A Vacation from Vacation

Phew, we are home from our amazing vacation to France and Germany and I am exhausted! Grandpa is still off site seeing for a few days so I am taking this opportunity to sleep, clean house, and catch up the blog!

After work on Thursday the 11th we jumped on a bus to London where we spent a cozy night in a hotel. In the morning we caught the Eurostar to Paris! The Eurostar is a high speed passenger train that travels up to 180 mph and connects London to Paris by passing under the English Channel via the Channel Tunnel, aka the Chunnel. The ride was so smooth! I would get up with Spencer to walk around and not even really notice we were moving unless I looked out the window.

We had so much fun in Paris! There was so much to see and do; we could have stayed a few extra days and still wouldn't have seen it all. The highlights of course included the Louvre, Notre Dame, and the Eiffel Tour.

On Monday the 15th we said goodbye to Paris when we jumped on a train to Germany. Our first train took us to Stuttgart Germany where we had a two hour layover. When booking our trains for Stuttgart station we could have had an 8 minute layover or a two hour layover. We went with the longer one because we didn't want to risk missing our train. When we arrived at Stuttgart we realized that our connecting train was directly across the platform, literally 12 feet away, and that even three American tourists with a baby could have had enough time to make that 8 minute connection. Oh well, we had no idea, we thought we would have to search for our platform and get checked in all while relying on our German to English dictionary and 8 minutes just didn't seem like whole lot of time.

Two hours later we caught our train to Munich. Once we got to Munich we had to take the subway to the metro stop where our friend Blue (no he doesn't have mean parents, he has really cool parents...and Blue is his last name which is what he goes by) was picking us up; we were on schedule to meet Blue at 5:30. We found our train with 10 minutes to spare. Everything was going great until the train before our train didn't seem to want to leave the platform. After about two minutes I thought, "gee, this train is waiting forever to let people on." For those of you not familiar with Metro, or subway, the trains don't wait for longer than 10 to 15 seconds-which is why you always see people running and pushing in the movies to catch their train.

A little while later there is this big announcement overhead (in German of course), after which people are looking very annoyed and many (not all) get off the train. About 10 minutes later the train departed and our train arrived. We got on and waited a few minutes. Again there was another overhead announcement and again many where annoyed and some got off. This pattern continued for several stops, each time we would wait about 15 minutes. Finally, two and a half hours later we met up with Blue, two hours later than originally planned.

Needless to say, we got a rental car for the rest of our Germany trip...

I loved everything about Germany. The landscape and country side was of the most beautiful I have ever seen. All the food we ate was mouth watering and the people were significantly nicer in Germany than France. (It didn't help that I kept running people over with the stroller in France.) I also loved that people would come up to me and talk German to Spencer, he thought it was the funniest thing, he would laugh every time.

On Saturday the 20th, we caught a plane back to the UK. When we arrived we went through customs and the emigration officer gave us a hard time. Adam and I both have visas. A visa is what entitles us to live in the UK. Spencer on the other hand did not have a visa. We were told, or at least under the impression that  Spencer did not need a visa for various reasons and that we could take his birth certificate to prove he was born in England.

The only reason Spencer was allowed to enter the UK that day was because he and I had tickets to fly home to Idaho in two weeks. The emigration officer said that he could come in into the UK as a visitor for the next two weeks BUT that the next time he tries to get back into the country, he NEEDS a visa. I could do a whole new blog post JUST about our plans for getting Spencer back into the country after our visit to Idaho.

We can't apply for his visa now because it requires sending off his passport and we NEED his passport to travel to Idaho. We'll only have two weeks in Idaho to apply for his visa and we are told it could take anywhere from 5 to 60 days...hopefully it is closer to 5 than 60....or Spencer and I could be staying a little longer than everyone expected. I wouldn't mind staying in Idaho for 2 months...but the problem is, Grandma Lamar-Dietz is coming to visit the week that Spencer and I will/should be returning. It would be an awfully crummy vacation for grandma if Spencer wasn't there because let's just face it, Adam and I are just perks now; everyone just wants to see the baby...