Haguenau HCSC Day-Tripper

I have joined a club. The Heidelberg Community and Spouse Club. And belonging to the club also made me part of different small group. One is the "Daytripper" a small group that go to different towns and visit or shop or visit... or shop some more! LOL
So when I saw that every year in Haguenau they had a "Braderie" which is a HUGE market with lots of differents types of goods. I thought it could be perfect for the group. So after talking it over we decided to go.
We were lucky enough to not have any rain. But it was a little chili (well, what do we need to expect for Fall)
It was funny because the Market area wasn't too crowded, and the town on its own, was not at all! So we enjoyed shopping but visiting the town of Haguenau, and it was fun to go out with those ladies.

Ladenburg Cruising

I know you must be pretty tired aboutme taking trip to Ladenburg. But it is such a pretty town (and only 20 mns from where we are) that I try to go there as often as I can. Here are a few pics that I took while visiting it with Vidhu (Miss Charm's niece)
AND I was able to finally made it "Protestant" church. I have been there several time and it was the first time that I found it open! I was SO happy!!!

One of the thing that I love about this town, is that building that were built in this century do not look out of place next to the old Timber houses. The residents have been able to maintain somekind of balance with the architecture.

Miss Vidhu in the "Catholic" church.

I love the refelctions that the sun made with the colors of the windows.

And as usual September is a great time to visit any town in the area. All the flowers are still blooming and the colors are just gorgeous!!

USO Last Paris Trip

And voila this is it... No more trip to Paris with the USO! I was glad that my friend Shaunna from Captivus was able to accompany me on that one! It was so much fun to be with a fellow photographer.
This time we went on the South part of Paris. We went to the Eiffel Tower and to the wall of Peace to just make sure we knew where it was going to be!! And to the Montparnasse Cemetery.

We walked most of the time but at the end of our little escapade our feet were screaming for us to just chill. So we took the subway. This is one of the thing that I love about the subway in Paris.

You can be surprise by accordeon player, or singer... and just relax by sitting down while listening to some "traditional" french tune!

We decided after Montparnasse to go to the Jardin du Luxembourg. It was the first time that I took the time to cruise around the Garden. And since it was the end of the summer, we had the change of colors in the trees and still flowers in the garden. It was so pretty!

And then we went back to the Peace Wall to do a project call HUG ME you can find more information about it here

Traveling and visiting Europe

Every year in Europe you will find the “European Heritage days”. Those days are different in each country but the benefits are normally the same. MOST National Museum is open to the public for FREE!! Yeap you read it right FREE!! Now be careful I didn’t say EVERY museum is FREE. I said MOST NATIONAL museums. So do your homework before you end up going to place that you’ll have to pay. You can Google information of the European Heritage days and you’ll find tone of goodies. I will list below the one that I thought could be of interest. Also based of the fact that we live in Germany and that I tend to only do day trip I kept that in mind. However if you are more adventurous and your purse coin is heavier than mine you can go to this website and click on the country that you are interested to visit:

Council of Europe - Directorate of Culture, Cultural and Natural Heritage-European Heritage Days

Those are some of the official one for different country around Germany: (since I live there) ;-)

Austria: BDA - Bundesdenkmalamt Österreich 26 of September 2010

Belgium: Wallonia: Accueil Les journées du patrimoine 11-12 September 2010

Flanders: Heritage Day Flandres Open Monumentendag Vlaanderen 12 September 2010

Brussels Capital: Monument 18-19 September 2010

Czech Republic: European Heritage Days 11-19 September 2010

France: - Frédéric Mitterrand's Editorial Journées européennes du Patrimoine 2010 18-19 September 2010

Germany: Tag des offenen Denkmals - Programm zum Tag des offenen Denkmals 12 September 2010

Hungary: Kulturális Örökség Napjai A Felemelő Század: A "Nemzeti Styl" - 2010. szeptember 18-19. 18-19 September 2010

Italy: Home-Page Sito web del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 25-26 September 2010
Luxembourg : Service des Sites et Monuments Nationaux 18-19 September 2010

Netherlands: Summary - Open Monumentendag 11-12 September 2010

Poland: Europejskie dni dziedzictwa 11-12 and 18-19 September 2010

Switzerland: Nationale Informationsstelle für Kulturgüter Erhaltung NIKE : Journée du patrimoine
11-12 September 2010

Hope it can make your visiting a little easier, and hopefully you’ll be able to visit some area or some museum that you might not have enjoyed cause the price was too much! Enjoy!!!

De blog

Heidelberg Castle Illuminations

Miss Charm has the most beautiful view of Heidelberg. So needless to say that when she invite us to come for grill and view of the Fireworks display. We all jump and say: Oh YEAH!!!

If you haven't had the chance to go to one. There is one every month during the summer months. so check out the Heidelberg city website (tourist office) and you'll find the date.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber Germany

Rothenburg ob der Tauber is the picture of the typical medieval german town. If you ever had a vision of what a Traditional German look like, you are seeing Rothenburg!

We went to visit it on the weekend of the "Imperial City Fest". It was a beautiful day to do so.

This view above is the most pictured part in Germany. I thought it was pretty funny on that pictures as you can see lots of people taking the picture of it!

Every year the town of Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber celebrate their "Imperial Festival". It was cool to go and visit this beautiful medieval looking town and seeing the history come to life. Music group, the Royal Riflemen parade.

But they also had tones of peasants showing of what a peasant use to do at the time.

The celebration start on a Friday until the Sunday. The first night they have a Torchlight procession and fireworks with music along the facade of the Town hall mark.

And on Saturday they have another Fireworks in the Tauber Valley.

And just for the beauty of it, you can visit the Franciscan Church and when we did, they just had a wedding celebration the day before. The decoration were still there.

Riding on Tricky

So Matt decided to go on a ride and for once I agreed to accompany him. First we had to fill up. It was a beautiful evening. The funny part was that his bike got overheated and we had to stop and stay for a while on the side of the road. The nice part was that we had a gorgeous view of the sunset on the Neckar River in Heidelberg.
This is one of the reason we love leaving in Europe. It is so nice to just being able to pop in and go enjoy the view of a beautiful town.