One last trip for 2019 with three stops designed to celebrate the season. The first stop was in Concord, North Carolina where the Speedway is turned into a Christmas Wonderland. They have taken over 4 million lights strung across a remarkable 3.75 mile drive-thru course. Many of the lights were set to music you could hear on your car radio. Half way around the track you stop at the Christmas Village with food, firepits, Festival of Trees, and a Christmas Movie Theatre.
Light show in the grandstands
Tunnel into and out of the infield of the raceway
Even though Speedway Christmas was lots of fun, it was not the main reason we left sunny Florida for the rain and cold weather of Mid-Atlantic region. Our main stop was Arlington Cemetery in Washington, D.C. For several years, we have been contributing to Wreaths Across America which is a not-for profit organization that puts Christmas wreaths on the graves of service men and women buried at Arlington. This year we decided to go in person and help put out the wreaths. It was an incredibly moving experience and when it was over just under 40,000 volunteers put over 257,000 wreaths on the graves.
We were instructed to lay the wreath at a 45 degree angle to help prevent the wind from blowing them over. Once you positioned the wreath, you were to say the persons name out loud and thank them for their service or whatever else you wanted to say. The premise behind saying their name is the philosophy that every person dies twice; once when their physical body dies and a second time when no one ever says their name again. Many of the graves that I saw were young soldiers when they died during WWI, WWII or Vietnam and it made me feel proud to say their name again to keep their sacrifice alive. We will let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
Entrance to Arlington National Cemetery
Opening ceremony at the McClellan Gate within the cemetery
Stood in line to get wreath then you placed it on any grave stone without wreath
Guard at Unknown Soldier’s Grave
Our final stop on the way home was Charleston. We walked along the Battery and saw some beautifully decorated old homes before headed back to our beloved Florida and 81 degree temperatures.
Like so many of the cathedrals we have seen, it is constantly in a state of repair with scaffolding on at least one side. Most of them are constructed from limestone and the pollutants in the air and age cause the black color that needs to be cleaned and repaired. This particular cathedral proports to house the bones of the Magi, stolen by Frederick Barbarossa from a church in Milan in 1164. The relics are in a wooden sarcophagus covered with gold and silver and decorated with more than a thousand jewels and beads that is standing behind the main altar, but we were not able to see it. It was Sunday and morning Mass was being held during our time there.
Before long, all the royals in Europe were using the fragrant solution because bathing was not a frequent event, but it was very expensive. A bottle of Eau de Cologne was equivalent to six month’s salary for a civil servant.
Not available outside the city limits, it is served by waiters in traditional costume of the brewery.
An interesting social comment on the tradition is that now some of the couples use combination locks because they are not so permanent.
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Used to be, this was where all the waste water was dumped making the river very polluted and the smell only added to the unpleasantness. But as you can see, these homes are now lovely and quite hard to buy and are beautifully maintained.
In Bamberg, we noticed very little delineation between sidewalks and streets. In fact, in some places, the only clue you had that you were walking in the street were these metal discs identifying the “curb”.
They came to a perfect solution: They built a bridge across the Regnitz and a city hall on a manmade island in the middle serving both sides and not subject to the taxes. Seems to me there were clever, greedy Capitalist even in the 14th century.
The Palace is now the home of Government offices but garden is where the children sing Do Re Mi in the movie. When you watch the movie, which we did aboard the ship, its fun to see these places but you realize there was a great deal of editing done to make the locations gel.
It was built in 1661 of Italian marble and is the largest fountain in Austria. I remember seeing it in the scene after Maria leaves the convent to become a Nanny. Again, no logical reason why Maria was walking past that fountain in the movie other than it was a famous and beautiful masterpiece.
was erected in 2005 to remember all those people who died. What you see is rusted, cast iron shoes of all kinds (dress shoes, children’s shoes, workmen shoes, and women’s shoes all of that period) sitting empty on the bank.
The philosophy behind the church was that it should depict the stark difference between heaven and earth so the interior is very elaborately decorated with lots of gold and precious gems. You could not conceive the splendor in this church even seeing the pictures.
(gef-i-on) and it took me several days to remember how to pronounce the name. Like Viking’s other long boat ships, Gefjon is 440 feet long and narrow accommodating under 200 passengers. We were lucky enough to have only 182 passengers and 52 crew members which was very different from any other cruise we had been on. There were no children and a few young people and a few “really old” people but I would say the average age was around 60 years old. As in all groups, there was one group from Australia that joined with some Canadians to be the rebel rousers of the group who were always the loudest and most vocal.
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