Souvenirs & other fun travel things

Well, I was going through my drafts folder and came across this post I had written but apparently had forgotten to post! So here is some of the things I picked up while in England, France, and Germany!

In England, I picked up the Hogwarts crest mug and Hogwarts notebooks from the Harry Potter studio tour gift shop.

The mini phone booths and London mug came from a tourist shop in London. I wish I would have picked up more little souvenirs in London! Like a little tower bridge or something. I was worried about spending too much money because I thought we were going to be doing more shopping, but we ended up not doing much more and I missed out on some things!

While a lot of people will say to wait until the end of your trip to buy souvenirs, I think that is bad advice! One reason being that you might never come across those neat things again and then you will be mad at yourself for not getting them! Anyways, I guess that is one incentive to go back ;) 

The tin and mini Eiffel towers came from a neat tourist shop in the Monmartre neighborhood in Paris.

The bird mug came from a Monoprix in Lyon. And the Le Petit Prince came from a bookstore in Lyon.

The Alice in Wonderland book came from a used bookstore in Dinan.

And the little embroidered doily came from a gift shop in Heidelberg.

I bought a couple of kid books for a few different reasons. One, Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince is the English version.) is possibly one of the best childrens' books ever written. Seriously. If you've never read it, and even if you don't have kids you should read it. It's got such a great message and the story is pretty cute. And the movie is coming out this year!

Alice in Wonderland was one of my favorite movies as a kid, so it only made sense to buy the book! And it was only like €3, so I couldn't pass it up! 

 I like buying interesting postcards when I travel. I don't like to get the ones that are pictures that I could take myself, so I usually stick to ones that are vintage or artsy. I like the vintage style ones best, but you don't find them very often! I also found those two Eiffel tower posteres while we were walking around in Montmartre in Paris.

 Some great clothes I picked up in Lyon! While in Lyon, we came across a couple of great stores. One was Pimkie and the other was Promod. The two white shirts on the left are from Pimkie, and the other two shirts and skirt were from Promod. I really like Pimkie, and am disappointed they don't have any store in North America. They don't ship to the US either! I prefer more simple patterns, and it's hard to find interesting or unique pieces here.

I definitely think next time I travel to Europe, I'm going to bring less clothing so I can be able to buy more there! 

I was not about to leave Europe without some chocolate! You can find Cadbury bars in the US, but they aren't as good as the ones from England. And Chocolate with Oreo? Need I say more? And yes, they are as good as they sound! 

I actually still have one of the Milka Colors bars left, which I need to eat! I put it away and kind of forgot about it. Also, if you are ever in France, be sure to pick up some Madeleines. They are SO SO good! 

When I travel, I typically try to pick up some postcards, an interesting coffee mug, and some sort of fun decretive things. It's nice to find something to display around the house as a reminder of my travels!

Do you collect anything when you travel?

Flight from Frankfurt

I realized as I was going through some pictures on my computer that I had never posted the photos from our flight back from Europe! We flew over Greenland and it was really pretty, so I wanted to share the pictures! 

 This is a picture of our flight route. And also my sister's reflection. ;)

 The coastline of Norway.

 I saw this volcano and thought it was so weird! I just found out it's named Beerenberg, and it is on the island of Jan Mayen, which is part of Norway. The last time the volcano erupted was in 1985. If you're into geography, you'll probably think this is interesting, otherwise this was probably just useless information. ;)

These were taken as we were flying over Greenland.

I've flown all over the US, so it was pretty interesting to see some really different scenery from the sky! 

I don't really like flying, but once the plane is in the air I usually enjoy checking out the scenery.

Do you enjoy travel and flying?

Heidelberg, Germany

From Lyon, we took the train to Frankfurt. It took us about 6 hours to get there. We arrived at the train station in Frankfurt, then took the metro to the Frankfurt airport where we picked up our rental car. Once we got the rental car, we drove to our hotel which was near the airport, but away from the city. 

It was dinnertime by the time we got settled in our hotel room, and the person at the front desk recommended a place across the road for dinner. So, we had a nice dinner outside, then headed back to the hotel. We drove into the little town by the hotel to try to find a grocery store, and we wandered around the store for a bit. It's kind of fun exploring foreign grocery stores! We made sure to pick up some Milka chocolate bars as well as some Kinder Eggs! 

The next morning, we drove to Heidelberg. It took us just under an hour to get to Heidelberg. The German countryside is really beautiful so it was a nice drive out there.

We arrived in Heidelberg, parked, then started walking around the town. Unfortunately since it was Sunday, almost all of the stores were closed.

The German architecture is so beautiful! The town was pretty quiet when we first arrived. There weren't too many people around, which made it nice for taking pictures. 

We kept walking by interesting stores, but were sad that they were all closed! Finally we found a large touristy shop and we went in. It had SO much stuff! There were souvenirs everywhere! The store had a path you had to follow throughout the shop and it kept going and going and going! There was everything from postcards, to cuckoo clocks, tons of Christmas decorations, little trinkets, and tons more! We all found quite a few fun souvenirs. 

Once we finished our shopping, we headed up the hill to Heidelberg Castle. The view from the top of the hill was pretty nice!

We then made our way to the ticket area for Heidelberg Castle. We bought tickets to enter the castle, as well as tickets for the English tour. Then we walked around while waiting for our tour to start.

The tour was actually pretty disappointing. They didn't take you anywhere interesting, you couldn't take pictures during most of the tour, and the tour guide was really hard to hear (and not because of his accent.). The first room we went into during the tour was really big and had high ceilings and the tour guide didn't talk very loud and the sound kept echoing in the room weirdly and we all missed almost everything the tour guide said. Other people on the tour kept asking others what the guy had said! No on could understand him. Which was quite frustrating because he was talking about the history of the castle and stuff. 

The tour lasted about an hour, and then we decided to go eat. I had looked up places in Heidelberg to eat the night before, and came across the Schnitzelhaus Alte Münz. We all wanted to try real German schnitzel, and none of us are big pork eaters so I was happy to find a place that also served their schnitzel made with chicken. 

With well over 100 kinds of schnitzel, there's something for everyone! All of the meals came with a salad and fries.

My dad and Michael were excited to get some German beer! And for the five of us, they put all of our fries in a huge bowl.

The schnitzel on the top left is the #64 barbecue (which I got)
The bottom left is the #30 paprika
and the right is the #9 cordon bleu Art

The food was all SO good! We ate almost everything. I would definitely recommend the Schnitzelhaus if you are in Heidelberg!

After our late lunch, we walked across the Old Bridge and took some pictures. 

The Neckar river.

A swan with her cygnets along the Neckar river.

Unfortunately this was our last day in Europe. We were all quite sad that the day was coming to an end. We walked back through town on our way to our car. We stopped for some ice cream on the way back. European ice cream is so much better than anything I have found in the US. Okay, pretty much all of the food is better than in the US!

So, we got back in the car and drove around the area for a little bit. We saw three castles just while driving! It's crazy to be in an area and see a castle and it's not even marked, it's just there like it's no big deal. 

Germany is a beautiful country and one I definitely want to visit again. One full day of sightseeing was definitely not enough! 

Marseille, France

While we were staying in Lyon, we took a day trip down to Marseille. It took just under two hours by train to get there.

As soon as we got out of the train station, it was SO hot and humid! We knew it was going to be hot, but we did not anticipate the humidity! Or the smells! We exited the train station and started walking down the street and the smell of sewage and garbage was SO overpowering! Very disgusting!

We walked down the road a bit and stopped by a bakery for a snack. Then we walked down to the water.

There was a ton of boats in the port! Everything from junky little dinghies to large expensive looking yachts!

Cathedral Saint-Marie-Majeur de Marseille.

After visiting the Cathedral Saint-Marie-Majeur de Marseille, we decided to take the bus along the waterfront and up a very steep hill to Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde. Since it was so hot (and almost 3 miles, mostly up a steep hill) we didn't really want to walk that far. 

It was a very interesting bus ride because the bus seemed to go kinda fast and made these very, very, sharp turns where it seemed like there was no way the bus was going to fit! But, it did and we were greeted with a pretty great view.

Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde.

I really thought I took more pictures inside the church, but apparently this is all I took! It was a pretty big place. It had the large sanctuary which is pictured above, and it also had a lower one as well. It was kinda dark and creepy in the lower one since it was in the basement! 

Once we were done walking around the church, I was feeling pretty terrible. I don't handle the heat very well, and with the high humidity, I wasn't feeling the greatest.  So we took the bus back down the hill and found a place to eat some lunch. 

We came across an American bagel sandwich place, so we stopped there. The food wasn't the greatest, but it was nice to finally have something to eat. We sat there in the air conditioning for a bit before deciding to walk to the beach.

The beach ended up being pretty small and really crowded with people. It looked man-made too. My dad and I waited on a bench while my mom, sister, and brother went down to put their feet in the Mediterranean Sea. 

Once we did that, we didn't really know what else to do. We still had maybe 5 or so hours until our train left to go back to Lyon, so we walked to a park and sat in the shade for a little while. There was a bit of a breeze on the hill, so that was pretty nice. And the view wasn't too bad.

So, we admired the view for a bit, then decided we were bored of that and walked back into town. We stopped at a shop that sold French soap (my mom wanted to get some French lavender soap) So we did that, wandered around town for a while, then ended up at McDonalds because it was air conditioned. Everyone was pretty tired of the heat, and we didn't know where else to go, so we sat there for a while before heading to the train station to go back to Lyon. 

I wasn't real impressed with Marseille. I think it would have been a little bit better had it not been so hot and humid, and the smells certainly didn't help. The city itself is really really dirty. There was garbage literally everywhere and the stench of sewage was horrible. It is definitely not a place you want to be wandering around alone at night! 

We did get to see some neat sights. Both of the churches we visited were pretty neat and it was cool to see the Mediterranean Sea. I know there are some neat places around Marseille too, but I don't think I would go back. 

Considering this was really the only 'dud' in our trip, I would say we didn't do too bad!