Venice

Since I was a teenager, I've had 3 places I really wanted to visit.  A few more have been added since then, but my top three for the last 20 years have been:

1. Germany
2. Italy
3. Australia and New Zealand

Really, it was more specific than that.  I had specific sites I wanted to see, and anything else I saw in the country after that would be great, but I really wanted to see these things:

1. Neuschwanstein Castle
2. Venice
3. The Great Barrier Reef

After 20 years of waiting, I got to see Neuschwanstein over Christmas, and now only a month later, I am visiting Venice!!!!! 

Finally here!  On the steps of the train station.

FIL is pretty excited too!  And looking much more photogenic than me, I am jealous. 

It was nearly as great as I expected, I certainly was excited when I walked out of the train station and saw the canal.  I think I somehow thought that Carnivale would be happening all the time, so it was a little calmer than I expected, but that turned out to be a good thing.   I love being near the water, so it was like a breath of fresh air (literally and figuratively, since the infamous smell didn't roll in until later in the day) when I walked out of our hotel and immediately got a great view of the canal every morning.  Every time I saw the water it helped me feel a little more at peace.  Going to Italy in January may not be ideal, but it worked out pretty well for Venice, because instead of the hot stinky sewer smell I have heard so much about, the air was mostly clean and crisp, especially in the morning.  Hubby complained about the smell, but in my opinion it was nonexistent during parts of the day, and only mild during the other parts.

View from right out front of our hotel.  Not bad!

Nearly every time we crossed a bridge, I would stop at the top and take in the view.  I enjoyed them all, but of course some we better than others.  Even seeing the same canal over and over did not get old for me, especially as the light changed throughout the day.

One thing I didn't expect was that it was a little TOO quiet, especially being off-season for tourist.  The first night when we went out to walk around we didn't run into many people.  When we went back out for dinner, we were walking for about 20 minutes (we got lost), and saw only a handful of people, and lots of closed shops and shutters on homes.  It was kind of eerie.  Daytime brought everyone out and the atmosphere perked up.  The other thing I wasn't expecting is that the streets were very confusing and hard to navigate.  It didn't help that some were tiny and we didn't expect those to be mapped or labeled streets, and others were at such a funny angle that you couldn't even see them if you weren't standing in the right place! 

Do you see the intersecting street in the middle picture?  We didn't either until someone came walking out of it, like MIL is coming out of it in the picture on the right (see if you can spot her in the middle picture).  No wonder we missed it the first time through.

Maybe that is why most people stick to navigating by boat and not trying to walk through the streets.  Everything was done by boat: ambulance, milk delivery, trash pickup, even funerals!

 

We got a kick out of refrigerated delivery boats like this.  The white part is the refrigerator, you can see the compressor hanging off the back of that portion when it passes by.

Hubby saw this funeral from the public transport boat.  The canals make even a funeral look beautiful!

But the beauty made up for the frustrations, especially when you got to view it from the water.

I took a free trip out to Murano Island just outside of Venice.  This is where the famous glass comes from.  I got to watch a glass blowing demonstration by father and son artists, and walk through a gallery showcasing the work of many artist’s pieces for sale.  Way too expensive for me, but I did enjoying seeing them and found a pretty piece in the gift shop that was till genuine Murano glass.   

The red stuff at the end of those poles is molten hot glass!  When cooled it was a light blue color.  They had a lot of different types of chandeliers.  When we win the lotto I am coming here for all my light fixtures.

The best part of that excursion for me was the boat ride over and back.  The day before, hubby and I were admiring the beautiful wood paneled taxi boats that were too expensive for us to want to take.  Low and behold, that is kind of boat I got to ride over in!  The passenger compartment was like a limo inside, with the back portion having a Plexiglas roof, and having doors at the front to keep the cold out.  And I got to ride in it for free!  I was super excited.  There were also gorgeous views from Murano that I got to take in while I waited for my ride back.

The boat on the bottom is the one I took back, it looked the same as the one I took out except it was missing the gorgeous wood, like in the above picture.  The inside of the cabin was like a limo!

After my tour I met hubby, MIL and FIL at the Piazza San Marco, where we toured St Mark's Basilica.  The interior, and even some of the exterior, of this cathedral was covered in sparkling gold mosaics. Also cool was being able to go out onto the balcony and catch the view from up there.

 

The exterior of the cathedral and views from the balcony.  The mosaics were in those round cutouts over each door.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but these are some of the mosaics over the doors on the exterior.  If they put this much detail, and gold, into the outside, you can imagine what the inside was like!

At the time of writing this, we have now been to Venice, Florence, and Rome.  So far Venice is still my favorite.  Even though there weren't many sights to see, the beauty of the city and the canals, as well as feeling like we had the whole place to ourselves at times, is what made this my favorite.  So glad I finally made it :)

Oh, and no, we didn't ride in a gondola ;)

Lucerne

The train rides have been pretty cool so far.  Getting from the airport to Leicester was a bit trying, but since we’ve left London it has been calmer.  We still had to make some transfers, but we have much more time in between trains, and there is more time to get off the trains when they arrive at the station.  We had enough of a layover in both Paris and Rome to stop and have lunch.  I was so glad to get some Paris pastries, even if the selection was small.  Yum.  Before we could make it to Italy, we spent a night in Lucerne, Switzerland.  We got there right before sunset, and really only had enough time there to go out and get dinner, but it was still a nice stop.  Then in the morning we got to enjoy some of the views we missed at night.  Even from the train station the town looked beautiful!

We passed a lot of towns, lakes, and mountains on our way to Italy, and it was hard to tell where Switzerland stopped and Italy began, but we enjoyed the view the whole way!  

Also naps, the train is great for naps.

London

After graduation we headed back to London for a couple of days of exploring.  My Father-in-Law (FIL)has never been outside the US, and my Mother-in-Law (MIL) has only been to Europe once, and that trip was only to Ireland, so everything we did for the remainder of the trip was brand new to both of them.  First we walked through the University of London campus, which hubby was looking forward to as he is thinking of applying there for Post Graduate degree and wanted to see what it was like.  This was on the way to the British Museum, which is what the rest of us were looking forward to.  I knew that this is where they had King Tut, so I would have been excited even if we hadn't recently seen the second Night at the Museum movie, which took place here.  I tried to find the things I had seen in the movie, but we were too tired to cover much area and the only thing I saw was this guy.  Still exciting.

I didn't get to see King Tut because he was on loan to another museum, but they did have lots of other mummies.  This whole display was at the same time extremely morbid and very fascinating.  Most were still wrapped up in their linens, but at least one was partially unwrapped, and it was amazing to see the preservation, you could even see hair!  They also showed x-rays of the wrapped up mummies to give you a glimpse of what was inside.  It’s easy to forget there is an actual person in there until you see the x-ray, especially because many of them were so small!  They were significantly shorter than we are today.  In the end it was a good experience, but hubby and I both agreed that we preferred the British Natural History Museum, which he and I had both seen on previous trips.

The next day we headed out to the Tower of London.  This was much harder than we thought.  First we were confused as to where the Tube (London underground train system) station actually was.  Then we realized we were on the wrong line, then the station for the correction line was closed, then when we finally got to the proper station, we walked all the way to the other side of a huge station before we found out that the line was closed in that segment because of track work.  So a trip that should have had us only walking for a block or two and should have taken about 20 minutes took closer to an hour and we were worn out and frustrated by the time we got there.  Not a good way to start out.  But finally we arrived!

Hubby and I had both been there before, but he hadn’t taken the Yeoman’s tour and missed out on the chapel and all the storytelling.  If you go, defiantly do the free Yeoman’s tour.  After the Tower we stumbled across the oldest church in the City of London and FIL had the sole attention of one of the docents, so we stayed a while there while she told him much of the history of the church and London.

After that church, the only site I wanted to see, St. Paul’s chapel, was closed.  So we settled for heading back towards the hotel.  Hubby, MIL, and I went to the Bree Louise Public House, which hubby had found on Yelp the day before.  It is known for its cask ales, ciders, and pot-pies.  We tried some of each. :)  We ended up making friends with the couple at the table next to us and talked for hours.  At some point FIL joined us for dinner and joined in the conversations.  Eventually I could hardly talk because I was losing my voice trying to talk over the raucous crowd, and we headed to bed.

The next day was the start of our speedy train journey to Italy!

Graduation Day

Today was Hubby’s graduation day!  When I met him he was already working on his Bachelor’s degree through the University of Leicester in England, sort of like a correspondence course.  Although he only actually stepped foot on campus for one three-day trip, he was a real full time student in every other sense of the word and worked extremely hard, all while working full time at a job that had lots of mandatory overtime.  And graduated WITH HONORS!  I am very proud :)

In front of the School of Management building, which was his school.

Hubby’s parents flew all the way from California to Dublin to come celebrate with us.  They didn’t have long to recover from that long trip before we put them on the plane again and flew them over to England.  Well, it was really bus to airport, flight, train to The Tube, then The Tube to the next train, then train to Leicester (sounds like Lester) where his school is.  We had to get up early to leave plenty of time to get to the airport, so by the time we did bus-plane-train-tube-train, we were already pooped.   Thankfully the ceremony was blissfully short, at least by graduation ceremony standards, and lasted just over an hour.  And now it is official!

Isn't the hall impressive! They actually played that organ for us in the opening of the ceremony.

Since his parents came all this way, we decided to have some fun with them while they are here.  We’ll spend a couple of days in London, then off to Italy for 6 days!!!!!!!  Lots more pics to come.

Christmas 2014

Our Christmas gift to each other this year was a fun trip!  I wanted to FINALLY see Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany (been waiting 20 years for this), and Hubby wanted to go snowboarding for the first time in about 17 years.  I also wanted to see some of the fabulous German Christmas markets, which is how this trip ended up being before Christmas instead of later in the year when the were better chances of snow.

We started in Munich, but weren't there for long.  We took the train from the airport to the hotel, luckily Hubby figured it out pretty easily.  

The adventure begins!

I was already so excited before we even left the train station in Munich, it was so lively and festive! I love trying the local food when I travel, I already saw a few places I wanted to hit up later. 

One of the great things about originating in Ireland is that the flight is short, and the time change is only 1 hour, so no jet lag!  Unfortunately, we were both up pretty late the night before, and our flight was early, so we were tired.  We ended up taking a nap anyway!  We still had time to check out 3 different Christmas markets, all of which were so different from each other.  The first was a medieval market, which had some things you might find at a renaissance festival, and had stalls designed to look like an medieval town.

The second one was...weird.  

But Hubby liked it because there was a spot with fun ambiance for him to sit and have a beer while I wandered.

After our nap we went back out and saw the best market of all, on Marienplatz.  I wish we had more time here, it was the largest of all the ones we saw, and had some great crafts.  But it had started to rain and it we were hungry, so we moved on.

We had to go to the famous Hofbräuhaus!  Unfortunately, the portion of the restaurant that had the ompa band and all the singing was closed off for a private party, but we still got to here some music from a smaller band and enjoyed the food and beers.  Even I enjoyed the beer, which is rare.

The next day was castle day!!!!!!!!!!!!  I've been wanting to go here ever since a project I did in 8th grade German class, and now I was finally going!  It was such a gorgeous day for it, I'd like to think it was being gorgeous just for me :)

We took a train there, and although it was 2 hours each way, we hardly noticed.  We could not stop looking out the window and enjoying the scenery, and on the way back we were talking to the new friends we just made.

Every train trip we took had gorgeous views.

We ended up taking the "shortcut" up the mountain, which was shorter but much steeper!  The good news was that now we can say we went hiking in the alps, and Hubby, at the suggestion of the tour guide, filled up our water bottle from a fresh alpine spring!  It was cool and refreshing.

The group took advantage of the break while a few of us filled up our water bottles.  They were all as ready for a break from the climb as we were.

Luckily the bridge was open that day, this is where you get the iconic views of the castle, but it will be closed in bad weather.  It was jam packed, but once you fought your way on and made it about half way through, the crowd thinned out and there was plenty of time for pictures (especially selfies).

You can just barely see the castle behind my head in the one of us together, oh well.  See how crowded the bridge was!

The castle itself was okay, it was strange because it was a newish castle that was just made to look old, it even had electricity.  And a room that was made to look like a cavern...they didn't call him MAD King Ludwig for nothing.  The best part was the views from up there, I would be happy living there just so I could look out at this every day.  I know, I keep going on about views from everywhere, but I love them!

It was worth the trip for sure, even though it did take up most of the day, and now I can finally say I've been to Germany.  The next day we only had enough time to wander around Munich a bit to find breakfast and hit one more market, then it was off to Austria!

We stayed in Kitzbühel, which has been called the Vail of Europe.  We don't really care about expensive shops or rubbing elbows with rich people, but Hubby knew I wasn't going to be hitting the slopes, and this was the town in the area he was looking at which offered the most for me to do while he was snowboarding.  The town was charming, but small.  

They were big on antlers (like over the door in the top picture) and cow hides.  Not carpets that look like cow hides, actual cow hides being used as carpets. There was also one hanging over the bench aside the fireplace in the hotel lobby.  They were everywhere.

The Christmas Market was small, but had some aplacas I could hang out with while I drank my gluhwein and ate a Lebkuchen.

We loved our hotel, and were really impressed with the breakfast and dinners that were included with our stay.  Not just some cheap dinner thrown at you, it definitely was like fine dining every night.

Hubby and the tables both got dressed up for Christmas dinner.

We would wander around some every day, but I spent more time in the amazing spa and just hanging out in the room relaxing, where I picked up a few words (like Santa) by watching Christmas shows I know that were dubbed in German.  When I saw Santa in the hotel lobby handing out gifts to all the kids, I was able to ask, "Weinachsman, haben mir ein photo?"  I said, "Santa, me have a picture?"  Not the best grammar, but it did the trick.  I thought it was funny that Santa in German in Weihnachtsmann.  Weihnachten is how you say Christmas in German (litterally hallowed nights), so for Santa they are saying "Christmas man."

But the spa was by far the best part.  If we go to Austria on a snowboarding holiday again, I want to stay here just so I can spend most of my time at the warm poolside and saunas while Hubby freezes in the snow :)

What a difference a day makes.  Before and after the snowfall.

Unfortunately, he didn't spend too much time in the snow because they were having a freak year where they weren't getting snow.  I guess all the weather luck went into our castle tour day.  They did make some fake snow, but Hubby said it wasn't great, and not many of the runs were open.  It didn't' snow until Christmas day, and didn't accumulate much until the next day, when he tried again. Unfortunately, it was so foggy that day he couldn't see where he was going!  Oh well, we'll go back and try again another time.  I wouldn't mind some more time in the spa ;)