Flight seven of fourteen completed!

/12
Another two flights have delivered me to Colombia.
My time with Justin and family was great. I have moved on from tea parties to playing with ‘ponies’, a type of hiding/seek and starting running races in the basement . It’s been such a joy to play with Ivy and Benny and you can really see the need for a basement. With the temperature at minus 13 real feel minus  23 and warnings that skin exposure to the cold for longer than 30 minutes could mean frostbite you can see why the kids don’t go outside to play.
I went into the city and saw the show ‘Beautiful – The Carol King story. It was brilliant and if it comes to a place near you I can really  recommend it.
The snow started up again  on my last day and it looked  set to stay. Justin took me to the airport hotel as I had a 3:15 am check in the next day! It’s always sad to say goodbye but I had some very nice goodbye hugs from Ivy and Benny.
Flight to Miami was good and after a very long walk to the gate for the next flight and about 20 minutes before boarding Valda arrived from here flight. It was a 3+ hour flight to Bogota so we caught up on some ‘gossip’, watched movies and ate an unappetizing meal. Getting into Colombia was easy, hope getting out will be without trouble😊! As soon as we were through customs we headed to an ATM – the money here is confusing as $1 aus = 2,330 pesos! Next stop a taxi to the hotel. As we set off the rain started and down it came we could see lots of graffiti, high rise buildings and green hills. I have read that Bogota has 4500 parks!
Quite a pleasant room which even has a two ring stove, microwave and fridge and room to move around. We dropped our things and went in search of a supermarket – we needed water, milk and a bottle of wine. With our shopping over, although it was only 5pm, we found a restaurant for some dinner. When we arrived back at the hotel we decided to put the milk into a jug and that’s when we found out that we’d bought yogurt not milk! Back to the supermarket for the leche and this time we got the real thing!  I managed to stay awake until 9pm and then the early start caught up with us!

The continuing journey

22/12
Sitting in an airport hotel signifies that my time in England is at an end.
I caught up with a couple of friends, former colleagues, for lunch on Wednesday. We caught up on all the ‘gossip’. It was hard to believe that it was two years since we last had lunch together. There was lots of laughter as we tried to take photos, especially when the young lad on the next table tried to ‘photo bomb’ the picture. His mum then offered to take a photo of the three of us and then the story of why we having lunch was told. It was lovely to see that we were all ‘weathering’ well.
With temperatures hovering around 0C at the start of the week 12C felt almost tropical and I even discarded my down jacket!  Unfortunately the warmer weather meant that it was quite misty. The changeable weather didn’t stop our nightly dip in the hot tub, mulled wine or bubbles in hand, an the stars were spectacular on the clear nights, we even spotted a couple of satellites whizzing through the sky.
Yesterday we visited a National Trust house – Hanbury Hall – stately home built in early 18th century in Worcestershire. This year the decorations were from the 70s & 80s. The Christmas number 1 records were playing and the mention that Babycham, CherryB and Snowballs  were the tipple of the time set our teeth on edge! We also visited a craft centre and watched as glass decorations were blown.

After  leisurely breakfast I headed south unfortunately it wasn’t the leisurely drive I had hoped for. Road works started a 30 minute crawl which would normally have taken 5 minutes. Heading down the motorway we were forced to go across country when an accident had closed it between two junctions. A journey which should have taken a maximum of two hours ended up taking four! I was very pleased to return the rental car without a scratch – had a few close calls!
An early flight -6:30 am take off- takes me to Frankfurt and then on to Chicago. Early night for me!
23/12
Out of the hotel at 4:15 to catch the shuttle to terminal. Luckily I started early as it was very busy but it  gave me time for breakfast. Flight to Frankfurt was packed! It was a quick flight but as we were parked in  the back of beyond and then had to wait for buses catching the connection was a rush. Sods law then dictated that the flight was delayed so the rush was for nothing!
9:30 flight passed relatively quickly with Snoozing, movies ,food and reading. Great surprise at O’Hare airport – so much easier and quicker to get into the country with automatic machines. I was soon through and Justin was there to meet me.😊 We headed to the hotel in the city, where I was staying for a couple of days. After a quick meal together I had an early night – not that I slept terrible well!
Down to breakfast was when I noticed that it had started to snow – it continued non-stop for about 6 hours! I  met Justin and family at the aquarium. It was so great to see them all. Ivy is as cute as ever and seemed to remember me but Benny was rather shy – it’s so strange to see him walking. I headed back to my hotel ploughing through the snow, hard to see at times as the snow was hitting you in the face. I was treading carefully as the last thing I wanted to do was end up A over T and do some damage to myself. It wax a long hike back but after all the sitting on planes it was good to be in the fresh air.

On to England.

A short, empty flight took us down though the mist to a cold, rainy London.  Luckily, as I'm not a politician, (Aussies will undertand this!) being a dual national, I pulled out the British passport and was quickly through immigration and customs.

Although the temperature in Franfkfurt had been around 4C it felt a lot colder at Heathrow. I quickly found the bus stop for the car rental companies and was soon filling out the paperwork for my hire car. My sis and b-i-l had arrived on different flight, same time, but reached car hire before me - they flew British Airways!

By the time we set off it was raining quite heavily and it was like that until we reached my nephew's house. There were still patches of snow, left from the previous week, piled up on roadsides. It was good to catch up with mynephew and his family, his girls have certainly changed in the two years since I last saw them! After a quick cuppa John, b-i-l, headed home to get the fires lit and the house warmed up before Jake and I arrived.

It took a couple of hours driving up busy motorways to reach our destination and we were looking forward to a blazing fire and John ready with a G & T for us. Unfortunately a very different scene greeted us! The front door was wide open - why let the heat out? Then we looked at John standing in the garage dripping wet and noticed a jet of water spraying around the garage. Poor John had noticed that the pipe had burst and was trying to turn of the water but, apart from him getting soaked nothing was working. We all tried to pull together to work out what to do. Only course of action was to turn water off at the mains. While Jake and John were doing that I was filling every available with water.  After numerous phone calls to the water board and emergency (no answer from them) plumbers we realised we were in for a long cold night!!!!

The fire was on in the lounge but the heat was minimal and I was still shivering sitting in my down jacket covered with a duvet. A good old cuppa went a little way to helping. We knew there was nothing to be done until the morning so it was off to bed clasping a hot water bottle and an extra duvet. No way could you read for long before your hand froze!

As you can guess it was a slightly uncomfotable night not made any better knowing that you couldn't shower. John filled buckets of water from a watertank in the garden for us to flush the loos - was this a mean trick my sister was playing taking me back to the 1800s!. Thought about getting water fron the swimming pool but that was frozen!

After an assurance that a plumber would arrive before 12 Jake and I headed off to the shops - first stop a toilet with running water!! Had my biannual fill of Marks and Spencers - knicker draw needed filling😊!  Good news  during the course of the shopping expedition was that the water was fixed - it appears that the shut off valve 'blew' off. Must have been to do with the fact that it had been minus 13C before I arrived!

Returning home to a much warmer house, we decided that we could manage without heating but no water was a different matter!

Frosty again this morning. Forgotten what a pain  it is to have to de-ice the car!
Today I had a visit to Gladys and family. Unfortunately Gladys had a fall a few days ago and wasn't feeling the best. It was lovely to catch up but I left with the feeling that my visit was the last one I would have with Gladys.

German adventures

Arrived Frankfurt after a long uneventful flight. I think I gave my sis and b-i-l a bit of a surprise turning up at 6:30 am. The apartment was on the fourth floor and I was tempted to use the invalid stairlift but was worried I’d wake the neighbours!
A shower and cup of tea soon restored me and we set out to discover Frankfurt with our accommodation host.  He showed us how to buy a day ticket for 11euro not per person but for up to 5 people to use constantly through the day. The tram  network is brilliant. We visited different tourist spot including the Christmas markets. The aroma of gluwein permeates  the air. Of course we tried a variety of different types. Just in the interest of research!
After an afternoon siesta we went back out to the Christmas markets and joined throngs of people wandering the stalls. There were police, carrying machine guns, amongst the crowds and we’d noticed that a lot of the entrances had huge blocks of concrete in place to stop any would be idiots.
The highlight of the evening market was having a bratwurst sandwich from the largest bbq I’d seen.

 Once back at the apartment, a hundred year old building with a few quirky touches, I ascended to my bed an interesting affair but comfy. When I descend it’s not  a pretty sight as I come down on hands and knees backwards – the picture should tell all!

Day 2 saw us heading to Heidelberg on the bus. Having done a reccy the night before we were confident that we knew where we were going .We got to the Bahnhof and an unwell man fell to the ground in front of us- not the best people as we couldn’t communicate with him and everyone around us was ignoring him until a young girl took over from us  .Off we went to the bus station with half An hour to spare ,however, we nearly didn’t make it as we were told that instead of being green our bus was going to be white! Luckily I went to ask an official and he said “Come on madam we are waiting to go!” “But we were told to get a white bus.” I said. To which the official laughed! It was a tense 90 minute trip through pouring rain wondering if in fact we were on  the right bus! First stop was the railway station restaurant – memories from my childhood were that the railway station restaurants served great food . I definitely enjoyed my hot chocolate laced with Grand Marnier.
We decided against catching a bus to our destination – the Schloss (castle) and started to walk instead. After about 45 minutes we came across a Christmas market, after a mooch around, we took the funicular to the castle. Although it was wet and grey the castle was very interesting especially seeing the biggest wine barrel.

Back down to the main square lunch was on the agenda and a very fine schnitzel was had by all. Deciding that time was on our side we once again made the walk back to the Bahnhof to catch our bus back to Frankfurt – my fitbit told me that we had walked more than 20000 steps. It was good to get back to the apartment but those 4 flights of stairs was purgatory!

Day 3 started early with our ’host’ taking us to the station to help us buy our tickets for our trip to Rothenburg. It meant a two hour train ride from Frankfurt, then a 40 minute regional train before an even smaller train ride to our final destination. It was so interesting to see the countryside changing the further we travelled from Frankfurt. There were areas of forest, flat land, wide rivers and many vineyards (need to do a google search to find out which wine it was). Patches of snow were seen the closer we were to our destination.
On arrival in Rothenburg we followed the crowd to the walled, medieval town. The buildings were very interesting and it was a very pretty place, especially with the covering of snow making it look even more festive,however, food was in our minds and rather than go to a restaurant we decided to get a bratwurst roll from the market along with our tipple of gluwein. I have never had a ‘hotdog’ anything like this before with a massive sausage hanging over   both ends of the bread -it took a lot of skill to eat it without getting covered in mustard and boy was it tasty.

After a good walk around the town we stopped for tea and kucken – apple strudel. A good break from the cold! As we left the cafe we felt a light sprinkle of snow on our faces and you could really feel the change in temperature and so we made the trip back to Frankfurt.
We have been  to a number of different places and can honestly say that the German transport system is superb – clean trains always on time.