany is a bit rare. For the better part of a week we had rain. It was such a treat to see the sun! We gathered ourselves together and took off for the day. I had no plans for Strasbourg. There were no museums I wanted to see, nothing I had to do. I was content to wander around and take it in. Strasbourg is in the Alsace region of France, and this area has passed back and forth in ownership between France and Germany many times. It is known for its wine and having "cute" half-timbered houses. Be prepared to over dose on cuteness.

Our first stop was the Strasbourg Cathedral - it stands so tall it was easy to orient ourselves in that direction. I love when I get the chance to go inside a church when the sun is shining- it makes the stained glass a whole new experience.

After our walk through the Cathedral we went through a walk through the rest of the town. My favorite area was "Petite Venice," which is an area where (back in the day) there used to be tanneries, bakeries, ect. Lots of small houses along canal ways. (I just have to add here, I find it quite funny that everywhere seems to mention or compare things to Venice. Each country has their own "Venice-like" spot. In Germany, Dresden is "the Venice of the North," while Amsterdam also claims the same title. In Belgium it is Brugge. In France, it is Strasbourg. In Colmar, France, there is another area referred to as "Venice." Really? Get a little more creative on your names. While Venice is unique and beautiful, I didn't think it was THAT great). Anywho. Enjoy half-timbered house cuteness.

By the late afternoon the sun had disappeared, and we had seen all we wanted. I was satisfied with my Strasbourg experience. We walked back to the hotel to get our car. We picked a grocery store out of the GPS and went out to buy some wine and restock our wine rack. I had picked a Cora grocery store, which is a French chain of grocery stores. Imagine my surprise when what we drove up to was the size of a Costco and looked like a giant super Walmart on the inside. Since it was a Saturday afternoon there were wall to wall people, but I still managed to get some good, cheap wine.

The next morning we were greeted by the sun once again. After checking out of the hotel and loading up the car, we went on our way on the Route de Vins. The Route de Vins is a small highway which runs along many small towns between Strasbourg and Colmar (although the route goes a bit past Colmar, we were stopping there). The towns are all suppose to be "cute" and surrounded by vineyards. I wanted to drive down the route and select one or two places to stop along the way. T

The first place I chose to stop was Haut Koenigsbourg Chateaux, as it was one of the closest stops to Strasbourg. I didn't really have any desire to go inside the castle, I just wanted to "see" it. I'm glad I picked this as a destination. I could see many small castles dotting the hills and vineyards as we drove along. When we turned off to drive towards Haut Koenigsbourg, we started winding our way up the side of a mountain. This gave us a panoramic view of the area

This picture/view made Josh and I both think of home. 

After our viewing stop, we hopped back in the car. The next destination I picked was Riquewhir, as Rick Steves dubbed it one of the best villages to stop at. Although, I have to say, as we drove past all the other little villages on the route, they all looked nice and probably deserved a stop. But I can see why Riquewhir is the most popular. The village itself is tiny, yet it is full of narrow, winding cobble stone streets, and brightly painted half-timbered houses. It reminded me of a better, smaller French Rothenberg. I absolutely loved this little gem, I think it will make a great day trip destination for our future guests.

I was surprised to find that on a Sunday afternoon most of the shops were open. I was also surprised to see so many other tourists (mostly German) wandering around. We looked through a few different stores before going back to the car. By this time it was noon, so I thought I would pick Colmar, our stopping point on the Route de Vin. Although we drove the route and drove past many of the villages, I would happily go back to this area to take a second look or see other villages.

We arrived in Colmar, parked the car, and set off wandering. Rick Steves recommends using Colmar as your headquarters, not Strasbourg. As I said, I only picked Strasbourg because of the hotel price. Colmar is suppose to be like Strasbourg only smaller, quainter. It was a quiet Sunday - most shops were closed, and there weren't too many people out. Without crowds or the distraction of stores, we walked through Colmar pretty quickly. Or maybe, by this point, we had both over dosed on cute half-timbered houses and were ready to be done. That could be the case too. It's not that I didn't like Colmar, I did like it... I think we were just ready to be done and head home, so it made it easy to "see" the town in a short amount of time.

This ended our Route de Vin trip and we headed home. We were blessed with good weather and sunshine, which only added to a fun weekend. I don't know why we waited so long to go here... but it was well worth the wait.

Canary Island Cruise Part Two: Lanzarote, Maderia, Malaga

After we left Morocco we had another day at sea. After a leisurely breakfast, we filled our day playing games, playing bingo, reading, and relaxing. It was nice to relax and take a breath, to have a break between our days of sightseeing. The sea was rough, and it made me grateful we had changed things around to avoid the weather. However, I wondered what the sea would have been like had we not changed paths... There was an announcement made that we would be arriving into Lanzarote much earlier than expected - around 1 am. We were told once the ship cleared customs we would be welcome to leave the ship if you wanted to. We laughed wondering who would be getting off the ship to check out the nightlife.

Josh and I discussed our plans for the morning, and he set an alarm on his iPad for us. In the morning I heard the alarm go off, and I got out of bed to shower and get ready. As I was putting on my makeup I glanced at my watch and saw the time was 4:40 am. What?! That is way too early! I was planning to get up at 6:30. I opened up the bathroom door to ask Josh if he realized how early it was (he did). Josh decided to go out for a run. I made a pot of coffee in our room and sat down to read a book. There was nothing else to do. I stood on the balcony and watched Josh leave the ship to go for a run. As he left the ship at 5 am, a taxi with some younger people was pulling in. I guess some people did decide to get off the ship and see the nightlife.

Once Josh was back from his run and we'd had breakfast, we decided to get going for the day. We were some of the first touring people off the ship (not counting the nighttime party people and Josh's run). Lanzarote is a volcanic island, and is much different from the other Canary Islands. There were a few things I wanted to see while I was on the island, but the thing I wanted to see the most was the volcano national park, also called the "Fire Mountains." This park was about a half hour, 45 minute drive from the port. We found the local taxi service had set tours which would take you to different spots on the island for a set price. We found a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the the Fire Mountains.

It was raining, and there was mist surrounding a lot of the island. The landscape was interesting - arid and volcanic with large black mountains raising in the distance. We rode along a highway for about a half hour taking in the landscape. Our taxi driver pulled over to the side of the road, and in his broken English told us to get out of the car and follow him. He showed us an old lava flow area with a blowhole.

Our driver then took us through a small town. I thought at first he was just showing us the town, but then he parked the car and once again told us to follow him. We hiked up an incline to be shown another edge of the coast. One side of the incline was a bright rusty red color while the beach and other side of the incline was black. There was a small pool of water which was green in color. It seemed almost lunar.

 We continued on towards the Fire Mountains. Our taxi driver explained the park didn't open until 9 am, so we were killing time until the park opened. Right outside of the park there is an area where there are camels which you can pay to ride on a short area of the mountains. Our driver was showing us all the camels lined up, ready and waiting for the tourists to show up. I didn't want to ride one - it was pouring rain, and sitting on a wet camel did not sound appealing. There were also camels which had coffee cans strapped over their muzzles, and our driver explained these camels had muzzles because they either tried to bite or spit. Yet another reason not to ride one.

 The park finally opened. Our driver took us through the entrance. Your entrance fee to the park also pays for you to take a 40 minute bus ride through the park along the mountains. We were some of the first people there. Our driver talked with one of the park workers and told us our bus would leave in about a half hour. As we were waiting, a worker of the park demonstrated features of the park and the restaurant - there is a large grill which the restaurant used to cook on which was powered from heat from the volcano. The worker also poured water into a hole in the ground, and about three seconds later the water came shooting back out like a geyser. If you placed your hands on the stones along the outside of the buildings they were warm, even on a cold, windy, rainy day.

After a bit of waiting, the bus was ready to go. Our driver made sure we got on board, and assured us he would be waiting for us when the ride was over. The bus started its drive through the park. The road was narrow and was only a one-way path. An automated commentary played - first in Spanish, followed by English, then German. The commentary explained the history of the island and the previous volcanic activity. There was a variety of lava formations - caves, tubes, piles of black rock, stacked layers of purple, pink, green swirled rock. It reminded me of the volcano national park on the big island of Hawaii, however this park had multiple mountains with a few different craters. The bus would stop for you to be able to take a longer look at an area, but any pictures you took had to be taken from inside the bus through the windows. With the rain sticking to the windows it made it a challenge to get a decent picture. The pictures I do have wouldn't do the landscape any justice.

When the bus returned to the restaurant, our driver was waiting for us. We left the Fire Mountains, and our driver asked if we wanted to go anywhere else. It was windy and raining. We told him we were happy to return to port. I really liked how our private tour turned out - it was about the same price as the tour offered through the ship, so we didn't save any money, but we had privacy and were able to do things at our own pace, which I really enjoyed. When we got back to the ship we had plenty of time to go look around the port town of Accerife, but it was pouring down rain... and we decided we were content with what we had done.

The boat left early afternoon. As the afternoon wore on, the sea started to get rougher. It was already a bit bouncy, but it went from simply bouncy to being rough. We were on an upper deck playing bingo, and I definitely started to feel a bit dizzy/nauseated/sea sick from all the movement. We went back to our room. I took a Dramamine, slowly sipped on a Coke, and sat on our bed looking out our large door/window trying to focus on the horizon. It took awhile, but my stomach did start to settle, and I finally felt less wobbly. We went to dinner, and we were sitting by a window, and we could see the wave crashing and swirling around the side of the ship. It was growing increasingly rough. We decided to skip any evening activities because of the roughness. We had a hard time walking down the stairs and hallways while staying upright. I couldn't foresee myself sitting in a dark theater without getting sick again. Trying to sleep that night was interesting. A challenge, to say the least. Not only was the ship rocking with the waves, but it would also roll side to side. Thankfully with the Dramamine I didn't get sick, but I frequently woke up from the movement of the ship. Laying down during a storm trying to sleep reminded me of how it feels to sit through a rough flight. We were told the next morning we had been sailing through 60 knot winds (69 mph) and 9 meter (29 feet) waves. This was when we learned the UK had been hit with an Atlantic hurricane, and we were sailing through the tail-end of the storm. That explained a lot. We were fortunate that neither of us got sick... others were not so fortunate.

The next morning we were up and ready to go early. I opened up our curtains and stepped out on our balcony to watch the island of Maderia appear through the mist. It was an amazing sight to have - the island is lush and green and the town of Funchal is full of white houses. There were clouds covering the top of the mountains of Maderia, but a rainbow was starting to appear as the sun shown through the mist. I was already in love with Maderia and we hadn't taken a step off the ship.

As usual, we were some of the first people off the ship. It was lightly raining, but the sun seemed to promise a nice day despite the rain. There was a mountain of taxis waiting for us when we got off the ship, but we went with a hop-on-hop-off bus tour instead. We chose to go with the bus as it was cheaper than a taxi, and the bus drove outside of Funchal to a small fishing village Camara de Lobos (which is where Winston Churchill took a holiday and painted. I didn't care so much about that, but the village sounded beautiful). It was convenient to simply sit back and look at the scenery as we went around the town of Funchal and out to Camara de Lobos. We got off at the village to walk around. The village is surrounded by banana plantations as well as a large sea cliff. It was sleepy little village, and I found it charming.

After our time in Camara de Lobos, we went back to wander around Funchal. We didn't have anything in particular we wanted to see, we just wanted to look around. I really liked the mosaic and patterned cobblestone sidewalks.

One thing I wanted to do in Funchal was to ride the cable car up to Monte, another village on the island. At Monte there is a well known botanical garden, which I knew Josh would want to see. However, the top of the mountains on the island were still socked in with clouds, and we wondered if we would be able to see anything if we went up the cable car. After debating it for a bit, we decided to pass on the cable car. The other side of the island has other sights which sounded interesting to me, and there are many coastal hiking trials. We agreed Maderia would be a place we would like to return to sometime, so I plan to do the cable car then. We learned at dinner it had been clear at the top of the cable car and people were able to see all around the island. Sigh. Well, hindsight is 20/20.

We returned to the ship to have a late lunch. There was a local folk group which performed on the ship for us singing traditional songs and dancing. I liked their costumes - the men wore short, calf-length pants and vests while the women wore a mixture of plain white dresses and dresses which were colorful with colorful aprons (they never explained if there was significant reason behind the differences in the dresses). Everyone wore a small pointed hat, which again, they didn't explain... but we had seen these hats in souvenir shops around the island.

The sun had remained out and the rain had vanished, and it was a surprising nice day. The boat was starting to leave port. Josh and I got a bottle of wine and sat out on our balcony watching Maderia fade behind us.

The next morning we awoke to find calmer seas and sunny skies. After breakfast we went back to our room. Josh wanted to relax and watch a movie on TV. I made a pot of coffee and went outside to read on the balcony. For the first time on our cruise I had to wear my sunglasses and sun hat while I was outside. Once or twice I had to go back inside to rest to get away from the heat of the sun. Now that was what I had wanted and envisioned when I booked this cruise and chose a balcony room - sunshine, warmth, and a private retreat. Well, I guess better late than never. On our last cruise we both made an effort to go work out (Josh make more of an effort than I did) and walk. On this cruise it had been too rough to even attempt to walk without worrying about falling or losing your balance. Josh attempted to go running on the treadmill in the gym and said even that wasn't worth it. On the one day it was finally nice enough for us to go walking we chose to be lazy. It was glorious!!

We awoke to find ourselves in Malaga, Spain. I didn't have set plans for Malaga. We were going to explore the city on our own. I wanted to check out Malaga as a place to possibly return to. There are many interesting places to visit which are within a close distance of Malaga, and you could use it as a home-base. Many people go here for beach holidays. I was mainly looking to check out Malaga from that standpoint. As usual, we were some of the first people off the ship. We walked from port into town. We could see the old fortress above town with switchback stairs leading up to it. We decided to hike up to the fort. During our walk up the stairs I was cursing myself for wanting to go to the fortress, but I was rewarded with a wonderful eagle eye view of Malaga.

We climbed down from the fort and continued our walk through Malaga. As I said, there was nothing in particular I was looking to do or see. There is a Picasso Museum in Malaga, as it was Picasso's birthplace. However, we were one of two large cruise ships in port, and when we walked past the museum there was a line out the door. We skipped it. I didn't want to see it that badly. Instead I did my own photo safari of Malaga, which I enjoyed. It is an interesting city with lots of hidden gems.

We went back to the ship to have a late lunch. Then I took a shower to get ready for dinner. It was our anniversary, and we had agreed to dress up for dinner. On this cruise we had dressed up for a few dinners, but not anything fancy, just dressed nicer (without jeans). Dinners weren't structured and didn't have dress requirements. In some ways this was nice for the nights you were tired and just didn't feel like changing clothes. But, there is something nice about getting dressed up too. Josh wore his suit, I wore a little black dress, and we went to have dinner together. After dinner we went to see the show for the evening, which was done by the cruise dancers. I loved it, but Josh wasn't too into it (but Josh is never too into dancing, he just puts up with it for my sake). It was a wonderful anniversary - touring a new city, having a nice dinner, seeing a show.

The next day was our last day on ship. There were lots of activities on board, but after plenty of trivia and bingo in the past few days, we were happy to have a lazy day ourselves. Josh watched movies, I got lost in a book. For me, it's a perfect way to spend a day. Later in the afternoon we packed our bags. One thing I liked about Norwegian was you can pick which time you want to leave the ship - they had different time slots (which were limited) and you could pick when you wanted to disembark. You also had the option to leave at your own time between 5:30 am and 9:00 am if you carried your own bag. We selected that option, so we wouldn't have to worry about re-arranging our checked/carry on bags at the airport. I really liked having that option, especially since we are perfectly capable of carrying our own bags. The rest of our last day was uneventful.

The next morning we had breakfast and got off the ship around 8 am. We shared a taxi with an older couple to the airport - which I was happy we did as it made the taxi much cheaper. We had checked in for our flight, dropped off our bags, and gone through security by 9:15. Our flight didn't leave until 2:25. So. We had a lot of time to kill. We wandered around the airport, read, had lunch... It made the time drag. Isn't it funny that the same day on the cruise ship was relaxing but in the airport it was boring? Finally, we were able to board our flight to head home. This time instead of a sandwich we were given raspberry coffee cake, which was delicious. Our flight was uneventful. We landed, got our bags, and caught the shuttle back to where we parked our car. We drove home and were greeted by excited kitties.

Despite the less than desirable weather and rough seas, we really enjoyed our cruise. I found myself comparing Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Lines to one another throughout the trip. I've determined I liked both cruise lines. I enjoyed both of the cruises we've been on. I do like the "freestyle" aspects of Norwegian. Royal Caribbean offers a "My Time Dining" option, which is suppose to be similar to Norwegian's "freestyle dining." I think I would like to try that out our next time around with Royal Caribbean. I think in the future I would be willing to look at both cruise lines when I am searching for a cruise. We also discovered two places we want to return to:  Maderia and Malaga. All in all a great trip.

Now enjoy my Valentine's present, Stitch, with our various towel animals