WOO HOO Europe here we come!!! or All the castles and pastries in Europe!

In a very un-Self like move we decided to go to Europe, less than two months before it was time to go! For all of you who know my hubby and I you know we like to plan and then plan again. So, for us to decided to go on such a huge trip weeks before was very out of the ordinary. Here's what happened... Adam's uncle is a Dr. in the Navy Reserves and was stationed in Germany this Spring. When he found out aver a year ago, he invited Adam's parents to come over and make a trip out of it. So they did, as well as his other aunt and uncle. Then as a coincidence Tyler and Lauren were going to be in Israel with their church and flying back through Germany and decided to stay and be with the rest of the fam. So that left us. So we prayed about it, a lot, asked SG's teacher what we'd miss out in school (and she said "nothing") and then we asked my parents to watch the girls... and they said YES!!! I have the greatest parents ever! So, I headed to the passport office and off we went! (If this all seems like more info than you'd want to know, this is also my personal journal of the trip, sorry.) We left on Tuesday, 5/12, about 5:00PM and flew overnight, direct to Frankfurt. It was a 9 hr 45 minute flight and neither of us slept a second. We had our own TV's and we caught up on all the movies we hadn't seen this year. We should have slept. When we arrived on Wednesday 5/13 it was 1:45 AM our time and 7:45 AM in Germany and we had a full day of sights to see! We went and met Tyler and Lauren at their hotel (they flew in the night before). We used their room to freshen up and change clothes, and then drove to meet the rest of the fam (who had been there a few days already) at our first castle. Burg Eltz was a beautiful castle in a valley with a moat around it. It was originally 3 homes joined together by 3 families that made up one castle. One family still has a home in part of it. It was beautiful, but there are no pics allowed so there are only some outside shots. We ate lunch there, chicken nuggets and bratwurst, and discovered just how strong the language barrier was going to be! After lunch we drove along the Mosel River, which was beautiful. It would have been even more fun if I could have kept my eyes open. We arrived at our hotel about 9 PM and met the rest of the family for dinner in the restaurant and I had my first taste of German food, schnitzel (deep fried pork) with mushrooms and fries. Europeans put fries with everything and they are very proud of them. Most of them taste like the ones from Burger King, nothing special - I don't get it? So, we finally go up to our room and I was not amused! It was the tiniest room ever, and old (carpet from the 60's)! You could kick the bed from the hall and our luggage wouldn't fit inside! There was only pillow and one towel and no closet! I would have found it funny if I hadn't been awake for over 40 hours, and had just ate schnitzel at 10PM (not a good idea)! We got our room swapped and hit the hay (we overslept by almost 2 hrs the next day...we were so tired)! Thursday, 5/14, Rhine River Day Our first real day on the trip. Like I said it started off rough, with a phone call saying "where are you, we're in the van..." They were all ready, on time, and we were still in bed and hadn't showered in 2 days! So we changed our plans a bit, showered, ate a granola bar in the car and headed to do a cruise on the Rhine River (instead of going to France). It's neat to see how the Lord works, France ended up being my favorite country of the trip and had we gone on the first day like we had planned, it would've been rainy and cold and we would not have done all we got to do (and we got to sleep in, BONUS). We had to wait a bit for our boat to arrive so we ate lunch in a cute town, St Goar, and shopped until it was time to cruise. The cruise took you down the river past tons of castles and pretty towns with beautiful churches. We sat outside, pretty chilly (about 40 degrees), but neat to see everything close up. After we got off the boat we walked around another really pretty town, Bacharach. It was one of my favorite towns of the trip. Maybe because it was one of the first and very German. It was small, cobblestoned, quiet, and had lots of old painted houses. We walked around and explored for a long time, shopped for a while and then headed to Landschul, where the military hospital was, and met Adam's uncle for dinner at a GREAT Italian place - one of the best meals of the trip. There are great Italian places everywhere and lots of gelato! After dinner I had the best ice cream/gelato (tiramisu) I've ever had ANYWHERE! Then we headed back to our hotel. Friday, 5/15, Luxembourg & Belgium We ate breakfast at the hotel... rolls, jams, deli meat and cheeses (took some getting used to) and then all piled in our 9 passenger blue FIAT van and hit the autobahn. We went to Luxembourg first - the whole country is about the size of Gwinnett and DeKalb counties combined, seriously. We went to a WWII Museum. It was really interesting and if something was used in the war, in any way, by anyone, at anytime it was in this museum. Wow! Fortunately I'm a girl who likes war stuff so I really enjoyed it. After touring it for a couple of hours we headed outside to climb on the tanks! It was like an adult jungle gym. Afterwards we popped open our umbrellas, tied on our scarves and headed through to streets to find lunch. We ate at a cute French bakery and I got to brush off my high school French. Then it was back in the FIAT and off to Belgium, about 40 minutes and some very unexpected back roads later! Gotta love GPS! Our first stop was the Mardasson Memorial in Bastogne/Battle of the Bulge. I mentioned before I like war stuff and also I love the HBO series Band of Brothers. It's a true story about "E" Company, a regiment of paratroopers in WWII and all they went through from D-Day to the end of the war. Bastogne was where they had one of the toughest times/battles of the war and they stuck it out and saved the town from the Nazis. It was really neat to see the memorial and to see the guys (who I felt I knew) names on the wall. After we left there, I asked if we could make a detour to the ACTUAL woods where they fought and dug their fox holes. I had done a little research and thought I could get us there, and had read that the fox holes were still there. And I did! And the fox holes were still there, everywhere, pretty well defined. There were also petrified pieces of exploded pine trees from the battle right where they had fallen 70 years ago. It was so quiet in the woods, and Adam and I were the only ones there. It was really amazing to know what these guys went through right where we stood. After Bastogne, we went to a fortress in Bouillon, Belgium (from the 1100's). Adam's aunt knew about it and it was so much fun! It was very Lord of the Rings and it was self-guided. There were tons of tiny, damp, and very dark passage ways. There were dungeons, a torture chamber with the original equipment, and beautiful courtyards complete with live birds of prey. We were the last people there that day and had it to ourself. It was so much fun following these little alleys and steep stairs carved out of rock into all of these hidden rooms and turrets. We worked up quite an appetite and found a place in town on the river, at Mount Blanc, and I had a pizza with ham, chicken, pineapple, and prunes...it was good. And the dessert was amazing, banana crepes with "creole" sauce on top. The guys had chocolate Belgian waffles. They had to have a Belgian waffle in Belgium.Saturday, 5/16, France!

Breakfast at our hotel and off to Strasburg we went. We met up with all of Adam's family and went to Notre Dame cathedral. Yes, there are 2 Notre Dames, the other is in Paris. It was gorgeous, huge, beautiful, amazing, ornate... WOW! We toured the church for a while and watched a neat clock put on a little show and then we walked around town and shopped. After some jewelry shopping we ate flammkuchen (a crepe-like pizza with ham, onion and brie cheese) with Tyler and Lauren at a cafe (very French!) in front of the church and then had an AMAZING chocolate mousse pastry from a nearby bakery. My French was coming back to me, I was able to understand a lot more than I could speak, but I was able to give sensible enough answers to get my point across. As the day went on I got a little better. After Strasburg we drove along the Wine Road, to Colmar. We stopped in a beautiful little old town and I bought more pastries and actually got to use my French a couple of more times and I don't think they knew I was American! We shopped for a while and then went on to Colmar, France. Colmar is a really neat town. One of my favs of the trip ( this whole day was my overal fav)! We went to an interesting museum, the Unterlinden, and then explored the town. Along the way I got a toasted baguette with Munster (stinky) cheese and bacon on it from a street vendor. He only spoke French and he tried to tell me I was ordering the "local" cheese. I knew, and told him I liked it (in French) and it was really good. You did have to get used to the smell but it was good and the bread was really yummy. Adam even liked it. After our stinky baguette we ended up in Petite Venice. It is a quaint, old part of town with canals, bridges and houses built right on the water. It was GORGEOUS!!!!! You had to remind yourself this was NOT DISNEY it was REAL! The cutest thing was when I went to take a pic of this one really pretty house (really brightly colored with beautiful flowers) and when I got closer there was a little old French man leaning out of his 2nd story window planting flowers in his window box. Little old American men are cute, but little old French men planting flowers...come on! On our way back through the streets we found another bakery (this is the 4th of the DAY, if you're counting) and I got to use my French one last time and I ordered us all chocolate torsades. They are long ( about 18 inches), braided, chocolate filled pastries covered in a crunchy sugary shell! Vive la French pastries!!!!!!

Sunday, 5/17, Heidelberg, Germany

Last breakfast at our hotel in Bosen. Adam's aunt and uncle flew back to the states and we packed up and headed South and East for the 2nd half of our trip. On the way we stopped for some beautiful pics in a mustard field. They were everywhere, and went on forever, bright yellow! When the sun shined on the hills they glowed. We met up with Adam's other aunt and uncle in a town called Heidelberg. The town was not quite what I had pictured. Not as small and quaint as the others we had been in, but it ended up being a great day. We had no real plans, so we found a neat restaurant and sat outside and people watched while we enjoyed an interesting meal... I say interesting but maybe I should say adventurous. I had escargot (so did Adam and Tyler)! Snails! Yup me! 2 of them, by choice, and liked them! If you like mushrooms you'd like snails. It's totally mind over matter! For my entree I got venison ravioli. Sounds safe right? Ravioli is not ravioli in Germany. It was an entire venison meatLOAF wrapped in a green sheet of pasta with a mushroom sauce. The first 2-3 bites were alright, but after that it was just bite after bite of thick, gummy venison patty and cream sauce. Not my best meal, but very German, they love meat. After lunch we did some antique shopping and then went to another castle. It sat WAY UP on the mountain and was more than just a hike! But it was pretty and we needed to walk off our snails. ;0) After the castle we all had dessert (I had apple strudel) and we said goodbye to the other aunt and uncle and headed off just the 6 of us. We were on our way to Munich via Baden-Baden and the Black Forest. It was quite the detour, that cost us about 4 hours of time in the car we hadn't planned on. We did see some neat places along the way but mostly it was just a lot of stop and go traffic (yes there is traffic on the autobahn) and some grouchy/slap happy people piled in a big blue van! We stopped at a German truck stop for dinner. Really. And they had a Burger King! And it tasted like BK! It was great! "American" products in Europe do not taste like home... Coke is NOT Coke...! After the truck stop, we rigged our portable DVD player up and hung it from the ceiling of the FIAT and tried to watch the Sound of Music to get us in the mood for Austria the next day. The volume didn't work so we tried to watch the movie, in silence, and as it swung, sometimes violently, from the ceiling in stop and go traffic. Some time after 11PM we got to our hotel in Munich (which was really nice!) and went to bed.Monday, 5/18 Salzburg, Austria

Croissant and a cherry strudel for breakfast with an Adelholzner. Sounds like a beer but it's this yummy orange, guava, carrot juice they have there. And then we went to Austria. We made a couple of pretty little detours along the way, and arrived about 12PM. We went to Mirabell Gardens first on our way to find something to eat. It was the place in Sound of Music where the kids danced around the Pegasus fountain and sang "Do, Re, Mi". Then we had some more great Italian food, angel hair with shrimp, in a Beergarten and went to Salzburg Cathedral (which was heavily bombed in WWII) and toured it. Then we got some gelato and went through St Peters cemetery. The plots in the cemetery are rented by the families 12 yrs at a time and each grave is a mini garden maintained by those families. Some family plots were still being maintained from the 1500's and some graves were from 2009. It was so pretty. The graves were every color of the rainbow and had beautiful old, ornate, iron markers on them. After the cemetery it was castle time, Castle Hohensalzburg. It felt like more of a museum than a castle and was more modern than any we had been in before. But it had amazing views of the Alps and the city below. After we came down I found an apple strudel! The real deal Austrian apple strudel! The guys had their waffles in Belgium and I had this! And I did not share! :) We walked around the city some more (very commercial and "big city" feel) and shopped and saw the house where Mozart was born and then headed back to Munich. Adam, Lauren and I went to dinner at our hotel and had a great, and very relaxed meal. I had potato soup (AMAZING), not to be confused with the potato soup I'd have a few days later, and tiramisu. Tuesday, 5/19, Bavarian Castles & Oberammergau, Germany

We had more pastries for breakfast...apple strudel and a different cherry one and Adlehozner. This was to be one of our favorite and longest days of the trip...but a GREAT one. We started with castle Schloss Hoheschwangau (The High Place of Swan) and toured it. It was so pretty, and very new in comparison to those we had seen...built in the 1800's, and it had electricity. It was IN THE ALPS! Beautiful! And the castle sat above a lake and a pretty little town with lots of horse drawn carriages! After the castle we went down to the lake and looked around. The water was crystal clear and the color of the tropics.

We walked down to the town below and took a carriage ride up (way up) to castle Schloss Neuschwanstein (Walt Disney used it for Sleeping Beauty's castle). It was INCREDIBLE!!! The King that lived there built it as his fairytale castle and it was. This guy was nuts but he liked fancy things! Once again no pics allowed but pics wouldn't do it justice anyway! After we toured the castle we ate lunch at neat place at the foot of castle.

The place was neat but the food was not the best. This is where I had my 2nd bowl of "potato" soup. NOT potato soup! The night before I had the best potato soup ever and this stuff, well.... not potato soup! So, I compensated and had a Belgian waffle with cooked apples and berries for dessert! :) You will be shocked to know that I did NOT gain ANY weight on this trip, even after eating my way through every patisserie in Europe (with many more still to come)! We did a lot of walking!!!!! We had planned on doing these 2 castles and then learned that the same king, Ludwig, had a 3rd not far away. So we did it too! - Schloss Linderhof, his Summer house, and where he actually lived most of the time. If the first 2 were fancy and ornate this one was off the charts!!!! Like I said the king was CRAZY (literally, mentally unstable) but he could decorate! You could stand in any room for days and never see all of it. It was amazing! There was gold DRIPPING from everything, and candles and mirrors and paintings....! And fountains (all gold), and flowers and he even built himself a man made grotto - an under ground cave with a lake and waterfall (all fake, but looked real) where he'd listen to operas. Once again no pics, but if you're ever over there it's a must see! I did not have a dessert of any kind after Linderhof. After Linderhof we went to a nearby town known for it's once-a-decade passion play and wood carvings ($$$$), Oberammmergau. We got there too late to shop, which was probably not a bad thing, and found somewhere to eat dinner. This town was also in the Alps and at the bottom of Mt St Benoit. We ate outside, at a hotel facing the Mtn and listened to really loud American country music...odd. Adam and I had another flammkuchen (pizza thing) with goat cheese, arugula and tomato and then I had it! It! THE dessert I didn't know I had been missing all my life! Caramelized lemon parfait with warm, wild berry compote! Ya'll!!! It was a lemon custard/sherbert/ice cream stuff caramelized like creme brule on top with all these funky stewed berries poured over it. HOLY COW, OH MY YUM! It was warm, crunchy, cold, and fruity all in one!Wednesday, 5/20, Munich, Dachau & Rothenburg Germany We got up early and headed into Munich via the subway. When we got to the city (about an 8 minute ride) we looked for breakfast. Guess what? I had a pastry, a chocolate/hazelnut croissant. But I tried to balance that by buying a bag of cherries at a fruit stand. We walked through the market place and found the flower market. It was very Disney. We saw a cute little old nun in full nun attire buying flowers. If we had been staying in Munich another night I would have bought some flowers for our hotel room. It smelled amazing. After the market went to the Hofbrauhaus, the oldest, and largest beer hall in Germany. All the guys wanted to see it. So we went, yes the pastor and his sons in a beer hall. But to their credit, it was 9 AM and empty. We walked/shopped around town and then headed back to our hotel to check out and go to our next destination. Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Like I said before, I'm interested in all things WWII and several of us wanted to go to a camp while in Germany. Dachau (Schindler's List) was a labor camp where the stronger of the people went to work at subcamps making ammunition for the German army. When they got sick or too weak to work they were sent away to extermination camps like Auschwitz, or cremated on the grounds. They did have a gas chamber and crematorium. We walked in both, and it was strange to be where they had been and to try imagine their fear. We also saw the gallows where they were hung, walked along the execution range and blood ditch where inmates were shot, saw their unmarked graves, saw the barbed wire still embedded in the trees along the creek, and walked through the barracks where they lived in such horrible conditions. After we toured the camp and barracks we went in to see the movie. It was horrible, very graphic. I was glad we saw it after we saw the camp because I was physically sick. I couldn't look back outside... to know you were just standing where you saw these horrible things happen... it was too much! I cried. On a happier note, our next destination (we stayed over night) was much more quaint. We drove along the Romantic Road (appropriately named). It's a pretty drive through dozens of little old towns in the country. When we arrived in Rothenburg, we checked into our B & B, which was cute and had huge rooms and baths, and then hit the town. It was beautiful, like nothing we had ever seen and is very hard to describe. It's one of the oldest, most well preserved medieval towns in Europe. It's totally enclosed inside the original walls from 1300's and there is not a modern building in sight. There are no cars allowed in the town unless you are staying in one of the B & B's so it's very quiet. We found a great restaurant for dinner, and the owner had a sweet dog that waited by our table for scraps. (In Europe they love their dogs, they're everywhere, they stay IN the hotels, come on trains, come IN the restaurants and aren't on leashes.) After our meal we hurried to the highlight of our time in Rothenburg, The Night Watchman's tour. In the middle ages guys with big ax-like swords walked around and guarded the town from bad guys at night. This guy dresses in full attire and takes you on a walking tour through the city at night and tells FUNNY stories of middle age life and some history of the town. It was so fun, he was hilarious, and very interesting. When our tour was over we did the wall walk. You can walk the 1 1/2 mile wall around the city. It was really pretty at night. After our walk we got a local dessert, SURPRISE! They're called Schneeballentraums, or Schneeballs. It's balls of fried piecrust dipped in different flavors, Adam had choc and I had cinm-sugar. They were really good. I had 3 while we were in town. :) Then it was back to our B & B for some rest before another day of exploring Rothenburg. Thursday, 5/21 Rothenburg (day 2) & Wurzburg, Frankfurt PM We ate breakfast at our B & B the next morning and then did some shopping. We went to the neatest Christmas store, it's hard to explain, but if there were a Disney park of all Christmas stuff, that might be kind of like this place. It was level after level of all things Christmas and was decorated like you were walking through a snow-covered old town at night. After dropping a few Euros there, we stopped by the church in town to look around, and they were having an organ recital, with 500+ pipe organ, OH MY GOODNESS! It was like nothing I've ever heard, like a movie. After the recital we looked around the church and at an amzing wood carving from 500 years ago depicting scenes of Christ's life. We left the church and walked through some gorgeous gardens tucked away along the city walls and then did another part of the wall walk again during the day. There were some gorgeous views. After our walk we found a great place for lunch and did some more shopping. I found one last dessert I had to try, apple pizza, and then we packed our bags and headed to our 4th and final hotel in Frankfurt. On our way we stopped in another city along the Romantic Road, Wurzburg. In Wurzburg we toured the Grand Residenz. It was the palace of the archbishop of the region hundreds of years ago. It was beautiful, ballroom after ballroom of amazing art, huge chandeliers and amazing views of the gardens outside. What you think of when you think "palace". After our tour we piled in the FIAT one last time and headed to our hotel. When we arrived, the hotel was great, very contemporary and Swiss. Like a really fancy IKEA. We ate downstairs in the restaurant and had a great meal and talked about our fav parts/places of the trip. And I had one more great dessert! :)

Unlike some trips (Hawaii) I was ready to come home. It was a great trip but we felt like fish out of water much of the time. I was not looking forward to the almost 12 hours of sitting in the middle seat of a plane but I was ready to go. When we gotto the airport, we ate and then went to our gate. While we were waiting to board our names were called over the intercom. We went to the counter and were told we'd been upgraded to Buisness Elite. It's 1st class on steroids! We got HUGE fully reclining seats (all the way flat, like a bed), individual down comforters, noise canceling headphones, hot towels, snacks and were presented with quite the menu of dinner choices! We were SOO SOOO SOOO excited. It was like an extension of our vacation! I know I sound like a broken record but the food really was the best part. We had warm toasted nuts, an appetizer sampler with soup, salad, and deli meats, dinner was pasta, steak, veggies, cheese tray w/fruit, & ice cream sundaes (pick your own toppings), warm choc chip cookies, & chick and pesto sandwiches and brownies for our next meal! Seriously, we ate it all over the course of our 10 hour flight! I might have a gained a lb or 2 on the way home. We had a short stop on NYC and then it was home and to our kids, beds and then straight to the lake the next AM for Memorial Day weekend.