Europe motorhome trip 2003

link to Europe 2003 family motorhome photos
We had a great time driving around Europe in a rented motorhome with our four children, Shauna, Kyle, Richelle, and Sarah. Mostly, we just went to the places in Europe our friends had told us not to miss.Over 26 days, with the flexibility of driving our own vehicle, we covered a lot of sights, and only some are covered in this blog. Check our links to other websites as you go.

Poopskenanny - a word the kids made up on the trip to define something not worth argueing about...

We'd tried out a European motorhome in Holland last October with my parents, and it worked very well. We think it's a great option with little kids, old people, or a handicapped person. If we had gone Eurail and hotels, we would have had to carry everything on our backs every day. With 11 and 14 year-olds along, that would have been very difficult. The motorhome (campervan) allowed us to go, stop, and rest wherever and whenever we wanted. Camping is the way most European families go on vacation. The Fiat 5-speed diesel drove really well. You just have to be very careful about not getting into a dead end or narrow street in the cities. You can drive where any tourbus or delivery van can go. We did take advantage of trains in some areas to get into cities from campgrounds.
The camping prices are by-the-person usually, and most cosider 14+ to be adults, so the campgrounds were more $ than expected - averaging maybe $35 per night. However, by the last half of the trip we were "free" camping about every other night, saving showers for the campgrounds. This is easier in large tourist towns like Brugge and Rothenburg, where there are special parking lots just outside the towns for camper-like vehicles for only about $6 for 24 hours. As a last resort, the freeways have lots of rest areas and they don't mind if you stay the night. This is especially useful if you want to drive late or get an early start.
We flew from Seattle over Canada and Greenland to change planes in Amsterdam, flew on to Munich, then starting the driving in southern Germany, going to the lakes region of Austria, dipping back into Germany for some castles, over the Dolomites to Venice, down to Florence/Tuscany, over to the Italian Riveria, up over the Alps to the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland, up the French border to Belgium, over to Holland, down the Rhine, and back to the start near Munich.

Places We Went:
Night 1 June 12th, 2003 - Ingolstat Germany
N2 - Hallstadt, Austria

N3 -Salzburg, AU

N4,5 - Innsbruck, AU

N6,7 - Venice, Italy

N8 - Florence, IT
N9 - Figline Valdarno, Tuscany, IT

N10,11 - Levanto, Cinque Terra, IT

N12 - Locarno, Switzerland

N13,14,15,16 - Lauterbrunnen, Jungfrau region , Switz.

N17 - Black Forest, Germany

N18 - Brugge, Belgium

N19 - Middleburg, Netherlands

N20 - Herwignen, Netherlands

N21 - Arnhem, Neth.

N22 - Wuppertal, Germany

N23 - Mosel valley, Germany

N24 - Rudesheim, Germany

N25 - Rothenburg o d Tauber, Germany
N26 - Ingolstadt, Germany

click here to see the website of the campervan place in Inqolstadt, near Munich - we had a class 4 - seats 6 and sleeps 7 http://www.rv-rental-germany.com/

We picked up the campervan in Ingolstadt, Germany, found the cloest campground, swam in a lake to keep awake, and went to bed at 9PM to overcome jetlag. The next day went to Dachau, then down to Austria an lakes region to Hallstadt, a beautiful town on a lake. We took the funicular up to a salt mine tour, then walked through Hallstadt, which has no automobile traffic.

http://www.salzwelten.at/cont/salzwelten/en_salzwelten_hallstatt_attraktionen.aspx

Fom Hallstatt, we went to St Wolfgang, a georgeous little town on a beautiful lake.

We rented a small electric boat on the lake there, then drove to Salzburg and went to Castle Hellbrun, famous for trick fountains that get you wet if you're not watching. The Salzburg campground overlooks the city. The next morning we attended a festival in a nearby small town, centered on shoulderfired cannons called pranger-shutzen used to protect Salzburg 300 years ago.

 They had a parade of about 40 gun clubs, assembled on a football field, had a mass conducted by the town priest, then set up a large beer tent and fired their guns the rest of the day. Then, after touring Salzburg and the Fortress, we drove to Innsbruck.
The next day we made a loop up to Germany and King Ludwigs Castles Linderhof and Neuschwanstein.

These are two of five castles "crazy" King Ludwig built in the late 1800's, so while they are beautiful and large, they don't have the history of other castles. On the way back to Innsbruck we rode an alpine slide near Ruette.

While driving the wild backroads over the Dolomites, we stopped for a rest at a woodcarving place and end up buying some nice carvings.

The drive over the Brenner pass and then over three shall Dolomite passes was one of my favorite drives, but didn't go as well with the kids in the back. The motorcycles were screaming past us on passes with 60 hairpin switchbacks. We passes bicyclists (mostly older) on the way up, and they passed us on the way down the other side.

Venice and other islands were great. We camped out on a peninsula and took a ferry to four of the islands, including Venice. We had an all-day ferry pass, so we circled Venice and went down the Grand Canal. The main attractions in Venice were crowded, but it was easy to wander off and get lost for a while.

It's really true about Venice - they do everything by boat. We saw the postman's boat, an ice cream delivery boat, a police boat, an ambulance boat, taxi boats, a garbage boat, and a cement delivery barge.

It was an exciting drive from Venice to Florence, with lots of tunnels and traffic jams on the freeway. It was hot in Florence, and Debbie and I were the only ones who went into the City to see the Duomo (large cathedral) and walk around a bit. , toured the cathedral there, and drove on to Levanto, down a steep winding little road.

The next day we went to the small town of Vinci to see the Leanardo da Vinci museum

, and then to San Gimignano, but the kids were too hot and tired of the winding country roads to see the town. So, we found a upscale campground with waterslides in Figline Valdarno and took a rest. The next day we went through Pisa
We really liked Levanto, considered the sixth Cinque Terra town. The next day we took the train through tunnels to some of the Cinque Terra towns, hiking the shoreline cliffs trail between some of them on the way back. Back in Levanto, we saw a local yearly event of making flower drawings on the streets, with religious torchlight procession at night.
The toilet facilities and customs of Europe seemed to hold a special fascination for the Greggs. Kyle noted near the end of the trip that he had never seen the same flush mechanism twice - they were all different, even in the same country. He's thinking about a documentary.
From Levanto, we drove back up the winding road to the freeway, through Genoa and Milano to Locarno for a one night stay on the shores of Lake Maggiore. Then we crossed the Alps via the 13-mile Goddard tunnel and then over the winding and beautiful Susten Pass.
Upon entering the Interlocken area of Switzerland, we checked in to the campground in Lauterbrunnen, then visited Truemmelbach falls - this most underground waterfall pounds through the rock with carved tunnel and stairways interlaced.

http://www.truemmelbachfaelle.ch/truemmelbach/allgemein.php?lang=en

Here's a map of the Jungfrau region. http://www.jungfraubahn.ch/en/DesktopDefault.aspx/tabid-70//236_read-1008

We bought 5-day Jungfrau regional transport passes and spent the next four days riding all sorts of trains, boats, funiculars, gondolas, and arial trams, including the Brienzer Rothorn, Harder Kulm, Thun, Spiez, Murren, Shilthorn, Wengen, Klein-Sheidegg, Grindelwald, First, and Mannlichen. We also went to the Ballenburg open air folk museum.

http://www.brienz-rothorn-bahn.ch/bahn/dampf-romantik/album/

We came very close to letting Kyle tandem paraglide up here. We talked to a paraglider before he took off - it is possible to catch thermals and cross the alps.

On the way out of Switzerland, we stopped at the Rheinfall, the largest waterfall on the Rhein, drove through the Black Forest, and stopped at a large American war cemetery on our way through France and Luxemborg to Brugge, Belgium.
Brugge is a really neat old city, famous for canals and chocolate. We took a boat tour in a downpour, and the girls did lots of shopping. We picked up the new Harry Potter book (in english) and some of the kids read it twice by the end of the trip.




After Brugge, we drove up the coast to see some of the moveable storm dikes, and went to the miniature sights of Holland exhibit at Madurodam (real tourist stop) where our campervan was nearly mobbed by some Indian gentlemen who'd apparently never seen one. We saw 19 windmills at Kinderdijk and then went to see our distant relatives, the Van Zees of Herwiknen. We went to Rike's 6th grade graduation program, spent the night, helped round up the milk cows in the morning, visited the church and graveyard, and took a ferry across the river to see castle Louewenstein and a beekeeper.
The Van Zees treated us royally. It was great to have our kids meet theirs. We helped them prepare for Rikes school party, and drove over to Apeldorn to visit Apenheul http://www.apenheul.com/index.cfm?pid=147 (where the monkeys are not caged and crawl all over you), and the Netherlands open air museum.

We spent the next night at a rest stop outside Wuppertal, and got to the Lutz Heishler mini steam shop when they opened. This was a fantastic place - maybe 300 miniature steam and stirling cycle engines, new and antique, ferris wheels, real steam driven train models, miniature steam driven boats, cars, etc. all over the place. Lutz himself showed us around and even demonstrated several engines. He was surprised I already had one of their miniature steam engines.

http://www.hielscher-dampfmodelle.de/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=39&lang=en

Turns out Lutz worked as an engineer at Boeing in Seattle 20 years ago! Debbie let me buy a gold plated stirling cycle engine to commemorate the trip. Lutz told us about the overhead railway in Wuppertal - the only one in the world, so we found it and rode on it to the city center for some shopping. There seemed to be a lot of turkish people in this industrial part of Germany.

Burq Eltz website http://www.burg-eltz.de/e_index.html This was one of our favorite castles. It is off in the woods and has been lived in (and still is) by the same family for 700 years.
Most European castles have been taken over, destroyed and rebuilt, or sacked at one time or another, and many interior furnishings were carted away long ago. So it's unusual to find one like this with original furnishings, and descendants still there.
We picked two of the many Mosel/Rhein castles to visit. Rheinfells has a long history of being built up, conquered, built again, torn down, rebuilt, etc, over 1000 years. The main income for the largest 10 castles along 16 miles of the Rhein was forcing boats to pay for safe passage. It was fun crawling all over and under this huge castle/fortress.

We found time to catch a tram into Cologne to visit a chocolate factory, do some shopping, and see the large cathedral.

After staying on the Rhein and seeing a fireworks and lighted ship show, we drove to Rothenburg, a medieval walled city. We walked through Rothenburg several times, and walked most of the wall.
Then we drove back to Ingolstadt, got up early the next morning, and few home to Seattle.

Argentina Trip

Argentina and Chile February 2007

On our way to meet and travel with Kyle at the end of his mission, we flew into Santiago, Chile for a couple days. The flights to South America are overnight, and for some reason seem worse than going east-west to Europe or Asia. We had a great hotel in Santiago, the Park Plaza, small and in a nice area with a pool on the roof and a great breakfast. We took the subway into downtown Santiago, saw the government palace, main square, cathedral, main market, and rode the funicular up a hill to the Virgin Mary statue overlooking the city. The taxi from the airport might have cost us more, but the guy could see I was thinking about the price, and he changed it quickly when I questioned it.

You might expect some wild travel experiences in South America, but I had told myself that these are modern countries, and that there would be no anomalies, and I would not be a paranoid American. However, some interesting things happened when we got to Rosario, Argentina. My suitcase had gone missing on the flight, for starters. We had a reservation with Advantage Car Rental, and our online rental agreement stated there was a rental agency in the Rosario airport terminal. On asking around, no one had ever heard of Advantage Car Rental. There were three other car rental desks, only one open, Budget. A nice man there said that if Advantage was associated with Payless Car rental in the next booth, they only showed up about once a month. He was nice enough to call the Buenos Aires Advantage office for us. They said that unfortunately, our car "had been in an accident." I asked them what we should do, and was asked "can you come to Buenos Aires?" Buenos Aires is 5 hours away from Rosario. Luckily, the nice Budget man had a little Renault for us to rent. But, judging by the amount of time he spent explaining the different crash deductible options, and documenting the nicks and dents already on the car, it was obvious that he fully expected us to get in an accident. But, he told us he really didn't think we would roll it over, so we went with a medium insurance plan.
The countryside looks like Iowa in late August, warm, humid, flat and fertile. We stopped at the equivalent of an Argentine Costco, and noted that, in order, the largest departments are meat, alcohol, and, believe it or not, there were two full aisles devoted to different brands and types of mayonnaise, which, like many other things like drinks and yogurt, comes in plastic bags.. Driving Argentina was quite an exhilarating experience. Most intersections are unmarked, with no right-of way rules. Kyle explained that momentum pretty much has right of way. So, you can get in a swarm of cars travelling fast, or get near a bus travelling slower. Nearly all of the drivers are males between 18 and 50. There are lane markers, but only by way of suggestion. Driving between lanes is a good way to keep your options open. Most city streets are one way. Near the center of a city, there are small arrow signs by street signs. A few bocks from the city center, they most times have small blue arrows painted on corner houses, stores or wall fences. A little further out, they many times don't have any indication as to street direction, and you have to look at which way cars are parked to determine direction. Though missionaries typically are not allowed to drive in Argentina, Kyle explained that while driving in America you can basically turn your brain off, but driving in Argentina requires your full attention all the time. I actually found it quite exhilarating. We got places faster and didn't have to stop as much.

We checked into a downtown hotel, called the mission home, and found out that there had been a misunderstanding, and Kyle had been waiting for us since the previous day. We got directions to the mission home and drove out to meet him. It wasn't easy to find, but we did, and were reunited with Kyle, amidst much tears and many hugs. We met President Hutchinson and his wife, and took Kyle back to the hotel. The next day was spent trying to get our ATM and credit cards to work, waiting for the lost bag (which did show up, thankfully, but was missing $80), and visiting people.

The next five days we drove around the mission, stayed in variously interesting hotels, and mainly looked up and visited people Kyle had taught or worked with, which was a truly wonderful experience. The way to announce your visit is to stand outside the fence and clap you hands until someone notices you and invites you in. Branch presidents hugged Kyle at length, people cried over seeing him, and little kids gave him presents. We really saw first-hand the love he has for the people, and they for him. Kyle had authored a poem in Spanish about his missionary experiences, and we had brought copies in nice envelopes. So, he handed those out and we watched as he conversed in Spanish, and interpreted for us every so often. When you greet people in Argentina, they do the air-kiss on one cheek thing (all but man-man). Argentines usually have a siesta from about 1 to 4 in the afternoon, so they are up late in the cool evening, and we could see people until about 10:30 at night. We visited about 5-7 families each day in five towns, Ramallo, Parana, La Paz, Rosario, and Santa Fe, some pretty average financially, and some in more humble dwellings.

After a large rain storm in la Paz, Kyle wanted to find an old man who lived in a tent. We drove down a dirt road and got stuck in some very slippery mud (the kind where when you walk on it, it builds up to about an inch thick, and you have the sensation of getting taller as you walk). All the neighborhood kids came out to watch the spectacle as we spun the tires, mud flew up and over the car, and Kyle got covered in mud trying to push the car out. We finally gave up and Kyle went in search of help. He found three young men, and we were able to get the car back to safe ground. We paid them well for their help, about a days' wages, but later found out that these boys were responsible for robbing the little old man we were trying to see, and were into illegal drugs. The car was a mess inside and out, so we went to a garage where they cleaned the whole thing (and sprayed down our pants and shoes) for 7 pesos (3 AR pesos to the dollar, so about $2.33.) Since Kyle's suit was trashed from the mission and mud, we bought him a nice argentine suit for $150US, which was probably a pretty good deal.

We resumed our visiting and did see the little old man, who had upgraded from the tent to a mud-wall one room house with plastic tarp roof. He was really nice, and you could see the love in his eyes for Kyle. In between these visits, Kyle would sometimes fill us in on the family situations. Marriage (lack of), cohabitation, and young single mothers seemed to be a pretty big problem in some areas, just like at home. I was amazed at how persistent Kyle could be in tracking people down. He tracked one lady to from one city to another we visited a few days later, and then to another location in that city, but we finally found her and had a visit. They were always happy to see Kyle again, whether they were still going to Church or not. In fact, I think some of the less active ones looked happier to see him. You could sure tell that he had worked hard and tried his best to help them improve their lives. On a few occasions, we could tell by the tone of the conversation that Kyle was calling them to repentance (he called it "dropping cane") one last time, but it always seemed well received. The visits and meeting people were the best part of the trip.

We turned in the rental car, the Budget man went over it meticulously and seemed a little disappointed in not finding any damage. Then we flew to Buenos Aires and, thanks to Debbie's internet searching, stayed in a very nice and reasonable hotel downtown. The next day we did a standard bus tour of the city and some interesting neighborhoods. The next day we went to the Ricoletta cemetery, some art museums and shops, then caught a flight to Iguaçu Falls on the Brazilian border.

The falls were fantastic, I'll put photos on snapfish. We did a jungle jeep ride, saw monkeys crossing the road high overhead in the trees, powerboat ride up to, and partially into, the waterfalls, train ride through jungle, walked on boardwalks to heaviest part of falls, the devils throat, and did a scenic raft ride. We kept running into three other families bringing their missionaries home, and saw mission president at Iguacu falls. Flight back to Buenos Aires, some more of seeing the city and shopping, the long flight back to Dallas, barely caught our Seattle connecting flight, and made it home to much hugging and tears with Kyle's sisters and extended family.