More scrappiness

Bacharach, the town we stayed in. The letters RAC are attached to ribbons, which pull out the hidden journalling.


Two pages of Marksburg castle


Page 2 of Marksburg Castle


Page 1 of Marksburg Castle. A square of journalling hidden behind the picture of the castle


The view of Boppard and the Rhine River from the so-called '4 lakes view' atop a bluff. The scene of the crime for my massive German sunburn. Sonnenschutz, people. Sonnenschutz.

Recent scrappiness

I have started the long, never-ending journey of creating a scrapbook of our Europe trip. Taking it nice and sloooooow and enjoying all the memories of the things we did. Hoping to go back next April to Brussels, Belgium, then Amsterdam, then London. Or vice-versa. Brussels only because it is easy to find frequent flier flights into there. London because Ethan thought it was awesome and wants to experience it with me. Amsterdam, because Amsterdam is awesome and we want to try the craziness of Queen's Day again, and get a chance to check out the many museums and sights that we missed the first time around. Love that combination of 'anything goes' and the laid back, quiet atmosphere of the canals.


Bad Salzig, where we inadvertantly exited our train and spent an hour of our first full day in Germany


Two page layout of our Rhine river cruise


Page 1

Page 2

Our hotel in Germany.

I am not a big fan of seeing a lot of writing/journalling, so I generally type my thoughts up and hide them behind pictures on the pages--the hotel page has our bill and postcards and my journalling tucked behind the darker green patterned paper that the pictures are arranged on; the ribbon on page 2 of our Rhine cruise pages pulls out to show my journalling on a card there; and the large picture on the Bad Salzig page has journalling on the card tied with green ribbons you can see on the left side.

I have finally decided that my scrapbook style is more of a collage of randomly sized pictures arranged together, occasionally overlapping. Evenly spaced apart. Not actually randomly sized--my printer does up to 5x7 pics, so I can do 5x7, 4x6, or half pics (3x4 or 3.5x5), or quarter pics (2x3 or 2.5x3.5), so that is what I choose from. Works for me.

I have some more layouts done of our Marksburg castle tour and the town of Bacharach, but no pics just yet.

My scraproom

Spice rack re-purposed into an embellishment holder


My solid and pattterned papers, divided by color (solids/cardstock) and manufacturer (patterned)


My fishing tackle box repurposed into an embellishment holder. Each tray comes out, and has around 25 little compartments for things like buttons or prima flowers or brads/eyelets.


My newest addition--4 long trays of tip-out embellishment holders. Bought at an estate sale in Portland with Mom for a total of $6. Absolutely awesome and PERFECT for little things. The clear trays each can be easily removed for better access to the teeny things inside.

Ribbons on spools above my (neverused) printer that came free with our last computer.


Flowers sorted by colors into a variety of jars

Rae tube2.wmv

We had a whole lot of fun at Great Wolf Lodge!

Rome, Day 2

This was an action-packed day. We got up bright and early and headed out, walking from our hotel to the Colosseum. We had prebooked a group tour of the colosseum/Palatine Hill and Roman Forum areas for 0830. We gave ourselves plenty of walking time, and made it there with time to spare. We did have a heck of a time figuring out how to get from an upper street area, until we figured out that the nearby metro station had an escalator down to the lower level. Once we were down there, we saw two prominent stairways that we had somehow missed in our earlier explorations. Whatever. We *do* have great senses of direction, but they failed us at times. At least we are good map readers!!

We were to meet our group and guide at the Arch of Constantine, situated right next to the colosseum. Ethan and I took pictures of the arch from every angle...and started to get a little worried when 0830 came and no one else was there. No guide, no tourists....no one. Two or 3 minutes later, a man came running up to the arch and introduced himself as our guide. He was delayed on a metro train, it seems. And it turns out, we were the only ones to book the tour for this day. Private tour!! They charge a whole heck of a lot more for private tours than group ones, so we really scored a deal.

Our guide was the fastest speaking person I have ever met. Anyone who knows me knows that I am *so* not one to point this sort of thing out, being a fast talker myself.....but this was micromachinemannish. I will upload some videos of parts of our tour so you can hear. It took a few minutes before I was able to get my brain to move fast enough to understand what he was saying, but I got there in the end. The guide was British, and I believe the company itself is Irish-owned. Real Rome Tours, for those who are wondering. Anyway.

We started out learning about the Arch of Constantine. This is one of what was at one time over 100 triumphal arches. After massive victories abroad, they would build a commemorating arch and have a huge parade through the city, going through all of the arches. They displayed the booty they had acquired, along with the slaves and leaders of the conquered area (dead or alive). There were also massive paintings of the area that had been conquered, so the peasant Romans could see the land their government had gotten for them. The arches usually had a giant chariot on top, with horses pulling 'winged victory' (goddess of victory). This particular arch is mostly made up of sculptures/reliefs pulled from buildings or other monuments, since at the time when it was built, there were not many artisans left in Rome.

Palatine Hill and Roman Forum

From here, we headed over to the Palatine Hill area, learning about the origins of Rome and some of its fabulous history. Lots of ruins here that would not have made any sense to me without a guide. He really made those bits of stone and brick come to life. After this, it was over to the Roman Forum, where we saw more extensive ruins, and also some restoration work going on. There were several archeological digs going on, so a few areas were off limits, but we still got a lot of information on exactly what it was we were seeing.....and what we might have been looking at were we here a few thousand years earlier. There are still some temples that are used today as churches. My most favorite story was the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina--originally the Temple of Faustina, built by her husband the emperor when she died and was deified. When HE died twenty years later, his successor, Marcus Aurelius didn't want to be bothered making another temple....so he had Antoninus's name added on to this existing one. How tacky.

This temple's columns have deep groove marks near the top, when medieval people tried to tear them down. At that time, the temple was half buried underground, and they were not able to pull down those massive slabs of marble. So, they decided that this must be a holy place, and converted the pagan temple into a church.



The colosseum as seen through the Arch of Titus



The ancient Appian Way

The Colosseum

After the Forum, we headed at last into the colosseum. We beat the lines to enter here by using our Roma Passes, and took the elevator to the top, where our guide explained the history of the building. We told him that we had watched Rome:Engineering an Empire before we headed to Europe, which he loved. It was great, in depth documentary that gave us a good background on Roman history before seeing the real thing. We talked a lot about some of the info presented in that show, and learned which areas were a bit shaky on factuality. Once the colosseum was explored, our guide left us to take pictures and wander on our own. We took our obligatory photos, the headed out to find a restaurant to grab some lunch.




Arch of Constantine as seen through one of the arches of the colosseum

After lunch, we walked past the Forum to the Capitoline Museum, located sort of behind the Victor Emmanuel monument. This is billed as the oldest museum on earth, dating back to the 1400s. I was beyond excited to see the colossal hand of the statue of the emperor Constantine. It is huge--my entire hand just fits over his ring fingernail. This hand is pictured on a big poster here at Harborview, advertising for orthopedic hand surgery. It still gives me a little thrill every time I walk past the poster on the 6th floor east clinic wing. Anyway. They also have part of an arm and the head of this ginormous statue.



Statue of Marcus Aurelius--the only equestrian bronze sculpture to survive from ancient Rome (they thought it was the Christian emperor Constantine, so they left it alone whilst destroying all the pagan statues) This is actually a copy of the original, which is housed inside the museum and no pictures allowed.

We wandered through the museum looking at sculptures and paintings and artifacts, using an audioguide. After a few hours, we were museum'd out, so we returned the audioguides and headed back out into the glaring sunlight. Did I mention that it was raining when we were at the colosseum?? The weather in Rome changes even faster than the weather in Seattle.


One of the statues of Castor and Pollux (and their horses)--the twins that make up the constellation Gemini