Debus Family Visit

Holly's parents and siblings were able to visit for 11 days in August. Besides hanging out and playing with Daisy in Muelheim, we all took a short weekend trip to see the castles down the Rhine river, did a day trip to Koln and Bonn, and traveled by train on a 5-day trip to Paris.


This is our only "full family" shot from the whole trip! It was taken at the ruins of Rheinfels castle, which was built in 1245, withstood Louis XIV's siege in 1692, and finally fell to the French Revolutionary army in 1797. It was fun to have the freedom to run around and explore the ruins.


The highlight of the Rhine weekend was our three and half hour river cruise, studded with castles and cliff-side vineyards.


A beautifully un-ruined Marksburg Castle also had great interiors, which we saw on our tour.

PARIS

Our favorite crepe place by our hotel...yum!

I will post more pictures documenting our Paris activities: the Eiffel tower, Notre Dame, Chartres cathedral, the Louvre, Louis XIV's palace of Versailles, our Seine river cruise, Napoleon's tomb and the Army Museum, Sainte-Chapelle cathedral, the Orsay museum, and the Arc de Triomphe. On our last, leisurely morning, Chris, Joel, and Dad went to the very top of the Eiffel tower while the girls went to a cafe and played in the park.

But as a teaser, here are some of my favorite shots:

Je t'aime
Believe it or not, this is not the only Eiffel tower picture we took on our trip.
Yay for having other people to take pictures of me and Chris together! (Thanks, Joel!)


Holly, Dad, and Joel at the Mona Lisa! Dad had just finished reading a whole book on the history of the painting.


Our twilight Seine


The beautiful Rebecca. Whenever the tower started twinkling like this, Daisy would cry "Star!" and be transfixed. I am going to put a picture of Eiffel in her bedroom.

Zurich and the Swiss Alps

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Zurich and the Swiss Alps

Daisy enjoying the views

Holly sitting on a grassy bank

Daisy saying "moo"

The Eiger (Ogre)

Zurich, with Grossmünster in the background

We took a 3-day weekend in July to explore Zurich and the Swiss Alps. Our friends from Illinois, Jesse and Susan May, live there with their dog, Lucky. Daisy had a fascinating combination of love and fear for Lucky. For example, she would reach out with a trembling hand to pet him.

Zurich was home to Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531), pastor of Grossmünster church and leader of the Reformation in Switzerland. We came to love Zurich with its dominating church building, the old city with its many flags and eateries, and the trendy modern bustle. One cute restaurant Jesse took us to was called Cake Friends, where we all shared a sort of pound cake platter with different toppings. Swiss German is nothing like German German. For one thing, the inflections and rhythm of sentences sound almost Italian. But what's more, the vocabulary is different. Our favorite example of this is "thank you." In Germany, "Vielen Dank" means thanks a lot. In the old days, people used to say "Danke viel mal." People still say this in Switzerland. But because of the French influence, there exists the charming phrase, "Merci viel mal." I guess we understood that Switzerland used many languages, but this blend of languages surprised us.

We took a day trip by train to the Alps. It was amazingly beautiful, with fresh snow on the peaks, wildflowers, and running streams down the mountainsides. Daisy learned the word "mountain" on this trip. We even saw cows with bells on their necks, and sampled some local cheese. It was a very accessible destination. With a series of trains and cable cars, we made our way to car-free towns on high cliffs that still had paved roads for wheelchairs and strollers. We had time for a great lunch, lots of pictures, and some downhill hikes before taking the train through Interlaken and Bern back to Zurich.

I will publish more pictures through Shutterfly soon!