Köln - Blogged by N8

If it seems like I'm suddenly doing a lot of traveling, it's because I am! I have committed myself to my work so much since I first got here that I didn't have time to tour a little bit of Europe before returning home.

On July 5th and 6th, I took a couple days to tour the beautiful city of Cologne (Köln), Germany.

We started our tour with a visit to the city's Hard Rock Cafe. I know, I know...




Well, we had a few calories to burn right after lunch, so we went to the main attraction in town which is the Cathedral.



In the basement, you can pay €2,50 to climb all the way to the top. You get into a spiral staircase and climb, and climb, and CLIMB! It seems like you are climbing forever because you can't see where your destination is and by the time you reach the top your legs are on FIRE! When you get to the top you are 157 meters up, which is 515.09 feet. It is really up there. We stopped at the bell tower, which is about two-thirds of the way up and waited for the bells to chime. I jumped so high when they did ring, it was so loud!





Here are some pictures that I took from the top of the cathedral.







After that, we climbed down another LONG spiral staircase. You just go down, and down, and down in the same direction. It's really funny because when you get to the bottom, you've got a pretty serious case of vertigo. You walk out of the tunnel pretty dizzy. I stood at the bottom and watched everyone walk away all funny. Ha-ha, cheap entertainment...



We went outside and snapped some pictures of the surroundings. We came across a man that was playing chess for money. I watched him play two games and he won both of them really easily.



Here are some more pictures of the outside of the Cathedral.







We walked over to a really neat bridge coming out of the train station that crossed the Rhine. All along the fence were thousands of pad locks locked to it. A lot of them had people's names on them and they had them in all sorts of shapes and sizes.





Everything in Cologne pretty much closed down before 7pm, so we just decided to go to our hotel and get to bed early so that we could tackle a lot the next day.

We started our morning with a Rhine River Cruise. Here's myself enjoying an "Apfelschörle" on the boat.



Here are some pictures I took along the way.







After that we took a gondola lift ride over the Rhine River. It was really fun. Here's me inside our gondola enjoying the ride.



Here are some more pictures I took during the ride.







That was the end of our trip. Unfortunately, my travel buddy Tech Sergeant D had to get back home so he could pack his bags. He left the next day to go back to the States. It was a fun "going away" trip for him.

Fourth of July Fun! - Blogged by JME

The first race I ran in was in November of last year at the 24th Annual Thanksgiving Day Food Drive Run/Walk that the local hospital sponsered. That race was 3.92 miles. I ran it with my brother-in-law, FireRyan. It was on a very cold November morning, and my MP3 player died two minutes into the race, so I had no music to motivate me. When I finally got to the end, FireRyan was there ringing cowbells. He ran the rest of the way with me to the finish line, all the while telling me to sprint, go faster, keep up with him while he sprinted, and beat the lady infront of me. I was so tired and demotivated that I almost decked the poor guy to get him to stop bugging me, but he did get me to sprint, and in the end I finished at 48.09, not much of a time to brag about, but I was happy that I finished.

For the Fourth of July this year, FireRyan asked me to run a race with him and Pookie. So, I decided to take FireRyan up on his invitation and see if I could do any better than my last race. Pookie and I ran the 5K and FireRyan ran the 10K. The 5K started about 20 minutes before the 10K did. This time, my MP3 player worked the whole time! That was a good start. I did feel a little demotivated at the beginning because a lot of people were passing me . . . until we got to this hill that was on our route. People were stopping left and right to walk up the hill. The hill was five blocks long and I just counted down to the 5th block. I became so motivated on that hill and just kept pushing myself. That extra umph of passing people, plus some nice sprinklers I ran through, helped me finish in record time.

This time Pookie was at the end waiting for me and ran the rest of the way with me to the finish line. I finished this race at 32:15.9, much better than my last race. I was 156th place out of 319 other women. What a high! I had some orange slices and walked around a little, then Pookie and I waited for FireRyan to show up to finish his 10K. As soon as he did, it was payback time. I sprinted ahead of him and told him to keep up with me. I told him not to slow down but to go faster. I kept yelling at him to sprint and beat the guy infront of him. I'm sure it was pretty annoying for him but it was fun for me to get him back.



Later that evening, I took Bug and Skunk and we went to watch the fireworks with FireRyan, Pookie, Pooh Bear, and Jo Jo. We had so much fun! The sky was amazing as the sun went down. We saw this huge plane fly over our heads kind of close to the ground. Bug and Skunk asked me if their Uncle N8 was in that plane. I told them I hoped so (even though I knew he wasn't). I told them we should wave to him just incase he was in there. It was so cute to watch them wave at the plane. They are so excited to have their uncle to play with again and they know it is coming up soon.




The only part of the fireworks the little guys didn't like was waiting for them to start. There wasn't a whole lot to do. Luckily, Pookie and FireRyan came prepared. They brought some snacks and were kind enough to share with us. They also brought bug spray. It must be a parent thing to anticipate and prepare for every need. It is quite a skill and I have to say I was impressed.