icleand: our last stop

From Berlin we said a teary goodbye to our friends and flew back to London picked up our remaining luggage and flew home to California with a pit stop in Reykjavik, Iceland for a couple days. Way back when before we even moved to England one of our soccer friends (thanks Brandon!) suggested that on the way back we stop in Iceland for their hot springs and so when planning the trip across Europe and then the flight home I thought why not throw in one more crazy stop along the way and so we went to Iceland!

Iceland is very otherworldly and quite quirky. Quirky as in over 30% of the population has a college degree and 50% percent of the population believes that elves inhabit their lands. Their prime minister is listed in the phone book and Bjork comes from Iceland… case in point

We enjoyed our time there and stopped to soak in the famous Blue Lagoon. It’s a natural hot spring in the middle of a volcanic rock field and it was awesome just like our friend described.

On to the photos!

I think our next post will be a re-cap of our travels as far as what we learned, lists of our favorites (from cities to food to places we stayed) and more photos

Berlin

Some of our very good friends came and met us in Berlin for two of the three nights we stayed in that city. The six of us stayed in a three bedroom apartment a few hundred feet from the only street still left in Berlin separated (in part and for historical and memorial purposes) by the Berlin Wall.

It was our last weekend together and we all knew it but despite knowing we would have to say goodbye in a few short days WE HAD SO MUCH FUN!

All of us girls waiting for the metro.

Joel and friends drooling over good food in the window

The Brits love their tea cake… We loved it too.

We went to famous Pergamon Museum specifically to see the Babylonian Ishtar gate that Nebacanezer built and through which the Israelites probably walked through during their exile.

Part of the mural wall leading up to the gate.

They also have an entire Greek market gate and…

The famous Pergamon altar a 2nd century altar built in honor of Zeus and whose city Pergamon is also spoken about biblically. These structures were massive and so cool to see.

We also saw the Paris Plaza gate erected in celebration of Germany defeating Napoleon when no one else could.

One of the coolest things we did was tour this glass dome sitting on top of the German Parliament. It was one of the best curated self tours we have ever encountered and the views of the city were amazing. You are also able to look down from the dome into the room where parliament meets and makes laws. The symbolism is profound especially after all that German people have gone through.

The Berlin Wall and the “no man’s land” in between.

This Berlin Wall took all of us by surprise, emotionally. The history is still so recent and the stories and photos were hard to hear and see. But it was such a thoughtful and moving memorial.

Suffice to say we had a great time exploring the city with friends. We laughed a lot, saw a lot and ate a lot Joel and I felt so blessed to have ended our time in Europe with such amazing friends. We can’t express just how much we are going to miss these guys.

Iceland is up next!

Dresden, Erfurt and Wartburg

So we’re obviously falling behind in our posts. After Prague we travelled West into Germany, stopping for one night in snowy Dresden and staying in wonderful Erfurt, also known as “Lutherland.”

Dresden was a really nice, smaller scale city where we took a nice walk through the city center (thanks to Rick Steves handy little city walk guide). We walked through huge plazas with towering churches until we couldn’t stand the cold anymore. We warmed up in cozy pubs, massive cathedrals and finally in our new favourite restaurant chain, Vapiano.

Huge wall mural depicting a procession of Royals.

My favorite cathedral (from the outside), looks like something out of a sci-fi film.

Sliding competition- yeah looking back on that night it wasn’t one of our best ideas but man was it fun!

On to Erfurt, where Martin Luther was born and spent his time as a monk. More than that, it’s a great little city that was fun to explore by foot, with lots of cool old buildings, bridges and plazas. Here’s a midevial bridge where high end vendors have set up shop for hundreds of years.

Another beer we fell in love with. Now if we could only read German so we could actually understand the menu.

Me in a coffee shop our host recommended. This was the first time we found a coffee shop selling whole beans on our whole trip… a great way to start the day!

Our second day in Erfurt was spent at Wartburg castle, where Martin Luther hid after leaving the monastery and translated the entire New Testament into German.

Next post is Berlin, our last stop (in Europe) where we met some good friends of ours from Exeter. See you soon!

Prague

This city was a very nice surprise after several weeks of traveling. Just as we’re both about ready to be done dragging these bags across Europe, we arrived in beautiful, beautiful Prague. The streets were lined with a variety of architecture as well as statues dotted here and there and even the insides of buildings were painted with wonderful art nouveau murals.

We wandered through a few museums, ate at outdoor markets, bought some art on the Charles Bridge, drank tea at a Chinese tea house (freshest tea leaves in the city, apparently), slept in and really enjoyed ourselves. I think this city was very refreshing for me especially, it was nice to just walk around such a nice city and always feel safe and comfortable, and good weather doesn’t hurt anything either.

We were stunned by the city’s beauty and I (Joel) almost felt like I could even live here. I still do, except for the small detail of really poor customer service that seems to be the norm here. I’m sure this is just a product of growing up in a customer oriented world, but I was shocked at how such rude and inconsiderate people can get, never mind keep a job where they actually have to deal with customers (imagine that). I just had another bad experience on the train as we head to Dresden (can you tell?)…

Ok, done with the rant/rave and on to the pictures!

Me eating something really good that I still have no idea what it was.

Night shot of the castle from Charles Bridge

Really cool clock in Old Town

Charles Bridge

Food from street vendors

View of Prague from the monastery

Night photo of old town

Old Town plaza

At lunch at the Indian Jewel

Melissa on a midevial street within the castle walls.

We’re now on the train and headed out to Dresden, then Erfurt and Weimar (all in east Germany) where we look forward to more good beer and new sights to see!

Budapest

Budapest is beautiful and the city sits on this whole network of natural hot springs that they build huge public baths around like the Romans did. Some of theses baths go back to the 15th century. In all cases they are spectacular, architecturally speaking, and they have all kinds of crazy cool pools with different temperatures of water, again just like the Romans, it was really cool and relaxing, minus big huge Hungarians walking around in speedos, but lets not think of that

On to the photos! (except we don’t have photos of the baths because we would have looked like weirdos taking pictures of strangers in bathing suits siting in steam rooms and what not)

Parliament Building at night all lit up along the river.

Fisherman’s Bastion was probably our favourite sight.

Mathias Church

Heroes Square with some gnarly statues

We went the this cool little museum (Kiscell museum) that had all kinds of treasures from historic Budapest. Super old street signs, a completely recreated apothecary, a huge collection of printing presses throughout the ages and, like any good museum, a temporary exhibit featuring a local artist. We were the only ones in the entire museum and we had eager senior citizens/security guards leading us around the museum to make sure we didn’t miss anything. It was pretty hilarious and confusing sometimes but it was an experience we won’t forget.

At one point this little old lady sort of corralled joel and I into this dark and cold passage way and we didn’t know what to think (don’t scary movies always start like this! Did we do something wrong?) and then the passage way opened up into this huge old abandoned church where this really cool art installation was by Coronczi Endre

Watch the video if you can (it’s like 20 seconds) that way you kinda get the feel of it.
And of course I had to get a photo of Joel having a beer in this traditional stein…

And his beer moustache

Next up Praha (Prague). We have a 7 hour train ride to get there from Budapest, yikes!

Salzburg and Vienna

Austria just might get the best european country of the year award… but we’ll see we still have a ways to travel. We spent two nights in Salzburg (where they filmed “The Sound of Music”) and three in Vienna. It was great. We explored and went to museums and ate and explored some more!

Joel at the Mirabel Gardens in Salzburg eating a strudel like a good little Dutch boy should. Seriously though, the pastries/bread here is great. The beer is also phenomenal (Joel and I just point to some indecipherable word under the “strudel” or “bier” heading on a menu and whatever we get is always, without fail, blissful).

They had this medieval road through the town with old shop signs and such.

Views of the outskirts of Salzburg from the Nunnery.

Salzburg views at night with the church and the fortress keeping watch over the city.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has one of the best fine art collections in Europe.

The belvedere Museum is in this massive palace with this massive garden in the back

Joel in the Museums cafe enjoying a “bier” under this fancy chandelier. A quick note about museum cafes; they’re awesome (especially when the museum your in was once a palace, which happens a lot in Europe and even more in Vienna) also they are not expensive at all! The same prices as anywhere else. Joel and I have sat in almost every museum cafe we’ve been in Europe and I don’t know why we don’t hang out in museum cafes more often when we were at home. It’s relaxing, it takes the pressure off AND they usually serve beer. End of story.

Central Vienna

Schonbrunn Palace was built for the Emperors summer hunting excursions. There are over 1,000 rooms in this place. Joel and I were shown 22 of them. The Royals lived here well into the early 1900s. In all honesty I have to say that after visiting and seeing all these palaces everywhere and how lavishly the people lived in them make Joel and I a little less like “wow, they have a solid gold sink basin with a faucet that is moulded into a shape of a swan just to wash their face in the morning? Cool!” To more like, “why would you have a solid gold sink basin and faucet in the shape of swan made for you to wash your hands and face in when the people you ruled over were starving?”

Only a small part of the extensive gardens of the Palace.

On a less bitter note we will be in Budapest soon! Turkish baths and beef goulash await

Innsbruck & Munich

We arrived in Innsbruck after a long day of train travel, tired and ready for a good dinner. We were staying at another place from AirBnb, this one was called the “Chillzimmer- the house with the “chill factor!” We were a bit nervous as the hosts are college students, so you never really know how late they will be staying up, etc. Of course it turned out great, we slept in a small but comfortable room with a loft bed and lots of posters on the wall. Our hosts directed us to a local place to get a drink, called the “Moustache” and below was a dance club called the “aftershave.” Haha, we liked it a lot.

We woke up the next morning to realise that the dark and the clouds from the night before had covered this view… We were in a valley surrounded by beautiful snow-covered mountains!

The city itself is very beautiful, we just walked around and looked at the buildings as well as a tour through a church with the coolest curated tour of Maximilians life and life’s work. Unexpected, but great.

We also took a trip out to a small rural town to see two castles, which was beautiful but honestly the castle tour was a waste of money. Great views though, which we didn’t have to pay for.

After Innsbruck, we travelled up to Munich. As much as we liked Munich, we hit a wall where we were both getting grumpy and tired of spending every waking moment with each other. That will explain why there aren’t as many photos of Munich (sorry, this was bound to happen at some point on the trip). We visited a “death camp” (as the Germans call them) in Dachau, actually the first one the Nazi’s built well before the war for political prisoners at first in 1933 that of course expanded as the Nazi’s occupied countries and imprisoned Jews and so on. It is also the only concentration camp to have lasted the entire 12 years of their regime until American troops liberated the camp in 1945. It was very hard to see emotionally (lots of photos, video footage, and written testimonies) but good to experience and to remember.

On a happier note we found this cool cafe called I Love Leo, so of course we had to take a photo I’m honor of our nephew!

After Munich we headed back down into Austria to the city of Salzburg, but we’ll tell you more about that in the next post. See you soon!

Swizterland

We spent two nights in the Swiss alps and I mean IN the Swiss Alps. The train ride (or three) to get out there from geneva were beautifully scenic. Lakes, snow, clear blue skies, and cold emerald waters are what we saw from our warm train window view. We finally ended up at a tiny station in Lauterbrunnen, the valley town smashed in between two of the highest peaks in Europe. We stayed at a hostel in town filled with skiers training and honing their piste skills for a crazy race that was coming up. The race is simple: start at the top of the Alps and ski as fast as you can down to the valley floor and try not to fall of the mountain cliffs on the way down. Kids do it. I guess that’s what comes from growing up on ski’s. I was a little jealous myself.

It takes three Bahn rides (roughly 45 minutes) to get from the valley floor to the top and along the way we saw massive frozen waterfalls and clear blue ice patches attached to the sides of cliffs. The views from the top of the alps were amazing.

This was part of the 360 degree view we had up at the top.

We walked down the mountain part of the way in leu of a Bahn ride and wound our way through tiny alp towns perched on the cliffs and sides of these huge mountains.

We founds alpine cats or rather they found us

I’m writing this on a long train ride from Lauterbrunnen to Innsbruck, Austria via Lucern. I would post some photos of Lucern but truth be told we really only had short (about a two and half hour lay-over between train rides) and unpleasant experiences there. I won’t go into detail but let’s just say by the time we were headed back to the train station Joel was about ready to fly off the handle and I was still recovering from being yelled at by a clerk in Claire’s of all places (I was buying bobby pins). We were glad to be on the train again.

Roma

Rome surprised us and for the most part swept us off our hesitant feet. It was food that did it. Or maybe it was the ancient massive buildings, churches, piazzas, and fountains that seemed to be waiting for us around every corner. We walked most of Rome and were constantly taken back by its romance. At night it just got better especially as we wound our way down the tiniest cobble stone streets filled with families and couples eating, walking and just living. It was great to be apart of for a few nights.

Joel fell in love with the Trevi Fountain I fell in love with the gelato being sold next to it All jokes aside the fountain is amazing and wonderful to look at day or night but its more magical at night.

See what I mean by massive? This monument to some Emperor was insane! And beautiful.

I fell in love with the Pantheon as well as the fun walk to the pantheon and its small piazza. The 1st century building is breathtaking and it looms in between the narrow streets that lead to it.

This was my favourite fountain. The sinking ship right at the bottom of the Spanish steps.

Joel over looking Rome from this cool park we went to. Wherever we go we always have a knack for finding a park or, even better, a botanical garden. We love people watching the locals in their green space. This park was huge and it reminded us of what an old recluse’s stately garden might look like. There were ancient statues everywhere with missing limbs and with green moss all over them and sometimes hidden by over grown olive and magnolia trees. There were also old carousels with the paint chipping off, and ruined monuments that became part of the landscape. Crazy cool and a little creepy but what a view!

Me admiring Bernini’s masterful altar piece. A stained glass interpretation of the Holy Spirit with bronze rays surrounding it. This and the Caravaggio’s in the small Churches around Rome were stunning interpretations of biblical scenes that left us raw with emotional and contemplative hearts.

Another view of the Pantheon from the opposite side of the Piazza

Me outside of St. Peter’s basilica after running the gauntlet of museum tours; the Vatican museum, the Sistine chapel and then St. Peter’s Basilica. We sent ourselves a postcard from Vatican City just for kicks.

Actually our friend suggested that we send ourselves a postcard from everywhere we go, writing favourite memories on the back. When we get home we will have them waiting for us or maybe even still on their way. Hopefully we can keep this postcard thing up through our entire trip. It’s such a thoughtful idea.

Ending this post with Joel in the Colosseum which we thought was not worth the admission price. The Roman Forum, which you also get into along with Colosseum is quite the opposite. The ruins you see there are fantastic and rich with history; Julius Caesar, Titus and more.

Running with bulls…

Ok, so we’re not actually running with the bulls, but we are in Spain! doesn’t that count? hahaha

We left where we were staying in London at 5am (not cool). We took the first possible tube train to an underground stop where we caught a van to the airport on London’s bumpy streets. After a two hour flight we arrived in sunny (but cold) Madrid, dumped our bags at the place we’re staying and headed for the Thyssen museum where we got our first fix of art. Afterwards we came back to the room we’re renting, took a siesta and then went out for dinner about 10. Great food and wine, great first day in Madrid.

The next day we didn’t wake up until 12.15, true to our lazy vacation style. But that didn’t stop us from seeing two museums (Reyna Sophia (Picasso’s Guernica) and the Museo De Americas), getting breakfast in a supermarket, another siesta and then back out for more dinner.

Here’s some photos of what we’ve been up to in Madrid, this city is pretty awesome.

Our first impressions straight off the bus.

Joel happy with his espresso and later in the trip both of happy with our churros con chocolate.

The Prado, the Palace and the Renia Sofia