Where will these languages take me...and what to see while there?

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But you're a bird.

 

Shell...read my reply concerning theme parks about 7 posts up. Legoland is lame...even if it was completely different from the one in California, it would *still* be lame.

Not really sure what to say about that...I always thought she was a bear.


Anyhoo...back on topic, I spoke to the wife, and she agreed that we should go to a theme park. That said...how is this Alton Towers place I've heard about? Can it hold it's own when compared to Six Flags Magic Mountain?

[EDIT] I just looked around on Alton Towers's website, and 3 of the rides listed are exactly the same as the rides at the local theme park here in Utah (Ripsaw, Enterprise, and the Blade). However, a few of the other rides look like they are worth the admission price. [/EDIT]

Also, I've pretty much mapped out all the castles and cathedrals in Germany we want to see. Now I'm going to look in to the cities we'll be going through while in Germany to see what they have to offer. So far, that's:

• Berlin
• Cologne
• Frankfurt
• Hamburg
• Munich
• along with lots of small towns along the way.

After Germany, I'll go back to looking at England and Scotland, followed by Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands. It looks like the Czech Republic and Hungary are off the list. For now anyway. I don't think we'll have enough time to go that far east...but once I'm done scouting, we'll start to weed out places we can skip...so there might be time for one or the other later on.

 

If you like theme parks and want to come to Belgium, check www.walibi.be (this one has an exotic swimming paradise next to it) or www.walibi.be/bellewaerde (this one has animals).

The Belgian Ardennes have everything for the adventury outdoors kind of thing, including caves.

 

Ok, here we go. I've got a lot of placemarks added to Google Earth, and it's time for the first upload so you can see them.

So this is how it works:

(Snip! See new post below)

This is where you come in. I've never been to Europe, so I need to know where to go and what to see. As you'll see from my placemarks, the majority of them are for castles and cathedrals. I really need help finding things to do in Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, London, and Scotland in general.

Now, as for transportation... There's no way in hell that I'm going to attempt to drive on the wrong side of the road while in the UK... We want to come home alive. So we'll be relying on public transit/taxis while in the UK, which is one of several reasons for our short stay there. We're going to have to rent a car while in Germany because there's just no way to get to all the places we want to go to without one.

Anyway, take a look, and let me know if you know some cool things to go and see nearby the places we'll be going to.

 

Cologne? Hmm, I would instantly recommend a guided pub tour. I strongly recommend that, a different local beer in every pub. I'm quite serious.

The cathedral is a must. It's one of the greatest Gothic cathedrals. The romanic churches and roman remains are pretty cool as well, and so is the Roman-Germanic museum (which iirc has English tours, for the museum as well as for the town). While you're in Cologne, and have the time, you should make a Rhine boat tour upriver to Bonn (and beyond), for some nice landscape, including the famed Loreley (even though it's IMO best in spring and autumn). Bonn is pretty much nearby and a nice town itself. When you're into arts, there are two nice arts museums in Cologne, the Wallraf Richards Museum and the Museum Ludwig, which are a minutes away from the cathedral. Bonn has some decent museums as well, namely the House of History, which will offer you some interesting insight into the more recent German history.

 

Ragusa - Besides Cologne Cathedral, how are the other cathedrals in the area? I know there's aaround 12 of them, by from the little research I've done on the internet, I think I'd like to visit:
Great Saint Martin Cathedral
St. Mary in the Capitol
St. Apostles Cathedral

Have you ever been to any of those cathedrals? A boat trip sounds like a good idea, and a bar tour don't sound like a bad idea either.

 

The three you name are great, even though 'cathedral' is a little bit much - there is only one 'cathedral' in Cologne - der Dom (=Cologne Cathedral). The others are just (sometimes rather large) churches. St. Gereon is interesting as well, with it's central decagon (visibly) built on the foundations of a Roman temple. St. Kunibert is also great after it's renovation. That would then probably be the most important ones.

You find an overview here, on German though:
http://www.romanische-kirchen-koeln.de/kirchen.html

 

Thanks for the link Rags...I had Google translate the page for me, and it really helped me find these churches on Google Earth. I've seen several churches in Cologne as I've done low level fly-overs in GE...and every time I see the iconic "cross" shaped roofline, I say, "Oh look, another church. I wonder what *that* one is..."

Unfortunately, I have a couple of questions for you too.

1. Do you know what the rules are for bringing cameras in to these churches? It would be a shame to not get any photos of the inside of these places.
2. Do you know if there's something I need to do/have to rent a car and drive in your country? I mean, besides having a valid driver's license and insurance from the US...

Anyhoo... With Rag's link, I was able to find a plethora of info on Cologne, so I have added a bunch of new placmarks to the list. So...one city down, and a buch left to go.

 

I never have been barred from using a camera in a church in Cologne, except, of course, and that ought to be self-evident, had I tried during the Holy Mass (which I didn't and wouldn't). It certainly is allowed in the Dom.

And from what I know renting a car ought to be unproblematic for you. More from the German embassy in the US:
http://www.germany.info/relaunch/welcome/travel/driving.html

 

Ok, time for an update. Over the past few months, the wife and I have gone over everything I've found, and we've changed some things.

Because we want to spent so much time in Germany, most of our money will be spent there...leaving us little options to go to other countries. England is still on the list, and Scotland is hanging in there as a day trip via a fast train...but that's about it.

Anyway, I've looked up the hotels/hostels, flights, trains, car rental, a rough estimate of food and spending cash...and *just* for Germany, we're going to end up spending over $8,000 of our $10,000 budget. I haven't even started looking for hotels, trains, and the like for England yet.

But if you'd like to see all the places the wife and I want to see and go to while in Europe, I've got an updated Google Earth virtual tour for you.

This is how it works:

• First, you need to have Google Earth installed on your computer. I recommend the newest version of GE (v4.2 beta). That's what I use and it works perfectly...and it's free!
• Then you need to download the file I made: kitrax_european_trip_02_17_08.kmz
• Double click the file once it's downloaded to open it in GE. It should automatically load, and take you to a view of Europe with dozens of pushpins.
• I highly recommend that you enable the 3D Buildings option before playing the tour. To speed the streaming content up, I recommend that you disable all layers except 3D Buildings, Borders and Labels, and the Wikipedia layer under 'Geographic Web'.
• Press the "play Tour" button at the bottom of the Places box to start the tour.
• If you don't have a fast enough internet connection, GE might fly to the next destination before you can even make out what you're looking at. To avoid this, you can hit the pause button as soon as the tour stops zooming in on a particular locating to let GE finish streaming, or you can turn down the speed of the tour by tweaking the program settings.

In the next update, I'll probably add hotel info and more info for the UK. But that's it for now.

 

If you want to see all the highlights of the Netherlands in some hours, you should go to Madurodam

Most Dutchies will be glad to show off their spoken languages, how terrible their grammar, accent and vocabulary might be, sometimes.

I feel sorry that I didn't go to the Plitvice Lakes (Plitvicka Jezera) in Croatia. Make sure you go there if you want to see some beautiful natural stuff.