The Living History Festival

On Sunday, we went to the Living History Festival.  They had reenactments of different types of battles, from different times in history.  These are a few of the swords that were displayed at the Living History Festival.

 There were many different groups of soldiers at the festival.  There were Roman gladiators, a Scottish warrior band, Napoleonic soldiers, Medieval soldiers, 16th century pirates, Viking warriors, and WWII soldiers.  This picture is of the re-enactment of a 15th century battle.  In this battle, they had cannons and archers.

This was the re-enactment of a WWII battle.  This re-enactment was my favorite.  We were standing so close to the soldiers that we kept getting hit by bullet shells!  -Leah

The archaeological park in Xanten

On Saturday, we went to an archaeological park in Xanten, Germany.  The park is built where there used to be a Roman town.  This is a picture of the ruins of a roman temple.  Also in the archaeological park , they had a museum(which had lots of roman artifacts), some rebuilt roman buildings, and other things.                                                                        

This is a picture of a reconstructed amphitheater at the archaeological park.  It was very big.

Ethan

This is a church we saw in Cuijk, a town close to where we are staying.  We also went inside the church,it was very large and had lots of paintings on the walls.

This is a wall mural of Saint George and the Dragon that we saw inside the church at Cuijk.  Almost all of the walls in the church were covered in murals like this one, depicting different scenes from the Bible.  I thought they were really neat.

I took this picture while we were at the grocery store.  We were in the meat section, when I saw this.  It was so funny, that I had to take a picture of it!  It seems that they have happy salami here in Holland!

This tower is part of a church in the town of Mill.  The church was really large, and it had a really cool clock on the tower.  

A day of exploring

We did some exploring today in Holland.  This morning we took a walk near where we live in the villiage of Plasmolen.  Below is a picture of Leah and I walking in the  Saint Jansberg forest.

Everyone had a good time walking and getting some fresh air.  Below is a picture of a water mill that we saw on our hike.

Is this some kind of crazy Dutch tradition?

No it's just the crazy American kids!

After our hike we went into the big city of Nijmegen to do some exploring.  One of the interesting things in Nijmegen was there were very few shops open because it was Sunday.  Seems like a very good tradition to me.  I did see a Belgian Chocolate shop there but they were closed; I'll have to stop by while I am here and get my Dad some chocolates.

We also saw some old ruins from the Valkhof castle in Nijmegen's city center.  Below is a picture of ruins of the chapel of that castle.  Unfortunately there was not much left of the castle we'll have to find a more intact castle in the future.

Flying and jet lag

We flew out to Holland on 9/11.  While sitting at the Milwaukee airport they announced a moment of silence to remember and reflect on the events of that day.  We flew from Milwaukee to Newark, NJ; which was Leah, Ethan, and Anna's first flight ever..  None of them turned green or worse but Anna's ears were bothering her.  Here is a picture of the kids on the plane.

I didn't get a picture of myself because I was holding the camera and besides it's just me.  I didn't get a picture of Debbie because she was sitting in the row in front of me and I didn't think you would want to see the back of her head.  Our flight to Newark went very well but we had a very long layover in Newark which we spent eating at Chiles and just looking around.  In the terminal we saw another reminder of 9/11 and that was the New York skyline.

We left our house Saturday morning before 6:00 in the morning (Wisconsin time) to catch our flight in Milwaukee.  We arrived in Düsseldorf, Germany at 6:00 in the morning (German time).  It wasn't 24 hours of travel time but with the time change in all it seem weird.  We got to our hotel for the first night but our room was not ready; so we went for a long drive through some of the surrounding areas.  I saw some windmills but did not get any picture of them because I was driving and everyone else was asleep or wishing they were asleep.  We're now in our bungalow; below is a picture of the front.  Maybe later I'll take some picture of the inside.  It's very similar to a cabin you'd rent up North.

Jet lag has affected myself and Anna the most; we both keep waking up around 4:00 in the morning and can't go back to sleep.  So we've been just hanging out around the table drinking coffee and talking.  They drink a lot of strong coffee here which is something I could get use to.

Nine days to go.

We have nine days to go before we leave for Gennep.  I've started this blog so you can see what we've been up to and how we are doing.