The Red Car Goes To The Show!

September 7, 2014:  The Red Car makes its debut on the show circuit at Chicago's annual British Union Car Show!

The weather was great and the show was very well-attended, with something like 500 British cars on site:

The Red Car, keeping good company with the Rolls Royces and the Bentleys:

And here's the competition...a long line of Austin Healeys:

It made us proud and happy to see how much attention our car got.  Lots of people were checking it out and taking pictures.  The awards were given on a "crowd favorite" vote and it looked like we got a few votes (besides our own)!  We didn't win, though.  We think that the ballot box may have been stuffed in favor of a very nice couple, fellow Austin Healey Club members who invited us all over for BBQ after the show.  Considering that, and that they do have a lovely Healey, they deserved it.

Formula 1 at Spa...

And for the first time in our personal history, it wasn't raining the whole time!

Well, OK, it did rain.  It rained like a cow on a flat rock about 10 minutes before qualifying started. But for the rest of the weekend, the weather was decent, so we had a opportunity to walk the track again.  Two really good things about the race:  Hamilton did not finish and Ricciardo won the race. We have considered contacting Ricciardo to let him know that he only wins when we're there...perhaps he could take a hint.

A look at the middle section of the track, during practice:

F1's on the famous Eau Rouge:

Enough said!  Except for this:

Wiener dog count for the Budapest to Amsterdam adventure:  Gordon 10, Pati 8.

Ons Krijtland

We returned to Epen, Holland where the grocery store STILL does not take credit cards.  We've said it before and we have to say it again, this place is wonderful.  We've been going to the Ons Krijtland hotel for about ten years, and we continue to absolutely love it.  Every time we leave, we immediately start talking about the next time we'll go there.  Take a look at www.krijtland.nl

Placed yet again in "our" room with two balconies, we spent the week as follows:  Get up.  Eat breakfast.  Hike to 5 or 6 hours.  Come back to the hotel and drink a beer.  Shower.  Eat dinner.
Drink cognac.  Go to bed.  Repeat the next day.

Here's the hotel from one of the footpaths:

Sunset from our balcony:

A memorial alongside a footpath:

We joined the GrensRouten for a few miles.  These are the major hiking routes through Europe:

A memorial to a local soldier along the GrensRouten:

And a cathedral of trees:

At the end of the trip, we were invaded by F1 fans, including ToursF1.com (Steve and Angie), and we all headed for the race at Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium.

Amsterdam At Last! And The Healey Museum

We arrived in Amsterdam ahead of schedule.  This was the only time we even approached the "schedule".  Of course, it was pouring rain.  The only way to the hotel was to dash on foot through the rain (what, take a cab?  Never!) so we waited until it lightened up a bit, bid farewell to Viking, and headed out.  The Ibis Stopera Hotel turned out to be a great location, and here's the view from our window:

We'd only stayed in Epen, Holland before this trip and there's a little Spar grocery store in Epen that doesn't take credit cards.  We thought it was just because the store was in a little town in the middle of nowhere.  When the rain let up, we went to the big grocery store in Amsterdam for provisions (of course I mean wine, what else) and to our surprise, it wasn't just Epen...grocery stores in Holland don't take credit cards.  Period.  So, a warning to those of you who are headed over:  take cash green money if you want groceries.

The next day, the rain gave us a break and we walked around town.  We passed by the Anne Frank Huis but did not go to the museum because the line to get in was ridiculous.  Might have had something to do with the huge cruise ship that was visiting.  Here's one of the prettier canals:

House boats are everywhere, and they look like a pretty good way to go.  Actually, we might have looked for one to rent if we'd known.  Some of the architecture is interesting, too:

Does the building look like it's leaning?  It's not the camera angle.  It's leaning.  Lots of them are. Some of the streets look like a screen shot out of an animated Disney movie!  Of course, it is well known that "cafe" in Amsterdam may mean coffee or it may mean pot or it may mean both.  Standing outside one of them and reading a historical plaque on the wall, we got a good whiff.

And here's one of the locals that we met along the way:

The next day, we made a pilgrimage to the new Austin Healey Museum in Vreeland, Holland.  This was one of our usual adventures.  We took a train, then transferred to a bus which was actually a van. The bus driver couldn't take cash (only transport cards) but he took us to Vreeland anyway and said he'd be back on duty at 4:00 p.m. in case we needed a free ride back.  Gordon bought the chap a cup of cafe. As it turned out, the earlier returning bus-van did take money, gratefully.

Anyway, Vreeland is just a cute little town with lots of boats and houseboats:

From the bus stop, one walks along the canal to the museum.  The Austin Healey museum has been open for less than a year and is still small, but it offers plenty of cars and lots of historical memorbilia.  The people who run the place are very friendly (the owner's wife even offered to drive us back to the bus stop) and they really know their Healey stuff.  We wouldn't recommend it as a vacation destination, but if you like Healeys and are in Amsterdam, it's worth the stop.

One of the Big Healeys on loan to the museum is very unique, one of only three built.  It's what might have been:  the Austin Healey 4000.  Austin Healey acquired some Rolls Royce engines and built prototypes, widening the cars to accommodate the bigger engines by literally sawing them in half and welding in additional bodywork.  It looks like a regular Healey until you set it next to the others and see the big difference that engine installation made.

And, those were the only Healeys ever made with automatic transmissions:

Now you, too, have more automotive trivia than is needed.  

Next stop:  The Krijtland!

Budapest Part 5: On The Rhine

August 7.  We have decided to stay on the ship and skip the rest of the port tours.  Today, four tours were to leave at 8:45.  One of them wouldn't return until 6:30 p.m.  They moved dinner to 7:30. Good thinking, but of course we didn't get to our docking location (between Bamberg and Wurzberg and completely unplanned) until just before 10:00.  Now we're glad we didn't go touring...no one returned until at least an hour and a half after they were supposed to.  We, however, had a quiet day aboard and had clean hair and clothes for dinner. Some views from the day's cruise:

We were still behind schedule, but Viking had an excuse for everything:  the lock broke, the bus is late, we're stuck behind a cargo ship, the traffic usually isn't this bad, the swans are in the way, etc. etc.

The remainder of cruise was spent aboard, watching the river banks go by.  Very interesting, all the campers in tents and trailers and caravans along the banks.  We understand that by law, a camper can only stay in one place for 9 months, otherwise the government assumes that you live there and you have to pay taxes.  So these people stay in one campground for six months or so and then move to another one.  This is retirement living for some people.

We sailed the Middle Rhine, which is dotted with castles all the way along.  We called it the Castle Crawl, and here are some highlights.  First, Castle Reichenstein:

 
The purpose of the castles was, of course, somewhere to live, but upkeep for the places was provided by charging tolls to boats moving along the river.  Here, a toll station belonging to Castle Gutenfels, which is in the background:

Several years ago, we stayed at Castle Rheinfels with the Grand Prix Club (ToursF1.com). Rheinfels has a hotel built into it.  We remember watching the river boats go by, and now we got the view from the other side:

Finally, Marksburg Castle, the best preserved of the lot and a popular tourist destination:

The next day, we actually got off the boat in  Cologne and walked around town.  It was Sunday, and we happened to walk into the Cathedral of Cologne just before mass.  They fired up the pipe organ and it practically shook the walls, accompanied by a full orchestra. Very professional and very impressive.  We're not Catholic (by a long shot) but even to us mass in German sounded strange.

   

Budapest Part 4: A Lock That Works and Nuremberg

The rivers that connect Budapest with Amsterdam are the Danube, the Rhine, and a number of canals that were constructed to connect the two.  The trip passes through Hungary, Austria, Germany (right through the middle of Frankfurt) and The Netherlands.  On both the rivers and the canals, there are locks, and plenty of them.  These river cruise ships are built to a size that will just barely fit into the smallest of these locks, and when the ship's in there, one is very close to the walls.  Here, we enter the Bad Abbach lock on our way to Regensberg:

Inside the lock, taken from our room's balcony:

See what we mean about close?  Here, we're rising up to reach the light of day again:

Don't know how many locks we passed through.  We lost count.  Anyway, next stop Regensberg.   This was supposed to be a full-day stop and we'd planned to hit a laundromat we found online, wash some clothes, and spend the afternoon walking around this medieval town.  As it turned out, the rush was on and we only stayed until 1:00 p.m.  Fortunately, the laundromat was there as advertised.  We'll spare you the photos of it.

August 6, Nuremberg, Germany.  We were supposed to arrive midday, but actually got there at about 10:00 a.m.  The busses (oh, no, not more busses) left at about 1:15 for a tour of Nuremberg.  Our first stop was the Nazi Rally Grounds, which is a partially finished building that resembles the colosseum in Rome.  It was supposed to be, however, 1/2 again larger than the Roman structure and contain the world's largest pipe organ (sorry Passau...or maybe Hitler meant to steal the one from Passau).

The Rally Grounds were supposed to have a roof with a skylight in the center that, when the sun came out, shed light on the directly on the speaker.  Of course, there was only to be ONE speaker.  Der himself.  It was not finished because the Brits and Americans showed up and bombed Nuremberg practically into rubble. The reason that the city took a lot of bombing was because engines were being produced there.  The tour drove by the famous Palace of Justice where the Nuremberg trials were held:

We visited the Palace, inside the city walls (which, by the way, are quite intact).

And we took in the view over the city from the Palace grounds.  In this photo, see the Nazi Rally Grounds in the distance?  Gives one a better idea of size!

We walked through Market Square (where the Christmas market is held).  Here, detail from the "Beautiful Fountain".  This statuary was covered with a concrete cocoon during the bombing and thus survived intact.

Another cathedral, we don't remember the name, but it's probably St. Stephans...

Now for more horror.  Sorry, its got to be said:  this whole thing was not well planned.  The tour ended at 5 p.m.  and in every city, there's traffic at that hour.  We were stuck in traffic and didn't get back to the ship until 6:10 p.m.  Then the Program Director wanted EVERYBODY in the lounge at 6:45 for the daily briefing because people had made choices for the next day's tours already and now everything was going to change. So, in our grubby touring clothes, we marched to the lounge where we were presented with four choices of tours for tomorrow.  Kindly make your choice RIGHT NOW and turn in your papers.  We had no reference material with us and no description of the various tours was given.  We said screw it and wrote that we'd stay on board.  At this point, we discussed never leaving the ship again until we saw the lights of Amsterdam, because at the upcoming stops, the passengers were to be let off for the bus tours and the ship would move on, picking them up downstream somewhere.

Budapest Part 3: Budapest to Passau The Hard Way

OR:  HOW TO LEARN NOT TO LOVE VIKING RIVER CRUISES

It has been said, on learned sites around the internet, that river cruising is a crap shoot.  River levels can beach the boat or render it unable to pass under the low bridges.  There are 60-some locks on the Danube and the Rhine and it's mostly one boat at a time through the locks.  And when one comes up snake eyes, the cruise turns into a bus tour.

We, of course, were in denial.

About a week before we left for Budapest, we were advised that instead of the Viking Kvasir, we would be aboard the Viking Idi because the Kvasir could not get through.  No other changes to itinerary anticipated. OK, no problem.  Shortly thereafter, we received the cruise details paperwork...well, it was someone's paperwork, but not ours.  It was actually for two different people who were on two different cruises, neither of them being the one we were on.  This did not bode well, especially since Viking didn't seem to care much when we called about it.

Fast forward to July 29, 2014, the day we boarded the ship.  Having dumped our luggage off, we cheerfully set off to spend the rest of our Hungarian Forint.  The result:  a case of wine and two bottles of the official Hungarian liquor, Unicum.  By the way, Unicum is great, but good luck finding it outside of Hungary.

Back on board, at the "6:45 p.m. daily briefing", we're advised that the ship won't sail tomorrow night after all.  The first lock through which we must pass has mysteriously broken.

Now, as an aside, we learned the next day that the broken lock was no mystery to the local hydrofoil operator...they knew that it was undergoing maintenance and would be closed, and had posted the information on their website.  In English.

So we sat in Budapest for an additional day.  At the "6:45 p.m. daily briefing" on July 31 we were told in the lounge that we would sail at 10:00 p.m. and then we were bombarded with choices for the coming days, many of which needed to be made before dinner at 7:00 p.m., less than 15 minutes.  At this same time, we were also told that we would spend the night in Komarno and be bussed to Vienna for two nights in a hotel.  No information was given on what was to follow those two nights. With this, we finally sailed for 60 miles or so to someplace called Komarno, which was not on the itinerary.  The departure from Budapest was beautiful though.

Arrived in Komarno and sat on the dock all day while other passengers were sent on busses to Melk and/or Bratislava.   On the 1st, having packed everything up, we were bussed to Vienna for two nights.  Thus begins the adventure for the case of wine.  We will say that the crew went out of their way to find us a box and help us get it sealed up for the trip to Vienna.  Much to our surprise, the box was in the room at the Grand Hotel Vienna when we arrived.  One of our suitcases was not.

In Vienna, August 2-3, walked around the centrum with a guide and visited the first of many St. Stephans churches.  Here, the church spires and an interesting take on a rose window:

On our second day, we visited Schonbrunn palace, summer home of the Habsbergs.  The grounds are beautiful and we wished we had more time to walk in them:

We had lunch in a winery call Weingut Wolff.  Good food (OMG the potato salad!), too much of it, and entertainment by a yodeling guy with an accordion and a gal who sang a powerful soprano.  Kinda loud, but fun.  They even got some folks dancing:

Look, this is a condensed version of what to us was a horror story.  There's more to tell, believe it, but we won't belabor the point here.  We'll belabor it in correspondence to Viking.  In spades.  Spending another night in a hotel, we pined for the "cruise" part of the river cruise, drowning our sorrows in a bottle of Renner Heideboden 2010 Burgenland from the local Spar Store.  Try it.
 
On August 4, we bussed to Passau to meet the ship.  We hoped.  We walked around Passau, where there had been a flood recently (we guessed that was the flood that stopped our original ship, Kvasir, from getting to Budapest) and some sidewalks were still covered over with water and impassable.  Visited the next St. Stephans Cathedral, home of the world's largest pipe organ, which we did not get to hear because we arrived too late in the day.  Oh, well, at least we got to see it!

Ship finally arrived at 5:30 p.m., everyone ran aboard and we left.  After this point, the ship will never sit in dock again.  Each day, the passengers will rush off to the bus tours and the ship will move on, collecting everyone downstream somewhere.  Rush, rush, rush.  Again, much to our surprise, the wine showed up in one piece, in one box, and delivered by a crew guy who apparently had ridden herd on it all day.  He got a tip.