From France to England: the Floating Road Trip

After splashing around at the beach in Belgium, we drove all around the coast of France to different ferry operators looking for the best deal and the shortest wait. This is how we like to travel. As a result, our road trips are whimsical and serendipitous, not cemented into any one set course of action. As Akychame says, the absolute BEST trips happen on accident, just stumbling across one lucky surprise after another! 

The ferry has the feel of a luxury ship, with gourmet dining, massage services, duty-free shops, and great views. It was a lovely break after our 10-hour drive from Germany to Belgium to France! 

We usually take the "Chunnel" (Channel Tunnel) to England. To take the Chunnel, passengers drive onto a train and park their cars one after another. Although you can walk around or use the lavatory, it is basically an uneventful 35 minutes. Since you're in a tunnel under the sea, there is nothing to look at. There are no cafes, either, which is fine because it's such a short trip. The ferry, on the other hand, takes a few sprawling hours. It's wonderful. We took the Norfolk Line, which is a mere 45 EUR or so per car, as opposed to about 125 EUR for the Chunnel. 

Yay, wireless! Akychame's new tiny laptop was so convenient for the trip - we even booked our hostel reservation for Oxford, England while on the ferry. 

The best part of the ride was being greeted by the white cliffs of Dover at the other side. In the past five years we have taken an undersea train, flown in a small aircraft, and sailed in a ferry across the English Channel! Next we'll have to swim.  

Once out of the ferry and navigating our way north to Oxford, we passed street signs pointing us in such directions as "Nottingham" and Canterbury." We always feel, when we are in England, that we've entered a fictional literary landscape. It's magical.

Next stop, Oxford: the "City of Dreaming Spires." Sigh.

Beachcombing Belgium

On our way to catch the ferry in Calais, France, we visited a lovely stretch of beach in Belgium. It was a chilly, sunny day - sounds of seagulls, surf rolling itself at our feet again and again like a mantra. It was wonderful to walk on sand again, to sink into sand dunes, our bodies avalanching to the glossy glow of beach below. 

Hunting for empty razor clam shells -  they look like old Chinese men's fingernails stretching outward  from beneath the sand. Hours later we boarded the ferry with pocketfuls of them.

This is the North Sea, close to the English Channel. Across the water, England. Our new home.

Akychame and Daddy: reminds me of the "Footsteps" poem. 

We watched the barnacles poke out for meals, then hide in a wink.

Little miss celebrity in Hello Kitty bathrobe and "bling"-ful shades.

Windswept, barren loveliness everywhere. Everything buried and unburied by sand and sea.

Salvador Dali, Chocolate Body Parts, and a Farmers' Market in Brugges, Belgium

Letters to God at the Church in the Cliff at Idar-Oberstein, Germany

The village of Idar-Oberstein lies about 45km up the Nahe River from Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg. It's a long, twisting drive from Kaiserslautern, a little over an hour through forests and mountains. We had heard so much about this quaint village, the church built into the side of a cliff, and the one-of-a-kind jewelry created on-site, that we absolutely had to check it out. For a weekend "quickie" trip, this was a lovely adventure!

Idar-Oberstein was once a mining center for precious stones and minerals, but when the industry exhausted its resources in the 1800's, the little town became renowned for jewelry craftmanship. This is where people go to find cutting-edge gemstone jewelry.

From Oberstein's Marktplatz (where most of the unbelievably artsy and wonderful jewelry boutiques are located, tucked into little corners here and there, and spilling out into the cobblestone alleyways), 230 steps lead up to the late fifteenth-century Felsenkirche, a late Gothic church set in a grotto about halfway up a steep rockface. Amazingly, you have to walk through a cave to get to the front door of the church! What a thrill...the drip, drip, dripping of water from the rock ceiling above us, the dank smell of minerals and forest, the darkness...

Inside, the church is clean, bright, and modern. One would never guess that it was built into a cliff over 600 years ago! Imagine our delight when we found a winding walkway through a side door of the church that led us between the church and the rock face, up to the bell tower and a little wooden lookout! We could see the entire town laid out beneath us. As if to celebrate this discovery, the gigantic metal bell sang out...what serendipity!

Before we left the church, we found a little nook overlooking the cliff. On a table, what we thought was a magnificent guest book lay open inviting us to read and to leave our impressions of our visit. When I began reading the entires, mostly auf Deutsch, it became clear that this was no guest book. It was a book of prayers to god! Each entry was different; the handwriting, color of ink, length of the entries,language, and the prayers themselves were all unique and beautiful the way they were arranged on the pages like a quilt of ink and hope. You can see Lvov writing a letter to God in this picture:

The church was so exhilarating, we wanted to keep exploring despite the sheets of rain. So we found a path that leads up from the Felsenkirche to two feudal castles, from which you can see views of Oberstein and the Nahe valley. Burg Bosselstein was built in 1196. Schloss Oberstein was built in the early fourteenth century and remained intact until it sustained severe fire damage in 1855. The Schloss, or castle, seems to grow organically out of the rockface, similar to the "church in the rock." The path led through old growth forest, the stuff of fairy tales, and across little foot bridges to the Burg and Schloss. Along the way we collected leaves, heart-shaped rocks, seeds with crimson tongues just poking out, and all sorts of treasures.

Before going home we bought a few crystals (I bought some "wands" to use on pressure points for massage) and then we stopped at a little restaurant in the village for a wonderful, sleepy dinner. Our family adventures make me so happy.

Celebrating the Sun at Hardenburg Castle

What a glorious Sunday this was! I love our weekend getaways. I've actually visited Hardenburg castle many times before. When Phil was deployed to Afghanistan in 2006 and the kids were in school, I would come here by myself and walk the trails and have picnic lunches and take little naps and just think and dream...


Hardenburg Castle, near the spa town of Bad Dürkheim, is one of the largest castle ruins in the region. From the time of its foundation at the beginning of the 13th century until its destruction in 1794 during the French Revolutionary wars, the castle served as the residence of counts and princes. It's magnificent here: the lovely, formal garden, the cannon balls embedded in the thick stone walls, the dungeon, the small church, the spiral staircase leading to the turrets...


Inside, it's dank and dark. More of a fortress than a castle. In medieval times, there would have been hay and herbs insulating dirt floors, animals would have often lived in the building with people, to provide heat and sustenance, and inhabitants would live in constant fear of attack from the many neighboring villages. Not exactly the stuff of fairy tales (at least not the Americanized versions).


I often think of Grimm's Fairy Tales when I visit places like this (the brothers lived not too far from here, along the Romantic Road, where they collected their stories from old-timers). Earlier incarnations of the fairy tales were being circulated orally about the same time this old castle was lived in. Amazing!

Pages from the Gutenberg Bible

Before this old fortress was built, Gutenberg was already revolutionizing the printing process (and arguably changing the course of history) just 45 minutes away in Mainz! The dukes and princes who lived within these walls might have owned a Gutenberg book or two.

Speaking of old books, I love the idea of early medieval libraries (before Gutenberg came along). They chained books to the shelves for fear of thieves. Books were painstakingly handmade, every page an individual work of art. Most people were illiterate at the time, but even those who could read could rarely afford to own a book of their own.

Feast your eyes on these exquisite examples of medieval book arts:


I just want to crack these lovely books apart and breathe the smell of dust, glue, leather, and ink. I want to run my hands along the pronounced vertebra of their age-worn spines. Reading them would come later, after I had completely explored their bodies. No wonder they were fastened to chains!

Speaking of medieval books, check this out...reproduction medieval books for doll houses...oh my goodness...as a lover of books, miniatures, and especially since I often create my own miniature books, I am just delighted by these:

Sleeping on the Floor of a C-17, Taking a 53-Hour Train Trip Across Country, and other Adventures in World Travel

Our Lovely Paris Vacation: A Poetry Reading, Burning at the Notre Dame Cathedral, and a Midnight Picnic on the Left Bank

There are pigeons and love-birds all around Paris' famous Notre Dame Cathedral. Oh, look, here's a couple of love-birds snuggling in front of the wood and calligraphic metal door of the cathedral. Can you hear them cooing? Can you hear the mighty organ reverberating ecstatically through the stone walls of the gothic cathedral?

Inside, the cathedral is glowing with candles and faces turned to god, burning passionately. Everything rises. Far above us, in the pocket of heaven tucked into the angles of the cathedral ceiling, our prayers took wing in the dark warm spaces. A little bit of this hallowed atmosphere entered our lungs, then released itself back into the respiratory system of the cathedral, each of our bodies a minute bronchi in the breathing in and out of this great stone spirit.

This was a brilliant day and night! Oh man, it's the stuff of dreams! We spent time at the legendary Shakespeare and Company English-language bookstore, where we saw a poetry reading and where the kiddos curled up on an old couch with the resident puppy. Then, just literally a hop, skip, and a jump across the river and voila! We were at the Notre Dame cathedral!

We visited the cathedral in 2005 too, but it was closed...so we hung out with backpackers, tourists, and all sorts of colorful characters late into the night watching street artists and fire jugglers. This time, though, oh man...not only was the cathedral open, but there was a midnight mass in progress (serendipity - my true religion!!!) when we entered, replete with organs and the sound of many voices raised like wine to god. After this heady experience, we had a scrumptious picnic while watching a street performer juggle and blow fire. Every time I look at this picture (above), it evokes these memories.

On a sophomoric note: in this picture (above) Phil's backpack looks like a futuristic jet pack, the twin "jets" of the French bread about to propel them across the Seine. It cracks me up!


With full hearts and souls and bellies we strolled around the Left Bank as long as we could before collapsing. It's a sacrilege to waste time sleeping in the city of lights...so we traded a bit of sleep for a bit of Paris that we'll have in our memories forever. A dream for a dream.

and now for some serious reflection...

My 35th Birthday in Strasbourg, France

I just turned 35! This is going to be the best year of my life. I can feel it. I could feel it the night of my birthday, cathedral bells singing and ringing through the cobblestones and vibrating through the soles of my feet. Like water, the music rose through me to my tiptop branches and leaves. I was nourished.

My Dad reminded me that bodies completely regenerate themselves on a cellular level every seven years . . . by this logic, not one cell in my body is the same as when I was 28. A re-in-carn-ation of sorts. "Carn" meaning flesh; becoming flesh again. Old cycles , tendencies, habits have fallen from me like dust. This body has reinvented itself five times, blooming and blooming from my soul's stalk. I am so thankful to become 35 with my lovely (loving) family at my side celebrating me and my life.


Here's my first sweet baby and me kickin' it at the hotel after I sampled my TWO homemade birthday cakes (both girls insisted on making me their very own cake). I emailed Aunt Cindi saying that both my heart and my waistline expanded exponentially that night...


The Lvov of Love:



The best thing I ever did in this world was make these two little humans!!! And speaking of making things, check out the gifts they gave me...



Akychame spent hours and hours hand-sewing me a pillow with a heart embroidered on it and another tiny heart hanging from the corner of the pillow by a ribbon. I called them "you & me" hearts. It reminds me of the saying, "having kids means to forever have your heart running around outside of your body" (or something like that)...the pillow is me, and Akychame is the heart attached to me by a fine length of ribbon, running around outside of my body.

Lvov wrote me ten love notes, some with poems on them, some with drawings...some just telling me all of the little tiny things that I do that she loves...one has a drawing of us holding hands. Above my head she wrote, "the Queen of Love" and above her head she wrote, "the Lvov of Love." And one note had I love you written over and over again in every conceivable inch. The greatest part is, she wrote exactly 35 I love you's for my 35th year, but she didn't do it on purpose. It was a total coincidence!



My birthday cakes were only alive for two days, but they were very well-traveled. Because the girls wanted me to have birthday cakes ON my birthday, and because they wanted the cakes to be homemade & not bought at a patissier, the cakes ended up traveling in the back of our car from Germany to France, then being carried by Phil & the kiddos from a deep-throated car garage through downtown Strasbourg in the middle of the night past street performers and throngs of tourists; and lastly, up, up, up to our little hotel room and onto the cozy bed; and then, of course, into my mouth, which to the cakes must have seemed an awful lot like descending into the car garage again.

Here's a typical little street in Strasbourg near our hotel. Notice the patissier (below) that we completely ignored because we already had the most delicious cake in the world.



Here's our charming hotel by the Strasbourg cathedral:



The hotel literally buzzed when the bells sang out. They would chime for five minutes every hour high above the heads of puppeteers, acrobats, devils, and fire-jugglers performing below for the "Street Artist Weekend," a gala feast of the senses sponsored by the city.


This is the view from our hotel room. We could feel the energy & excitement of the city through our open windows. Below, people dined at midnight under crimson umbrellas, sports teams sang songs to rival the bells, drunken lovers stumbled by, and here and there a person would saunter slowly by on stilts on the way to a performance. If you crane your neck to the left and lean out of our hotel window a little, your eyes will follow the bells to their source. The magnificent singing cathedral. You have to enlarge this photo and imagine that the ground is vibrating and the air buzzing with a call to prayer.


Little did we know when we pulled into Strasbourg on a total whim (the way we do most of our traveling) that the city would be teeming and burning with the Street Artist's Festival. It was sheer luck and serendipity. If I have a belief system, a spirituality or superstition, it hinges on serendipity. It's the knuckle, the joint upon which everything poetic revolves.

Here's a picture from my favorite street performance - pungent gasoline and rocking bagpipes lit the night on fire (you might want to click on the photo to enlarge):


Even the puppets were playing with fire that night. I couldn't have wanted a more spectacular birthday if I were a queen. It's as if every performer in the city outdid themselves just to entertain me.


Everywhere I turn, I see fire. I seek its warmth and destruction, the smoldering of old modes and skins. It will light the way for me, burning a path warm and smoky. This is going to be the best year of my life.