"Ahhh....Venice" -Indiana Jones in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"

Or said a bit more eloquently: “Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.” - Truman Capote, American author

In late spring of 2011 GermanBoy and I took a three day trip to Venice, and after our tours around the floating city, I must say that I agree wholeheartedly with both Capote and Indiana Jones. Venice was absolutely marvelous, even to the point of being too amazing, too much at times.

We left the full-of-construction street in front of our apartment at 5am and began our 6-hour journey to the "City of Canals."

There wasn't much traffic, so we arrived at our hotel on the neighboring island of Lido (cheaper than staying directly on Venice), checked into our hotel, and were on a boat heading over to Venice by 1pm. 

I've head lots of complaints about Venice being over-crowed with tourists. When we arrived, however, it was raining, so we were pretty much the only ones around! The weather was not ideal, but it felt like we had the city to ourselves!

We made our way to the main street, where there were definitely more people milling about, but I certainly wouldn't say it was packed. We walked up and down, up and down, up and down the stairs that formed small bridges over the canals. I searched for the stair-bridge that Harrison Ford had walked along when they shot  "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." They all looked so similar that it made it hard to be certain which bridge was the right one, so we walked over every one just to be sure.

Just behind the main drag, plazas were deserted of people, outside-seating areas were closed, and in many places the canal water was overflowing the sidewalk. 

During the heaviest bit of rain, the famously-shaped gondola boats sloshed in the water by the docks. Nobody was offering nor asking for rides, and so they were all tucked away under plastic blue tarps. 

As soon as the rain so much as lightened up, however, tourists flocked to the boats and began requesting rides in the canals that meandered under the bridges and between the buildings all throughout the city. Many tourists really wanted to do get the gondola experience, even if it meant riding while holding umbrellas! 

The rain came and went throughout the afternoon, and during the times of no rain, a lot of the tourists tried to get their turn on the gondolas, which left the water-ways pretty full, but the streets quite empty for GermanBoy and I!

Most people just hired a boat with a driver, but we also saw one couple that had a driver, a man playing an accordion, and a man singing to them! The singer was belting out a beautiful version of "Qui Sera Sera," and I wondered if the male passenger on board was planning to propose to the female passenger...

Here are some more photos of Day 1 in Venice:

Apparently the houses used to be taxed by width, so the skinnier the better! This is a model of the skinniest house on Venice.

The water level has risen, so the house owners have had to brick-up the windows and doors!

By the time we made it back to our island of Lido and settled into a tasty, not-too-touristy restaurant for dinner, we were both exhausted. And even while sitting at the table, our bodies still felt like they were drifting on sloshing water. It was time for bed.

***Thanks for reading this Thursday blog! Don't forget to come back next week for more! Plus, if you want more adventures, be sure to check out my Twitter and Facebook Page. And if you have any photos or stories from your travels that you'd like to share, please send them to me to land in my "Guest Adventures" section! Thanks again for reading, and have a great week! Bye***

Bavaria in the Springtime

Like America, Germany is made up of states. However, in Germany there are only 16 states, and their average size is much smaller than the average size of America's states. The smallest German state has an area of 161 square miles, less than Washington D.C., and the largest German state is Bavaria, which measures 27,240 square miles, a little bit bigger than West Virginia.

Munich, where GermanBoy and I lived in 2011, is the capital of Bavaria, a place that is known for its castles, green forests, and rustic beer gardens.

I'm not really a beer drinker, and I grew up getting my kicks from eating at super tasty restaurants with comfortable accommodations. So when I first moved to Munich in 2009, I didn't really understand what the whole fuss about beer gardens was. They are basically just big areas of picnic tables, shaded from the sun by lots of trees.  You must buy drinks from the beer garden, and cannot bring in your own, but by law the beer gardens have to allow you to bring your own food if you want (which we were never organized enough to plan out and do). Or you could buy some of the Bavarian soft pretzels, sausages, rotisserie chickens, or other foods from the beer garden.

Like I said, at first I didn't really see the appeal; the seats are flat and hard wood benches, I don't drink beer, most of the time it was just GermanBoy and I since we didn't have many friends, the food is not my style and is over-priced, and as I sat there wishing they had food I liked, I always felt jealous of the groups of people who were all together with their friends and organized enough to bring picnic cloths and whole spreads of delicious looking meals and desserts. Why did we have to go to the beer garden? Why couldn't we just be at home on our own balcony doing this, enjoying the weather while at the same time having all the cold drinks and food we like stocked in the kitchen just 10 feet away? Or, if you don't feel like your own food, why couldn't we go to a restaurant where the food is actually something I will enjoy and the seats are comfy?

But as time has gone by, I have learned how to do the beer gardens better, and by May of 2011 I, myself, had even been become a bona fide beer garden fan. Here are the important tips I learned:

1. Plan ahead. Figure out how to get organized and bring food you like. You don't need a fancy table cloth, but at least be that person with the awesome fruit salad!
2. They are a great place to meet up with friends. It's cheaper than going to a restaurant because you can bring your own food (if you can follow tip number 1), and it's better than your balcony because you can fit more friends and you don't have anything to clean up before they come or after they go. 
3. Choke down at least one beer because after that you don't notice the hard benches anymore. 
4. Beer gardens are a great place to stop during a day of city bike-riding. You can use the toilet, get something cool to drink, catch your breath, and plan the rest of your afternoon.  

During the nicer days of spring 2011, GermanBoy and I spent more than a handful of long afternoons at the beer gardens, including when GermanBoy's parents came for a visit.

We had lots of wedding details to work out, and it was nice to chat over it all while sitting outside, snacking and sipping on a nice cold beverage of your choice. I love cider, which is available in the Irish bars around Munich, but not at the beer gardens, so I usually just drank cold bubbly water with lemon and some of GermanBoy's beer. My soon-to-be-parents-in-law shared a Radler, which is beer mixed with fizzy lemonade. In some places you can also get beer mixed with cola, which is called a Diesel.

While his parents were in town, we also took them a bit deeper into Bavaria to show them the famous Neuschwanstein Castle, which GermanBoy and I had already visited a year and a half earlier. This time, however, the construction was complete and we got a full, unhindered view of the castle that Walt Disney used as the model for his Cinderella Castle.

At first the weather was sunny and warm, but in the afternoon some dark black rain clouds quickly blew in, giving me a great photo before drenching us all with rain. But it left as quickly as it had come and all the tourists, ourselves included, quickly came out of hiding and continued exploring the majestic castle and landscape.

***Thanks for reading this Thursday blog! Don't forget to come back next week for more! Plus, if you want more adventures, be sure to check out my Twitter and Facebook Page. And if you have any photos or stories from your travels that you'd like to share, please send them to me to land in my "Guest Adventures" section! Thanks again for reading, and have a great week! Bye***

Bunny Ears and Other Animals on Easter Sunday

The winter in Germany had been super cold, and the summer would not prove to be very pleasant either. Easter weekend of 2011, however, was extraordinarily nice. Super sunny and in the 80s, this weekend was lovelier than every single weekend in June and most in July. So I'm glad that we took advantage of it!

On Easter Sunday, GermanBoy, his parents, and I woke up around 8am and gathered downstairs to begin the day. The year before I had organized an Easter Egg Hunt for GermanBoy, and this year I surprised everyone by wearing bunny ears and a small round cotton tale. With me in my costume, and everyone else staring at me like I was crazy (which I guess I am), we sat around the dining room table and enjoyed a lovely hearty German spread of breads, cheeses, meats, and hard-boiled eggs.









Once our stomachs were pleasantly full, we cleaned up and headed off to a day at the Delhoven animal park. This place wasn't a zoo with exotic creatures and glass enclosures, but rather an open-ish grassy park full of animals that are native to the area.

The sheep and deer were especially cute, but you could go into the enclosure with the brawny goats and play with them. Which I definitely did.

There were also many birds, including swans, which GermanBoy has a semi-strong fear of. I have heard that they can be a bit ill tempered, so I simply stayed back and admired their beauty from a distance.









On thing I found very curious were the fences around the enclosures. Now, this was a park full of children. I think that our group was one of the only without at least one kid present. Therefore, I was quite alarmed when I saw this warning sign on the metal fence:

The white and red sign on the left instructs people that feeding the animals can be dangerous to their health and that doing so is very strictly verboten. Okay, that's understandable. But the smaller yellow sign to the right of the the white one warns visitors that the fence is electric and they shouldn't touch it!! Number one, why is this sign the smaller of the two?! And number two, I don't know about kids in Germany, but I'm pretty sure that in America at least 5 kids (or adults even) would electrocute themselves each day, running up to the fence totally excited about the animals. GermanBoy speculated that perhaps the fence wasn't really electric, but they just put that sign there to stop people from even thinking about touching it. I was very tempted to tap it with my finger to find out, but in the end I was smart enough not to.

One of my favorite things at the park, however, was not an animal at all, but rather an "old time" ice cream truck. I put "old time" in quotations, because it only looked old to me. To GermanBoy and the rest of his family, this was simply what normal, present-day ice cream trucks look like. Awww, how cute.

Once back at GermanBoy's parent's house, we lazily enjoyed the rest of our quiet Easter Sunday afternoon. A little playing with GermanBoy's remote-controlled race car, and a whole lot more delicious food, before we knew it Easter was over, and it was time for us to head back to Munich.

Lucky for me though, GermanBoy had one last awesome surprise up his sleeve: stopping at a rest area along the highway that has an absolutely gorgeous view of the Moselle Valley, a high quality wine-producing area that's been in business since the 1800s.

And with that beautiful sunset, our Easter vacation was done.

***Thanks for reading this Thursday blog! Don't forget to come back next week for more! Plus, if you want more adventures, be sure to check out my Twitter and Facebook Page. And if you have any photos or stories from your travels that you'd like to share, please send them to me to land in my "Guest Adventures" section! Thanks again for reading, and have a great week! Bye***

A Wedding Location and Trans-Atlantic Easter Egg Dying

In Germany, you must get married at the town hall or another "certified location." It's not like in America where you can have your ceremony on a mountain/beach/field/insert awesome off-the-beaten-path location here. Even if you want to have a church wedding, you must still get married down at the town hall or other "certified location" as well. We weren't getting married in a church, but I had always dreamed of having my wedding outside, at a cliff, overlooking a gorgeous view. I wanted my dad to walk to me to my fiance and then we'd say our vows to each other. None of that would be happening at the town hall. So we decided to have two weddings :-) The first would be my outdoor ceremony, and then the next day we'd go down to the town hall, sign the paperwork and make it official.

Therefore, on the day after going wedding cake tasting in downtown Cologne, GermanBoy and I scouted out a location for our outside wedding.

From the moment we arrived at Remagen on the Rhein River, I knew it would be the perfect place.

On this day we hiked up to the top of the cliff, but on W-day we would drive up through the cute German village to the top.

There was plenty of parking at the top, a great big, leafy tree that we could stand under, a couple benches, and an amazing view over the Rhein River. Now if we could only have such gorgeous weather on our wedding day as well! We could only hope, and buy lots of umbrellas just in case.







Besides needing to go to GermanBoy's hometown to plan our wedding, we also went because it was Easter weekend! So on the following day, Saturday, we stormed the bakery, butcher's, and grocery stores with all the other masses (by the crazed crowds, you'd think the stores were closing for two weeks! Luckily we had pre-ordered our breads and rolls from the bakery, because when we got there, a huge swarm of people were pushing and elbowing their way to be first. Even little old grandmas shoved you out of their way!), and then we began to prepare tasty treats for Sunday.

I'm very concentrated as I dye my first batch of eggs in Munich:)

We had dyed Easter eggs at our home in Munich and brought them with us to Cologne, but then GermanBoy and his family wanted to dye even more eggs, so we made it a trans-Atlantic thing. I called my parents on Skype and we dyed eggs in Cologne while they dyed eggs in America! It was pretty cool to get to "do it together."

***Thanks for reading this Thursday blog! Don't forget to come back next week for more! Plus, if you want more adventures, be sure to check out my Twitter and Facebook Page. And if you have any photos or stories from your travels that you'd like to share, please send them to me to land in my "Guest Adventures" section! Thanks again for reading, and have a great week! Bye***

Please, Please, Please Can I Have a Wedding Cake?!

Different people look forward to different parts of the wedding planning process. I couldn't wait for the cake tasting.

I did a little research about wedding cakes in Germany, and I learned that traditionally Germans often serve up a rich nut or sponge cake. It's soaked lightly in liqueur or syrup and filled with either marzipan, jam, or nougat. That, however, was simply not going to do it for me. I wanted a colorful three-tier cake, full of buttery frosting and absent of any nuts, jam or nougat. Luckily, American wedding cakes are slowly making themselves known in The Fatherland, and we were able to find several bakeries offering what we were looking for.

Since the wedding reception was planned to take place in GermanBoy's small village outside of Cologne, we would have to purchase the cake there of course. So when we went for a visit at the end of April, cake tasting was on the top of our To-Do list!

We emailed several of the bakeries in downtown Cologne, but most didn't offer actual wedding cake tasting sessions, so we decided to just stop by and purchase a couple slices of cake from each bakery.

Bakery number one was small but clean and filled with beautiful models of American-style wedding cakes. Behind the glass were several scrumptious looking pastries, but only one wedding-style cake. It was made with almond dough and a Johannes berry butter cream.

 

We bought a slice and objectively nibbled our way through the dense richness. We definitely loved the almond dough; it was both thick and moist. And while I didn't care for the Johannes berry cream, I could tell the cream itself was high quality and would be great in a different flavor.






We spoke with the woman working behind the counter and flipped through a folder of possible cake ideas. It definitely looked promising.

"I would like a three-layer cake with a different flavor of cream on each layer," I told the woman. "Would that be possible?"

"Um, well that would cost extra," she responded with hesitation.

"Okay, but could you do it?"

"I suppose, but it would be extra. How many people are you having at the wedding?" she asked.

"Around 20."

"Oh! Well then you definitely don't need a three-layer cake. Just one or maybe two layers will be fine," she said.

"But I don't want just two layers. I was a three-layer cake," I told her.

"But that will be way too much cake!"

It was as if she didn't want the bakery to make money!? In America I believe they would have been trying to sell me more than I need because "you only get a wedding cake once in your life," but here, she was trying to down-sell! I basically had to convince her that I really, really did want a three-layer cake, regardless of the amount of guests I was having.

We finished off our cake slice and moved onto bakery number two, hoping we wouldn't have to beg to get the cake of my dreams there.

Bakery number two was terrible. It was a huge bakery, busy serving its current customers. When we finally got someone's attention, the woman behind the counter simply shoved a wedding cake folder at us and went back to work. They had no wedding cake slices for us to sample and didn't seem all that concerned with getting our business anyway. We left after just 5 minutes.

We walked down the street, passed an awesome building featuring a gigantic upside-down ice cream cone on the roof and into Bakery number three.

Bakery number three was nice again. They were also busy, but the waitstaff was very friendly and helpful.  While browsing through the cake folder and taste-testing yet another rich slice, the owner of the bakery himself came out to greet us. He chatted with us about what we were looking for, and we pointed out some of the decorations we liked from the folder.

"I really like these cream roses," I told him. "Could I have those all over the cake?"

"Well yes, but that would be extra. Each once costs 15 Euros," he responded.

Again with the price!!

"Yes, but I like them," I said.

"Okay, but you could also do something like this," he offered, flipping to a page that showcased a simpler cake.

I couldn't believe it. He was trying to down-sell the cake as well! Don't bakeries in Germany WANT to stay in business?! I guess that's just the way it is; if you want a cake, you really have to prove it and fight for it!

In the end, we decided to give our business to the first bakery and put an order in for a three-tier cake with three different flavors; blueberry butter cream frosting for the bottom, chocolate in the middle, and coffee on top. Yummmm Yum!

***Thanks for reading this Thursday blog! Don't forget to come back next week for more! Plus, if you want more adventures, be sure to check out my Twitter and Facebook Page. And if you have any photos or stories from your travels that you'd like to share, please send them to me to land in my "Guest Adventures" section! Thanks again for reading, and have a great week! Bye***

Taking the Scenic Route

Since we had gotten to Mainau Island early to beat the rush, we got out early as well. By 2 pm we were on the road heading back to Munich. So instead of taking the most direct route home (a 2.5 hour drive) GermanBoy and I took our sweet, sweet time.

We didn't just take the back-roads, we went waaaaaayy our of our way to go over the Alps, drive through the highest town in Germany, pass into Austria, and get a view of Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and the rolling green grasslands glistened in the afternoon sun. It was the perfect way to end our lovely mini-vacation.

GermanBoy snapping a photo of Zugspitze

Everyone from Germany got gas in Austria because it's cheaper

We had an amazing, relaxing time together, but within a few hours of arriving back in Munich, we were already back into full-on wedding planning mode!

Of course there was more paper work to do (but really, does that ever stop!?), but we also had international flights to choreograph, invitations to create and send out, hair-do's to choose (more me than GermanBoy on that one), hotel accommodations to figure out (GermanBoy's village only had one or two hotels with about 6 rooms each, which were already all booked up; we eventually found a nice place in the neighboring village 30 seconds down the street), and decorations to plan. We spent 4 hours in the basement of Ikea, wandering back and forth from one section to another, trying to figure out what our table displays would look like. And I must give GermanBoy credit, he had some really great ideas and actually pretended (or maybe he really did!?) to care about the decorations. The Ikea basement, I found out, is like a casino. You go in and lose yourself down there. Time ceases to exist because there are no windows. You enter when it is light and come out at 9pm. Throws you off a bit.


Most of the wedding planning stuff were chores to me. But there was one thing I'd been looking forward to since GermanBoy had gotten down on one knee and proposed to me in St. Augustine: the cake testing. But I will delve into all the sticky, sugary sweet details of that next week, as finding a German bakery to make me an awesome American wedding cake was a bit of a challenge in its own!

***Thanks for reading this Thursday blog! Don't forget to come back next week for more! Plus, if you want more adventures, be sure to check out my Twitter and Facebook Page. And if you have any photos or stories from your travels that you'd like to share, please send them to me to land in my "Guest Adventures" section! Thanks again for reading, and have a great week! Bye***