Day Trip to Siena

We missed the train so much we decided to do a day trip to Siena....actually Mary had this planned all along. A good tour guide. I recommend her for your next European trip....on the condition that I get to come along as well.

Firenze Part Due

The pics are here!

Sorry, no pictures yet as our connection won't let us upload images. So we'll get them up as soon as possible.

We had an excellent second day in Florence. We were going to get a really early start but our lousy sleep the night before on the train caught up with us and we didn't get going until around 9:00 am. We walked up to the main bus station and caught a local bus to the Piazale Michelangelo. You would have seen some great panoramic shots from that spot if the pictures would have uploaded. (You are also missing a great picture of Mary's new shoes that she wore today and the picture of her fixing the bandage on her foot that was needed because of all the walking she did in her new red, leather shoes.)

Once the bandaids were in place we walked back crossing the Arno River back into the city. We prepared for our walking tour ot the Uffizi Gallery. The tour and guide (Paula at Art Viva) were excellent. The highlights of the tour were Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" and "Primavera". The gallery also has the only completed painting of Leonardo da Vinci, which he painted at 19. None of his other paintings was totally completed, including the Mona Lisa (see, we got our money's worth out of the tour).

In our usual indecisive way, we walked around the city looking for a good but not to costly place to eat. After our meal we went and bought a 4 Euro bottle of chianti, took it back to our hotel and sat out on a quiet, private terrace at the hotel. We are getting to like this red wine stuff.

Tomorrow we are hoping to travel by train to Siena for the day.

Buona nocce.

M & K

Firenze

We're not in Germany anymore, Toto. It didn't take long to figure out that Italy is a lot different than Germany. First of all they speak a vey strange language....what are they trying to say?

Our overnight "luxury" sleeper on the overnight train from Frankfurt to Milan forgot about the luxury part. We got into our sleeper and there was an awful smell coming from the bathroom. Someone had left an unflushed dump which I tried to flush away but Mary said, "You can't flush it until the train leaves!" So we waited and once the train started I pushed the flush button but it turned out that we couldn't flush even when the train was moving. In fact no one on the train seemed to be able to flush it......finally they got rid of the mess but the toilet was "WC Defekt". Anyways we survived and got at least 3 hours of good, solid sleep.

We got into Florence around 11:40 and took off for our hotel that was in easy walking distance. We arrived at our hotel at 1:30......it was in easgy walking distance but we took the circuitous route around most of inner Florence, having passed the hotel at least 3 times without noticing it. Mary did, however, meet a lot of friendly people who were more than willing to give her directions even though they never really had heard of the Hotel Accademia. Anyways, the hotel is an old villa and LOVELY(Mary's descriptive word). We ate an early dinner at an outside trattoria, got to witness a great verbal fight between some South African tourists and our waiter...."I'll come back there and throttle you!" "Get out and never come back!"

Florence seems to be a maze of streets filled with architecture and artwork. We are off to the Uffizi Galleria tomorrow. Tonight was laundry night....nothing like properly cleaned clothes after all the hand washing we've been doing.

Ciao!

M&K

O'reilly's Pub - Frankfurt

These are a couple of pictures we took during our stopover between Rothenburg and Milan.
Mary found a great river walk and we kicked around down there until we came to the Irish Pub.

Mary's blog.....
In our beer drinking tradition we have found an Irish pub near the train station while we wait for our ovaernight train to Italy. We had a schones walk along the Main River in downtown Frankfurt. Nice to stretch after a day on the train from Rothenburg.

We had an good stay at Cafe Uhl in Rothenburg in the attic room. We walked half of the wall that encircles the town and we climbed 200 steps to the top of the Rathaus tower. Quite the view!

The German phrase book has now been replaced by the Italian one. Wish us luck.

(Mary is in North American sports withdrawal..... especially football. The Irish pub has car racing, of all things!)

Auf wiedersehen, for now.

M&K

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Hello, everyone,
Well, we made it to Rothenburg and continued with our traditions of long walks. Both of us should be in great shape after this holiday. We are staying at the Hotel Uhl, which is also a bakery and restaurant. A very nice little place. We are on the top floor....lots of stairs....no lift....good shape.

We did the Nightwatch tour. It was an hour long tour at night, learning about the history of Rothenburg, the medieval town. It is a beautiful walled city and we plan to get up early and walk the wall. The night watchman was great. Lots of good info with humour.

Tomorrow after looking around Rothenburg we are off to Frankfurt to catch our overnight train to Milan and then on to Florence.

No pictures tonight as I'm doing this post on the terminal in the hotel entrance. Lots of pictures next time.

Take care.
M&K

OKTOBERFEST!!!!!

O.K.......first came the recovery from last night's Hofbrau Haus . It was a bit later start than what we had planned for. Then we did some leisurely strolls around Alte Stadt and we en ded up add Marien Platz for the glockenspiel performance at 11:00 am. After that we made our way to the Oktoberfest grounds.

We were surprised by the amount of people going out for beer that early in the day and also by the fact that Oktoberfest is just like a big fair, like the PNE, except with beer.....lots of beer!

We strolled the grounds and then decided on the Lowenbrau tent for starters. We each got a litre of beer, and a pretzel and half chickent to share(we had sort of had our fill of bratwurst yesterday). Mary gave 3 of our servers Canadian pins and in return they gave us each an Oktoberfest pin. We went strolling again, looking for "Das Boot", Brooks' request for a gift. No luck so we found ourselves in another tent, Hacker-Pschorr, the fifth picture from the top. Here we split a litre of beer and Mary learned how to hoist the mug with only one hand! She was very proud of this as you can tell from the final picture.

That was our limit and we went in sfearch of"Das Boot"...success! Off for a quick bite for supper and back for an early night...I think Mary has just passed out.

Off to Rottenburg in the morning.

Auf wiedersehen.

M&K

Castles, Bratwurst and Beer!

Day 6 and Bavaria has kicked in. We started off with a 2 hour train ride to Fussen from where we caught a bus up to Schwangau. We visited both castles. The first picture is of Hohenschwanngau, Maximillian's castle. The next picture show Marien's Brucke, named after Max's wife. The next picture is of Castle Neuschwannstein, the fairy tale castle of King Ludwig. Seventeen years to build but never completed. He only live in it for 6 months, when he was deposed as king, and drowned mysteriously 2 days later. (Close enough on the history....don't quote me.) The next 2 pictures are of Mary and me on Marien's Brucke looking back at the castle. Mary had sweaty feet as she was not to sure about the height of the bridge.

Back in Munich we made our way to the Hofbrau Haus where we had bratwurst, sauerkraut and beer. The last pictures show the before and after of our evening at the haus.

We closed off the evening with a stumbling, listing kind of stroll back through Marien Platz where we chanced upon a duet of buskers singing a lot of songs we could sing along with. A great end to the day.

Take care.

M&K

On to Munich

Okay, hopefully now the blog can really begin. We have just finished our 5th day in Europe and are relaxing in our hotel room in Munich after scoping out die Altstadt, with Marienplatz and the Rathaus, and then a stroll over to the Residenz, all of which came after a supper in the Augustiner beer hall(getting ready for Oktoberfest).

We had two excellent days in Amsterdam, although the first one started at 7:30 in the morning after we got off the plane. We took the train to the center of town, put our luggage in the lockers there, and stumbled off over the cobblestones. We found ourselves in the red-light district with a few women already in doorways and windows, showing their wares. After a couple of hours, Mary dragged me out. We then went off to find our hotel. Back to the train station for the luggage...back to the hotel to drop the luggage and then off to the Rijks Museum and Rembrandt. (It's seems Mary didn't schedule any down time in her vacation planning.) We finished off our stay with trips to the Van Gogh museum(very interesting), the Anne Frank Huis and our canal cruise. The city is wonderful, the people are great.

After Amsterdam we took a train to Cochem, a small town in Germany on the Mosel river. After a rather circuitous trip from the Bahnhof we came upon Ferienhaus Erholung, our B&B. From our balcony we had a view of the Mosel River and the left, the castle which overlooks the town. It is a very quaint and rustic town, with narrow streets and the Moselpromenade(a street we became very familar with... We walked this route 10 times during our two days there. On our second day we took the train to Moselkern (we had trouble understanding the ticket machine and ended up paying double fare to get there....who know "ruckfahre" meant round trip?) where we did an hour long hike to get to Burg Eltz....which I think is the oldest known European castle, first documented in the 1100's by Barbarosa. It was a "sehr schones tag" until we got off the train back in Cochem where it was pouring. Mary, not one for down time remember, said, "I don't want to stay around in this train station, let's run for it!" Fifteen minutes later, and much laughter from those more wiser people standing under shelter and umbrellas, we arrived at the restaurant we had scoped out earlier in the day and sat down for our schnitzel, after Mary went to the washroom and used the hand dryer to dry her hair and her top. Cochem is a wonderful place to visit. Thanks to John Parras for recommending it to us.

Today we spent a few more hours on a couple of trains to Munich. We had a couple of interesting "German" conversations, one while waiting at the bahnhof in Cochem, and one with an older woman who had a seat in our compartment. We tried to tell her that we spoke only "ein bisschen Deutsch" but this did not stop her from continuing her converstation with us. Mary and I would pick out a few words and repeat them to her and this seemed to make her even more enthusiastic about her talk with us. You actually can converse quite well even when each of you only knows a little of the other's language.

Tomorrow is either a day trip to some castles or an afternoon at Oktoberfest. We'll check the weather and then decide.

Herzliche geburtztag, Tyler und Bruno.

Take care.
K&M

European Vacation Day 3

Three days in and we're still talking to each other in a civil manner. Must be all the drinking that we're doing.
Amsterdam and Cochem have been great. Two museum days in Amsterdam. The people were very friendly and almost everyone spoke English.
We've been trying our German in Cochem with mixed results. Our B&B is great and we had an ausgeseichnit hike to Burg Eltz castle. On to Munich tomorrow. We have a 12 minute connection to make in Koln so hopefully everything runs as scheduled.

Hope all is well in Canada.
Take care.
M & K

Day 1

Alright, here we are sitting at Gate 96 at YVR waiting for our flight to Seattle and then on to Amsterdam. Brooks and Tina came over to Vancouver and we had a good day on Monday, driving around town in his monster truck and visiting IKEA. We had dinner on 4th Ave. with Tyler and Angela and chanced upon Mexican Independence day at Las Margaritas...free tequila and mariachi band! (I know you've been looking forward to checking out this incredible blog, Ty.)

Mary figures our room at the airport Fairmont will be at least 3times bigger than any of our rooms in Europe. Kelly figures he's a really lousy, panicky pre-traveler but he's hoping to improve.

We watched Hockeyville and saw all the people of Terrace. If anyone at Uplands reads this tell Maggie that she did a great job. We saw MaryAnn in the crowd of kids. Brooks is proudly flying his Hockeyville banner on his new truck. Bruno you did a great job on the program!

Hate to rub it in, but a mediocre day traveling beats a great day teaching. Buy lottery tickets.

M & K

Sorry, just found out that I misspelled my own blog's name. Needed an o not a u. The address will stay the same.

Only 4 more sleeps.

Mary and Kelly's European Holiday

One week and counting to our flight to Amsterdam. Mary has already packed her bag twice and had it approved by Krista. She has an adapter this time around so she will not put the power out on a hotel floor like she did on her exchange year.
We are sitting in a local coffee shop trying out our new little(short battery life) Acer that we bought for picture storage and email access on our travels.

We are counting on all our teacher friends to have mysterious illnesses November and on to help fund the trip with sub days.

Hopefully our blog entries will get more interesting as the trip nears and progresses.

M & K