Last Luxem-blog

Well, this is it. The movers come to pack up our things tomorrow, and ship them back to California. For my final blog, I wanted to do a walk through the Wednesday morning farmer's market that I have come to love.


Here we are waiting for the bus into town.












Location of excellent bread (du pain) and croissants.








































Sam wouldn't let us eat in peace, so here he is eating his first croissant.















We bought some excellent buffalo mozzarella, Parmesan cheese, and fromage blanc (white spreadable cheese, mmmm) from this truck. The woman with the microphone interviewed me in french and asked me what I was buying and how I was going to prepare it. I'm quite proud of my self for being able to say that my family was going to have a pick-nic with the excellent cheese.











Anna knows we always buy flowers at the market. This time it was some freesia.











Mmmmmmm... roast chicken.











With a full stroller, we head back home.





Good-bye Luxembourg. We will miss you!

Stereotypes

I was thrilled to be able to catch this travel advertisement on the back of one of our much loved & used Luxembourg city buses. The Texan smoking a giant cigar is awesome--- come to America and see cowboys! This is the second advertisement for traveling to the USA that I've seen. I haven't been able to catch the first on film; it's a blond cheerleader in a sparkling red, white & blue sequin number with terrible red lipstick. Ahhh, what does this say about how Europeans view Americans? It's sad but likely a true image of what they think of us.

I clicked the link and was able to get close ups of the 3 ads they are using. Too funny!

Big Foot

At my goodbye dinner last week I was reminded of a culture shock experience I had when I first got to Luxembourg. I went shopping for shoes, winter boots specifically at the mall near our house and the memory of it has made me never go shopping for myself here in Luxembourg again.

To start out, I have big feet, and actually hardly anything about me could be considered small. But, before pregnancy, I hung onto the end of the 'normal' range in the states with a size 10. Being pregnant with Anna however, caused my feet to grow by 1/2 size. This makes it difficult, but not impossible to buy shoes in the states. Now, I move to Europe and need winter boots (it's cold here folks), so Anna and I take the bus to the local mall. I find some really cute boots and ask the sales lady for the equivalent of a US size 10 (thinking there's no way they would have a 10.5) and the woman got the most horrified look on her face. Let's also remember I am having this conversation in my broken french. After a few moments of very uncomfortable silence, the saleswoman picked her jaws up off the ground, verified my grotesquely large size and went to look in the back. When she returned, she assured me that not only did the boots I wanted not come in my size, but that in the whole store, there were NO boots in my size. I left, feeling freakish in my big feet and promptly ordered boots on Zappos.com and shipped them to my mother-in-law for her to bring to me in her suitcase.

I have subsequently heard that there are bigger sizes of shoes and clothing available for women in German stores, but after this shopping incident, I haven't been able to regroup for anything but online shopping :) Sammy's cute feet pictured above are after he crawled around the sand box at the park last week.

Turkey Time

here's the trip report on our Turkey vacation: We did nothing. Yep... nothing. Well, nothing officially touristy anyway. Here was our daily schedule at our all inclusive resort:
8am Wake-up & watch "bob the builder" in Turkish
8:30 Eat pancakes and eggs for breakfast
9am Go swimming
10:30am change pools so Sam could fall asleep in his stroller during the walk
11:30am go back to room to shower for lunch
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Nap time (and sometimes James golf time)
4pm Wake-up and go watch Anna ride the carnival rides
5pm Eat ice cream and then swim again
7pm Dinner
9pm Drink Mojitos
9:30 Both kids are asleep
...And then repeat the next day

What a life! I can't believe my stir-crazy husband actually enjoyed it too (though probably not as much as Anna & I did). It was nice to vacation just for relaxation. Also, James and I noted on our return bus trip to the airport that we did see a mosque- just through the bus windows though.

En français, the update

This is not a travel update.. be warned.

Just wanted to give you all an update on our 'foreign' language skills here. Today, I had a conversation entirely in french with a liqueur producer in Normandy, France and I understood almost all of it. I asked questions, repeated what I thought he said back to him and then ordered some amazing apple aperitif from him. The true test will be to see what we get if/when it arrives, but I actually thought it was fun to speak with him. When we first moved here I dreaded having to speak in French with anyone, and now I think it's fun, though still definitely a challenge.

Anna now knows her numbers and colors (1-10) in french. And if you ask her what color something yellow is, she will usually reply in french, "Juane." The progress is great. Hopefully she won't be traumatized later by the fran-glais we speak in our house. Ha, ha.

Paris - Normandy Vacation

Well, it's about time I report on our France trip. It was amazing! Paris was all rush, rush, and Normandy was relaxing and educational; so the two halves fit well together. My parents flew into Paris and joined us for this vacation.

Paris
We rented a flat through Vacation In Paris in the first arrondissement, and we have never stayed north of the Seine before, but really liked the location. It was a 20 minute walk to Notre Dame and a 25 minute walk to the Louvre-- perfect! We enjoyed the little markets and shops on the cute pedestrian streets near us. When we first arrived we noticed we were staying on 'sex shop row' which also added some color to the neighborhood. As James noted, the very old church just across the street from 'Paris Sexy 2001' had probably lost the morality war on this piece of turf a long time before.

We did the Musée Louvre twice, and I enjoyed it much more than I have before. We found new and different things to enjoy, and since I'd been there twice before I think I was more relaxed and able to take it in better--- it really is a HUGE museum. My favorite piece this time was a statue made of onyx and marble, truly unique and beautiful. We also returned to the Musee Marmottan which hosts Claude Monet's original work that started the Impressionist movement, Impression Sunrise. We originally visited here 11 years before, and all the Monet works were as amazing as I remembered them to be.

I can not think about our time in Paris without giving my mom a bit of a hard time for her daily metro snafu. It became comical how many ways she could lose/destroy a ticket and she hopped the turnstiles at least twice... with a valid ticket hidden somewhere in her pockets.

I would be remiss however, not to thank my parents for babysitting for us on day 2 of the trip (while they were under heavy jet lag), so that we could go out and enjoy a proper dinner to celebrate our 10th anniversary at a gastronomque restaurant in Paris, Le Tastevin. It was one of the best meals of my life and a great celebration. Thanks Mingy & Grandpa Joe!

Other highlights include: the Rodin Musee, Musee d'Orsay, Musee L'Orangerie, le Sacre Cœur, Saint Chappelle, Notre Dame, the Jardin des Plants, going up la tour Eiffel and Angelina's for a hot chocolate & sweets early dinner. Wow, no wonder we were tired leaving Paris 5 days later!

On our way to Normandy we stopped by Claude Monet's house at Giverny. It was my third visit there, and I truly do love that place. I was a bit bummed that there was a lot of dandelion type fuzz in the air and it settled on everything looking like snow on the ground and making the famed waterlilies pond look a bit dirty. But, I was glad to have seen it at this different time of year.

Once we arrived at our chateau in Normandy, Chateau Sully, things began to unwind a bit. Each day, we enjoyed long afternoon naps followed by swimming in the enclosed pool. James was so spoiled by the softness of the sheets that he didn't sleep under the covers in our next more economical hotel in Lille.

We enjoyed good food in Normandy, thanks to Trip Advisor, Rick Steves and our deep love for Indian Food. The snotty owner of our chateau said there was no Indian food in the town of Bayeux, but we happened upon the Taj Mahal Restaurant (49 Rue St Jean, Bayeux) and it was the best Indian food that we've eaten in Europe.

We took the one day Rick Steves recommended tour of the D-Day sites and split it into two (hello, we travel with 2 kids under 3). It worked perfectly, and on day one we saw the Arromanches and some German Gun Battlements; and then on day two we saw the American Military Cemetery (see my separate post on that), Omaha Beach and Point du Hoc with the bomb marks still evident all over the bluff. These sites were all well maintained, interesting and educational. A piece of history you have to see and experience to get a good feel for it.

Our last morning in Normandy (Sunday) we happened upon a seaside market in Port en Bessin that was incredible. We purchased a slinky, beautiful table runner, fresh paella, strawberries, cherries, normandie cheese, apple juice, apple appertif, apple cider and plastic forks for our feast on the little towns pier-- what fun! After this, we were off to Vimy Ridge, a Canadian WWI memorial where my Great Grandfather fought for 3 years. We arrived 20 minutes before closing time, but my Dad was still happy to see the trenches and memorial.

The next day we drove home to Luxembourg and took my parents to the famed Brazilian Steakhouse lunch (Restaurant Rodizio). The massive cuts of meat sizzling on metal rods were impressive, but the perfectly cooked pineapple was the winner in everyone's book. (See photos for Anna's excitement over this meal)

A great trip followed by a couple days with my parents here in Lux to show off Parc Merveilliuex and Cahteau Vianden before they took the train back to Paris.

We're off to Belek, Turkey next week for a week at an all inclusive beach resort. Can't wait!

American Cemetary above Omaha Beach

My coolest moment of our recent trip to Paris and the Normandy region of France is pictured above. By chance, we arrived at the American Cemetary above Omaha Beach just before it opened and wandered over to check out the group of people preparing to raise the flags. A man asked if there were any other Veterans in the crowd, and James immeadiately grabbed the backpack from me and said ,"Go." So I walked up to the front and got a surprised look when I said I was ex-Air Force :) (Still love that.)

I had the honor of saluting while a WWII Veteran raised the colors for the day (that's me in the green jacket on the right). Incidentally, it was the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, which made it extra cool. I teared up walking through the crosses and Jewish stars on the graves just after the ceremony... pondering the loss and senselessness of war. A moving morning to be sure.