Our Visit to Germany and Austria

Andrew and I have been married for over five years and during this time we have been fortunate enough to be able to travel a great deal to many different countries. The trip that we both rank as probably our favorite getaway was when we went to the Bavarian region of Germany and then to Austria in June 2004. Andrew loves the mountains, we both love castles, eating and beer, and I must confess that I had always wanted to visit the filming location of my all-time favorite movie, The Sounds of Music, so this seemed like a trip we just HAD to do together.

We started out in Munich, Germany and spent some time in the city and also outside the city in the Alps region. We would have liked to have been able to ski while we were there, but skiing stops in May and resumes in September, so we happened to plan our trip during the summer hiatus. Oh well! Andrew would have had no problems, but I'm not sure my "beginner to intermediate skill level in the Poconos" would have been quite advanced enough for such a feat since the Alps are just a little bigger than Jack Frost and Big Boulder!

We did, however, make it up the Alps via ski lift (sans skis of course) and what an experience! Unfortunately we did not have the clearest day when we went so our visability could have been better, but the views were spectacular nonetheless. Supposedly, on a clear day you can see Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Austria all from one peak on the Zugspitze, one peak that we ascended.

Feeling on top of the world!

That's one heck of a ski lift!

What a view! It makes you feel like...oh, I don't know....yodeling! :)

One of our favorite places to spend time at night in Munich was the Hof Brauhaus, a famous beer hall with song, dance and ample flow of supersized beers and pretzels. What a fun atmosphere and it's pretty safe to assume that one drink here will last you all night!! Of course Andrew needed to take home a souvenir mug for himself...

Our last night in town we arrived at the Hof Brauhaus late and weren't able to snag a cozy table for two so we sat down on one of the long tables for, oh maybe 20 or so. After a few moments a group of American businessmen sat with us and being the friendly folk that we are we struck up conversation with them. Now this is where our usual overseas coincidence occurs (as you may have read about in some of our former trips). One of the men was an alumnus of our alma mater, Lehigh University, and had had many of our same profs. Being that Lehigh has 3,000 undergrads and is a small private college that is most well-known in the northeastern US, we found this to be quite a coincidence since we ran into a fellow Engineer in Munich! Here's a photo of the three of us.

My birthday fell during our time in Germany so I decided that for my birthday I wanted to go to a nearby city called Rothenburg ob der Tauber. It is a quaint, "gingerbread"-esque village that got rave reviews from the travel experts so we decided to make the trek. What a pleasant surprise! Rothenburg had fabulous food and shops and such an old-fashioned Bavarian feeling to it. It was a perfect birthday!

A view of the gingerbread town:

Here I am in front of the Kathe Wohlfahrt store in which we purchased two wooden German boy and girl Christmas ornaments. We have a tradition of buying a Christmas ornament in every ciy in which we travel, so we couldn't resist!

After our time in Munich, we headed out for Salzburg, Austria and decided to stop at the famous Neuschwanstein Castle en route in Bavaria. In case it isn't obvious, Cinderella's Castle in Walt Disney World is directly modeled after this famous German palace. It was absolutely amazing and we took photos that looked like postcards.

Here is a bridge that we crossed in order to take picturesque photos of the castle. The bridge was very high off of the ground and quite scary to cross, and I don't even usually have a fear of heights! It was actually built specifically so that vain King Ludwig could go out there to admire the castle that he had built by embezzling Bavaria's public funds.

Here we are approaching the castle, which, as you can see if you look closely, is nestled amongst the mountains.

A bridge with a view.

The view! I swear that this is not a postcard and is actually a photo!!

Our next stop was Salzburg and what a wonderful, intimate city! We decided to splurge during our time here and to spring for (the low end) hotel room in the beautiful Hotel Sacher Salzburg, home of the decadent chocolate sacher torte. This hotel was beautiful and made our stay unforgettable. We had a lovely room, dined in the hotel restuarant twice and spent every night after we got back from our nightly activity in the hotel piano lounge. One night, I even requested "anything from My Fair Lady", my favorite show music, and the pianist proceeded to play a 30 minute medley of the entire score just for me!

Salzburg at night:

A view of the entire city from the top of the Hohensalzburg Fortress.

Here we are in the lobby of the Hotel Sacher dressed up for a night on the town, starting off with a Mozart dinner concert.

Some photos from around the town. We bicycled all through Salzburg one day and also took a Sound of Music tour another day to see some of the filming locations for the movie.

So Austrian!

The Sound of Music commemorative cow. Talk about commercialization!

Some Von Trapp sights...

"I am sixteen going on seventeen..."

The front and back of the Von Trapp's villa. They used two different houses to film the famous Rodgers and Hammerstein home.

"Do-Re-Mi..." We visited the famous Mirabell Gardens where the Von Trapp kids pranced around with Fraulein Maria leaning to sing. Here's a beautiful photo of the gardens followed by one of myself posing as Fraulein Maria at the garden entrance.

Our final stop on our vacation was in Vienna. This is certainly a much larger city than Salzburg so it had an entirely different feel to it, but the history and musical presence here made for some great sightseeing. We took a carriage ride around the city and then ate dinner at the Hotel Sacher Wien on our last night in town since we had enjoyed our stay at the Sacher in Salzburg so much and wanted to give its Viennese counterpart a try. What a wonderful way to say Auf Wiedersehen to our trip!

Caribbean Cruise with Friends

In October 2003 we organized our first group vacation with some friends and decided that a cruise would be a perfect idea since they are said to be more fun when traveling in a group. It is also something that I had never done, and Andrew had not done since he was a child, and is a pretty reasonably priced vacation. We chose Carnival's Triumph cruiseship and the western Caribbean itinerary that stopped in Cozumel, Mexico; Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands; and Ocho Rios, Jamaica. Accompanying us on the trip were Mark and Heather Ferrence, Steve and Amy Kriebel, Chad and Aimee Saunders, and Ray and Missy Greenley.

Here's our ship (well, some of it!). It is hard to imagine just how big a cruiseship is until you are standing next to it!

Our first night onboard, we went to the Captain's Welcome Dinner, which was one of our two formal nights. It started as a complimentary cocktail hour followed by dinner in the main dining hall. We all dressed up in our finest threads and enjoyed a great first night at sea!

Our first port stop was in Cozumel, Mexico and the Saunders, Greenleys and we decided to take one of the Carnival excursions to visit the Ruins at Tulum. It was a fairly long bus ride followed by some time at the ruins before we headed back. It was a good experience and something both of us had always wanted to see, but hot is not even the right word to describe just how "warm" it was inland in Mexico. And this was in October, we couldn't even imagine what it would have felt like had we been there in the summer.

Some photos of the ruins:

The neat thing about the Ruins at Tulum was that they are located on a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. So, the scenery was phenomenal and the contrast between the ancient ruins and the picturesque seascape made for some really neat photos.

Our next stop was on the Cayman Islands and this was by far our favorite port stop. Grand Cayman is breathtaking - perfectly clear blue water, white sand, one of the cleanest cities you can visit. We took an outside excursion on Captain Bryan's Tours, which included a catamaran cruise to the famous Sting Ray City and some time to go snorkeling as well. Here's one photo of the sting rays. They are SO slippery and fast-moving, but really rather friendly. They like to brush up against your legs just like a friendly dog would. They're not quite as cute though!

Our last port stop was in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, and here we walked around on our own and also went to Dunn's River Falls to climb up a waterfall. For some reason I can't seem to find our photos from Dunn's, and am thinking that we may have used (God forbid!) a regular 35mm camera for these photos since I do have them scrapbooked. Here, though, is a photo of some random parrots we met in town. We thought it was funny that they were just hanging out around the city.

Finally, our last night onboard was really a fiesta in the dining hall and the cruiseship went all out to make our final dinner on the Triumph a memorable experience. There was entertainment and a special dinner and dessert. We had THE best wait staff during our time on the Triumph so here we are posing with them.

California Here We Come!

My cousin Neil got married in May 2003 so my parents and brother headed out to San Francisco with us for the event and we all decided to stay a week and make a vacation out of it. We spent some time in San Francisco and then also spent some time in the Napa Valley to do some wine tasting. It was the first time any of us had ever been to California and we had a great time.

Here are Andrew and I on the Powell-Hyde trolley line, which is the famous San Francisco trolley car that still has the original old-fashioned look. We took a trip through the hilly city and it was often a bit of thrill ride when the trolley needed to stop midway up a steep incline or coasted down one of the streets.

I loved visiting Fisherman's Wharf and we tried to do all of the touristy things while in the area - Ghirardelli Chocolate Square, Alcatraz Island, Pier 39, and I made sure to sample some of San Francisco's famous seafood. That clam chowder in a sour dough bread bowl was my warm welcome to the city!

Here are Mike and I in one of the jail cells on Alcatraz Island. We took the nighttime ferry over to the island for a tour and the dark, foggy night definitely added to the creepy feeling of that place!

The three of us visited an arboretum one day while my parents went shopping and Andrew was able to take a photograph with the giant redwoods that he had been wanting to see. We walked through the botanical gardens and loved seeing all of the different foliage and fauna in bloom.

Our camera's highlight of this trip was definitely on our last morning in San Francisco, actually on our car ride out of the city to the Napa Valley. We had had nice weather while in the city, but as it was San Francisco, there was not a day that was perfectly clear without any fog. In fact, the fog was so heavy for two of the days that we were there that we could not even see the Golden Gate or Oakland Bay Bridges! However, on our last day, we had a beautiful, clear blue day and we hoped that we would be able to catch a glimpse of The Golden Gate Bridge since you have to see this landmark while in northern California! So, we rounded a curve in the road and immediately we saw it clear as day. It's amazing that just the day before this bright orange bridge wasn't viewable at all!

The second half of our trip was devoid of many photos since it basically constituted eating, drinking and relaxing at the pool and in the spa, but we did capture a photo of our favorite vineyard along the way, a small family-owned winery in the Sonoma Valley en route to Napa. It is called Viansa and the wines there were fabulous. Apart from this winery, we also had a good time at some of the larger wineries in the Napa Valley such as Rutherford Hill, Domaine Chandon, Beringer and Robert Mondavi. Viansa: