Introducing Soko

Well I finally got a little furry friend to share the house with!  I've been thinking about getting a cat for a while so I've been watching the classified ads in the area.  Someone this week posted up about a "beautiful orange cat" so I emailed them and asked for pictures:

Well when I got those photos he had my heart!  For those of you who have met Baxter, who is currently staying with my parents, Soko looks like his identical twin!  They have very different personalities though.  Baxter is the Steve Carell of cats, a smart, lovable goof-ball.  Soko is much quieter and reserved but very affectionate and curious!  Soko is so quiet it is easy to lose track of him, he's like a little kitty ninja!

Unfortunately, Soko doesn't look quite like this right now.  Apparently he got some bad mats in his fur while with the previous owners.  They took him to the vet and they ended up really chopping his hair down!  It's growing back now but he looks like a little lion.  I'll post some new pictures later.

When I brought him home the poor guy was so scared he spent the day hiding under the bed and the stairs.  How he's relaxing a bit and found a nice sleeping spot under the covers in the spare bedroom.  He's eating and using the litter box so he knows his way around now.  In a few days I'm sure he'll realize this is his new home and he'll be thinking he rules the roost :-)

Idar-Oberstein

Before the weather turned really bad I did make a trip to Idar-Oberstein to see some attractions there.  The town is known for gem mining and they have a really interesting church.

The town is pretty easy to get around in, until you want to walk up to the church.  The great thing about Idar-Oberstein is that there is a lot of shopping and the town center is really interesting.  As you can imagine, there are jewelers everywhere with some fantastic work.  Here is a fountain for the gem miners:

One of the plates at the base of the fountain:

The church there is cool because it is built into the side of the mountain.  It is a more modern church but worth going to go see.

Here are the steps up to the church.  As usual in Germany, no elevators or escalators.

The inside of the church has a water source that comes directly out of the rock but not a lot of water was flowing that day.  Here is a picture from the balcony in the church.

There was a backdoor at the church that you could use to get to an overlook for the city:

There were a couple of castle up in the area that I checked out too.  One was closed so I couldn't tour it.  The other was pretty much in ruins but interesting to see anyway.

One of the neatest things at Idar-Oberstein was their museum on gem stones!  I couldn't take pictures inside but it was completely awesome.  I think it was worth the drive alone.  The had stones from all over the world and I got to see things that I have never in my live experienced before.  On top of that they had some HUGE geodes!

Finally, there was an old mine near by that I drove up to.  I didn't go in because I was pretty much worn out at that point.  I did walk around the park and they had some things you could see.  One was an area where they used to have some gallows...a little creepy if you ask me!

Here is an entrance to a mine shaft:

Overall I really liked Idar-Oberstein.  I will probably go back eventually to see the mine.  Since the weather is so bad that at least gives me an option to do something inside!

Lack of updates...

I know I've been lacking on the updates but a combination of not feeling well some weekends and really crappy weather has kept me from traveling.  There really doesn't seem to be a Fall season over here, it just goes from really beautiful in the summer to cold, dark, and rainy.  On the days where the weather is not as bad, meaning it might only be drizzling, the days are very short.  So I haven't done much of anything lately.  I'll post up one place I've neglected to do above and put up some other news in a second.

Back in the USA!

I had to go back to the US for about 10 days.  The trip was great and my awesome family came up to visit me while I was in Maryland!  It was great to see them and we got to go sightseeing in Annapolis.  What a great city!  Expensive as all get out to actually live there, but really nice place to visit.

Here's the fam back together:

And me with my sister!

Our trip to Annapolis was pretty quick, we took a whirl-wind trolley tour which was a lot of fun.  It was hard to snap pictures and keep up with all of the information but here are a few pics:

We did get over to the Naval Academy to look around.  The campus there is beautiful.  We wanted to go into the chapel but someone was getting married when we got there so we couldn't go in.

Here is a nice statue that the city put up in honor of first responders:

I really liked Annapolis a lot, if it wasn't so expensive to live there it would be a great town to live in for a few years.  I don't think I'll ever be able to afford to live there but I would love to go back and visit!

Bamberg

Lack of updates I know but as usual I've been really busy on the weekdays and weekends have been packed lately.  I got a chance to go back to the US, see update above so I'm only know updating the blog.

A few weeks ago I went to Bamberg to see a friend of mine.  I hadn't seen him in a while and we had a great time catching up.  He lives in a small village outside of Bamberg which was a really pretty farming community.

 We went into the city of Bamberg which has a lot of water flowing through it.  People call in the Venice of Germany, but they don't use the waterways in the same way.  In Bamberg, the waterways are not really used for transportation now.

 Of course nearly every town has some sort of cathedral.  My friend hadn't been to the one in Bamberg yet since he just moved there not too long ago.  I never get tired of looking at the cathedrals, they are always so impressive!

 We also went up to this rose garden that overlooks the city.  Some of the flowers were still in bloom and there were quite a few people looking around:

Bamberg also has a ton of painting on buildings.  One of the most famous in the town is pretty bizarre.  Apparently, the artist "ran out of room" to complete the painting, so they added this protruding baby leg statue to finish off the painting.  Can you see it?

 Another cool statue with gold painting on it:

 Apparently there was some sort of street festival going on and we ran across this band:

 Bamberg was an awesome town and very easy to get around.  Once we parked in the parking deck it was simple to navigate the city and see the sights.  Tons of shopping, sightseeing, and the food was fantastic!

All Caught Up!

Well that's all the photos for a bit!  I finally got everything posted up that I had in reserve.  I hope that everyone is liking the pictures.  I'm having a blast traveling and taking them!

Nancy, France

This last weekend I went to Nancy, France.  I've been wanting to spend some time in France, more that I did previously at least, and Nancy looked like a great town to stay for the weekend.  I LOVED the city!  It was a lot of fun, the people were very friendly, the food was awesome, and the sights were incredible!

I started in the Place Stanislas which is a huge square with some magnificent architecture, there were several beautiful buildings and some really neat gates:

In one part of the square they were having a market and I couldn't believe the number of people that were out shopping!

 There was so much to do around the square that I ended up walking around that area for most of the day.  The had several museums and an aquarium.  I went to both the Lorrain Museum and the Beaux-Arts Museum.  The Beaux-Arts Museum was my favorite, they had a nice collection of classic and modern art, including some Picasso!  Of course I was not able to take pictures inside so I don't have any to show.

Nancy also had an aquarium, no pictures allowed either.  The aquarium was ok but I would recommend skipping it.

There was a nice garden next to the aquarium that contained a lot of medicinal and local plants.

There are arcs all over the place, here is another:

 About lunch time I went to the Cathedral Saint Epvre, unfortunately it was closed for prayer so no tourists were allowed to walk around inside.  They were in the process of renovating the Cathedral and you can see in the pictures where they had cleaned the building and where they still needed to work.  It's like night and day!

 Sunday morning after breakfast I went to the Water Garden.  I should have skipped it because it was just a place to dock boats:

 Nothing too exciting there.

On the way to Nancy and on the way home I drove through the French countryside.  The pictures don't do it justice!  I was so beautiful there!

 Nancy was a great place to visit.  The food was awesome and the people were very friendly.  I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for a nice town in France to spend the day.