Snow & Xavier

Yay, it snowed just in time for my lovely friend Xavier's last weekend in Europe before flying all the way back to Oz yesterday! This was the view from our balcony on Monday morning (and, no, it's NOT a black & white photo.....just looks that way). Xavier was with us again Saturday, Sunday & Monday and it pretty much snowed the whole time he was here, meaning he got to see snow in a "city" for the very first time :-)

We had a great time together (again!) - went to Sterre & Doornroosje 'til the wee hours of Sunday morning, shopped, drank coffee, introduced him to the fun of chocolate letters (Dutch Sinterklaas tradition), and generally just "hung out". It was so lovely to see him again and to be able to provide him with his "last supper" before heading back south for the winter :-) We miss you already, but Xave, we know for sure you will be back in no time !!!

Alli xxx

Top 10 reasons to visit Michigan

Well we have been back from the US of A for over a week now, so thought it was high time I gave ya'll a bit of an update and photographic impression of our fun time in Michigan :-)

The one word that still comes to mind when I think of how to describe the states (and most everything in it) is BIG !!! The cars, the shopping malls, the freeway system, the packet foods in supermarkets, alot of the people, AND the meals in restuarants! Man, some of the meals we ordered were enough to feed a small army (and that was just the entree/appetizer!). If any of you have seen the Morgan Spurlock doco "Super Size Me" ........ it's all true! The cola was flowing freely and the waiting staff (compared to the no-service mentality here in NL!) were over the top attentive. It seemed like every 10 minutes there was someone at our table asking if everything was to our satisfaction. Even at the entrance to alot of supermarkets there is a professional "greeter" just there to make sure you "have a nice day". And everyone is SO polite - no rudely pushing past you with a shopping trolley or queue jumping that's for sure :-)

But my lasting impression is really how American Australia actually is! At some points whilst wandering aimlessly in shopping malls (hypnotised by muzak), or driving along the broad freeways in the middle of nowhere I really felt like I was back in Oz! That impression only lasts, however, until you pass the next inevitable flagpole proudly flying the Stars & Stripes. I have never been in a country before that flys its flag on such a mass scale. I also realised (whilst at an ice hockey game) that I actually know quite a few words of the national anthem!

Anyway, all in all, we had a great time. Here follows my top 10 "things to do" whilst on vacation in Michigan:

1. Stay with Bea & Ad :-)

Bea (Jeroen's mum) and Ad (her husband) live outside of the sleepy little village of Williamston (about a 90 minute drive from Detroit). Surrounded by farmland, dotted here and there with forested areas, it was the perfect spot to be during autumn. A bit like Bright (Victoria), there were blazes of reds, yellows and oranges to be seen everywhere; and with Halloween pumpkins on just about every front porch it was very quaint and picturesque. One of the nicest things was waking up every morning to the sight of deer in the front garden :-) And coupled with Bea & Ad's 3 funny animals (Serena the gordon setter, Bobby the hippo in a cat suit, and Jaylin the blue & gold macaw) it sometimes felt a bit like Animal Farm ;-)) Thanks again for everything!

2. Visit Greenfield Village
This "village" is really a huge 80 acre open air museum, established back in 1920 by Henry Ford, and is a bit like stepping into a time machine - taking you on a journey back into the sights and sounds of America's past. Dotted across the land are about 85 authentic historic buildings - from Noah Webster’s home, where he wrote the first American dictionary, to Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory, to the courthouse where Abraham Lincoln practiced law, to the Wright Brothers' cycle company, where they developed and built the Kitty Hawk. The buildings were all carefully moved from their original locations and are arranged in a realistic looking village kind of setting. But the buildings and the things to see are only the beginning. There’s fun stuff too. In Greenfield Village you can (and we did!) ride in a genuine Model T Ford, or ride a train with a 19th century steam engine.

3. Go to an ice hockey game

Needless to say, sport is a BIG thing in the states. So big that even highschool football features weekly on television! Most people (and Bea & Ad are no exception) seem to be into college sports, be it football, basketball, ice hockey, baseball, soccer etc etc etc We had no choice but to support the team from the University of Michigan (where Ad graduated from) and travelled one evening to Ann Arbor to see an ice hockey game between the U of M Wolverines and the evil enemy, the Ohio State Buckeyes. Despite not really understanding most of the rules, I really enjoyed a fast, exciting game and am happy to say the final result was 4-3 for Michigan - Go Blue! And the less said about the football team the better, hey Ad!? ;-)

4. Solve a murder mystery
With our best Miss Marple hats on (figuratively speaking of course!) we spent a Saturday evening on the Charlotte Murder Mystery Dinner Train :-) Whilst the train made a leisurely (and when I say leisurely, I think we could have walked faster!) 6 mile round trip, we were served a yummy 5 course meal whilst being entertained by a troupe of actors/actresses performing a pretty funny interactive murder mystery. We, the "audience", were all recruited as supersleuths to help decide who dunnit - Bea & Ad both managed to figure it out, whilst Jeroen & I, in true Virgo fashion, got too caught up in the details and tried to over analyse the whole thing way too much, missing the total obvious !!

5. Eat
And eat we did - in a big way (see I told you everything about the states is big !). Jeroen and I did take a few of our favourite recipes with us so we did have a couple of fun nights at home cooking. But mostly we ate out at various restaurants/cafes/pubs, the favourite being the lovely little restaurant we went to on our last night - mmmmmmm, key lime pie :-)

6. Find your way out of a corn maze

Apart from the obligatory pumpkins and "scary" ghosts, witches, cobwebs, & skeletons adorning every second house during the Halloween period, there is also the phenomenon of mazes in cornfields! We visited one of the biggest (and supposedly the best) on the last night before the farmer was preparing to harvest all the corn and ship it off around the country. Arriving just as it was getting dark, torch in hand, we were provided with a "map" of the maze and sent off into the corn. All I could keep thinking of was that creepy Stephen King story, "Children of the Corn", and every time those dried cornstalks rustled in the breeze had to look over my shoulder. But, thanks to my husband's precise map reading skills, we all made it out again safely without too many detours or dead ends :-)

7.Visit Frankenmuth (little Bavaria)
Who would have guessed that smack bang in the middle of Michigan is a little piece of Germany (and Bavarian Germany nonetheless!) Our main priority for driving to the area was to visit the world's biggest xmas store, but we also stopped off for lunch at the Bavarian Inn, where we dined in the Edelweiss Room and were served by jolly people dressed in dirndl and lederhosen!! What better place than to drink German beer and eat sauerkraut (even if the sauerkraut was only on my new favourite sandwich - the Ruben - traditionally corned beef, sauerkraut, cheese and thousand island dressing on dark rye). But THE highlight of the day was a visit to Bronner's, the above mentioned xmas store. In a word it is huge! So huge that on entry you receive a map! And wonder of wonders, I even managed to find Hello Kitty xmas ornaments AND a totally pink xmas tree :-)

8. Visit the Detroit science museum

Lots of levers to pull and buttons to push. Whilst there we also visited the planetarium for a display of the autumn night sky, and I experienced my first Imax movie and now know everything there is to know about the endangered Great Lakes lake sturgeon.

9. Gaze at the night sky through a telescope
Speaking of the autumn night sky, we (actually mostly Jeroen & Bea) spent some time outside braving the cold night air gazing at the sky through Bea's two telescopes. Managed to catch great glimpses of the moon, Jupiter & 4 of "her" moons, Venus, and a few pulsating disco-ball like stars whose names I now can't remember. A bit weird at first getting used to viewing everything upside down and in black & white, but very cool!

10. Shop til you drop
I must admit that even going to the supermarket was, at least for me, a fun and exciting experience! I am a sucker for breakfast products, so was in 7th heaven when confronted with an entire aisle of massive boxes of cereals, at least 10 different varieties of pop tarts, and other new & unknown sugary delights too numerous to mention! Everything is on such a big scale - 5 liter buckets of ice cream, 1 liter bottles of mustard, packets of cereal big enough to feed a family of 10 for a month, I loved it! We also discovered the joys of outlet malls, where we scoured stores such as Adidas and Levi's for bargains, and where the scale is so grand you have to drive from one store to the next, stopping even at traffic lights!

Alli xxx