Swiss Slam Down

I have several posts in the works to cover the remaining days of our whirl wind family vacation, but I am waiting on both sisters to upload their pictures so I can steal them.  So in the meantime, here is an overview of what was, months ago, termed the Swiss slam down.  (We snuck in some of Austria, too).  It was a great success, and I'm sure in a few months time we'll all forget those moments we wanted to kill each other. :)

Here are the 8 of us that made an appearance throughout the three-week adventure. All lookin' our finest.

And the Volvo we spent so much time in...

Turkish Bath: Day 2

On Saturday night, I went with Dad to eat Baklava while everyone else went for the ultimate Turkish experience: a hammam, or Turkish Bath.  (I sat out, since I'm pregnant...)  Everyone came home bright red, clean, and happy to have been slapped around and scrubbed by scantily clad men and women.   

Since Hyrum's the one who went, here's the experience in his words:

Matt and I arrived at the hamam for some serious bonding time. The first thing we were instructed to do was go upstairs with a little entrance ticket.  By the time we got to the second floor we were already lost.  There was a Turkish guy handling the towel distribution and he just pointed to changing room and gave us a key.  They mostly pointed to communicate.  Since each of us paid the individual fee we were expecting separate changing rooms, but it was a surprise to just receive one key.  Seriously, it was bonding time.  

When we were changing into the little red towels we realized we could see through the "clouded glass" windows into the reception area on the first floor.  Then to make it worse, we had to cross the reception area in our towels to get to the steam room.  We felt very exposed.  (Or at least Matt did.)  

Then we entered into a hall and I was expecting someone to collect my ticket and give me more directions.  Instead I had a random man in the same little red towel asking for my ticket.   At the time I thought he was going to steal my ticket and go get a massage for himself.  I expected the employees to have something differentiating them from visitors.  We finally made it into the big room (shown below), which is like a hot steam room where they do massages and have running hot water you can pour on yourself.  It's an old room with old fountains and little rooms off to the side.  We finally each got our own Turkish person to give us the massage service. Matt's guy body slammed him onto the slab and started giving him a scrub down.  My guy just pointed for me to go over by myself.  I was trying to look for a nice empty spot to lay down and wait for my turn, but without succeeding I ended up in the center of the circular slab watching everyone else's massages, and thinking, "No one is ever going to come for me."  (The picture below shows only 5 guys on the slab, but when we went, there were probably 20 already laying there.  I just tip-toed over them.)  

                        

[Don't bother looking for Matt or Hyrum in this picture... I found it online]

After seeing Matt being slapped around, pushed, and slid around on the soapy slab, I think I was better prepared for what was coming.  Finally, it was my turn.  The guy was trying to get my attention, but finally just grabbed my ankle and pulled me over to the edge.  All that I was hoping was not to feel gay.  But the guy was rough enough that I still felt masculine.  Every time the guy wanted me to move or flip over, he just hit me a few times.  I quickly caught on.  At the end of the rough soaping and scrubbing, they had me sit and he brought a cold bucket of water to throw in my face, and "rinse" me off.  Then he took me to a different room for a head massage, switching between cold and hot water.

Then I was reunited with Matt, and we sat around relaxing in the hot room--- more bonding.  Every time you go to the slab you leave your sandals there, and when you get back they're not there anymore.  (Meaning someone has taken yours, and you have to go find someone else's to take.)  One thing we did a lot was he'd ask me for water.  I'd either go fill up really hot water, or really cold water, and dump it on him.  It was fun.  Of course I did not give him a body scrub or towel slap.  It was also fun to watch people coming in, equally as lost as I had been 20 minutes earlier.  We were there for almost an hour. 

Eventually we decided we'd had enough, and had to figure out how to get out.  We thought we had to get a new towel so we went to a towel station and each took one.  At the same time, one of the employees came over and was mad, and just ripped the towels out of our hands. (No words... they don't use words.)  I was so lost, and he pointed for me to turn around.  He took off my old towel and put a new one around me.  Then did the same with Matt.  They were very particular about the process.  We finally made it to the second floor (again, exposing ourselves through the reception area) and then changed and headed home.  

It was an experience that neither of us will soon forget!

Pregnancy Update: 24 weeks

I now have more of my pregnancy behind me than ahead of me.  That's a weird thought.  Last week someone asked me if I was so excited for the baby to come, and I have mixed feelings about it.  For us, the next "milestone" to get through is Hyrum being deployed, and then the baby comes a month or two later.  So I'm obviously excited to be a mother, but much less excited about sending my husband away.  I guess we'll take it one week at a time, and when the due date finally comes, I'm sure I'll be ready (as ready as I can be), and plenty excited.

I'm finally starting to feel pregnant, meaning when I bend over its hard to breath, and I dislike hiking now even more than I did pre-pregnancy.  If I eat big meals I usually regret it for several hours.  Most of my jeans are much more comfortable with the top button undone.  But I guess the good news is I still fit into my clothes.   I wear the occasional maternity shirt, but mostly because I have them and I'm tired of my regular clothes.  If someone saw me on the street, I still don't think they'd feel comfortable asking if I was pregnant.  They'd be thinking in their head, "Wow, either she's gained weight, or she's pregnant... not sure."

We feel the baby kick pretty frequently.  Sometimes at night if I lay on my back, the kicking is particularly strong, and I wonder if that's the baby's way of saying, "I need more oxygen!"  I have no problem breathing, though, so I still lay on my back quite a bit.  Not much progress on the name front, but my family has taken to calling the baby "Juanathan Migichael" cleverly thinking it's half-spanish/half-english.  Trust me, it definitely won't stick past birth.  Here's to hoping he has a real name when he's born.  

Turkey: Days 1 & 2

Three full weeks is a long time for vacation!  Our adventures through five countries with a combination of 8 travelers has left me with a lot to write about (not to mention a lot of laundry to catch up on!)  First on our trip was TURKEY.

It's probably a little random that we ended up in Turkey.  But several months ago I told one of my sisters that if they were going to come all the way to Germany, we should go somewhere cool.... like Turkey.  That idea kind of stuck, and when they were looking at plane tickets over here, they found a good deal into Istanbul.

Overall, it was a city unlike anything we've seen in Europe.  There are mosques everywhere, and oriental architecture and tiling.  It's colorful, with some parts that reminded us more of Latin America than Europe.  Streets are organized by trade-- a whole street of people selling shoes, or a whole neighborhood of people selling car parts.  Everywhere we turned there were people trying to sell us something--and they're very persistent salesmen.  You can't drink the water, but luckily food prices were quite low compared to traveling around Europe.  I loved having an exchange rate in our favor!

Hyrum and I flew in Friday night after work.  I'm glad we didn't get mugged as we walked around dark narrow alleys at midnight with our suitcases looking for our hotel.  Lucky us that a random group of men on the street offered to help, and instead of leading us away to our death, actually led us right to the "hotel" door.  (It was more like a house with 3 bedrooms they rented.)  I was happy not to be wandering around more, because that part of the city was very hilly and windy.  A wrong turn meant a lot of extra steep walking.

Saturday morning  I was woken up by someone yelling outside.  Early.  I was half asleep and couldn't figure out what the noise was all about.  As soon as I'd fall back asleep, it started all over.  When I finally got up, I asked Hyrum if he'd heard the noise.  I couldn't figure out what it was, or if perhaps I'd just dreamed it.  Then I realized:  it was the 5 am call to prayer!  (Heard from every mosque around the city.)  We heard it several more times throughout the day, and each following morning.  Luckily I learned to tune it out while I was sleeping.

We hit up the Grand Bazaar before meeting up with Jenna and Matt at noon.  It's amazing how BIG the bazaar is, yet being surrounded by a wall, you can be right next to it and not know where it is.  We headed down some narrow roads and eventually found an arched entrance to the centuries-old covered labyrinth of shops-- amazingly over 4000 shops are inside!  The structure is noticeably old, but still beautiful with colored tiles and arches when you glance up.  They sell everything, too: bowls, jewelry, chandeliers, candy, souvenirs, etc.

One of the many entrances to the Bazaar

We met Jenna and Matt at the hotel we'd all be staying at-- which was conveniently located next to the Hippodrome, and literally a 2 minute walk from the Blue Mosque.  (Didn't hurt that it was also next door to a candy shop that sold Turkish Delight and baklava!!  We ate our moneys worth there.)  Since we wanted to do most of the tourist-y things once Mom and Dad arrived, we headed instead to Galata Tower in the "new town".  It would be more accurately described as "not old and touristy".  It was plenty ghetto and not new.  It was also all uphill.  And we weren't sure we were going the right way.  Eventually, we did find the tower, and after a short stair climb and elevator ride (bless all places with elevators!) we had beautiful views of all Istanbul.  

view of tower from outside

Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque

"New" town

Galata Bridge

Before returning to the hotel to meet Mom and Dad, we made one last stop at the soccer stadium.  Of course.

At dinner time we met up with everyone at the hotel.  We were impressed with ourselves that we'd managed to all find each other (at the appointed times) in this new city.  It was fun to catch up.

We lucked out on dinner that night-- we ended up at a table on the roof terrace overlooking the water, with nobody else in sight.  We could be as loud as we want!  (And we LOVE that).  There were huge boats out in the harbor that made the sunset even more picturesque. 

Paris day 3

We had two goals for Sunday.  Hyrum wanted to see the soccer stadium(s) and I wanted to see Versailles.  So we left our hotel in time to get to the stadium and back before check-out.  We took the metro all the way to the other side of the city to see the stadium, and when we tried to leave the metro station, we couldn't get out. [side note: unlike in most cities, Paris metro systems are set up so you have to put in your ticket when entering AND exiting.  If it doesn't accept your ticket, the door doesn't open for you.]  We wandered around trying all the different machines, and our tickets didn't work.  We tried using new tickets (that I had in my purse.)  They didn't work.  We finally found a sign that said this was in "zone 2", which explained why our zone 1 tickets were useless.  However, that didn't help with the small problem that we were trapped.  The platform to return to downtown Paris was only accessible if we wanted to jump over a fence, and then face a 50 feet drop-off.  There were no ticket machines, and no employees in sight.

Hyrum snapped some pictures of the stadium while I tried to figure out our options.  After 15 or 20 minutes we saw some security guards walk by outside, and we flagged them down.  I tried to explain that we had the wrong ticket and couldn't leave.  He told us we needed to buy a zone 2 ticket.  I wanted to yell, "Yes--but I'm still stuck in here!!"  

They eventually let us out, and we went to buy the right ticket.  And while we had "escaped" we decided to walk over to the stadium really fast.  I enjoyed the sun while Hyrum walked around taking pictures.  

This is Hyrum's angry face while trapped in the metro station.  He was not happy to be so close to the stadium, but unable to get to it. 

MUCH better!

This is as much as I need to see of the stadium.

Using our newly purchased ZONE 2 tickets, we hurried back to the hotel to check out, and drive an hour west to Versailles.  (Traffic driving around Paris is BAD!  It took longer to get out than it should have, and took forever when we left.)

The upside is while driving, we got to see Paris's second soccer stadium.  Not planned, but Hyrum still got excited.

So finally, Versailles.  Our last stop.  This is the palace that King Louis XIV dreamed up when the Louvre became too "common-place".  As we toured through the palace it was interesting to see how over three kings, Versailles went from being a small hunting lodge to a HUGE palace.  It housed up to 5000 nobles at a time.

The Royal Chapel. 

View of the gardens from inside the palace. 

Enjoying our audio guides, and that ridiculous ceiling.  I believe this is entering the Hall of Mirrors (250 ft long with 24 gilded candelabras!)

Another view of the hall. 

We saw this little boy in one of the paintings and both agreed it would be a great outfit for our firstborn son!

Here's that coronation painting thats also in the Louvre. 

Right off the Hall of Mirrors you have the bedrooms of the king and queen.  They're pretty insane.  I just hope the queen liked this wall-paper, because its EVERYWHERE!  I can't imagine the lack of privacy in their bedrooms-- basically half the court would be there when you woke up.  I guess its a small price to pay...

After we finished the tour of the main palace, we wanted to go to another part of estate that our ticket covered.  (Grand Trianon).  Because it was the weekend, we couldn't walk through the gardens for free, so we had to walk around the estate.  There was a train, but it was an additional 7 euros so we thought we'd just walk.

On the way, we saw this TINY street, and a car was trying to get through.  (The one in the middle.)  There were people outside guiding it, but it was seriously inching along so it didn't hit the cars to the sides.  NO IDEA why it tried to take this route in the first place, but streets here are insane.  Made me glad to be walking.

 But the walking got old.  Our feet were killing us.  Here's a view of the sheep fields we passed.

Finally we got there, exhausted.  I took a long break on the stairs.  The house itself wasn't that impressive, but the garden area was nice.  The house was a summer get-away, and eventually Marie-Antoinette moved out to this area (into Petit Trianon).  The house is pink marble.

 Hyrum was impressed with his straight they cut the trees and bushes.  You can kind of see it in this picture below.

On the way back, we definitely took the train (and it was half-off, since it was just one way).  We hopped in the car and slowly drove out of Paris to a hotel, spent the night, and drove home on Monday.  It was a lot to do in 2.5 days but worth it.  Paris turned out to be just what we expected.  Lots of famous sights, a ton of old buildings and architecture, great food.   Nothing more, nothing less. Now I can cross it off my list and visit Turkey this weekend!

Paris Day 2

We're leaving on another trip this weekend, and I'm committing myself to finish writing about Paris before I move on to another city.  So here goes...

Saturday ended up being our whirl-wind day in Paris where we tried to fit in all the major sites (excluding the Eiffel Tower.)  It ended up being a success!  Our first stop was the Louvre, so we took the metro from our hotel to downtown.  When the metro stopped, we saw a huge crowd of teenagers in the station jumping and cheering.  Then we saw they were all waving flags.... Colombian flags.  More teenagers got off the metro and joined them, and Hyrum was so excited to see so many Colombians.  He had on his Colombian bag, so they all started cheering for him, and they got together for a picture.  The longer I'm married, the more I realize that being loud and proud is definitely a Colombian trait.  Hyrum's not the only crazy person who travels the globe with his flag.

Hyrum is in the middle. (My fault its fuzzy...)

We finally made it to the Louvre, and bought our museum pass to use for the next 2 days.  We luckily had a Rick Steves travel book with us, so we tried to go through and hit all the highlights in the museum since we couldn't just wander around for hours.  (Places to go!)  I was surprised that the famous glass pyramid is actually in the middle of an enclosed courtyard.

Venus de Milo, c. 100 BC.  From Greek island of Melos.

Hyrum on display.  (After some not-so-fancy editing of his arms...)

Apollo Gallery-- you get a glimpse of French castle life pre-Versailles.  The whole museum is pretty ornate, and this room kind of puts the Vatican museum to shame.  (Not in terms of art, but the over-the-top decor itself.)  

Similar to the Vatican, a lot of the art is HUGE.  This is "The Marriage at Cana" by Paolo Veronese.  Apparently, Jesus is in the middle turning water into wine.   

Another example of the ridiculous castle decor.  This is the ceiling. 

Another huge piece of art, "The Coronation of Napoleon" by Jacques-Louis David.  Ironically, we saw another copy of this painting the next day at Versailles (also done by the same artist--and just as big.)  

The Mona Lisa... not quite as big.  The Rick Steves book says that this room smells bad because of all the people there... and unfortunately the book wasn't wrong. 

Hyrum is imitating the statue by taking a picture of himself with his cell phone.  Maybe Greece first invented the  "selfie"?

So that was a lot of pictures.  But considering the museum has 12 miles of galleries, I think it's fairly modest...   After the museum, I took advantage of being pregnant to eat a little snack.  Who doesn't love having cheese and crackers in their purse??

On our way to the Orsay museum, we stopped by Laduree for some macaroons....  

...Strolled through the Tuileries Garden (used to be the gardens for the Louvre palace, the inside part is much more green!)...

... And crossed over the Seine River...

That's the Orsay in the background.  Since this museum didn't allow pictures, I can't post much.  But it was a much more enjoyable museum (to me) than the Louvre because it has all the famous art that I love.  It's primarily impressionist art and more modern stuff.  (Nothing ancient).  We saw the Birth of Venus (along with other random pieces of art I had to memorize for my Humanities class in college), and ballerina paintings from Degas, pointillism from Seurat, and waterlily scenes from Monet.  Plus Cezanne, Renoir, Manet, and my favorite, Van Gogh.  What's not to love??

Before we realized we couldn't take pictures, we took a few. This one didn't turn out for some reason, but I love this painting anyway--Starry Night over the Rhone.  (Okay, so maybe Hyrum did know he shouldn't take pictures.  But that doesn't stop him, usually.)

 The museum is in an old train station, so the whole middle section is open with huge arched ceilings.

From the Orsay we raced over to Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame, which are conveniently right near each other.  I've seen pictures of the stained glass in Sainte-Chapelle before, and I guess I was expecting more of a church.  You basically go up a really tiny staircase and find yourself in a small (compared to most churches) room with stained glass on all walls.  Nothing else to see besides the stained glass, and no where else to go besides this small room.  (I had the same feeling as in the Sistine Chapel---its very impressive art, but just a much different scale than you're expecting.)  So we sat for a while and enjoyed the stained glass, which becomes more amazing the longer you look at it.  The gothic church was built in just 6 years (compared to Notre Dame which took over 200).  The royalty worshipped there.  It contains 6500 sq feet of glass, 2/3 of which is original from the 13th century, and portrays over a thousand scenes from the Bible.  So my initial disappointment over the size dissolved as I took in all the detail.  

I found Notre Dame to be as impressive as any big church you find while traveling around Europe.  Nothing really stood out.  The gargoyles on the outside were cool, as well as some of the stained glass inside.  

Gothic arches on the inside.  You can see part of the alter. 

This is the rose-shaped window--original medieval glass.

gargoyles on the outside.

And for your viewing pleasure.... the hunchback of Notre Dame. 

In case you wanted a better view!  My husband is so willing to pose for anything.  And half of the ideas are his!

 After Notre Dame we walked around to the back of the church where I got lost and posed as a tourist. (Okay-- I wasn't actually lost, just really wanted to find a good place to eat!  I was starved.)

notice the street sign in the bottom left picture.  Kind of clever. 

Our last major stop for the day was the Arc de Triomphe.  This was Hyrum's favorite place in Paris.  (I might have been too tired to fully enjoy it...)  It's huge (165 ft high) and has great views of Champs-Elysees and Paris traffic in general.  

I just want to point out that after a full day of sight-seeing, and being pregnant, I still managed to climb the 284 steps to the top!  I felt each one, and could hardly breath at the top.  The going down (seen below) was much easier.

I could have watched this all day.  The arc is in the middle of a HUGE round-a-bout.  There are no lines on the street, and it seems that cars entering the circle have priority over cars already in it.  So you can see below the cars going "down" are entering the circle, and have to basically weave through cars going in different directions (who are stopped, and blocking traffic, but can't move forward because cars are driving in front of them).  It's a bit of a mess to see cars going in every direction.

This gives some perspective on how big the arc is. 

We ended the night with some more macaroons.  

Update: here are two pictures I originally included, but they got deleted.  Now blogger won't let me move them back up in order. They're from the Louvre-- one in the Egypt room, and the other is a view of the pyramid from inside.