A Week of Sightseeing with some of the Briscoe Family

This past week we've had the opportunity to have Ralph and Lola visit as well as Tom and Sandi, Diana, Emmy, David and Daniel. They were all here to enjoy dinner and a session of General Conference with us on Sunday night. (We get to view, via the internet, the 10 AM session at 6 PM and the 2 PM session at 10 PM.) Tom and Sandi and kids left Monday morning for a trip to Paris and Ralph and Lola headed to Germany and Switzerland to visit the temples there.


On Thursday, Dennis arrived home from his trip to Utah and Ralph and Lola returned from their travels. On Friday we drove to the other side of the country and met Tom and Sandi and crew at Keukenhof Gardens. The temperature was perfect and the gardens were breath-taking. We all enjoyed the two hours that it took to stroll through the gardens. Afterward, we drove to Delft for dinner at a good Indonesian restaurant.



Saturday morning, Tom's family headed home and Ralph and Lola, Dennis and I did a little local sight seeing of places of interest to us - Alyna's school, Dennis' work, etc. We also spent some time grocery shopping and preparing some of the food for Easter dinner.

Easter Sunday was really nice. We had a really nice church service and then in the evening we had about 20 ward members here for dinner. It was fun to have some time to sit and visit. Luckily for me, they all speak fairly good English.

On Monday, or second Easter, Dennis and I and Ralph and Lola took a car trip to Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and France. In Germany we went toTrier.
Trier is the oldest ancient Roman city north of the Alps, and has many well preserved ruins. Most notable of the Roman remains here are the 1500 year old Port Negro (Black Gate) - the old city gate, a well preserved ampitheater, and a wide array of underground baths. There are also two very old churches which were built together, the oldest of which was built by Constantine in 300 A.D. This is a great place to spend a day or two, and if you're up for seeing another country, the Luxembourg border is less than 30 minutes away.

We went to the American cemetery in Luxembourg were one of Ralph's cousins is buried. From there we went to France and found the Maginot Line which is a set of bunkers that were strategic in WWII. It was an area Dennis remembered from a film, The Major and the Minor starring Ray Moland and Ginger Rogers.

Ralpn sitting on top of one of the bunkers.

On the way home, Dennis showed us the place that he lived when he fist came to Holland in the town of Heerlen. It wasn't far from there to Castle Hoensbroek so we also visited it.