Verazzano in Tuscany, Italy
Cotswolds, England
Frankfurt, Germany
Cinque Terre, Italy
Capri, Italy
Temple of Heaven in Beijing, China
Barcelona, Spain
Budapest, Hungary
Siena, Italy 
Volpaia, Italy This is a little late, but I wanted to put in some pictures from Athens. Better late, than never. In early 2008 we were well on our way to Denmark. We were packing up, giving things away, storing stuff, and fitting all our ‘must have possessions’ in a 1 cubic meter box for shipment to DK. We said ‘see ya later’ to old friends and ‘mojn’ to new friends; we started learning new languages; making a list of places to visit while we’re in Europe and checking them off...
Here are the memorable moments from our travels in 2008.
*Note: It might take a few moments to load and it has music.
I don’t have any excuses. I could make up some big elaborate story about how busy I’ve been for the past few months working two jobs and volunteering, but well…that just wouldn’t be all that accurate.
So, here’s the recap of our 3 week European Tour in July 2008.
5 – the number of countries visited (Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Germany, Switzerland)
18 – the number of nights in hotels
16 – the number of billy goats we saw on Mt. Pilatus, Switzerland
208 – the number of steps climbed to get to the Prague Castle
509 - the number of gross, stinky, unbearable steps up the south tower at the Cologne Cathedral
12 – the number of cities visited (Prague, Oswiecim, Vienna, Hallstatt, Salzburg, Munich, Lucerne, Interlaken, Baden-Baden, Mainz, Trier, Cologne)
4230 – the number of kilometers driven
0 – the number of kilometers Holly drove :)
$609 USD – the amount spent on diesel
1074 – the number of digital photos taken
400 – the number of pictures worth keeping
Chuck's favorites
The last few slideshows from our summer tour are finally posted. Here's a short summary.
Day 8-9 - Munich, Germany
Munich (Munchen) was probably our favorite city to visit on our summer holiday. We were fortunate to be there for Munich’s 850th birthday celebration. I imagine it was similar or a lower-key Oktoberfest. Munich sure knows how to throw a party!
The slideshow is pretty self explanatory. Many of the pictures are from the ‘free tour’ of Munich, which is really a college student giving an organized tour and working for tips. Munich is a city rich in history and we would definitely go back in a heartbeat. You could easily spend a week in Munich and visit some of the nearby sites that are within an hour or so drive.
Day 15 - Black Forest and Baden-Baden, Germany
I don’t think we really ever found the Black Forest because we just saw regular old forests, but you can be the judge with the pictures in the slideshow.
Baden-Baden is gorgeous. It was a rainy and overcast day, so the pictures just don’t do it justice. As we drove out of Baden-Baden, Chuck said, “This is a city that you’d want to live in, not just visit.”
Day 16-17- Trier, Mosel River Valley and Mainz, Germany
Trier was a cute little town with a nice pedestrian walkway through the old town. It doesn't appear to be a big tourist location, but nontheless, we had a nice time. And, Chuck was able to visit Karl Marx's home.
There are vineyards for miles and miles along the Mosel River Valley. The route along the Mosel River takes you through quaint towns all with summer wine festivals.
The Rhine river runs through Mainz, Germany and is a great tourist spot for cruising the river. We spent a quick 24 hours in Mainz walking through the pedestrian area and staying at the Hyatt. Our stay was toward the end of our trip and I must say, the bed at the Hyatt was the most comfortable bed of the whole trip!
Day 17-18 - Cologne, Germany
The last days of our European Summer tour in 2008 were spent in Cologne. It's a huge, huge, huge city and it's probably the dirtiest of all the cities we visited. However, the Cologne Cathedral makes up for it. That is one impressive structure. Look at the scale in the slideshow. We couldn't even get a picture that included the whole building. It's HUGE!
On the right hand side under Travel Maps, you will find a map of our European Summer Vacation and the route we took or click here. We started in Denmark, but our first stop was Prague (Praha), Czech Republic. Our last stop was Cologne (Koln), Germany. You can click on a bubble and read the short summary or click on the link, which will take you to the blog entry and/or the slideshow.
NB: This was my first attempt at using the video feature on my relatively basic camera and putting it on the blog. Hopefully it will play correctly.
The swans are typically fed tons of bread by tourists, so it surprised us to see swans that weren't so lucky actually searching for food. Here's one Swan's adventure.
Here's what happens when you feed the swans...
Cheers! Skål ! Salud! Prost! Na zdraví!
Here's Chuck's attempt at soaking up..err drinking up...some local culture while on our 18-day whirlwind tour of Europe.
Chuck and I went to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC a few years ago. It’s one thing to read about the Holocaust in a book and another thing to face pictures, diagrams, and artifacts. We both left the Holocaust museum feeling a greater sense of responsibility for our own actions and the actions of others. In particular the DC museum went out of its way to tie the social actions of WWII to the present with a large information center on Darfur . It would have been easier to dismiss events of cultures past and foreign to us, but as Darfur is STILL happening today, the overall museum has a greater impact.
Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camps in Oscwiecm, Poland gave us the same feeling of responsibility through their sheer magnitude. Auschwitz I is in town and could be thought of as a true labor camp (although many human rights violations occurred there as well). Auschwitz I is what the Nazi’s showed the Red Cross when questions arose. The first few slides are from Auschwitz I and show barrack style sleeping quarters in brick buildings, streets, streetscaping including trees and there was even a swimming pool.
Auschwitz II (Birkenau) is several kilometers outside of town in a wide open field, and it is one of the sights we refer to when we talk of the genocide. Its size and openness hides what we all know. The pictures in the slideshow probably won’t convey our feelings of amazement and shame. It is important to understand that the gas chambers of Birkenau were fully operational for only 2 months and in that time >400,000 Hungarian Jews were exterminated. As with the DC museum, it would be easy to dismiss the large scale industrialization of “The Final Solution” as a foreign problem, something that would never happen in America … but the field of chimneys was a ghostly reminder of the Allied saturation bombings in Europe, and the atrocities of Fat Man and Little Boy (the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
Approximately 6 million European Jews were murdered as a result of Hitler's planned extermination (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust). The genocide in Darfur has claimed 400,000 lives (source: http://www.darfurscores.org/darfur).
The slideshows of our trip are being uploaded and are located on the right hand side. A few things:
We're back in Denmark. We cut our trip short by 1 day. We were supposed to spend 2 nights in Cologne, but after the first night, I decided it was time to get back on the road.
We've been working to get the laundry done, replenish the refridgerator, and get back into a daily routine. Chuck still has a few more days off for his summer holiday, so he can relax a bit...not too much though...I'm sick and need some attention!
Cologne is...in a word...dirty.
We decided to go to Cologne because of their huge Cathedral, which is amazing architecture and took over 600 years to build!
We stayed at the Sofitel, which typically is a very nice hotel to stay at; however not in Cologne. It was marginal, at best. The air quality was sub-par and in the end I now have a sore throat and sinus issues. One bad day out of 18 isn't the end of the world.
We walked the pedestrian streets and shopped a bit. There is a chocolate museum in Cologne, so we walked along the river and stopped in for a tour and chocolate sample.
Chuck and I went into the huge Cathedral and he climbed the 509 steps up about 90 meter or 3/4 of the way up one of the towers. I sat in one of the pews and waited for him. He came down drenched and the first thing he said was it reminded him of the movie Shawshank Redemption. You know the line at the end of the movie when Morgan Freeman says of Tim Robbin's character (Andy Dufresne) "Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness I can't even imagine. Or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards. That's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile."
Apparently, the air was pretty foul in the stairwell. 509 steps of nasty smelling bodies...I can't even imagine.
After our drive up the Mosel River Valley, we cut across to Mainz, our next hotel pit stop. I booked the Hyatt Regency, over looking the Rhein River. The hotel was very nice and I had my best night sleep of the whole trip. The bed and pillows were perfect.
Mainz has a nice downtown area with several pedestrian walkways and a beautiful area along the river to walk, read, bike, and play.
Chuck had some difficulty with the name of the town. Or he was just being humorous on our drive....
Chuck: So, Maine is our next stop?
Holly: Mainz
Chuck: What hotel are we staying at in Maine?
Holly: zzzz
Chuck: Maine
Holly: zzzz
You get where this is going.
After leaving Trier, we decided to drive up the winding road that follows the Mosel River. There are acres and acres of grapevines lining both sides of the valley. Every few kilometers there is another cute little town, packed with people, shops, and eateries featuring...local wine.
As we drove through, I said to Chuck, "This could be so much fun, if we spoke German." There are so many small towns and given the high number of campers and camping grounds along the river, it seemed like this is more of a local attraction than an international tourist location. So, the odds of English being spoken or even understood were slim to none. And, no...I'm not learning another language.
My DK Eyewitness Europe guidebook, which we refer to quite a bit, recommended a stop at Burg Eltz, a castle between Trier and Koblenz. It failed to mention that there were two entrances and somehow we end up at the hiking entrance. This translated to a walk down a steep hill for 1.8 kilometers (just over a mile) for 30 minutes just to get to the entrance....and then the return was strait up the rocky trail for about 50 minutes. Phew. I'm really going to be a billy goat if we keep up all this climbing! The alternative entrance was a parking lot with a shuttle train to the entrance. Below is a picture of Burg Eltz from halfway down the hiking trail.
It was a hot and muggy day, so we were both exhausted by the time we reached the car. We were planning on continuing up the Mosel to Koblenz and then taking the highway over to Mainz. However, we decided to take a short cut and go over one of the mountains and head straight to Mainz.
When I planned our summer holiday several months ago, I stumbled upon a site that featured hotels on top of Mt. Pilatus (elevation 7000 feet). Cool, right? Absolutely.
We drove to Alpnachstad and took the steepest cogwheel train up the side of the mountain. As I posted before, I've suddenly realized that I have a (slight) fear of heights. My palms were sweating the whole way up the mountain. Once we arrived, it was breathtaking. Pictures just don't do it justice, but enjoy the ones I picked out below (out of the 100+!).
There are several trails of varying levels that you can take. I liked the one that was clearly on firm ground, a huge sturdy railing between me and falling to my death. However, I did agree to a walk on a trail that appeared safe. I made it about 15 minutes and then stopped, sat on a bench and waited for Chuck to go around several more bends. His comment, "I bet they don't have too many emergency situations here," was the icing on the cake. I was envisioning walking on a 4-lane highway (while hugging the mountain wall on the 2' path) and then he says that! I immediate thought, hmmm, he's right. There wouldn't be any emergencies; you'd just fall to your death. Ok. That was enough hiking for me. I waited and kept imagining my 4-lane highway.
We took the aerial gondola half-way down the other side of the mountain and got off to ride "Switzerland's longest summer tobaggan run." Honestly....sooooo much fun! For 8 Swiss Francs, you ride on a sled down a metal runway, curving through the meadows and surrounded by Swiss cows with those HUGE bells around their necks dinging and donging. When your run is over, you get hooked up for a 'backward' ride up to the starting point. The picture below is of one person heading down the track and another person being pulled up backwards.
We stayed at the Hotel Bellevue. Where it lacks in plush amenities, it surely makes up for it in the shear beauty of the surroundings. It's quite a feeling to have all the tourists leave the mountain at 6pm and then you have the whole place to yourself (plus about 20-30 other guests) until the next day at 8:30am. There was a welcome on the main deck with drinks and snacks and then we all headed into dinner. What a great way to end our short stint in Switzerland!
Lucerne (Luzern), Switzerland has been our location to relax a bit on our whirlwind tour of Europe. We both read several books, walked around town, saw a few of the sites and shopped. I bought some pretty cool Christmas gifts to bring back to the US.
Here are a few photos. The first one is Chuck reading his latest book while sitting in the shade (our balcony still had some sunshine). The second one is of a second covered pedestrian bridge. You can see how clear the water is in the last picture. There are swans all over the place in Lucerne. Even though the swan is the national bird in Denmark, I've seen more swans here!
When I planned the 3 week trip around Europe several months ago, I thought we might need a break from walking and sightseeing, so I planned on spending about a week in Lucerne, Switzerland. We are staying at the Grand Hotel National in a junior suite overlooking the Lake for 4 nights and then 1 night on top of Mt. Pilatus.
Today we took a quick 1 hour drive to Interlaken, which was the first place opened up to tourism in Switzerland. They are working on constructing a tunnel so I'm sure the drive will be much smoother and little less stressful in the future. We were pretty high up in some mountains with very little earth on the passenger side of the car. Good thing I took my Dramamine!
Interlaken is very pretty. It's a little tourist town located between two lakes. The view is beautiful with mountains and even one snow covered. We shopped a bit and then drove back to Lucerne, stopping a few times along the way to eat a late lunch and take pictures.
Here are a few pictures. The first one is of the mountains surrounding Interlaken. The second one is one of the lakes near Interlaken. The water is so turquoisy blue.
This morning we drove from Munich down to Lucerne (Luzern), Switzerland. It was just over 4 hours and the roads were quite good. The highways or expressways in Europe are well kept and smooth. For the summer season, I expected a lot of construction and we only saw a little bit of it. And, the construction work doesn’t back up traffic for miles and miles like in the Midwest.
We needed to buy a vignette or highway toll sticker for the car when we entered Switzerland. We also had to buy one when we entered the Czech Republic and Austria; although, in Austria we stopped to buy one (obviously at the wrong spot) and were told we didn’t need one. So when we arrived in Vienna, we asked the concierge and quickly got one affixed to the windshield.
The drive into Switzerland is beautiful. We were winding around a few mountains, but also went under many in some pretty long tunnels. So far, the longest tunnel we’ve been in has been 6.6 km (4 miles). That tunnel kept on going. Imagine what would happen if you got stuck under there!
We arrived in Lucerne just after noon. I could probably live here forever…if I was independently wealthy, but that’s a minor detail. As a reference a grilled chicken breast (with no side dishes is $24USD / 24 Swiss Francs and a diet coke is $6USD / 6 Swiss Francs). I like the conversion factor in Switzerland. It seems like I’ve been doing non-stop math for the past 4 months!
Below is the famous walking bridge and tower in Lucerne.
Today was more of a leisure day. We spent the morning walking through the English Garden. It took us just over an hour to walk to the halfway point, Lake Kleinhesseloher (or Kleinhesseloher See in German).
We stopped along the way at the Chinese tower and watched part of the big party. Munich is very efficient at throwing parties! We were at the Chinese tower / HB beer garden at 10:10am and based upon the amount of empty beer glasses and dirt/mud on people’s shoes, my guess is they had been there all night. We tried to get some pictures of the traditional dress without drawing any additional attention to the foreigners (we were basically the only ones not in traditional dress). The shorts that the men wear are called Leiderhosen. There are two buttons on a flap near the waist. Apparently, they are not only stylish but functional. When you need to use the facilities, flap down the leider and pull out the hosen. Below is the party at 10am!
