Keukenhof

On Monday after our weekend in Normandy, I let my parents rest. Then on Tuesday, April 1st, I decided to take my parents to Keukenhof in the Netherlands. Keukenhof is a beautiful flower park south of Amsterdam that is only open about 8 weeks out of the year and is supposedly THE most photographed place in the world. My Dad has been a gardener for as long as I can remember and my Mom loves flowers so I thought it the perfect day trip to take them on while poor Eric slaved away in the office.

A little history: In the 15th century, the land where Keukenhof now stands was owned by Jacoba van Beieren, Countess of Holland. This area was used for hunting, but also to collect herbs for the castle's kitchen and was thusly named, Keukenhof, or "kitchen garden". In 1949 a group of bulb growers decided to present a Spring flower exhibit here and it has been there every year since.

A couple interesting facts and then I'll just bombard you with tons of pictures (if you click on the pictures individually, a bigger version will open & you can be even more mesmerized):

• In the last 58 years, more than 42 million people have visited Keukenhof
• There are 4.5 million tulips in 100 varieties
• 7 million flower bulbs are planted by hand in the park
• There are more than 2500 trees in 87 varieties

Eric made fun of me for how many pictures I took, but I just couldn't help it! Everything was so beautiful and colorful. I think what he found the most amusing (or annoying) was that I kept wanting him to look at the pictures on the 2x2 camera viewing screen even thought he couldn't really see anything b/c it was so small. And I kept saying, "I mean, look at the colors!"











I find this one almost hypnotizing:


Here's my mom getting us a yummy waffel snack:

I couldn't resist.... they're so cute!







With the impending Summer Olympics, the theme for 2008 was Beijing, China. There were various different displays, but this was by far the coolest:



Even at a flower park I can still find shoe shopping. I think she needs a bigger size, what do you think?

This was the picture I thought my Dad would like the best (wink, wink, Dad):


This mill was built in 1892, and then brought to Keukenhof in 1957:





Ok, I know that was a lot of pictures of flowers, but I mean, look at those colors!!

Normandy, et al.

The first weekend my parents were here (March 28-30) we headed off to Normandy, France. Both Eric and my Dad are big history buffs, and my Dad is especially interested in military history, so the Normandy invasion beaches were the desired destination. One of the AWCA members recommended we stay at a really neat castle, which is now a B&B, called La Ducrie (The Duke's House). If you go to the website there are good pictures and the history of the whole place. But basically, it was built in 1437 for Louis XI, who would later become King of France. After Louis XI was "finished" with the house (which I guess means grew tired of it and gave it to someone else), it became the home of the senior tax collector of the region who was also a duke, and thus it was given the name "La Ducrie".

Here are a few pictures of La Ducrie (there are better ones one their website):



They have beautiful black swans swimming in the moat around the castle. Apparently black swans are quite rare:

And there are black sheep too:

All of us outside La Ducrie:

When we arrived we met the owners, Joe & Vivienne. They are from England, but moved to France several years ago, bought La Ducrie, and renovated it so it could operated as a B&B. They were very sweet and Vivienne gave us a tour of the house. Eric and I stayed in La Salle de Monnaie, which I suppose means the "money room", because in the corner of our room was a little doorway which revealed a passageway to one of the towers, and in the passageway there is a covered hole in the floor where the taxes were hidden until they could be transported to the Treasury.

A picture of La Salle de Monnaie:
And the door to our room.... I think I hit my head on the doorframe several times that weekend:

And here's the passageway to the tower. If you look on the ground, you can kind of see the plywood covering the pit where the taxes were stored.
Vivienne also told us another cool story about this little room. I hope I remembered it correctly. Anyway, during WWII, La Ducrie was caught in the crosshairs of a battle. There were two sisters living here who were petrified when they heard the approaching troops. I can't remember what happened to one of the sisters, but I know the other one hid down in the pit for several days. The shooting had long stopped, but the woman was too scared to come out so she stayed hidden even longer. Until finally she heard more voices and knew they weren't speaking French or German. She figured she'd die if she stayed down there any longer (she had run out of the food stores she brought down there with her) so she took a chance and came out. Imagine the surprise on those American soldiers' faces when out comes this lone scared, dirty, starving woman! And I think she was just glad they weren't German. Anyway, neat story.

Another neat find in La Ducrie was this Angel, painted in the 1500s, which graced the back of the door of the room my parents were staying in:


We arrived just before dinnertime on Friday night and, after our tour of the castle and some time to freshen up, joined Joe and Vivienne in the bar for a few drinks. We enjoyed a lovely 4-course dinner prepared by Vivienne (app, main, dessert, and of course, fromage). The conversation was interesting and fun and the wine flowed for several hours. In the end it was just Eric, me and Vivienne!

Here's Vivienne:
And Joe:

Joe also gives tours of the Normandy area and was kind enough to recommend a path for our adventures the next day. We followed his advice and all decided it was a really nice order in which to explore everything. Thanks, Joe!

Saturday morning we headed out after our filling breakfast à la Joe. Our first stop was Sainte Mère Église, where the American 82nd & 101st Airborne Divisions mistakenly landed. I think they were supposed to parachute into the countryside surrounding Sainte Mère Église, but instead fell right into the center of the city. In fact, one paratrooper's chute actually got caught on the steeple of the town church and he subsequently got shot in the foot. He feigned death for hours until he could be cut down. I think his name was John Steele. There's still a memorial on the church in the form of a "dummy" paratrooper hanging from his 'chute strings.

Here's a picture of the church:
And a close-up of the 'memorial':

There's a great museum in Sainte Mère Église that gives the details of the 82nd & 101st drops. Inside the museum is one of the planes from which the men jumped:

Here's us outside the museum:

After Sainte Mère Église we drove along Utah Beach. This portion of the beach is still pretty untouched - no museums, houses, etc. Just the beach. It seems so peaceful now that it's hard to imagine the chaos and bloodshed that occurred here on June 6, 1944:


The concrete gun implacements that the Germans constructed as part of their preparation for the defense are still there today:

My cute Dad taking a pensive stroll along Utah Beach:

And my cute Mom up on a hill overlooking the beach:
And this time with my cute Dad with my cute Mom:


There was another really good museum further down on Utah Beach with a memorial as well. Here's a short video I took. It was extremely windy that day so just know you'll be hearing that wind on the video.


Utah Beach from Melanyann Garvin on Vimeo.


Going east along the French coast, we next came to Omaha Beach. The cliff you see in this picture (in the distance) is called Pointe du Hoc. This is where the 2nd Ranger Battalion scaled up the cliff to disable German guns threatening Utah & Omaha Beaches.


A view down Omaha Beach with a bit of the monument of the National Guard troops who served in the war:
Further down Omaha Beach you come to the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. This was our last stop for the day and a very sobering experience. There is a very informative museum in the visitor's center and then you can walk through the cemetery. We arrived late in the day and didn't have as much time as we would have liked to wander around, but we did get to visit the museum and see the cemeteries closest to the front. The graves seemed unending, and we could only see 2 of the 10 gravesites. The grounds and memorial are really beautiful and peacefully situated on a hill overlooking Omaha Beach. Here is the view of the beach as you walk along the Northern side of the cemetery:
And the 4 of us:



A short video for you of the cemetery. We were there at 5:30pm (closing time) so you can hear the bells in the background. Remember, it was windy, so adjust your volume.


In the Cemetary at the Normandy Memorial from Melanyann Garvin on Vimeo.

Here are a few more pictures of the Memorial and Cemetery:




It was getting to be dinner time when we left the beaches so we stopped in Bayeux for dinner. Our restaurant of choice wasn't open for another hour so we enjoyed a drink in a nearby bar. This is fairly irrelevant except to set up the following picture. I had to laugh each time my dad ordered a coffee and received a teeny, little cup filled with espresso. By the end of the trip he knew to order Cafe Americano if he wanted a "regular" coffee, but until then he had to drink his very strong, mini-coffee out of the little cups:


We had a lovely, traditionally French dinner at Le Pommier:

Sunday morning we said our goodbyes to Joe and Vivienne and headed out in search of Mass. We didn't think we were going to be lucky until we heard churchbells nearby when we stopped in Caen. And, thus, my Mom was able to attend her first mass in French at the beautifully old Saint Étienne de Caen:

Following mass we started our 5 hour ride home, and along the way stopped in Rouen. This city is best known for being the place where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. It also is the home of a magnificent cathedral made famous by Monet's numerous interpretations of it.
Here is the Notre Dame Cathedral in Rouen:
Random factoid: This cathedral was the tallest building in the world from 1876 - 1880.

And Monet's version:


On our walk from the cathedral to the Place du Vieux Marche (where poor Joan was burned) we passed under the Gros-Horloge. The clock on this Gothic belfry was built in the late 1300s and is still running today!

This tall cross was erected on the spot where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. There is also a modern church with her namesake behind the cross.
After our stop in Rouen, we finished our trip home. It was a great weekend, packed very full. I think the neatest part was knowing that this was a place my Dad had read about, thought about, watched movies about, but never thought he'd actually see in person. As a soldier and war veteran, I'm sure it touched him in ways I can't even imagine, and it was really cool to be a part of that.

One last picture to leave you guys with:

Thanks for reading...............

The 'Rents Visit - Part I

So most of you know that my parents came to visit for three weeks from March 25 to April 15th. We had a really great time, but I think they may have been ready to head back by the end of it- we wore them out! I thought I had allotted for adequate down time, but now that I'm looking back at the calendar, I guess I kept our schedule pretty packed. Perhaps something to bear in mind next time. Anyway, in those three weeks, we hit SIX countries and hopefully gave them a nice taste of Europe. They saw Belgium, France, Holland, Germany, England and Luxembourg. We really only drove through Luxembourg, but since we got out at a gas station, I'm going to count it.

They arrived in good form at the Brussels airport and actually held up quite well through dinner. My Mom adjusted pretty easily to the time difference, but I think my Dad (as most do) had a bit more of a hard time. Anyway, their first full day here I took them to the Plantin-Moretus Museum. The museum, housed in the original publishing house, chronicles the start and development of the printing industry in Antwerp by the Plantin and Moretus families beginning in the mid-15oos. My father wanted to be a printer as a boy and even worked in a printing press, so I thought this would be a great outing for us. The exhibit was really interesting and the English audio guide made it even more so. They had lots of really old scripts and two of the oldest surviving printing presses around.

Here's my dad in front of those two historical presses:


And my Mom and Dad outside the Plantin-Moretus House:

After the museum I took them to a little lunch place my friend Stephanie introduced me to. We call it The Convent, perhaps because in the courtyard of the building where the restaurant is, there is also a tiny, little chapel that you can now see behind a pane of glass. However, I just realized the last time I was there that the name of the restaurant is actually De Groot Witte Arend, which means The Great White Eagle. And now that I know that, I was able find their website. There aren't any pictures of the chapel, but you can at least see the courtyard. Anyway, I'm helping my parents sort through the menu using my "menu Flemish" that I've picked up over the last six months and my mom points to one of the appetizers and asks what it is. I attempt to decipher the description and tell her I think it's some kind of meat pastry with a tomato sauce. As I'm trying to determine whether or not I can give them any better explanation, the server comes over and asks us if we'd like an English menu. Now, this would normally be no big deal, and actually quite welcome, however I was a little puzzled by this as I had been to this restaurant at least 5 or 6 times and never before had anyone offered me the English menu, even though I always order in English AND this server had been my server several times previously! Oh well. So once we get the English menu, we look at the list of appetizers to determine what the one my mom wanted was, but it's not listed. So we ask the server about it and he says, "It's a meat pastry with tomato sauce". Well.... guess whose Flemish ain't so bad! So Mom & Dad look at each other, shrug, and say, "why not?". I thought it was pretty adventuresome of them and the little puff pastry with ground beef inside and tomato sauce around the outside turned out to be quite good. Sorry no pictures for you.

The next day my friend Nicole gave us a ride to Breendonk. Breendonk was originally a fort built in 1909 as part of a series of forts intended for the defense of Antwerp. However, during WWII the Nazis thought it would make an ideal concentration camp, and thus it was turned into a place of misery, torture and death. Because this camp isn't located in Germany/Poland, it has been very well preserved and totally intact.

Here's a look from the outside. The fort has a moat surrounding it:


The English audio guide was extremely well done and took you on a two-hour tour of the whole facility. The guide really gave you a feeling of what it must have looked, smelled, and felt like to have been a prisoner there. My parents and I decided that the weather that day (wet, dreary, and VERY cold) gave us and even more "authentic" experience. After two hours of walking around the camp, I couldn't feel my fingers or toes and I was dressed for the weather. I can't imagine what it must have been like to endure life in that camp day after day barely dressed, barely fed, and beaten constantly. As horrific and disturbing and graphic as it is, I'd definitely recommend a visit if you're going to be in/around Antwerp. It is incredibly educational and the lives of those who suffered and died there deserve to be remembered.

This is a picture of the area behind the fort where those unfortunate souls who had done anything to anger the prison guards were brought to meet their terrible end by firing squad.

And here are the "facilities" at Breendonk. So much for privacy, eh? And you were only allowed to use these lovely facilities AFTER you had asked permission and IF the guard on duty felt like letting you go. Otherwise you just had to hold it. Although sometimes they were allowed to go without even asking like when all the prisoners were marched in there to simultaneously "go" and take 1 minute cold showers.

I took a picture of my parents and they of me, but we agreed that if felt a little weird. Too hard to smile knowing what took place here.

After Breendonk, I took my parents to lunch at Het Elfde Gebod (The Eleventh Commandment). It's a cute little restaurant right outside the main cathedral of Antwerp and it has all sorts of religious statues adorning the walls and counters. It's definitely an original place!

And in this one it looks like my Dad hears the voice of one of the Saints calling out to him:

Ok, next post: Our trip to Normandy! Hope you're all well!