Part 2

April 10th, 2010 – England Adventure

Tell you what,....waking my Dad up should be a right of passage or something. Ya know, like how Indians consider a young man a hunter or something when he makes his first kill. Not that I had to kill or anything, but waking up a grumpy man like my Dad takes talent because I managed to survive without being injured for life.

We were out the door by 6:30a for the ferry dock, got checked in and all that good jazz. I was expecting our Ferry to be a smaller boat, but then again, I’ve never used a ferry. This thing was like a small cruise liner! It was awesome! Not to mention, it only cost $150 for a round trip ticket to take my truck AND 2 adults. That’s a steal of a deal if you ask me! After getting my truck within the ship and all settled in, Dad and I grabbed an “English Breakfast” and just enjoyed the scenery as the ship was pulling out of port and making it’s way over to England. Pretty cool experience for my first time doing this….barely any passengers on board (MAYBE 50 people at most) and we got to roam around. Better yet, we were able to acquire some sleeper seats and passed out for a good amount of time considering we were both still pretty worn out from our lack of sleep due to the hotels bed arrangement. The travel time from port to port took about 4 hours, but the time seemed to pass pretty fast between catching cat naps and walking around.

I was first in line to get off the Ferry! Yay me!

My "English" breakfast

View from our table

Here's some perfect examples as to how empty the ship really was:

Our luxurious sleeper seats

Dad was misbehaving, so I locked him out.

When we arrived in England, I was the first truck off the ship and made our way over to the Immigration Office…rather intimidating! The UK border patrol was blunt and to the point about why you’re in the country, they want EXACT information and if they don’t like what they hear, they’ll just deny you and stick you back on the boat. Luckily, we said the right stuff (ha) and got our official handy dandy England stamps in our passports to allow us entry into the country (yay!).

Why is it that the UK HAS to be different than anyone else when it comes to their driving?!? It’s VERY nerve wracking driving on the “wrong” side of the road. Sure, to them it’s the correct way..but to Americans, it’s ass backwards and frightening! I’m used to “the right has the right of way” in Belgium, but over here, you’re always having to check to the left. WEIRD! Plus it’s hard to get used to the vehicle operators being on the right hand side of the car rather than the left…weird weird double weird!

I managed to get the hang of the driving even though it was quite stressful..almost hit a motorcyclist (my bad), but since my plates say “B” for Belgium..they can just think I’m a Belgian tourist that doesn’t know any better despite the fact that I’m an American that’s completely clueless about their motor laws. Oh, and thank gawd for GPS!!! My lil Tom Tom was a lifesaver! It helped me avoid driving through London (our ferry docked in Ramstead).... I REFUSED to drive my truck anywhere near that city. I garuntee I would’ve wiped out several cars or pedestrians! The drive took about 3ish hours to get from the ferry to my Grandpa’s house due to Holiday traffic and all that good stuff. Once we arrived, we got to hang out, catch up, get some dinner and retire to our hotel that they managed to book for us. This place is AWESOME! It’s a studio type of apartment with a kitchen, washing machine, a REAL bed, a REAL shower / bathroom and we’re barely a block away from the ocean! I LOVE the smell of the water..it really makes me miss Monterey.

Me...LOVING my room!

Dad was using the sleeper couch... he was a lil frustrated that it had a lock on one of the joints, lol

After spending four hours on a Ferry, roughly four hours on the motorway and trying to drive a completely different way, I was very spent and passed out for the night.. I barely remember actually getting INTO the bed, lol.

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Part 1 of ....uhhhh....alot..

Since I’ve been on the move for the last week, I figured it’d be a smart idea to journal everything as I went along rather than try to remember it all at once. Ya know, so it’s atleast fresh in the mind considering we were all over the place. When Eric and I went to Georgia for a few weeks back in 2007, I had a hell of a time trying to remember all the little, but hilarious, things that went on:

April 9th, 2010 – Ypres, Belgium

Dad and I started on our little adventure to enjoy a week over in England. This has been a trip I’ve been WAY excited to partake in considering I’ve usually been stuck in Belgium due to work, or traveling to The Netherlands or Germany. Sure, it sounds rather stupid to complain about going to those two places all the time since I’m sure there are people out there who have never been to either one of those countries, but, since I live just “down the road” from them, it loses it’s unique charm & experience, ya know?

Sadly, Eric wasn’t able to join us considering some things at work just weren’t lining up for him. Hopefully I’ll be able to bring him over to England sometime before we PCS within the next 2 years so he can experience SOME traveling. I feel bad for him since he’s barely been able to see any of Europe..and we’ve already been here for a year!

Anyway, Dad came to Europe about five years ago and visited a town called Ypres. In all honesty, I’ve never heard of it..but apparently it had A LOT of history from World War 1. Since it wasn’t too far from where our Ferry was (only an hour away), we stopped off there and managed to check the place out. There’s an incredible building there called “Cloth Hall”. When you look up pictures of this place online, they do NOT do this place justice. It’s absolutely breath taking! During WW1, this building was completely bombed out to the point you wouldn’t know it was as massive as it truly was. Within the building, they have a war museum dedicated to all the events that took place in the small town, uniforms from German soldiers, example from the Gas War, and tons and tons of information about 1914-1918. It was really interesting! Since I have SkyTV (it’s a British cable company), in November,they heavily advertise “Remembrence Day” which they use a red poppy as it’s symbol. One day alone, it’s said that 30,000 people died due to bombings and gas attacks in that particular town…that’s absolutely insane to me!

Perfect example as to how large some of the ammo was..

A picture of the after math...

Original wall from Cloth Hall after the bombings

Love letters to soldiers

We spent a great deal of time in the place and reading all the information (it was displayed in English, Dutch, French and German) in addition to taking TONS of pictures. While you’re walking around, they have some audio playing overhead with a narrator reading things from soldiers letters, documentations, and even war journals from Officers. I think the one that creeped me out the most was when I was checking out the gas mask display area and they had a scenario playing as if a gas bomb went off and there were gas masks in a display case. The case lit up with a misty green color and you could hear the voices choking and crackling as if someone was dying… brings the true nature out that someone DID die if they didn’t have their mask on properly.

Gas canisters

After we were finished with Cloth Hall, we went over to the Rememberance Memorial (The Menin Gate). This thing was overwhelming! It’s dedicated to the men who died in battle and were never found…VERY daunting when you realize the hundreds and thousands of names that are on the walls (54,896  names). When you think about it, there’s more names than there are bricks. Everywhere you look, there’s names..outside, inside, along the stairs…just everywhere. They have all the names listed under the country they fought with, their rank and what their job was (gunner, pilot, artillery). I took a ton of pictures, but they just don’t do it justice. This is something you DEFINITELY need to see in person to appreciate it’s history!

Mini sculpture of the entire building

Once we finished up there, we headed off to Ostende since that’s where our hotel was (Imperial Best Western) and checked in for the night. It was rather amusing when we finally got there cause when I originally booked the room, it was making the place sound VERY spacious and all that jazz. My mistake, lol. I forgot that we were in Europe. Correction.. I forgot that we were in Belgium. When we got to the room, the two double beds were smushed together to make one queen sized bed..and the bathroom really didn’t offer much privacy since the door was frosted glass. With some careful planning (and distraction), when morning time came.. we managed to take our “showers” without mentally scarring one another.

See? Very private.

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I'll be on a boat

By "boat", I actually mean ferry.

On Friday, my Dad and I will be heading over to Ostend since we leave on a ferry boat to England early on Saturday morning. I kinda figured it'd be better to head out on Friday (mid morning or so) and take our time getting there since it's past Brugge..check out the local area and figure out where the Ferry office is so I won't get lost when it's time to load the truck. I havent been in a boat (or ferry, for that matter), in a VERY long time.. since atleast 1996. The last time I remember being on a boat was when I went whale watching with my Grandparents and I got SERIOUSLY seasick...it was rather pitiful and oh so miserable. HOPEFULLY, it won't be like that for this trip since it'll take 4 hours to go from Belgium to England! Four hours of pure misery will feel like an eternity..

Here's some pics I was able to find on Ostend:

Truth be told, I'm pretty damn nervous about driving my truck around England. Personally, I really DIDN'T want to take my Xterra over there, but after doing the math...we'd be saving roughly about $700 if we didn't have to get a rental. Dad and I will be staying at a Bed and Breakfast place somewhere near Suffolk (where my Grandpa lives) for a week.. in the meantime, we'll be checking out different parts of the countryside and hopefully NOT crashing my truck. I really wish Eric and John were able to join us since it'll be a fun trip, but Johns Spring Break will be over by then and Eric can't seem to get any time off (that's a whole other story). SO, it's just Dad and I on this trip.

I'm pretty sure we'll be checking out alot of war museums, RAF stuff and seeing alot of sights. As tempting as it sounds, I'm curious about London, but not willing to drive my wheels through that place. Odds are, I'll take out a building while taking a corner or something considering everything is kinda cluttered...and on the wrong side of the road things freaks me out, too.

Either way, I'm excited to go!

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Ramstein Run

Since Dad's been here, I've taken him to The Netherlands as well as Germany. Given, The Netherlands wasn't all that impressive considering I took him to Schinnen (our pathetic lil commissary), but still..atleast he can say he went to a different country. Then we hit up Germany yesterday to check out Ramstein since he was wanting to get a laptop. He could've picked one up at Schinnen, but they had a whopping selection of 3 laptops verses Ramsteins option of 30+.

Our first stop once we got to the area was The Big Emmas (I've talked about it on here before).. I think my Dad didn't believe Eric and I when we were telling him that they serve HUGE amounts of food. Once he got his beer, I think he became a believer:

He ended up getting a half size Jager Schnitzel ... that he couldn't finish... (the beer was already taking affect)

Eric rocked out with his 1 liter of Coke Light while John sized him up with his 1/2 liter..

Dad gave me the "thumbs up" on my half size chicken salad....yes, this is a salad!

After Eric enhaled all of his Schnitzel, potatos and such, he figured he needed to make his stomach earn it's keep by getting a HALF size of their ice cream...he was pretty miserable after the fact considering he polished off the whole bowl

Once we managed to roll ourselves out of Big Emma's, we burned some calories as well as cash over at the BX. Dad found a laptop that matched the specs he wanted, we stocked up on some goodies for the house and what not... my only complaint was the amount of people that happened to be there that day. I mean, holy cow. I was starting to get shopping rage cause of all the people who kept running into me with their carts or the parents who were not watching their kids. It was bad!

When the time came for us to head on home, we made a pit stop outside of Trier, Germany. I've passed by this place many many times, but I always forgot to pull over and take a picture at this one particular rest area. Pretty, hunh?

Dad hopped out of the truck and fired off some pictures himself

Nice pic of Eric with John :)

Eric and I attempted to take a pic of ourselves with Trier in the backround, but my Dad was being an attention whore

Annnnnd here's a loving yet dysfunctional picture of Eric and I

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