Vienna

We had a 4 day weekend soon after we arrived back in Germany. They have lots of bank holidays over here! So we went to Munich the first day and saw IronMan 2 at a cinema that shows the English version. Yay! Then we drove on to Linz, Austria where we stayed for the night.

The drive through Austria is gorgeous with the alps and green valleys. It rained on us much of the way, but once we arrived in Vienna the next day (called Wien here in Europe), God held back the rain and gave us two beautiful days to see the sights.

We hopped on the HopOn-HopOff bus and soon hopped back off to see the buildings up close and take pictures. We saw this palace, now a government building, where Marie Antoinette grew up before she became the ill-fated Queen of France.


We visited the Parlament building, where the fountain was awesome.


Then the impressive Rathaus building.


Vienna is one of the most beautiful cities we've seen. There are so many parks, and colorful trees and flowers.

And fountains! There are thousands of fountains all over this city, fed by waters flowing down from the alps. There are drinking fountains all over the city as well, so for the first time it was easy to get clean "trinkin wasser".

Next we jumped back on the tour bus, and visited the center of the city, where we saw this amazing mosaic on the roof of St. Stephen's Cathedral.


And here's a wild looking train for dad.


We ended our first evening of touring by walking to Schloss Schönbrunn, near Hotel Viktoria where we stayed. It is one of the most beautiful palaces in Europe, modeled after Versailles.


And I love the old lamposts, especially at night.


It was a gorgeous evening...

On our second day in London, we visited my favorite kind of place, a castle. On the way, we caught sight of many of the beautiful bridges over the Thames. This is the Albert Bridge with Parliament and Big Ben Clock in the background.


My favorite is the Tower Bridge. I always thought it was called London Bridge, but found out differently while crossing over it on the way to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.


As we drove over Tower Bridge, I got a couple of cool shots.



We arrived at the Tower of London, which I expected to be a huge tower, but it's a palace with many smaller towers. It used to be where the royalty lived, and later it was where they were imprisoned for various reasons.


Lower the drawbridge and raise the gates! We're comin' in...


Cool grounds and stone walls and towers everywhere...



We saw one of those iconic British guards, who I think surely could not see a thing. Maybe it's just a convenient way to sleep on the job, as long as you can manage to sleep while standing.


We went to the Jewel House where we got to see the crown jewels, including the largest cut diamond in the world, the Star of Africa at 530 carats, which is set in the Queen's scepter. It's magnificent!


This diamond (picture from the web because we could not take pics in the Jewel House) is 2.3 inches, to give you an idea of it's size.


Finally, we had to visit Martin's Tower.


And then, for Dad, a shot of our Heathrow Express train that took us back to the airport, where we found out our flight to Munich was cancelled due to the ashcloud from the Iceland volcano.

We left for Germany the following morning, but we'll go back to London... soon!

A Spot of Tea?

My first flight on a British Airways plane was a delight, due to the way the flight attendants talked. "Would you like a spot of tea love?" Delightful.
We flew BA back from Toronto, and on the way to Munich, we stopped over in London for a couple of days. It was magnificent! And the only problem with the trip was that it was far too short. We plan to go back.

We visited the British Museum, where I got to see the actual Rosetta Stone. Very cool. Gives a whole new meaning to this software I've been using to study German and Italian.


We took one of those open-top, red tour buses around the city to see the sights. Just like you would picture in London. I noticed something amazing... something that has become typical of our excursions around Europe. Despite the weather forecasts, God holds back the rain for us. It was typical London weather with all of the clouds, but we stayed dry. Very nice, Lord!

We got to see Westminster Abbey


The National Gallery and the Church on Trafalgar Square with it's pretty blue clock.


The Trafalgar Square fountains.


And many other cool buildings and architecture. It's just awesome seeing the sights of London.



and the best is yet to come...

Oh, but before I finish up this post, here is Marty pretending to make a call from an iconic London phonebooth.


Such a nice day in London, love. Hope you enjoyed it.

From the Top

Forgot my camera when we went to have dinner at the top of the CN Tower in Toronto, so had to rely on my iPhone.
Here's what we went up...

Here's the view as we enjoyed our dinner...

Here's a view straight down of this cool circular brewery featuring old train engines...

Finally, this is my shot standing on the glass floor looking down about 1300 feet. This was the tallest building in the world until the new hotel went up in Dubai.

Power of the Falls

There's a verse from Isaiah 40 that I love which questions, "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand?" Nevermind considering all the oceans on top of this, but the amount of water pouring over Niagara Falls every second is hard to fathom. Interesting that the word fathom is all about discovering the depth of deep waters. We visited the falls (my 3rd time and Marty's 2nd) on May 1st and here's a few of my favorite pics.

I mean I know there are thousands of pictures of Niagara Falls out there, nonetheless, I just gotta post because the majesty just moves me. We loved just standing there staring at them and listening to the roar.


The spring flowers were everywhere and considering how short their bloomspan it, it looks like we came at a perfect time.


Catching a view of the falls and the flowers and the sunset was a treasure ...


And bridges ... I love bridges and the rainbow bridge between Canada and the U.S. is a beauty. Marty made the comment that the U.S. should have conquered this (Canadian) side of the falls as well. Haha!


They light up the falls each night and it's really cool, but none of my pictures of the colorful event came out in the darkness. However, I did get this UFO looking shot of the floodlights and the observation tower behind it.


If you've never been to Niagara, you gotta get there sometime. It's one of the jewels of our country (Canada's too).

Goo Goo Gah Gah

Know how you get all tongue tied when you start talking baby talk sometimes? Well, here's an example of how I stopped being able to even say the word hiccup correctly just because of the sound my little grandbaby boy was making. Haha.

He's such a cutie, especially when he tries to help get a pacifier back in his mouth.


In addition, the wedding of his momma and daddy this past Saturday was quite the event! It's official that they are Mr. and Mrs. Mark and Elizabeth Spicer. Spicer the Nicer is now three times as "Niiiiiiice"! Oh yeeeeah!

Why is there suffering?

My daughter's blog contains a recent post on the subject of suffering. Her God-given wisdom and intelligence explored the Calvinistic and open-Theistic views on whether God "allows" or "causes" suffering. I often say, "Wow", as I read her commentary... which is why I so often email my friends with a link to it saying "check this out!"

My friend Dave once asked me, "If God is God, why do bad things happen to good people?" It's a frequently asked question, though I'd never been posed it by someone, especially someone dealing with a friend who was dying of cancer. And though I tried to answer, it turned out he really didn't want an answer. He just wanted someone to listen to his pain.

While I personally think God both allows the sin in this world to result in suffering and He sometimes causes suffering, for a myriad of reasons, something new hit me this morning during church...

We often say that good people suffer so they can relate to others dealing with pain and suffering... so they can empathize and truly feel the pain with them. When we hear of suffering in the world, whether it be in Haiti or Chile or Moscow, where catastrophe has rocked someone's world, it tears at our heart and we can sense their hurt, because we know what hurt feels like from our own, though different, experiences in life. But none of this suffering would even be necessary, if there just were no suffering in the world at all. So why is there any? If God is God, that is...

This is what God whispered to my heart this morning. If we never experienced suffering in life, we couldn't begin to understand how God feels about sin. Sin is so hated by God, that it took a devastating and powerfully painful payment to offset it, which is why Jesus had to go to the cross for us. If no one ever suffered, especially the "good" people, then we couldn't comprehend, and we still don't fully comprehend, the horror of sin and it's consequences, and what amazing lengths Jesus had to go to in order to cover it for us, and to open a door for us to have a personal relationship with God our Father.

This is why the great saints are thankful to God when they get to "share" in the suffering of Christ... when they get to draw closer to understanding and feeling what he went through for us. It causes us to feel his pain and know more fully how very much he loved us in that he was willing to go through it, when he didn't have to, for us.

When I suffer, and my life sufferings have been very minor, in the midst of those times, I think "Oh God! And this is nothing compared to what you went through. Thank you SO much for going through that... for me."

So if for no other reason... we suffer... to understand our God and how much he loves us and overcomes our sin for us.