Day-1

The Louvre:

Watched a sparrow outsmart the pigeons while waiting for friends to arrive.

"Enjoying" the experince of having 1/2 of our group evacuated from the room they were left in because of a suspicious package and explaining to the guard that we don't want to go into the room we just want to know where our family is!

Matt gets to go infront of the velvet ropes ( along with our friends wee ones) to see this :

But being more impressed with this:

Ahhh Paris

If you ever make it to Paris there are a few must sees. We were there for a week and after talking with my Uncle (who lives there) he agreed that we had seen the majority of sites.

We stayed for a week and rented an apartment. To play catch up ( we have been home for almost 5 months now...) I'll be doing a quick Highlight post with a few pictures for each day ;)

But our bags won't be on the next flight!! And where is Matt's chair?

As with every trip we've ever taken there is at least one thing that makes us scratch our heads with wonderment until they bleed. This time we got to do it in a foreign language!

We had a layover in Paris on our way to Munich from London. Because we decided to do Germany on our own dime the flight from Paris to Munich was booked at a different time then the rest of the flights, it was also on a totally different itinerary. We did not think this would be a problem, as we had over 2 hours between the flights to gather our luggage and check back in, but the gods of chaos had a different plan in mind for us.

Upon arriving at Charles De Gaulle we were met by "Johnny the wonder kid" he speaks very little English, and I speak just enough French to get us to the restroom and ask for a potato. We try to explain to him that we need to get our luggage, and find Matt's chair, to this day we have not figured out why the chair must be checked luggage in France. After running around a bit we find the chair and Matt is overjoyed to leave the tiny aisle chair ( that is skinny enough to get down the aisle in a plane). Now off to find our luggage.

Everyone we talk to continues to assure us that our luggage will be booked onto the next flight,that is all fine and dandy if our luggage had been checked through to Munich, but as the next flight is on a different itinerary the luggage is not going to be on the next flight. After explaining this in franglish to about 10 different people, we finally chat with someone who speaks English better then we do and they provide us with 3 different spots that our luggage could be.

Luggage found(after Johnny tries to get us through spaces that no one should be able to fit through) we head off to get our tickets. No one can find our reservation and we head off to customer service,apparently in the booking process our names have been flipped and we are now lastname firstname.

Johnny now informs us that we need to get to the other terminal and goes off to search for his supervisor so he can call for the wheelchair transportation. We bid good day to Johnny and pray that we can get on the plane with tickets that have different names then our passports.

Upon arriving at the other terminal we are introduced to Sulomon who will be taking care of us from now on. Joy of joys, he speaks English and we are able to explain our ticket situation. After a few minuets at customer service we head off to check in our luggage. Here we begin to realize just how foreign a manual wheelchair is, as Matt is asked time and again about the battery pack on his chair when he informs the agents that he will be staying in his chair until it is time to board the plane. After numerous calls to several people it is decided that Matt can in fact stay in his chair ( and we begin to really miss the ADA in the great old USA).

The chaos gods are not done with us, and it looks like they may actually win this battle as we wait for another transporter to take us to the plane( which is not at the gate, but is at another gate in the terminal we had left Johnny in) For some reason we are boarded onto the back of the plane after every one else is on, which infuriates the other passenger in a wheelchair, if we had known this we would not have requested to be moved to the front of the plane for ease of boarding.

Finally buckled in the plane takes off 20 min late, but the food was surprisingly yummy!

I heart Germany

A List of the things I heart most about Germany:

Taxi's that are brand new Jaguars

Big German waitresses who won't let us order our own food, and scoff at the fact that we order coke in a brew house

Stores that makes us worry about where we are staying, but turn out to be like Ikea ----->

Learning that brats should be served on baguettes

Weibserwurst, if anyone knows where we can get some of this you would make our day!

Chocolate, the good kind, not the stuff we try to pass off as chocolate here in the states(sorry Hersey's)

Women taxi drivers who can't get out of town because of the gay pride parade, and spout off all the German I know(and I don't know the good words)

The View, I would be happy living here...apparently Hitler wasn't, but I'm betting the fact that he didn't eat meat and was probably hungry had a bit to do with it

Surely it never rains in London

London had a long hot spell this summer, right before we left in fact, so why on earth would I think to pack an umbrella? Our second day in London was definitely one of those, if I had packed it we wouldn't have needed it, but since I didn't, we did kind of days.

We thought about getting up early to see the changing of the guard, and decided to put it on our list to do next time.

While admiring the outside of Westminster Abbey one of the tour guides told us that we could go in for free. There are a lot of people that are buried there that I didn't know about, Handle, Darwin and Sir Issac Newton. My (I'm not sure how many greats) grandma Mary Queen of Scotts is also buried there, so I went up to say hello and found out why I love canopy beds so much as she is buried under one.

The tube in London is undergoing renovations to become more wheelchair accessible. One of the few stations that is already accessible is near Westminster so we decided to take the tube out to the Tower of London. Well I read the map wrong and the station that is at the Tower of London connects to an accessible side station...by stairs. So we got back on the tube ( we had learned that all day passes serve us best from our days in DC) and headed over to Kings Cross ( of Harry Potter fame) to transfer to a different line. However when we got there the lifts were out so we headed back to Westminster and got on a different line. While having our adventure underground the skies opened up.

We walked through the rain a bit until we got to a restaurant to eat while we waited for the rain to let up a bit, it didn't. So we decided to go for it, we walked across the Tower Bridge and over to the Tower of London. The Tower of London isn't totally accessible, something about it being really old, there were a few things that we could see, luckily one of them was the crown jewels, unfortunately they don't let camera's in, but there is some cool stuff in there! There is also a remnant of an ancient Roman city wall, it was built in the late 2nd or early 3rd century

Once we were done there we headed back, in our ponchos that a nice lady gave us, to take a ride on the London Eye. Now for those of you who know me I am not a big fan of heights, last year at Disneyland while on the Ferris wheel wee one had to console me. There are no restraints on this, you are in a glass capsule that rotates as the wheel goes around. I hear the view is great, I stayed in the middle clamped to the bench, Matt took pictures. (video to come)

Across the pond

We took the nigh time flight from New York to London, mostly so I could "sleep" as we flew over the ocean. I don't like driving over water, let alone flying over it. Matt said it was a good thing I was sleeping because as we approached Heathrow Airport he watched a big plane fly over us.

Going through customs was interesting, as we waited our turn we watched as a lady had her story torn apart, luckily our story was easy, 3 days for site seeing, and can you recommend the best place for fish and chips?

London is frantically getting ready for the Olympics in 2012, which turned out great for us because they are getting everything wheelchair friendly. All of the new taxis are wheelchair accessible,they look like bowler hats .

We arrived at our hotel, praying that they would have a room that was available for early check in, we only had to wait about 20 min. After we freshened up we went out to explore London.

Our hotel was right off of Picadilly Circus, and within walking distance of most of the sites.

This is the hotel we originally picked out, but Marriott didn't want to play nice. It's the old Parliament building. The big ferris wheel thing is called the London Eye, and yes we went on it ( pictures in the next post).

We were so tired that we just walked around and planed out the next day. We walked across the pedestrian bridge ( the one that gets taken out in Harry Potter) just to realize that there is only an elevator at one end so we walked back.

We had asked the concierge at the hotel where the best fish and chips could be found, well we apparently didn't listen very well and got lost on our way to find it. We found a pub and as we have learned over the years, if you want really good food, find a pub! We ordered the variety plate and some cokes, and realized that the cokes on this trip were going to be few and far between, and that we would come to miss refills.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to take a quick nap before heading back out. 2 hours later we went and found McDonalds. We just had to try it to see if it was the same as back home.

The burgers are better, but alas the fries are not.

3 hour tour

The best way to see Manhattan when you have very few hours in which to "see" Manhattan is a river cruise. You get to see the majority of the sites and you get to do it sitting down ( although Matt always does his site seeing sitting down...)

We opted for the 3 hour tour that takes you all the way around the island, and we had just enough time to head down in the morning take the tour and head to the airport.

Here are some of the highlights

Many a person learned what bird strike is when a plane landed on the Hudson River a few months before we went to New York. Although us Eddie Izzard fans have known for a long time what bird strike is.

The boat we were on was one of the first boats to reach the plane. They were backing out to start the tour when the plane landed. Here is a picture of where it landed.

This is Pier 54, where the Titanic would have docked if she had made it to New York, the pier is said to be haunted

This is the very first cell phone tower, the town of Hoboken NJ has a cool history, the first cell phone call, the first documented baseball game, and the oreo cookie just to name a few.













Ellis Island, it's alot bigger and nicer then I thought it would be. It's crazy to imagine the
amount of people who went through here, after leaving so much behind praying to find a better life.










We didn't have enough time this trip to go to Liberty Island, but you get an awesome view on the island tour. The crown had just reopened the day before, it had been closed since September 11th.

The United Nations building was built with windows on both sides to depict the transparity that they wanted to have

Not exactly the best place to advertise for the best locations and lowest prices on hotels. I would not want to stay there!

The House that Ruth built, in all it's glory... before they tear it down.

And the very best tidbit of information I learned on the 3 hour tour was about the Intrepid. This loverly Aircraft Carrier from WWII was built in 5 months by women. It takes the boys almost 5 years to build one now.