#627 Iron and Ice

The Iron and Ice enrichment voyage, a journey around northern Europe and Iceland, is what brings us across the Atlantic. We embarked in Hamburg, transited the Kiel Canal into the Baltic Sea, and today made our first port of call in Warnemunde, Germany.

Our itinerary includes several stops in the Baltic before returning to the North Sea for ports of call in Scotland, Iceland, and Northern Ireland.  After a month of sailing, we will disembark in Southampton the middle of June.  We're thrilled for this itinerary that takes us to many new places and introduces us to many new people.  But the thing that puts the biggest smile on our faces is the many friends who have chosen this voyage to come sailing with us.

Yours in Iron and Ice,
Mary

#626 Cunard Sisters

Today, we spied the third of the Cunard sisters, the MS Queen Victoria when the MV Explorer pulled into the seaside resort of Warnemunde, Germany at 0800. 

Just 4 days ago, we saw the second sister, the MS Queen Elizabeth, pulling into a dry dock in Hamburg.  And last August, we sailed on the first sister, the RMS Queen Mary 2.

Seeing the third sister today was an unexpected thrill especially when the ferry from Warnemunde to Rostock gave us this nose-to-nose view of the MS Queen Victoria and the MV Explorer. 

Yours in sisterhood,
Mary

#625 Sailing with Friends

It is always exciting for us when we board the MV Explorer.  We love it.

It is only on the MV Explorer that we see many of our friends - faculty, staff, and crew that we've come to know and care about on previous voyages.  It really is like coming home.

And this time, just to add to the fun, we've boarded the MV Explorer with some land-based friends including Rob and Donna - friends for more than 20 years who now live in Colorado.  They add life to any party.  And they've certainly got this party started with a lift over the threshold!

We're blessed to call them friends and shipmates.

Yours in sailing with friends,
Mary

#624 St Michael's in Hamburg

From just about anywhere in the city of Hamburg, you can see the spire of St. Michael's church and today we proved it.

We walked all over the city and used this landmark to get our bearings just as the captains of the ships sailing up the Elbe. Even while indoors at the Miniature Wonderland, we spied St. Michael's church - the miniature version.

During the afternoon, we visited the church interior just in time to hear the choir sing This Little Light of Mine.  We climbed to the top of the St. Michael's tower for breathtaking views of the city and the river.  We tried to find the MV Explorer docked in HafenCity but it has not yet arrived from Bremerhaven 

We finished our day by returning to the church and walking across the street to the Old Commercial Room to dine on pickled herring, labskaus, and Hefeweizen.

Yours with an eye on the tower,
Mary

#623 The Sea is Calling

We're off on another nautical adventure, but first we have to get ourselves to Hamburg.

For our trip, we're relying on Iceland Air to fly us from Dulles to Reykjavik to Hamburg, but wait.  Uh oh.  What's this?  Pilots Union: Biggest Travel Season in Danger.   An Iceland Air pilot's strike?  Lucky for us, we miss the strike by one day and fly just south of Greenland on the way to Reykjavik. and we land as scheduled in Hamburg.   

Now that we've completed the aeronautical leg of our journey, it's time to turn our attention to the nautical portion.  Hamburg, as we discovered last August, is about as nautical as it gets.

Today, we are lucky to witness the Queen Elizabeth 2 sailing up the Elbe River and pulling into a Blohm and Voss dry dock for its first overhaul since entering service in 2010.

The MV Explorer is also in dry dock at a Blohm and Voss shipyard (her birthplace) getting some routine maintenance, engine-, ventilation- and steel repairs (superstructure, tanks), fresh water sys, rudder, propeller, pipes, ventilation, deck improvements (new tiles and carpets in public spaces).  All this is according to http://www.shipcruise.org/cruise-ship-refurbishment-dry-dock-schedule/.

So the MV Explorer will be all ready for us when we board on Saturday.

Yours in anticipation,
Mary

#622 Stalking a house on the Google

So, how did we come to own this 100-year-old Arts-and-Crafts airplane bungalow?

Here's how it happened.

Once upon a time in the 1990s, Kelly and I were driving around southwest Missouri, as we do.  We spied a cool bungalow down a side street and turned towards it.  (This happens more than you might think.) And that's when we fell in love.

We are so taken with the house that we ask our nearby family to let us know if it comes on the market.  Years go by, a decade or more, and then the unimaginable happens:  Google Street View comes to Aurora, MO.

From our home computer in Charlottesville, VA, we find this image.  It is a sign in more ways than one.

Everyone knows that Google's imagery is not current, but the sign in the yard tells us the cool bungalow had recently been on the market.  We zoom in on the sign and contact the realtor to see if she has any interior photos that she'd be willing to share.  She does.  And not only that, she tells us the house had been taken off the market due to illness the previous year and it is soon to be relisted.  Another sign.

That was five years ago.

Yours in reading the signs,
Mary

#621 Happy 100th birthday

Happy 100th birthday to this unique arts-and-crafts airplane bungalow in Aurora, MO!

The earliest reference we've found so far is this one line in the Aurora Advertiser from 13 February 1914:  "Louis Coleman is completing a beautiful bungalow on East College."

In the oldest Aurora neighborhood on a street filled with grand Victorian homes, we're thrilled that Marionville native Lewis Shaw Coleman Sr (1886-1934) broke the mold and built this divine structure.

The second owners, O.E. and Linda Moore, purchased the home in 1930.  During their stewardship, the house was featured in the 1937 publication, Lawrence County in Pictures.

Lawrence County in Pictures, 1937

The house was then sold to the Duncan family in 1983, the Holmes family in 2004, and finally, the Johnston family in 2009.  We, the fifth owners, purchased the home after admiring it via surreptitious surveillance for more than a decade. 

Now, on to the real research.  Who was the architect?  Do the original plans still exist?  Was this a kit house?  This will be fun!

Yours in research mode,
Mary