a quick mash up

Hello all my lovely people,
I know it seemed that I fell off the face of the earth again, fortunately that is not the case. The last couple of weeks have been a whorl wind of activity that have been full of early mornings, late nights, and a lot of fun.
First: our last full day in Prague was spent wandering up, and then back down, Petrin Hill. It is mostly surrounded by a tall stone wall (I have yet to figure out if it is a castle, city, or garden wall). It is full of manicured gardens, amazing views, an observatory, and a community orchard (we enjoyed a few apples on the way down).

This is my most favorite place in Prague, because it was breathtaking and adventurous and peaceful all at the same time.

After the hill we admired the astronomical clock. It is old (over 600 years), it is beautiful, and it is cool. I learned it is the oldest working astronomical clock in the world. 

Isn't it amazing!?!?!
Next, the six of us rented a car and drove from Prague to Krakow where we joined on the last three days of wedding activities, one of which was a walking tour of Krakow.
We started at the old town square northern wall, (c.1200s):

After wandering around the town square for a couple hours we had lunch in a traditional Polish milk bar, called that because they focus more on dairy than on meat:

We then spent some time exploring Wawel castle where we admired the royal court yard and gardens before entering a secret passage that went down a long spiral stair case, through one of the 22 caverns under the castle, and exiting out side the castle wall (I still get goose bumps thinking about the generations of knights and messengers that ran up and down those stairs).

The next couple of days were full swing wedding activities: rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, wedding prep, wedding, and reception. I am afraid I do not have to many pictures of these events but I will say this: if you ever get a chance to go to a Polish wedding, do it! Polish people know how to party ;D. And the wedding its self was beautiful. It was held in a small country castle that still had remnants of a mote (be still my beating heart):

Unfortunately we had to leave the reception early (the first bus back to the hotel was at 12:30) because we needed to drive back to Krakow for our 12 hour flight back home. Well state side for me and kiddos as we stopped off in the mid-west to hang out with my family, but more on that next time.

Thanks for checking in,
XO Lue Lue Ellabee

Spiders, castles, and bones oh my!

Good morning all,
These last couple of days here in Prague have been full of adventure, history, and learning. Non of us speak even a little Czech, and the English to Czech phrase book is no help because we never seem to pronounce the words correctly. Fortunately, we have managed to get along okay with pointing, nodding, and smiling. And every once and a while we will meet someone who is interested in (or at least okay with) practicing their english on us.
Anyway, here are a few of the things we have been up to:
Saturday afternoon we landed in Prague and made it to our apartment where we met up with my love's sister and her love. We are sharing an amazing 3 bedroom in old town Prague. This is the view from the loft area above the dining room:

There is one problem, it seems to be rampant through out the city. That is spiders, they are every where, and they are big.  This is just two of the 7 (that I have seen so far) that have webs directly outside our bedroom windows.

You can't leave your windows open for any length of time because they come in, especially at night. Saturday night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I opened my eyes to see the silhouette of one of these suckers slowly dropping towards the lower half of my love as he slept. I soon realized I could not take care of the spider with out waking my love, which I did with a "Get up, a spider is about to land on you!". We both jumped up, turned on the lights, and searched until we found the offending spider and squished it. I am all for the 'live and let live' out in the wild, but they come into my house they are getting smooshed. I awoke in the morning to find these in the loft windows:

I was kind of hoping to stick my head out and admire the view. Oh, well, onto better things.
Sunday we took a walk across the Charles Bridge on our way to Prague Castle. The views were amazing.

You can even go up inside one of the watch towers. This is a picture of Prague Castle from the top of the tower.

We wondered up the hill to the castle and watched a bit of what we originally thought was the changing of the guard. Once the ceremony hit the 15 minute mark we decided it must be something else because, that elaborate ceremony every day at noon seems a bit ridiculous. Instead of staying for that whole thing we made our way to St. Vitus Cathedral, which is inside the castle.

 
The castle its self is a sprawling compound made of gardens, houses, and a few palaces. We learned that the Czech government still operates from there. I am sorry I did not get more pictures of the different buildings and the castle wall. But I do have a pretty nice picture from the old town square, back across the Charles bridge and near the astronomical clock (I am planing on going back to that today) :

Yesterday we to the hour long train ride to the town of Kunta Hora to see the Sedlec Ossuary (aka bone church).

 There are the remains of up to 70,000 people here, most of them centuries old and stacked in pyramids inside the ossuary. In 1870 a Mr. Rint was hired to organize the bones and he decided to get creative which is why the ossuary has become so popular:

 

I can't say I am a fan. I went because it seemed all historical and interesting but, I left feeling like a terrible person. I kept thinking about all these poor people who's lives had been forgotten and are now seen as nothing more than part of a morbid tourist attraction. I say rebury the lot and let them be.

Well I am going to end it there.
Thanks for checking in,
XO Lue Lue Ellabee

leaving Spain

(written Sunday 12:00pm, spell checked Monday 6:00am)
Hello all,

I know that it has been a while. My only excuse is the lack of available Internet this past week. Right now I am in the Barcelona airport, waiting for our flight to Prague. So, I will try to do a quick re-cap of the week.
Ordesa National park is absolutely worth seeing:

We sapient 3 days hiking in and around the park on the GR11 trail, one of several hiking trails that go between Spain and France.

After Ordesa we went to one of Spain's Paradors, state run hotels that are usually historic land marks, but some are just hotels built in incredibly scenic places . We stayed at Parador Bielsa. When we got there we did a little hike to a waterfall and then I did a some more hiking on my own searching for an old hermitage and ended up here:

This is part of a huge valley at the top of a mountain--well, maybe not the top, but certainly quite a ways up it. The "farm house" looked abandoned and there were no more signs to tell me if it was the hermitage I was looking for, but the scenery was breath taking.

We left the Parador early Tuesday morning and thought it would be fun to drive through France on our way to the coast. The small towns are beautiful, but we could not stay on back roads the whole way. From the highway, France looks suspiciously like Missouri. We stopped for a quick lunch and gas at a large truck stop and the little one thought it would be fun to play hide and seek. Unfortunately, he didn't let any of us know and we spent a frantic 20 min looking for him. He was discovered by a very kind cashier who (despite the language barrier) did his best to understand why I was so distressed, then found someone to cover for him while he helped us look. The security guard was less kind as he lectured me about learning a country's language before visiting that country (I will choose to believe that he felt like a tool when he realized I was about to burst into tears because I couldn't find my baby in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language).

When we finally got back on the road again I was not in the mood to try to visit any of the tourist attractions that we passed on the way back to Spain (and we passed a pretty awesome castle which I really regret not stopping at).

For the last four days we have been staying at this pretty crazy hotel turned condos on the coast near Begur Spain. We had an amazing view from the apartment:

The building, itself had some interesting features like this piece of the mountain sticking out:

We walked all around trying to figure out how it worked and I think they put it there rather than built around it. There were lots of long dark hall ways and slightly absurd features that made our stay just a little more interesting. When we weren't at the beach swimming, we were exploring the building.

Well, that is all I have time to share with you for now.
Maybe more tomorrow
XO Lue Lue Ellabee


P.S. I almost forgot to tell you, I finished the shawl! I will show you pictures once I have the pattern written up (although I have no way to block it until I get home). But I have decided to name it Torla, after a beautiful stone village near the Ordessa National Park (it is also where I cast off).

Montserrat

Good morning my lovelies,
Yesterday we packed up, rented a car, and drove up to the Montserrat monastery in the mountains. This particular monastery has been around for nearly 1,000 years (you have no idea how exited this makes me). Since the monks here have always encouraged pilgrims, there are several amenities here for visitors. Like a restaurant and hotel. We are staying at the hotel, Hostal Abat Cisneros, which has been amazing for several reasons. The first of which is the view of the monastery from our rooms:

 The second, and probably more important, is  you can go on a really long hike with out worrying about getting back in time to catch the last train to the parking lot. Given that my sweet loves a good hike and I love really old buildings/ ruins, this is the perfect place for us. Montserrat has at least 10 different hiking paths to everything from monuments to small churches built in the 1500's.
We went on a sort of rambling hike in the general direction of one of the farther churches. We only had a vague idea of where we were going. But, we did get to see many cool ruins, most of them were of hermitages. The number, size, and description of the hermitages made we wonder if I misunderstood what a hermit was. One of the hermitages was big enough for 20 hermits.

We wondered for a few hours, and experienced some amazing views:

I am quickly falling in love with this country. Especially since there is a bus from Barcelona to Montserrat.
On our way down the mountain we took the stone steps from Pla dels Ocells. There are many, many steps; after step #250 we stopped counting. There are many awesome views from these stairs. My favorite is this one:

My love decided to show our little one how to use the camera, his pictures are not too bad.
After we got back to the hotel (8:30pm), we had a good shower, a good dinner, and were in bed by 11. We learned that first mass is at 5:45, and vespers is at 7:45. When we finally did drag ourselves out of bed this is what we saw:

Rain. Well, it was actually a really good thunder storm. It was beyond amazing, watching the lightning flash across the sky and then listening to the thunder echo between the mountains. At one point the bells were ringing at the same time as the thunder and the thunder was louder.

We have now headed farther into the country side to the town of Torla, just out side of Ordesa National Park. The next couple of days will be full of hiking through the park. Wish us luck.

Thanks for checking in,
XO Lue Lue Ellabee

jetlag and beach time

Greetings my friends,

The last few days we have been working on getting past some culture differences, as well as the time difference. The biggest change has been bed time, or lack of a set bed time. Back home the kids are to be in bed by 8 and 8:30 respectively. Here, it is common to see small children out playing after 11. My daughter thinks this is the most wonderful thing in the world. We have been just going with the flow, doing what the locals do, except my kids don't do naps and my daughter is a natural early riser. 

Tuesday night we got home around 9:30 and decided to make dinner in our apartment instead of going out because we were all tired. While I started cooking, my love gave them a shower and got them into pjs. Once in his pjs, our son decided to put him self to bed. We had to cox him awake to eat maybe, four bites of carrot. After that he literally demanded to be put back into his bed. He was out in record time. Wednesday started and ended super late, the kids were not awake until 10am and did not go to bed till after 11. Yesterday proved more difficult. Because our daughter, true to her nature, was wide awake by 7:30 (at home she is usually up by 6:30). In a effort not to wake her brother, she came into the main room and sat reading on the couch. Now, this would not be an issue except that the main room is also her father and my bedroom. So, just as I was opening my eyes, I was surprised by a small figure sitting on the couch looking at me. 

Fortunately for me, despite the rude awakening, yesterday was a day of relaxation. Once everyone was up and ready, we meandered the 1.7 km to the beach--getting breakfast (in this case brunch, as it was 11 by the time we ate) on the way. The sun was hot by the water was cool and clean. I swam a little and knit a lot.

I have changed the shawl up a bit. I have sort of combined it with the age of brass and steam kerchief. I am excited to see how it turns out. If I like it I will put it up on ravelry.

Thanks for checking in,

XO Lue Lue Ellabee

Art, boats, and something special!

I will tell you right now that I love museums. I love learning about history through physical abjects. Yesterday we took the sight seeing bus to Musue Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. 

There are pieces that date back nearly 2,000 years.

My favorite of the religious are (of which there is quite a lot, but I feel that is common in European art museums) were the murals from the inside of churches and cathedrals. They took the painted chunks of stone and re-created the walls that they were in so you could understand how it really looked. My favorite was from a church built in 1125.

 
I am always impressed by paintings that are more life-like than photographs. You can almost feel the satin of this girls dress and the soft fur of her muff.

My love tolled me that in one room there was a Salvidor Dali and a Picasso.

 

If you are wondering why I took a picture of the middle painting than you have made the same mistake I did, that is the Dali. I did not read the descriptions and just assumed the painting with the holes was by him.

After the art museum we hopped back on the tour bus, road down the hill, and hopped off again at the Musseu Maritim. The building that houses the museum is an important historical landmark all on it's own. It is where ships were built for nearly 800 years! My favorite exhibit was the wooden submarine. I immediately started singing  "...we all live in a wooden submarine, a wooden submarine, a wooden submarine...". For those of you who are not Beatles fans, they have a song called "Yellow Submarine".  My second favorite, was the life size replica of a royal naval ship from the 1500's. There is a hole in the bottom so you can see into the galley.

 



On our walk back to our apartment, I got a special treat. I found a yarn shop! Well... I had looked it up online and realized it was in the direction we were already headed. It is called All You Knit is Love, and it is a good shop. I was looking for some souvenir yarn, and the owner helped me find this beautiful sock yarn:

Also, best knitting business cards ever!

Well, kiddos are asking for breakfast so we need to get ready and go out.

Thanks for checking in,

XO Lue Lue Ellabee

A double decker bus, cathedrals, and museu de la xocolata

Yesterday was a day of adventure. We started off wondering through as many back alleys as possible, looking for breakfast. After eating we wondered through Paca de Catalunya, which is a big tourist shopping area. It was nice, but we were in the mood for sight seeing. So we got tickets and hoped onto one of these double-decker buses:

These are the kind of sight seeing buses where, once you have bought tickets you may get on and off at any of a number of stops along the way. The bus goes past many interesting sights. My favorite, a side from castles, are cathedrals.

 
Barcelona has a particularly amazing cathedral, de Sangrada Familia. It is the dream of Antoni Gaudi, one of Barcelona's most influential architects. It takes up an entire city block, is really tall, and is only about halfway done despite having been steadily worked on for the last 130 years. We only walked around the outside. You can get tickets to go in, but when we got there the line was literally half way around the building (it looked like it translated into 3 hours of waiting in line). The outside is still amazing, I particularly liked the difference in appearance between the rear facade (maybe 20 years old) and the front facade (about 130 years old).

We saw many other landmarks, including a few other buildings designed by Gaudi (the only one I got an okay picture of was the dragon gate, one of his first designs) and Barcelona's football/sports arena (which I believe they said was the largest in Europe). I learned it is really hard to take a picture with a tablet while riding a bus (even if it is stopped).

We did get off and walk the 10 minutes up hill to Park Guell, a park designed and then dedicated to Guadi. We wandered around the free area for about an hour, enjoying the architecture and the amazing view of the city (non of which I got a picture of). Unfortunately, by the time we got in line for tickets to the section you pay for, they were announcing than no more people could go in until 4pm (16:00).

After the bus, we took a little rest back at our apartment before heading out again to Museu de la Xocolata. Why, yes this is a museum all about chocolate! This city just keeps getting better and better =D. Your ticket is a chocolate bar, there are huge chocolate sculptures, there are three short films on the history of chocolate, and the gift shop is (of course) a chocolate shop.  We enjoyed thick Spanish style hot chocolate, with a sponge cake type finger cookie for dipping. It was delicious!

 

I would say that despite the jet lag and not getting in to the inner part of Park Guell, it was a wildly successful day.
Today, we are on the buses again (we got a two day pass). This time we will be exploring the southern part of the city with it's parks and beaches.

Till next time,
XO Lue Lue Ellabee