Stamps Like Champs

Sunday, June 9, 2019

Llamas, and Whiskey, and Beers, Oh My!

We had THE MOST fun day yesterday! Vacation started with a surprise from Steve. On Friday, he stumbled upon Carlson's Llovable Llamas and he knew I would love it, but he didn't tell me what we were doing. I was so excited once I knew!! This was so much fun! We basically had a llama experience. First we learned the differences between a llama and an alpaca, then we played with baby llamas and their mamas. Then we got to take a llama for a walk, brush a llama, feed them treats, and learn about the shearing process. The highlight of the experience was when our guide, Kaylie, caught one of the babies for me to hold! She was a surprisingly light baby llama given her size, and she was super soft! I was begging Steve to let it be my therapy llama so I could take it home on the plane with us. We took Gracie and Holly Cow for a walk around the grounds which was fun except Gracie didn't like the other llama behind us that was following too close. Gracie spit at that one! Gracie cut me off towards the end of our walk to grab some grass too. Apparently she was starving, haha!

Baby llama!!!

Gracie (left) & me

Baby llama's mama - Coco

So freaking cute!!!

Steve holding baby llama (they don't name the baby llamas until the end of their summer season - the 4H kids name them).

Different Mama and baby - this one was the youngest baby (only a few weeks old)

Llama kisses (technically an alpaca though)

Llama kisses for Steve

We went over to Schram Winery & Brewery where our intention was to have lunch but the food truck wasn't set up with enough time for us to do that. So we enjoyed a wine and beer tasting instead. Both were really good. The Maple Brown was one of the best beers I've ever had - it tasted like ice cream!

Schram's beer sampler

Yesterday was National Rose Day, so of course we tried a glass of their semi-sparkling rose!

After grabbing a quick bite to eat, we met up with Tyler and his wife, Britta, at their house to ride over to J. Carver Distillery. Tyler used to work for a company called Vertafore. The company I work for uses Vertafore products and Tyler was my go-to person when I needed something. Sadly, he left Vertafore a few months ago, but we have maintained a friendship. He knew I liked whiskey and one time when he came to Maryland he brought us some of J. Carver's Hunt Club, which is a fantastic beverage. We went on the tour of the distillery and of course enjoyed a few samples! We also stopped by Waconia Brewing to grab a quick sampler.

J. Carver Distillery Tour

Barrel room - I need a Yankee Candle for the smell of this room. It was heavenly!!

Our samples after the tour

Waconia Brewing sampler

We ended the day with some delicious pulled pork at Tyler and Britta's house followed by an extremely fun game of Oh Hell (card game), it was extremely fun because I won! Then we taught everyone how to play 99 - another card game. Sadly, neither Steve or I were victorious in that game.

Intense game of 99!

Tyler & Britta - thank you so much for everything yesterday; we had an absolute blast! We can't wait for your visit in October! ;-) Seriously, make it happen!

Thursday, June 6, 2019

Europe Finale & Memorial Day Weekend

Yeah, it's been a while again. I never did finish (or start really...) the last blog of the Europe trip. So, here's the last part of that followed by our surprise trip over Memorial Day weekend.

Our last day in Prague was a paid Viking tour to Terezin. The reason I was never motivated to write this blog was because this was the most depressing day of the entire trip. Terezin is a hybrid concentration camp/ghetto from World War II. This was an all day tour since Terezin is about an hour away from Prague. We started in a museum where our tour guide pointed out different exhibits to give us an introduction to Terezin and its history. Then we walked past the cemetery into the concentration camp. This is where the heaviest part of the day was. The Holocaust has always intrigued me, even though it is a very depressing time in our history. In high school I wrote a research paper all about it. I thought I learned a lot from doing that research paper and it is a topic that has always weighed heavy on my emotions since that paper. Seeing a concentration camp in real life magnifies those emotions significantly. I can't explain my feelings very well while walking through Terezin, but I realized several times that I was holding my breath throughout the tour. This is something I tend to do when I'm scared. I'm not exaggerating - seeing it and hearing the stories were terrifying. I can't imagine the thoughts going through someone's head while there during the war. Sorry to kick off the blog on a depressing note, but what do I always say about depressing stops in our travels? We learn about it so we don't repeat it.

Over 10,000 children were at Terezin. Terezin was made to look like it was a happy-go-lucky area to outsiders, so children were allowed to draw. A lot of the drawings on display were of life at Terezin. Most of the children that were at Terezin died at other camps such as Dachau and Auschwitz. Terezin was not an extermination camp.

Cemetery

The chilling words "Work sets you free."

Bunks - further into the war, this would hold hundreds of people.

Showers - again, Terezin was not an extermination camp so this isn't a gas chamber.

We ended the tour at a brewpub to help drown away our depression after the tour.

On to something more fun!

On Friday, May 24, while driving home from work, I was talking to Steve on the phone (we have bluetooth in our car, so stop judging). I have been pretty stressed lately...very stressed actually. I was dying to get into a park. I didn't care where it was, I just wanted to go somewhere. While on the phone with Steve, I asked which park we could go to within driving distance. Sadly (or gladly really), we've completed all the parks that are within driving distance from us. Jokingly, I ask Steve if we can fly somewhere just for the day and fly home the same night. Steve completely shocked me and reminded me that we have a ton of Southwest points and companion pass, so we could see if there was somewhere reasonable we could go. Three hours later, we were all booked and packed to go to Louisville, KY! This is the first time we've ever done a spur-of-the-moment trip and it turned out to be a really fun weekend!

We started at Four Roses Distillery where we had some pretty delicious bourbon (of course I loved the most expensive bottle...). After that, we hit our first park which is Camp Nelson National Monument. Camp Nelson is where free African-Americans went to enlist for the Civil War. This is a recently added site under the National Park Service and it was our last park in Kentucky. It was super hot and we didn't have any water yet since we were making sure we went to the park before it closed. So we only hiked out to one of the forts and then decided to move on. Forts aren't my favorite anyway as you all know.

Camp Nelson

A site for one of the forts

Pretty house at Camp Nelson

The next morning, we went to George Rogers Clark National Historical Park. George Rogers Clark is the older brother to William Clark (as in Lewis & Clark). The reason George has his own site is because he led the expedition that defeated the British in Vincennes, Indiana. He actually managed to do this after marching his men through freezing waters in February and was outnumbered. What made it fascinating is that he used a lot of sneaky tactics to make the British think he had more men than he actually did. He did things like having them fire often and screaming and making a lot of noise. The write ups in the memorial outlined everything he did which was an interesting read!

Our last park of the trip was to Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Illinois. This was such a cool park! The few blocks around Lincoln's home is park property so they have set it up like you are stepping back in time to Lincoln's neighborhood from the 1850's. We had a great ranger give the tour of the house.

Our last day was spent back in Louisville. We ended the trip by going to the Louisville Slugger Museum, a brewery, and a tour at Evan Williams. Sorry for the lack of pictures - our camera chip was full during the tour at Lincoln's house. I hadn't transferred the Europe pictures off it yet! Oops!

George Rogers Clark Memorial

Mr. Clark inside the memorial

Lincoln's House

Lincoln's desk

Monday, April 29, 2019

Nuremberg & Prague (Part 1)

We were exhausted last night, so I didn't blog. It is pouring rain today and cold, so we both decided to just chill at the hotel the rest of the day. Usually we don't let rain scare us away, but we are usually better prepared with better rain gear when we are in a National Park. Instead, we're across an ocean and needed to pack light. It's not so much the rain that bothered us, but it's only about 40 degrees here on top of it, so we were cold and wet after our tour this morning! Enough about the rain, let's get caught up on the blog again, starting with Nuremberg.

It's hard to find the right words for Nuremberg, but I will try my best. We didn't do the free tour through Viking that day. Instead, we paid for one of the excursions that was specifically about World War II in Nuremberg, and if we were lucky, we could go into courtroom 600 where the trials were, and we were lucky. This is a pretty heavy tour and the tour creates some conflicting thoughts. What I mean by that is the first half of the tour is all about Nazi propaganda. On the tour you are taken to the Zeppelin field and then to the Congress Hall. The Zeppelin field was huge and you actually see where Hitler stood during his rallies. You can even go stand there if you'd like (our tour didn't take us there though). It is illegal in Germany to give the Hitler salute, so don't do that. Congress Hall wasn't finished before the war ended and it's still huge. Technically I think it was supposed to hold more people than the Zeppelin field, but for some reason the field felt bigger to me - maybe because it was open air. Here's where there are conflicting thoughts. We all know Hitler was a terrible person who did terrible things. But his showmanship is, for lack of a better word, impressive (?). I feel awful writing that, but you have to see it to believe it to fully understand what I mean. I had such an icky feeling standing in the Zeppelin field where terrible moments of history happened, but at the same time, completely shocked by the size of it and just how many followers Hitler created.

The tour took us into the Documents Center within Congress Hall where you learn about the rise of Hitler all the way through concentration camps to the Nuremberg trials. We only had an hour in the museum, so we had to cut our time in each room short, but I could have easily spent 2 or 3 hours there listening to each of the English translations for everything in every room. The tour ended with seeing Courtroom 600. They do still hold court in that room and even though we were there on a Saturday, they do still have court on the weekends too. It wasn't guaranteed we'd be able to see it, but we did and for that I consider ourselves fortunate. The room itself seems a lot smaller than I was expecting, and our guide did say that there is a wall where there wasn't one during the trials in the back of the room. At least on this part of the tour, I didn't feel icky because we all know that in some way there was justice - those who took part in the crimes all had to pay for it by prison time or they were sentenced to death (two killed themselves before their sentences were carried out). In prior blogs, I've spoken about a National Park Moment - a feeling I get sometimes where the park feels huge or something on a grandiose scale. I felt like I had a National Park Moment in the court room. I was in the room where a significant part of history happened. And not just history for our country, but the world! If you are ever in Nuremberg, I highly recommend doing this tour if you can. We did it through Viking, so I'm not sure who else would offer it, but it's worth it.

Congress Hall from across the lake

A very small portion of Zeppelin Field

The second tier - the small part that juts out is where Hitler would stand

Inside Congress Hall. Pictures don't do it justice with how big it is. Also, excuse the phantom hand in the picture - these pictures were taken while the bus drove us through.

The four large windows are the courtroom

Inside the courtroom.

It rained all day in Nuremberg, but we had a nice double rainbow during our last meal on the boat!

Now that brings me to Prague. On Sunday, we disembarked the boat and headed off on a nearly 4 hour bus ride to Prague. When we got to Prague, we were dropped off at our hotel and then we had time to ourselves until our paid tour through Viking - to see Prague by Night. That reminds me, we did the Prague extension Viking offers, so Viking is still our "host" while we are here for 3 days total. Our rooms weren't going to be ready until mid-afternoon, so we had a few hours to ourselves in the city. We initially thought we'd book it to the train station nearby to try to get to Kutna Hora. We made it to the train station, but we were completely overwhelmed by it. I don't know why we were so intimidated because Steve successfully got us through Salzburg, Vienna, and Budapest all by train, but we both were mentally exhausted trying to figure things out. Not to mention, we had to be back by a certain time for the night tour and we were cutting it close with a later train. We thought we'd try again today, but rain and cold kept us away. Oh well. After quitting the train station, we went to Old Town and saw the astronomical clock. We discovered that you can go up the clock tower for a nice view of the city so we did that.

My thoughts on Prague - I was pretty excited to go here because everyone was telling us how much they loved it here. It's a cool city, but super crowded. Much more crowded than Vienna and Steve and I didn't really feel safe in the mob of people who were in Old Town. I was reminded here why I hate crowds so much. We also had a very strange lady behind us almost the entire time we walked through Old Town. She was dancing super close behind us. I wouldn't mind the dancing part so much, but she wasn't listening to any music, she didn't have headphones, she didn't mind our personal space, and we're in a crowd. They say pick-pockets create distractions and we were worried this was one. Thankfully, we never found out because we pulled over to act like we were checking something on our phone and she kept walking. Prague also seems to be full of a younger crowd. I'm not sure if they are locals or visitors, but I don't recall seeing anyone older than us besides the dancing lady and anyone here through Viking. One thing I do love about Prague is that all the sidewalks are cobblestone and all sidewalks have a different cobblestone design!

We did the night tour through Viking last night which was really cool. We started by going up the Broadcast Tower which was built in the late 80's and meant to look like it was from the future. The babies were added later because the people in Prague hated the building so they thought that adding babies to it would make them like it more. Turns out it worked, because they tried to take the babies down at one point and there was an outrage! We ended the tour at the Strahov Monastery, which is situated on top of a hill overlooking the city. We took in the view and then the tour ends with a quick beer at the brewery in the monastery.

Today's tour included a walk around the Prague Palace and inside the cathedral. The tour would have continued to Old Town, but it was a walking tour at that point and we were already outside in the cold and rain for long enough. So we called it a day. We end vacation on another World War II heavy note tomorrow. We are going on a paid Viking Tour to Terezin. Terezin is a town, but also home to a concentration camp, which we will tour. Thankfully they don't send us home too depressed, because there is a brewery on the itinerary as well.