Austria, Italy and Germany

FYI - this is a bit of a work in progress still...more info and pictures to come...soon!

Wow, ok I know its been a while since we’ve updated the blog, and hey probably most of you haven’t noticed, except for our die hard daily checkers, which that may consist of my mom and Cheryl…considering my mom is on this trip Cheryl here is the long awaited update!

June 11: My (E’s) mom arrived today, Leslie and I took the train from Cologne to Frankfurt Airport and met her. We took a taxi to pick up our rental car. Today is my first day driving in Europe, it’s a little unnerving since I have almost no idea what any of the signs mean and we just found out that in Italy we won’t have any support from the Rental Co because they don’t rent cars there….great. We got a little Audi A3 2.0 liter diesel wagon. It is really a nice car. It rained quite a bit and I thought there was a speed limit in the rain…130kph (~80mph), although I just found out that there is still no speed limit in the rain unless posted. Probably a good thing I didn’t know that at the time.

June 12: Packed for our trip to Austria and Italy. Worked on getting our 6 month pass…met with a guy, registered with our city that we live here, etc…

June 13: 10:45am and we are on our way, today is the first day for a nice sunny day driving on the Autobahn. Quite an experience, after doing this I know why the Germans build cars the way they do. When traffic was light we were able to drive 180-200kph (~112-124mph) typically, that is pretty fun and intense for a couple of hours in a row…very cool experience. Downhill we were able to hit 225kph (~140mph) one time that was about as much as the car had. Leslie was our trusty navigator, we had Mapquest directions, but they were pretty much worthless, thankfully she took control of the maps and kept us pointed in the right direction…almost all the time. Well enough of the driving stuff for now.

We arrived in Innsbruck in the evening, our hotel was great, right in the middle of the old town, close to the Inn river, and in the rain. We walked around the town a little bit and found a nice little restaurant close to the river that served pretty much everything, and I had a local beer, Zipfer.

June 14: Today we had a full day in Innsbruck, we didn’t really know what to do here so we started walking, breaking my mom into our way of traveling. The Winter Olympics were held here twice and they still have the huge ski jump looking over the city. We set out to walk up to it and get a view of the Austrian Alps. On the way we found a bunch of shops with local stuff and tourist crap as usual. On our way we also visited an impressive Rococo church at the edge of the city. We made it up to the ski jump and got some amazing views of the city and mountains, plus a pretty exciting jaywalking experience to get across a blind curve with cars flying by, it wasn’t exactly set up well for walking. We walked all the way back to the old town where we were staying and then took another walk to the gardens that were close by and finished up with a walk back along the river, the river ran very fast here out of the Alps. My mom and Leslie both bought some jewelry at Swarovski, they are located in Innsbruck and had an over the top store with lots of crystals, check out the pictures. We went to a little local pub within the old town for dinner and had some basic bar food, Austrian style, and another local beer, good as usual, much like Germany.

June 15: Packed up and headed for the meat or should I say pasta of our trip, we’re off to Venice today, leaving promptly in the morning at 10:45am again. Once again I’m a little nervous about driving since we are headed to Italy and I know it is not quite as orderly as Germany…or should I say kind of like Tijuana…but worse with Vespas everywhere in between. Although I’ll have to say since we were going only to Venice I didn’t really get any city driving opportunity until we hit Florence. And driving on the Autostrada (Italian Autobahn) is about the same but with speed limits (unfortunately). All was good except for heavy traffic just before getting into Venice, which we later found out was do to a tornado warning outside of the city and the bridge, into and out of Venice was closed. Once we got to the parking lot we caught a vaporetti (boat bus) to our hotel. No one was at the front desk when we got there so we scored some tea crackers from the breakfast room and checked out the view out of the balcony, overlooking a canal. Our room was near the Ca‘d’Oro stop and was recently renovated with air conditioning, a great plus for the area, last time Leslie and I were in Venice the air conditioning was not overly conditioning. We still ended up getting there early enough that we were able to get out and see the city, we were close to the Rialto bridge, so we headed there and Leslie and my mom shopped for some souvenirs. My mom ended up picking up a cool oil painting of Venice. Once the sun went down we sat down for a late dinner at an outdoor pizzeria, with a piano enticing walkers by. The food and music combined for the perfect Venetian atmosphere. We finished off the night with one of the great thrills of this trip; we walked to San Marcos square, which as usual is heavily covered in tourists, but at night much better than during the day. The orchestras were battling with each of there own versions of ‘Phantom of the Opera’, ‘New York, New York” and a plethora of other songs Leslie remembers. But unlike our last ‘dry’ trip to Venice the square was flooded and the remaining tourists were wading through the water with their pants rolled up and their shoes in their hands. Leslie was first to dive in and soon all three of us were enjoying the moment and scene. The pictures don’t quite do it justice but do give you a good idea of what it was like. The final note, not exactly the romantic finale you were looking for, but we did figure out how they fool tourists into walking away with all the pigeon poo that covers the square during the day….kind of gross, but hey when in Rome or Venice for that matter.

Also not to forget we started our Gelato tasting contest that would end up consisting of at least one to two Gelato stops per day.

June 16: Day 2 in Venice, Leslie froze her ass off in the room last night. After breakfast Leslie realized that her hair was messed up and sticking out so she used her curling iron to fix it and accidentally burnt the side of her face! (Leslie starts writing)… OK… so Eric, Denese, and I walked all over Venice today. It is such a cool place to just explore. Getting lost here is fun, so that is exactly what we set out to do. First we went to St Marks Square and went into the Basilica. The Basilica was covered in gold tiles on the inside. We then went to The Venetian Palace right next door. The Palace was were the Duke lived and all the governmental branches were located. The prison was across a canal and connected by a bridge named “The Bridge of Sighs” because of the beautiful view the prisoners saw through the windows as they were sent to the prisons. Many drawings and carvings were still in the prison cells. Then we went to get a bite to eat at a bar behind the Square. After we ate Eric and I took Denese to the Spiral Staircase, but unfortunately it was being renovated. Then we crossed the Accademia Bridge and walked to the Lagoon were the cruise shipped sailed in and out. Later that night we had dinner at “Trattoria agli Artisti” and I had the best pasta of our trip… shrimp, zucchini, tomato, and pasta with olive oil. After dinner we went to St Marks Square again for

Home in Germany, Bacharach and Cologne

May 30 - June 7: Not much new to report here, we spent most of this time relaxing in Wutha Farnroda, my dad got into town while we were off in Amsterdam. We have spent the last week doing some errands, working in the yard, and meeting some of my dad's friends and a few different bbq's...German style...lots of bratwurst and beer. We also went to Church in the woods to see Eric's Dad sing in the chior (yes in German!). We didn't really understand anything that was going on but there was some cool music, check out the horns in the pictures. They also served beer at this Church Festival (very cool).

June 8: Grabbed another bus and train ride out of WF this morning and traveled to the Rhine valley...where we stayed in a small town called Bacharach. When we got off the train, we hopped onto rocky grassy ground, not exactly what we have been accustomed to, while arriving in big cities. The town had one 'major' street and the street we stayed on was actually more what I would call a sidewalk/alley...let's just say you couldn't drive your SUV down it. We stayed with a lady named Irmgard Orth, she rented out a couple of rooms and was a very sweet old lady. She spoke practically no English but was overly excited about our attempts to converse with her in German. She served homemade honey and jams with breakfast. We ended up buying a jar of honey...as the Germans say 'Es Schmeckt'. It was very hot but did a Rick Steves walking tour of the town and climbed another crap load of steps to Burg Stahleck Castle, it now operates as a youth hostel and is very well preserved, we hung out there a little while and enjoyed the views of the Rhein valley. During our walking tour we also saw a few of the high water marks (popular in Germany) where past flood waters have risen too. Very much of the town wall is still intact and we had dinner outdoors on the top of it at a place called Land Restaurant Stuber then followed that up with wine tasting at Weingut Karl Heidrich. Although the picture doesn't do it justice a GIANT BEE was flying around the entire time we were in the restaurant. After kidding Leslie about it crawling on her shoulder when we lost sight of it, she later fled from our bench seat only to point and tell me to stay still while she escaped and the bee slowly crawled up my back onto my shoulder...finally my life was saved as she swatted the bee away from a distance.

June 9: Took the Rhine river boat an hour down the river to St. Goar for the day. This was a quick 45 minute ride passing the famous Loreley along the way. The Loreley is actually only a big cliff along the Rhein, but has a tale that goes along with it of a beautiful women that sung a song that often led sailors to their fate, with their ships running aground. When we passed by this point all of the German tourists began to sing Heinrich Heine's Song of Loreley. Pretty amazing considering the reserved German culture and stereotype. We spent the day in St. Goar touring the Burg Rheinfels Castle ruins. Very cool place with lots of good views. During its heyday the castle was capable of housing the 4000 townspeople during seighes. They were capable of survival for six months with their own pantry, slaughterhouse, wine cellar, prison, etc... We took an optional detour or the 'fox hole' which was a series of tunnels only three feet high, that were used to set explosives against enemy attacks underground outside the walls of the castle. These tunnels provided them a means to kill hundreds of would be attackers at a time. The ones we were in were never blown up. So to the exciting part...the length of the tunnel was 600 feet long, assuming no wrong turns are made, and yes there were several turns to be made. It was recommended to use a flashlight, but if you were overly prepared like us you could wing it with a couple of candles (only 50 cents each). There were many alternate routes, not clearly marked, luckily with the directions from our book we were able to make it though. It was a scary experience, because it is literally pitch black, wet with muddy slippery floors and with the candle light it was impossible to see any of the wall markings that we would eventually recognize when looking at our pictures later. We were both about ready to turn around after the first corner and realization we had no idea what we were doing and we were all by ourselves...but we went for it anyway. Later that day we took another boat back to Bacharach and went out for wine tasting at another location. This time we were given 15 glasses to taste, after polishing off the first one the waitress informed us we weren't supposed to drink the whole glass at once...apparently she didn't really understand why we were 'tasting' the wine.


June 10: Took the train this morning to Cologne for a quick one day visit. We added Cologne in since we were going to pick up my mom from Frankfurt the following day. It was Leslie's first trip there and she definitely thought it was worth it to see the Kolner Dom (Cologne Cathedral). It is probably one of the most impressive Cathedrals I have ever seen with thousands of stained glass windows that were preserved during the second world war by being stored underground in what is now the German Roman Museum. We completed the hike to the top of the bell tower, 400 plus steps, the last 100 or so are up the center of one of the towers in a metal scaffolding, Leslie was about ready to turn around as we were both feeling a little weak in the knees and stomach. The final few step were up a small spiral staircase that let to the landing above, we spent the next ten minutes or so watching the faces of other tourists reaching the 'summit'. Pretty entertaining. Besides that we didn't do too much there, we had dinner at a big tourist spot, it used to be the 'Kolsch' brewery...now they just serve the local beer there and local food.

The End of Amsterdam - Beginning Belgium

May 27: Today the weather changed from mid 60's to the high 50's and a little bit of rain too. Today was our free day to spend anyway we like. So we slept in late and went to the Irish Pub down the street from our apartment. Eric wanted to watch the Formula 1 race held in Monaco. It was fun chilling at the pub with the locals. Then we went out walking through the Jordan area of Amsterdam. Eric had a guide book that mapped out a nice walk and interesting little facts about the area along the way. We ate some dinner, packed up our stuff in the evening and went to bed.

May 28: Today was walked to Eric Hespenheide's office building to drop off the keys. Then we hiked it back to the train station to catch a train to Brugge. We had a transfer during this trip in which we missed one of our trains. No problem, we just caught the next one that came an hour later. Once we got into Brugge we made our way along Market Square to our Bed and Breakfast. The Bed and Breakfast was in a very old mansion about a 5 minute walk from Market Square (the center of the city). Our room was very large with our own bathroom that over looked the garden. It was a bargain because it was only 65 Euro per night and it included a huge European style breakfast!

There was just a little bit of time left for some of the things we wanted to do here, so we went straight to the Bell Tower for a tour. The tour was straight up to the top over 300 very small,and narrow stairs!

We went to dinner at a little Italian joint down the road. The food was so good.... it was prepared by the husband and the wife was serving the whole restaurant! There were only the two of them that ran the whole place! It was a good recommendation that we read from our Rick Steve's book, as was the Bed and Breakfast!

May 29: There was coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice, yogurt, croissants, rolls, bread, homemade jam/jellies, cheese, and meat! I am sure I missed somethings, but wow.... it was very good. We met a couple our first morning there at breakfast who had been traveling on their vacation through France and Belgium. They were very helpful and full of information on Paris and Normandy. They gave us a name of a man who gives great D-Day tours etc. Then we were off for our first and only full day of Brugge. We went first (of course) to the Half Maan (moon) brewery and did the beer tour. This tour included a glass of their blond beer. It was great! The tour guide was very good, humorous and entertaining, but very knowledgeable in the Belgium Beer arena. Eric bought a logo glass from the bar and then it was time for lunch and waffles. The Belgium's eat waffles only in the afternoon, not for breakfast! I think Eric and I might just go back to Belgium for a waffle one day! They were sooooooo good.... I got mine with powdered sugar and Eric's had whipped cream all over it (Audra, you would not like this very much!) with strawberries on top! Once we were done eating our waffles (in like 2 seconds) we went to get a little bit of Belgium Chocolate at a little recommended shop called Dumon! Here a woman, with her two daughters, make all kinds of chocolates in there shop. I have never tasted chocolate like this..... It just might ruin it for me when I am no longer in Belgium. Then we went to the house for a little rest. The little rest lasted for a few hours of sleep!

Pictures at last...