Good-bye October...

This week we can finally say goodbye to the month of October. Nothing personal the colorful leaves were beautiful and the costumes and candy were fun, but it’s been a hard month so adios!


In October I learned the definition of words I’ve never wanted to hear. Urologist, Malignant, seminoma and oncology seem to now be common place in my vocabulary. I listen and acquired more information than any woman ever needs about testicles. I waited in the hospital while my scared husband was cut into. That October night I watched helplessly as my strong handsome husband teared up in physical pain. Together we finished out October waiting, waiting to see what happens next.

Hello November…

Venice Italy, What I know...



Venice, Italy



This weekend we went to Venice, while I acknowledge that Venice is a beautiful city perfect for pictures, I have quite a few gripes. Most of my issues deal with the cleanliness of the city. The logistics of a city with canals instead of streets might be enough for most people to overlook the trash and scum, sorry I give no allowances. The Italians are not known for their cleanliness and a city with no grass full Narrow streets packed with tons of smoking tourist could only be made worse with dogs. Yes I know that lots of people are dog lovers the Europeans most of all but when walking down a concrete "street" barley wide enough for two people to pass, the last thing I want is a dog urinating on the side wall, which really just means on your feet. I know that even in areas with plenty of grass dog owners are required to carry those little bags with them, but let's face the truth not everyone uses them, now let's go back to a city of concrete with narrow passage ways. You use your imagination.

A few shots of the narrow streets

All that being said we did take some great pictures and see some fun things. But even after a short trip in Europe it makes me realize I might not say it enough but I am very happy that we fly a red, white and blue flag outside our house!



Sam on the water fromt



Canal and boats

Us on one of the many bridges

Canal

Canals

Tower in St. Marco's Square

View from the top of the tower in St. Marco's Square



A Chagall at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection



Another beautiful canal

These are pictures taken in the jewish ghetto, in the 1500s Jews were forced to live in this square they could go out during the day but at dusk they had to be inside the gates that were locked and gaurded by Christian gaurds. At one time there was over 5,000 people living in this confined area, therefore they had to start building up. You can see that in this area are some of the tallest buildings in Venice, if you look closely you can see that the windows are smaller on some floors the ceilings on some of these stories were very low, again to fit more living space for people. As I am sure you can guess the Jewish ghetto area was used again during the 20th century. One of these pictures shows some barb wire still in place and by just coincidence some Italian army members. The book said there are only about 35 Jewish people living here today, very sad.

Peppers at the market

One of many churches although most are not still open.

Canal

Laura in Venice, Italy

Sam outside of Harry's bar Ernest Hemingway was a regular here.

St. Marco's Square at night

Gondula

Venice, Italy

Laura in St. Marco's Square

Canal and boat

Venice, Italy September 2012

Pictures of Koblenz...

I got a new camera this week! Sam and I decided to go try it out on a family day trip to Koblenz. You may have heard of this city because it is the point where two large rivers intersect and start flowing together, the Rhine River and the Mosel River. But if you are not as up to date on your Germany geography as I am and are wondering where else you could have heard about the city of Koblenz. That would be last November when a huge WWII bomb was found, they claim an American bomb but we wonder how they can tell. In November the Rhine River was lower then it had been obviously since the war, apparently the river is used to more then the 9 out of 10 days of rain we were receiving that month, because of this the bomb was found. It was a big deal in these parts they made a date to evacuate an area around the bomb and somehow safely detonated the bomb.

Here are a few pictures of me fooling around with my new Lumix camera...

Sam and Laura in a park (trying out a feature that lets me blur the background)

Cute street

Laura and I on the Mosel side of the river fork

Laura Monkeying around

The fort in Koblenz (again trying out a new feature on the camera, sepia)

The City from the fort

These are pieces of the Berlin wall. I was very excited to see this piece of German history, there is not a lot of historical things to see from the darker parts of Germany's past and I felt this wall definitely was something historical from a sad part of their history. Unfortunately the German's treated this the same way they treat a lot of things from this time in their history, they ignore it. A flea market was set up in this park and someone literally set their table right in front of the display.

New House

When we were offered our house on base Sam told me that he had already driven by with his 2 star general boss and showed him which house was ours, he offered a comment about how nice it is to have a garage. Last week when we were issued the keys to our new, and I mean new it is only 2 years old, townhome the housing inspector offered up this advice “you have to keep your yard nice on this street because lots of Generals drive by”.  I know my husband is bringing them by!

My Harry Potter London Tour...

For my Birthday in London Sam booked a “Harry Potter London sights tour” before the tour I was a little disappointed because all over London were advertisements for the Harry Potter studio tour, a tour at the WB studio with the props and sets. The studio tour had just opened the week before and we had already tried to get tickets to this tour before leaving for London and were disappointed to learn the whole month of April was already sold out. Once my London three hour bus tour started I forgot about the studio tour, well I couldn’t really forget because there are advertisements all over and it really looked like fun, but I started to get excited about the next couple of hours. In the three hours we spent walking and driving all over London we saw a lot of sights and it was not obsessively focused on the Harry Potter movies, we saw a few monuments that had nothing to do with the wizarding world, a lot of things seen or mentioned in Bridget Jones, 10 Downing Street and there was even a reference to Narnia, which of course made Sam very happy. I also discovered that I do not know as much about the wizarding world as a few 13 year olds who I pretty sure English was a second language to, embarrassing! But for those of you who doubt my loyalty, I did have on my “Wealey is my King Shirt” even though you cannot see it under my jacket.

Here we are In Leadenhall Market, a place I thought was really pretty and we would never have gone to without the tour, I tried to recreate the movie scene with me walking down the street in the same area that Harry and Hagrid did. Laura apparently did not care about authenticity…

So we tried it again with Sam being a good sport… Here are Harry and Hagrid on the same street in the first movie…… Hagrid talking to young Harry… I am to short so you do not see me in the picture we took in Leadenhall Market...
Hagrid and Harry entering the Leaky Caldron, in the movie the area was suppose to be Charing Cross road which is known for it’s book stores, therefore for the movie the surrounding shops on this street were dressed up to look like book stores… Me standing outside The Leaky Caldron or as it is known in the muggle world an eyeglass shop…This is St. Pancras Station in London (we did not get off the bus here)… Here is St. Pancras Station as seen in the Chamber of Secrets, in the story they are suppose to be flying the car over Kings Cross Station, which is right next door, but this station looked nicer on the outside so they used the exterior in the movie... The knight bus dropping Harry off in front of a different Leaky Caldron in the prisoner of Azkaban, this one was really a flower shop that was across the street from Borough Market... This was that same street but during the day and with more people, for some reason Sam had a really hard time taking a picture of me in front of this street. I am not even sure I like this one since you can't see the detail that was there and in the movie, o-well you will just have to take my word for it …
They put a fake front over the door of the florist and painted everything to match, you can see the line left when they took off the fake front… Here we are in front of Millennium Bridge which was finished and opened before filming of the sixth movie Half Blood Prince, but not when J.K Rowling wrote the book…
This is me holding on as the bridge collapses from death eater attacks, I guess I should not be smiling…

This was one of my favorite places we stopped, I am not sure why because there was really nothing to see, but here we are at Great Scottland Yard, which is of course not only the place where the British police horses are now kept but also the location of the entrance to the Ministry of Magic. The visitors entrance through the red telephone box in the fifth movie was filmed here, but there is not an actual telephone booth there anymore and there was a police horse sanding there at the time. But in the Seventh movie the trio do use this spot to prepare to enter the Ministry. This is Ron on the movie…

This is me, same spot the movie just added a lamppost and people…

Number 13 Grimald place headquarters to the order of the phoenix , is actually number 25 on this street. It is easy to identify by the drain pipe running down the side, the special effects needed a straight line to make number 13 appear between number 12 and 14. Again we did not get off the bus here because the tour guide said it would be rude to get out and take pictures on someone’s doorstep, so this is a picture from the bus window. Sam was a little disappointed because about 3 doors down was a for sale sign and he felt this would be the perfect spot to finally take the plunge into homeownership, but alas it was not meant to be…
Number 13 Grimald place with Harry and friends standing in front in Harry Potter year five…
I could go on and on boring you with more Scottland yard, the building that inspired Grigotts wizarding bank and a few more buildings used in filming, but I think everyone has gotten the point that I had a good time