Travelling Abroad with Jennifer

Today we are travelling to Europe with Jetteam member Jennifer of WearablebyDesign. Here is Jen's wonderful post and photos of her journey!

"I recently got to take a trip across Northern Europe with my husband for his work.  It was extra fun for me as I got to see cities I’d never seen before.  I thought I’d share some of the highlights with you all!

 

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We landed in Munich, just to get adjust to Europe. The next day we flew to Warsaw. We spent a few days there. Munich was completely destroyed in WWII. Hitler wanted to erase the city and remake it as his own. It had 1.3 million people (of which 350,00 were Jews) prior to the war. At the end of WWII it had 1,000 people left. They knew Hitler's plans and they drew plans of the existing city in order to rebuild after the war. They did a pretty good job and it's a lovely city today. 

After the war, Poland was annexed by Russia and became part of the Soviet Union. So they weren't well off and have only lately, become thriving under independence.

Stalin built a building in the city center as a gift to the people of Poland. At the time, it was nearly the tallest building in all of Poland, but the people found it ugly and old fashioned. It has only lately become embraced.

news.yahoo.com/unwanted-gift-stalin-warsaw-palace-culture-turns-60-...

Next, we went by train to Krakow. This city is quite large and on the big and beautiful Vistula river. But the old town in the center is small and approachable. The old castle and fortifications are on a small hill overlooking the river. It was for many years part of the Hapsburg Empire of Austria and has a clearly Austrian look and feel. We stayed in the old town square and had a view of the Christmas town set up for festivities. The old St. Mary's Basilica is the best preserved, medieval style church I've ever been in. It's breathtaking! The cloth hall in the center of the square is equally breathtaking. 

 

And they had the best mulled wine of any I tasted throughout Europe.

Next, we went to London. We saw the Museum of London. It was terrific. Especially the exhibit of the great fire of 1666.

We had the great fortune of seeing the Dickens play "A Christmas Carol." They did a bang up job, given that they had no children in the cast and had to do time travel on stage. It was pretty true to the story which made it thoroughly satisfying and yet new spins on many aspects of the story. 

Next up, Copenhagen. We stayed directly across from the Hay Market in the town square. Given how far north we were and the date, you would have thought the weather would have been impossible. We were really lucky everywhere we went that you could always be outdoors. Their museum of the history of Copenhagen was lots of fun. It had a lot of jewelry, metallurgy, bog people, etc. Our only disappointment was the lack of Viking history. I guess Sweden has most of the loot! So that will have to be on a future list.

Back to Munich. This time we had a full day to see sights. We went to the Neues Rathaus. It was packed with people and was the location of their Christmas town. The weather was unbelievable and we sat outside the city wall at a cafe and ate lunch in the sunshine! 

 

Then we made our way stateside, flying from Amsterdam directly to San Francisco going over the north pole. I got a beautiful photo showing the lack of snow (which was a bit alarming). Going east is brutal, but going west just makes for the worlds longest day. 

 

 

Thank you Jen for sharing your awesome trip to this beautiful country!!!!!!!

 

Jennifer Smith-Righter

 

WearableByDesign