We didn't skip it this year as last year. The adults are all boosted, some of the grandkids are fully vaccinated, three of them half vaccinated. Hannah doesn't qualify for a vaccine until January but she goes to a small preschool in which kids are kept safe. Upscale place, no ignorant Trumpers.
But our state is full of them and they are filling up the hospital and are dying. Can't cure stupid.
Ah winter. I hate it. Dark, cold and slippery roads. I still keep busy and amused as I await spring
I only had my iPhone with me although it keeps getting better and better with each new model. It has a weak zoom and fisheye but a 'real' camera will have better lenses. Steve occasionally used his phone but for the most part, took photos, hundreds of them, with the real camera, Below are my favorites.
So sad to return especially as I had left so much garden clean-up though we had a very late first frost so I could keep my flowers longer.
We had our own van from Passau to Munich. Viking likes to use Lufthansa which only has a very minor presence in Detroit. They must not have found a way for us to get back without using Air France, which I prefer greatly over Lufthansa. We were on the Autobahn driving a sedate 80 mph. However cars were passing us going way over 120. Due to our first leg being late and a very short time between flights in Paris, we had to run a mile from one side of the airport to the other in Paris. Not fun. We had to have the results of our latest covid test in hand. Without it, we'd have to pay $200 and possibly miss our flight.
Miss Hannah
It took a while to get used to our time change and then we had the end of Daylight savings which actually makes my life a bit easier for a while.
Every fall I dig up the sensitive to cold bulbs; glads, dahlias and cannas. Glads are easy but what a chore the others were. The bulbs had quadrupled in size if not in the case of cannas, grown twenty fold. Very difficult to dig up and I probably destroyed the dahlias.
All my tall flowers have morphed into brown sticks so I have been filling up bags and bags with those.
But I am pretty much done. I have also arranged two trips: California in 3 weeks and a Rhine cruise in the spring. Viking gave us very inconvenient flights due to their insistence on using crappy Lufthansa. I tried to change it to Delta, KLM or Air France but we would have to pay much more.
Although the Covid rate is going down in the US, it is rising in Michigan. Again Ann Arbor is an island surrounded by reality and the reality are uneducated rednecks who think vaccines are some liberal lie. I hate them.
Steve got his booster and Maya and Tessa just got their first shots though covid again has creeped into Maya's class. So her class is under quarantine AGAIN which is really inconvenient for parents who work or in Naomi's case going to school (she works and weekends when Maya's father finds time to pick up his daughter, not often lately.
Our final day. Viking offers two similar trips on the Danube. One has two days of Vienna but no Linz, Passau or Bratislava. It does include Regensburg, which we saw on our own two years ago. I do prefer Passau to Regensburg. We started off with early morning walking tour on their at walk though no studios were open, looking at flood markers which were about 9 feet high during the flood of 2013. Three rivers come together so our guide compared it to Pittsburgh which also has hree rivers. Our previous city Linz was also compared to Pittsburgh being a grimy steel center that now has cleaned up.
Hitler also spent his toddler years here falling through the ice at one point to be rescued by an older child who later became a priest. This priest later regretted saving such a monster to be but how could he tell. We ended up in their fancy church which has the largest organ in Europe and gives organ concerts almost every day. If there wasn't so much to see, we should have done that.. After lunch, we climbed the big hill going up lots of steps to an old fort and castle which had beautiful views. Rhen back down the hill to have a beer at the Art Museum cafe along the river. Then we went to the more modern part of town. Lots of walking. A beautiful city.
