Salzburg: 6/22/14

Today we woke up early (again) because we had to catch our 7:30 AM train to Salzburg, Austria.  The train ride is quite short, we were in Salzburg at 9 AM, and had until 1 AM when our overnight train left for Venice.  This left us with a full day to explore and enjoy Salzburg.  Salzburg is known for 2 big things... One, the birthplace of Motzart.  You can hear his pieces resenating through the streets of he city.  And two, the backdrop & location of the Sound of Music!  If you remember how beautiful some of the scenery was in the movie then you may understand when I say the city is GORGEOUS!  All of Austria seems to be pretty and Austrians are nice people too.... It makes me proud of my Austrian heritage!  And we really lucked out on weather again.  In a city where there are more rainy days than sunny we had blue skies and weather that makes you want to skip around while singing "Do, a deer, a female deer. Rae, a drop of golden son. Mi, a name, I call myself.  Fa, a long long way to run. So, a needle pointing thread. La, a note to follow soooo. Ti, a drink with jam and bread. And that will bring us back to Do!" :).  Here are a few initial views of the city.  The large castle in the hill is called the Fortress.

First up on the itinerary was a ride up the Monchberg lift in the Museum der Moderne.  It offers fantastic birds eye views of the city.... See??

After this we headed to Stiegl Brewery... What I have called my favorite beer since trying it 10 years ago while studying in Innsbruck, Austria.  I have not been able to find it in Houston, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to retaste!  The brewery is pretty nice, and it has a very nice view, too!  We did the museum tour, but skipped the brewery tour since it is only offered in German.  Afterwards we got 3 free tastings, and had lunch... The best Wiener schnitzel I have ever had!  They even gave us free souvenirs!  Here are a couple pics....

After the brewery we had a boat tour down the river that runs through Salzburg.  It was such a relaxing break before our bike tour of the city.  It was actually a Sound of Music bike tour that teaches not only about the city but takes you to all of the famous settings from the movie.  Every bike has a characters name from the movie... And Kyle and I we're given Fräulein Maria and Captain Von Trapp, woohoo!  We also learned a little Austrian newlywed tradition involving pretzels (they love their pretzels there!).  Similar to a wishbone, you are supposed to each grab a side of the pretzel and pull.  The person who ends up with the bigger side gets to wear the pants in the relationship.  Even though we are not newlyweds, we decided to give it a whirl.... Results below!  Okay, so Salzburg is picturesque, and in case you wanted more proof, here are some pictures of the city from our bike tour.  You will see some reinactments from the movie (featuring Kyle & Liz)... The best of which is a video it won't let me post but we are skipping in the hills holding hands while "the hills are alive, with the sound of music" is playing.  Lol.  Do you recognize the buildings though?!

That pretty much concluded our day in Salzburg.  After the tour we walked around a bit, had dinner, and headed back to the train station.  So with that said...."so long, farewell, auf wiedesten (sp?), goodnight"!

Bavaria: 6/21/14

Today we had a another tour with Mikes Bike Tours- this one into Bavaria.  They actually call it Bus Bavaria since some of the time is spent on coaches going out to the Bavarian Mountains.  It is such an awesome way to see the area!!  I was definitely regretting the late night at the Hofbrauhaus though, waking up in the morning was quite rough!  On the way to meet the coach we got a few shots at the Marienplatz.  It worked out great since no one in town was up that early in a place usually packed with people making photo-taking difficult!

Next it was off to Bavaria.  The biggest attraction to Bavaria is King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein Castle (pronounced Noi-Schwan-stein), one of the most famous castles in the world.  It is the inspiration behind Disney's castle, and you have certainly seen photos of it before.  We could not have been luckier with weather!  There are not many days without heavy clouds in the Bavarian Alps, so we were feeling pretty blessed with blue skies and amazing views of the castle!!  When we arrived, we got our bikes and had 2-3 hours of biking around the area first.  We got to see the gorgeous Swan Lake, the beautiful river, the picturesque Alps, and got lots of views of both castles (both King Ludwig's) in the area.  Here are a couple pics from that stent of the day:

After the bike tour part, we had lunch, and then got to watch Brad's magic show.  Brad was our tour guide who has been doing this tour for 15 years.  What you wouldn't expect from Brad is that he actually went to the German School for Magic, won 2nd place at the world magic competition, and is ridiculously good at card tricks.  I could never explain, and certainly not show you how good they were because I have no idea how he was doing what he was doing!!  Great entertainment!  Anyways, so after lunch we had time to go do the Alpine Slide before hiking up to tour the castle.  The Alpine Slide is similar to bobsledding, but sitting on a luge type cart.  It was soooo much fun!  Kyle had a bit of an accident on it though while flying around a corner.... He has an ugly burn on his arm to go along with it.  It's a good thing he had the GoPro on- we can forever laugh at the wipeout now! ;). The footage is all really cool actually.

So after the Luge it was time to make the trek up the hill to the castle.  He views from the bridge on the way up were impeccable!!!  The castle is just stunning!  I didn't get photos inside because you are not allowed to take them.  Don't be upset though.... Because of the Kings insistence on detail, only around 15 of the rooms were completed by the time he died, and the others never finished.  Therefore the tour of the inside is quite short.

After the tour, we hoped back on the coach and headed back for Munich.  We arrived back in town at 8 PM and the town was out and about sporting their German pride for the World Cup game vs Ghana that was getting ready to begin.  Being in Europe during the World Cup has been a pretty cool thing, I must say.  Kyle had gotten in touch with a friend named Nikolas, who invited us to come watch the game a bar where they had a reserved table.  Kyle met Nikolas while he was working at the business building in college and Nikolas was in the masters program getting his MBA.  We had not seen him since he was in Houston many years ago.  We met him at a big Greek bar (he is Greek), and it was such a treat!  We got to try all kinds of neat Greek foods, all while watching & cheering on Germany from a large patio loud with fans!  Thank you for a fun night, Nik!

Munich: 6/20/14

We made it to Germany!  We arrived in Munich around 9:30 AM, exhausted from a long flight.  We took the city transportation to central station and walked to our hotel from there.  It was drizzling on us on the walk so we were worried our first day wouldn't be great.  We had some time for showers and a quick power nap before our Munich city bike tour, and by that time it had turned into a gorgeous day!  Phew!  Some of the highlights of the bus tour include:  the Marienplatz, the Theatinerkirche (a gorgeous church on the inside, with a less impressive yellow outside), the lions adjacent the Theatinerkirche (on the statue is a smaller lion head you are supposed to rub for happiness... But never all 4 because that is a sign you are greedy), the Englischer Garten (a park bigger than Central Park with 3 beer gardens also in it.  We visited the Chinese beer garden on the tour for dinner, drinks, music, etc.), watching the surfers surfing the 24/7 wave caused by the bridge in the lake, and last but not least, the ever-famous Hofbräuhaus!  Here are some pictures from our bike ride around Munich:

 

After our bike tour I wanted Kyle to experience the joys of the Hofbräuhaus, so we went there for a bit of fun.  That turned into waaaay too much fun, however, ha!  We met a bunch of people, but 2 guys in particular that were sharing our table provided some excellent stories.  They are on an international drug bust team working for the DEA out of DC.  They had just finished the biggest drug bust Greece has ever had... 13,000 pounds (or 13 kilo) of Heroine.  The pictures were insane!  They were stopping through Munich on their way to Eastern Jamaica for another bust going down.  Their work stories were the coolest!  They actually want to recruit Kyle to be on their team, haha!  Anyways, we didn't end up leaving the Hofbräuhaus until 2 AM, putting us home around 2:30.  We had to be up the next morning very early for a bus tour to Bavaria.  Ugh, you have done it again, Hofbräuhaus!!!!!

New Zealand Day 8: The best plane rides are the kind you jump out of!!!

... As long as you have a parachute attached to you at least! Today we started the day with a wonderful skydive in Queenstown. This was my third skydive, Kyle's second. I think I enjoy it much more than he does (he really hates the way the harness feels on his "boys"). I absolutely love the feeling- especially the initial 5 seconds coming out of the plane. I am honestly wanting to look into getting certified to jump myself. Anyone who has not done it.... You are really missing out!!! The only thing disappointing about the jump was seeing the pictures we paid for afterwards. Mine especially came out horrible!!!! We specifically asked our photographers to get certain shots of us. We both did what we wanted and neither of our photographers got the picture. Ugh! Oh well, nothing we can do about it. We have not watched the DVDs yet so we will see how those turned out when we return home.

After the jump we did some final souvenir shopping then went back to the hotel to get ready for our pub crawl. We attended the Kiwi Ice bar pub crawl. It was fun, but it was all single young folks. I seriously felt so old (legal drinking age in Australia and New Zealand is 18). Some of the girls were so wasted though and it was awesome watching them and remembering when I was their age, haha.

I'll post pictures when I can get to a real computer to load them from the cd.

New Zealand Day 7: A cold, wet Doubtful Sound

Today was supposed to be the day we had our overnight cruise in Milford Sound that we switched to a day trip to Doubtful Sound after going to Milford Sound yesterday. We knew the weather was not looking good, and for the most part that was correct. Thankfully, at the end of the cruise we did get some blue skies. The entire day was freezing cold, and half of it wet too. Yuck! It was still beautiful, and the one good thing that rain brings is more waterfalls. There were tons of those at Doubtful Sound, most of them long skinny ones. The other cool thing was we got to see several Australian penguins which are the most rare breed of penguin. Regardless of weather, we decided we still liked Milford Sound more and definitely liked getting there by helicopter more than by bus (it was about a 4 hour trip on the ground to get there and another 4 back). Because the transportation lengths this took up the entire day. Here are a couple pictures from the day...

New Zealand Day 6: Extended

Here are the pictures from Kyle's round of golf in Queenstown from Wednesday. He had to take a water taxi to get there, but the views were gorgeous!

New Zealand Day 6: Our best day yet!!!!!!!!

Where to even start with today!?!?!!! Okay, as of last night we were not sure what today would bring us or what we would end up doing. We had skydiving on the itinerary however even though we tried to book it right when we got in, they were completely booked for today (strange- you book everything here the day before with no issues). So weather conditions had kept skydiving on hold for 3 days which is why it was so booked from those people pushing it back. Anyways- so the only other thing that I had REALLY wanted to do in New Zealand that we just had no time for is to hike one of the glaciers on the south island- ice spike shoes and all! Well glaciers are 5+ hour drive from QT so it really wasn't an option, however i found a helicopter tour that will at least take you to the top of one and let you see it. It was too late to call last night so I set the alarm for very early to try this morning. Thank God for Peter who was so gracious to me! They too had 3 backed days of no flights going out and many people waiting for the right day. I received a call back from him that he would fit us into a different tour- one that is twice as expensive and three times as long. He said we would be picked up in a half an hour (I was still in bed) and we would fly to Milford Sound, land then get a 2 hr boat cruise around Milford Sound. We would then load up the helicopter again and set out for a glacier landing. So basically what we wanted and more and he offered it to us at the same price of just the glacier tour as long as I did not discuss our deal with the other passengers aboard. We saved $720- the only thing that we were hesitant about is the fact that tomorrow we had a planned overnight cruise of Milford Sound and we didn't know how we felt about seeing it 2 times. I told Kyle the weather for tomorrow is not supposed to be good, and being such a gorgeous place we should for sure go today to at least get one pretty day cruise out of it.

Okay, so it turned out to be our best day yet!!!! Helicopter ride was indescribably, unforgettably amazing. I have never seen such beauty before in my life- the angles you get, and the things you get to see which you could not possibly see on foot or in a plane are breathtaking. Kyle said he didn't think he stopped smiling the entire time. If I wasn't on the outside, I sure was on the inside!!! The Milford Sound cruise was lovely too. We learned it was the exact route that the cruise would take the next day, and also confirmed the weather is not looking great for the following day so we decided to switch from an overnight Milford sound cruise to a Doubtful Sound day cruise. Anyways- it rains A LOT in Milford Sound..... At least 300 days a year, and they said they can get more rain in a week than London in a year (shocking because it rains a lot there too!). That being said, we were very fortunate to have our cruise with blue skies and white clouds today! Again, Milford Sound's beauty is so hard to describe in words or even show in pictures. There are large mountains forming the land around the twisting and turning water- snow caps, waterfalls, penguins, seals, you get it all! After our cruise we loaded back into the helicopter and set off for a glacier however because of the wind (it was darn windy out- it was surprising we were allowed in a helicopter at all) as well as cloud cover over the glacier tops we went to the peak of a tall, very powder snowy mountain. I was a little sad, but once we got to the top of the mountain I was not disappointed. It was gorgeous!!! We kept imagining ourselves as the crazy good snowboarders at go to mountain tops via helicopter and do super wild things. You would sink a foot into the snow (down to the glacier part) with every other step...... Not a good day for me to have worn cute little flats, but the cold feet didn't bother me too much with that view. After taking pictures up there and playing around a little we boarded back up and set off for Queenstown. We finished this part of our day with a late lunch at Fergburger. And the winner is............ Devil's Burger!!!!! We thought it was better, AND it was cheaper! Kyle is currently playing a round of golf as I write this so his golf pics wont make it into this post- plus, it's a loaded one already!

Now..... Speaking of that..... Pictures. I have gone through them 3 times and cannot seem to get the number of photos I keep on the iPad lower than 250 for the day (I only keep the really good ones on here but keep all of them on the card). I have no idea how to chose which for you to see but here goes nothing........