Europe in a Day

I've lived in the D.C. area for over 4 years now. For the most part, I really like living in the area and a couple of Saturdays ago I was reminded of one of the reasons why I like living here. Two Saturdays in a year, some of the embassies in D.C. open their doors to the public. One Saturday is dedicated to non-EU countries and the other Saturday to EU countries.

This year we went to the EU countries Saturday. (I've been to both the non-EU countries and EU countries in the past.)

Our first stop was the Embassy of the United Kingdom. I've been to this one before, but the person I went with had never been and I definitely thought it was worth it to go again.

They gave us free sunglasses as we walked onto the grounds of the embassy and they had some beautiful cars near the entrance.

The British ambassador's house. When I went to the embassy before, we didn't do the tour of the house, but this time we did. It was pretty cool!

The main hallway in the house. It's pretty fancy!

Look at that huge table. They said it was set for 32 but 34 could fit on there. They also mentioned that they don't usually have it set up for that many people. The table can be broken up into smaller sections and used in smaller rooms in a more intimate setting, but they had it set up to show the largeness of the table and the room. :)

This is a sitting room where they usually retreat to after dinner. I thought the couches looked quite comfortable and inviting. Of course we could not sit on them, but it felt pretty homey.

The grounds of the embassy were beautiful!

These two men were from a bigger group of men who had been playing the bagpipes for the visitors. Sadly we were inside the house when they were actually playing and by the time we were done inside they had already finished their playing.

Of course I had to get a picture with the Matt Smith cutout as Dr. Who. I've seen all of the most recent episodes of Dr. Who through David Tennant and a lot of the Matt Smith ones but only one with the most recent one, Peter Capaldi.

The British flag made out of stones (or at least the blue parts are).

Our next stop on our tour was the Finnish embassy. I had already been to this one too, but I also really liked this one and thought it was worth it to go again. We ended up having to wait in line for an hour to get in, but it was cool. The architecture of the building and the food samples they have in there made it worth it. :)

Inside the Finnish Embassy.

I love this wall of windows in the embassy.

There was this guy playing the accordion to entertain us as we waited in line for the food.

The one selfie Heather and I took together. Heather does not like getting her picture taken, but we decided we needed to get a picture of us in our British sunglasses in front of the Finnish embassy. :)

The final stop of the day was the German embassy (where the French and German embassies combined their cultural information tents.)

I'm not sure what the building is used for, but I liked it!

They had part of the Berlin Wall there. The red lettering on it says "We are the People." I really liked the grounds of the German embassy. Since the embassy was a little ways away from the other embassies and the grounds were larger, I felt a little more like I had stepped into a foreign country. The grounds were really nice!

I liked these old German cars. Aren't they cute?! The building behind them is the German ambassador's house. This house was definitely a more modern style than the British one.

I have no idea what kind of car it is, but it's pretty cool looking. (Notice that the license plate is upside down.)

This is the library inside the German ambassador's house. It's a cozy room, but to me it's not as inviting as the British sitting room.

By the time we got to the end of the German embassy grounds, Heather and I were pretty hungry. It was 3:40ish and we had walked a lot that day and hadn't eaten anything since that morning (except the food samples from the Finnish embassy), so we decided to eat at the German embassy. They had bratwursts and knackwursts and pretzels for sale. They had other things too, but that's what we ended up getting. The food was pretty dang good!

After we were done with the German embassy, the embassies had closed for visitors, so Heather and I walked toward Georgetown to go to Georgetown Cupcake. When we got to Georgetown Cupcake the line was long and it was hot out and we decided we didn't want to wait in line. But we still wanted a treat so we went to a frozen yogurt place across the street instead and it sure did taste good!

After eating our frozen yogurt, it was time to go home. We walked across Key Bridge to catch the metro at Rosslyn.

 Overall it was a fun day! Thank you D.C. embassies for opening your doors to the public one day a year. 

All the Light We Cannot See

Apparently I am on a, IShouldReadSadWorldWarIIbooks, kick. I read The Book Thief a couple of months ago and I just recently finished All the Light We Cannot See.  

I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to finish this book (and felt it the next day at work). I had to see what happened. How was it all going to end?

All the Light We Cannot See is a book based during World War II. Marie-Laure is a French girl who lives with her father in Paris. Her father works at a nearby museum where he is the master of all the keys in the building. Marie-Laure goes blind at a young age and her father builds her a small model of the city so that she can learn her way around and get about by herself. Marie-Laure and her father eventually have to evacuate Paris as the Nazis come and occupy the city. They escape to Saint Malo, a small coastal town in France, where Marie-Laure's crazy great-uncle lives.

Werner is a German boy, who lives with his sister and other orphans in an orphanage in a small German mining town. He and his sister find a broken radio one day and bring it home. Werner studies the radio for awhile and then fixes it quite easily. People in town start to come to him to get their radios fixed. When he comes of age, he is recruited by the Hitler Youth partly because of his knowledge of being able to fix radios and other such instruments.

Of course, the stories of Marie-Laure and Werner interconnect at some point. This book is not what I expected it to be, but I really liked it!

The stories in this book tell tales of courage and guilt and love and selfishness and obsession and goodness and doubt etc etc. I thought the book was well written. I really got sucked into the book and grew to like the characters or not like the characters depending on who they were. I must say, though, that the author switches back and forth between time periods and stories and at the beginning I had a hard time keeping track, but it eventually became easier as I grew to know the stories and characters.

Having read The Book Thief in the past couple of months and now this book, I think it's time for a more lighthearted and not so realistic book. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets here I come...

I am I, Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha

As soon as I saw that the Shakespeare Theatre in downtown D.C. was going to have Man of La Mancha there, I knew I was going to go. And go I did!

I loved it! Don Quixote, Sancho and Aldonza were awesome! They were strong singers and played their parts well. (Well everyone played their parts well, but the main characters are most important, in my opinion.)

There were a few uncomfortable parts (but were an important part of the show) and overall the show was awesome! I really like Don Quixote and his child-like innocence and goodness and how he changes the people around him for the better.

If you've never heard the music from Man of La Mancha, you should listen to it. The Impossible Dream, of course, is awesome, but I also like the song Man of La Mancha, Dulcinea, The Dubbing, and I could pretty much name all of the songs, so you should just listen to all of it. :)  

Thanks Shakespeare Theatre for putting on such a good show! 

P.S. The man who played the Padre in the show was a doppleganger of Mark Ruffalo. I was sitting in the 4th row from the front, so I could see clearly and I totally thought it was Mark Ruffalo at first. I also really liked his character; he was good too!

Randomness

I was looking at pictures on my phone recently from the past month or so and wanted to share some of them. 

I love to bake and I especially like to bake cookies. In this picture, it is chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough. If anyone ever needs or wants cookies, I will be more than happy to make you some. :) Although I will make any kind of cookies, the kinds I make the most are peanut butter chocolate chip, chocolate chocolate chip, snickerdoodles, crazy craisin cookies, and Nate's best ever chocolate chips cookies.

I have owned my car for over two years now and I recently took him to get his first real car wash. I know it's pathetic that it has taken me this long, but it's better late than never. Right?! :)

One day I got a flyer on my car for a burger place near my brother's house in Leesburg. I've been meaning to go to it for a long time and I finally went there. This was the burger and I will say that I really enjoyed it and would go back again for another one and I have pretty high expectations for burgers.

Last year I went to Jack's Beer and Burger Joint in Harrisonburg with my nephew and got a really good burger there that I now compare all burgers from specialty burger joints to. So the fact that I would be willing to go back to this place is saying a lot.

About a month or so ago my sister, Lara, and her family returned from Spencer's Make-a-Wish trip to New Zealand. They all loved the trip and thought it was amazing and were grateful to Make-a-Wish for making it happen! About a week or two after they got back, Make-a-Wish had a fundraiser walk at a nearby shopping center and they, of course, decided to join the walk and invited others to join also. Our team consisted of me, my sister, Lara, my brother-in-law, Glen, and their kiddos, Cami, Emma, Adam, and Ellie and one of my co-workers was an honorary member. (Spence couldn't make it because he's at school).

I think there was a good turn out for the walk. I would say there were at least 100 people there, all on various teams. We could not have asked for a better evening for the walk too. Both the days before and after the walk were not very pleasant, but that night the weather was perfect. The walk was lovely and it was for a good cause!

I know this post is very random, but I wanted to share these pictures and stories for when I eventually print out my blog for myself.

NYC

So Kristina,Tom, Andrew and Madeline were in town from California at the beginning of this month. Kristina wanted to go to NYC while they were here and they invited me to come along and I decided I would join them. I rode up separately from Kristina and the kiddos, since they wanted to get there earlier and I didn't want to miss work.

(As a side note, I highly recommend not leaving on a 5:45 bus on a Thursday evening (or probably any weeknight for that matter), because you will hit rush hour traffic, no matter which direction you're going. But I made it to NYC by 11:55 that night and made it on the midnight bus to Secaucas, NJ, where we were staying.)

Friday morning we went to the 9/11 memorial, which I had never been to before and I really liked it. I think they did a beautiful job with it. We didn't go into the museum, but the grounds and memorial were nice.

 The Freedom Tower.

The names of all of the people who died in the 9/11/2001 attacks as well as the attack of 1993 on the World Trade Centers were etched on the memorial. As I mentioned earlier, I felt like the memorial was beautiful and well done.

 I like this picture of Madeline and I looking up at the Freedom Tower. (This was not a posed shot.)

After the 9/11 Memorial, we hopped on the subway to Times Square and walked around there for awhile. Andrew, Madeline and I went into Toys R Us while Kristina ran a short errand and then we met up again and started walking toward Central Park. I like this shot of us in Times Square!

We made it to Central Park. We walked around a bit and found a playground for the kiddos to play on. At this point, we had walked quite a bit and the Andrew and Madeline were getting tired. Kristina and the kiddos went back to the hotel while I stayed in the city and ended up being by myself the rest of the evening.

After we parted ways, I made my way back to Times Square to the TKTS booth and bought myself a discount ticket for an evening show.

I had some time to spare after I bought my ticket and I wasn't sure what to do, because I wasn't expecting to have free time. I called a family member and they suggested I go to the New York Public Library.

To the library, I went. I loved it! I had never been before and it was really cool! I liked the architecture of the building. I liked the art in the building whether on the ceiling or on the walls and I liked the exhibits.

The main entrance of the library.

After the library, I went to Grand Central Station, which I also had never been to before. I also really liked this! The architecture and art were awesome but I also liked people watching there.

Grand Central Station. After I finished here, it was about time to eat and then go to my show.

I ate somewhere that I don't recall and then I went to see On the Town. I liked it. I thought the music and dancing were fun and very well done, but I wasn't a huge fan of the storyline.

Overall I had a fun trip to NYC and got to see some new things! Thanks Kristina and family for letting me join you on this short trip!

The Book Thief

I recently finished reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak for the second time. I really like to read, but I rarely read a book more than once. If I do, I must really like the book.

I first read The Book Thief a couple of years ago and I loved it. The book was well written. I became attached to the characters. I cried. I laughed. I felt scared. I thought about the message of the book for a long time after finishing it. 

The movie came out in 2013 based on the book. I saw it and I thought they did a good job with it. I realized, though, as I watched the movie, I couldn't remember the details of the book and that I wanted to read it again.

I didn't pick it up again until a couple of weeks ago and, as I started reading it, I remembered why I liked it so much. The author does a good job with character development and keeping you interested in the story.

The book is from a different perspective. The narrator of the book is Death. I know some people might find that weird, but I feel like it works in this case. As odd as this may sound, Death becomes fascinated by a little girl named Leisl, who lives in Nazi Germany during World War II.

Leisl is surrounded by death and suffering at a young age, but continues strong and courageous in the face of it. Leisl and the people she is surrounded by, show Death that humans are worth it, that even with all these humans killing other humans that humans are beautiful creatures and that words are powerful whether to persuade for good or for bad.

I won't go into great details about it all, but I really just wanted to say that I love the book The Book Thief. It is sad. It is funny. It is thought provoking.

San Diego- La Jolla Beach, Trolley Tour, Coronado, Temple

Last post for my California trip...

I loved San Diego! We went there on our last full day before heading home. I heard from a friend that taking the trolley tour through San Diego is a fun way of seeing the city without having to worry about driving through the city and parking and figuring out where to go etc.

The trolley tour was awesome! They stop at a few of the most popular touristy places in the city and they come around every 30 minutes or so.

We got off the trolley at a couple of places, but I definitely think my favorite stop was Coronado! Coronado is a peninsula of San Diego.

The reason I loved Coronado, (besides the charming houses and architecture, where no two buildings or houses were exactly alike (so no cookie cutter houses here)), was because of the beach!

Apparently Coronado beach was rated the #1 beach in the U.S. last year. (Something we learned on our trolley tour). Since we had been to a few other beaches on this trip, we wondered how this beach was going to be different from the other ones we had been to.

The beach was different and it was awesome! How do I describe this beach?

Well, there were really tiny gold specks in the water that made it sparkle. (You can kind of see the gold in the picture above). The water was clear. The sand was so soft and light-colored. The water was shallow going pretty far out. The buildings near the beach were charming. The beach was just beautiful in general! (And they had lifeguards and decent restrooms.) I loved this beach!

Water had washed over the words (in the picture above) numerous times and yet the letters stayed.

Coronado!

Look at that sand! It felt so good on the feet.

Sisters at Coronado!

My adorable nieces, Madeline and Ellie, jumping for the camera. Aren't they so cute?!

Paparazzi shot!

The trolley tour was awesome! There were a couple of stops that we didn't get to explore at (like Balboa Park), that I definitely want to go to next time I visit Kristina and Tom.

We parked in Old Town San Diego near the Mormon Battalion Museum to catch the trolley and we decided, since the museum was open later than the trolley ran, that we would  go to the museum last. The church did an awesome job with the museum! It's a fun and interactive way to learn about the Mormon Battalion.

I know I started off with the end of the day but now I'm going back to the beginning. We began our day at La Jolla Beach. The water was so clear there and we saw some seals or sea lions (I am not sure which ones) swimming around.

La Jolla!

Just in case you didn't know from previous posts, I love the beach!

Isn't it beautiful?!

Kristina, Lara and I at La Jolla.

Our very last stop of the day before going home was the temple! It sure was beautiful! I love how it's right off the freeway (kind of like the D.C. temple) and it just kind of is suddenly there.

Sisters at the temple!

Well this post concludes my posts from my trip to California. Overall it was a wonderful, fun-filled, family-filled trip!