Linda and Scott's European Adventure 2018
First night in Germany in Haselbach at our friend Tina's house with her daughters Josephine and Pauline. After our long flight to Frankfurt, we went from the airport to the train station and met a nice young student named Lasse who helped us buy our tickets to Buchloe from a machine. It was not a straight-forward endeavor. We did not have reserved seats so we had to move around when people came with reservations, but we did end up with good seats on a very fast train. We arrived in Buchloe close to 8:30 p.m., and Tina and Josephine were there to greet us. It was still another half hour or so drive to their new house in the country where the table was set to greet us with dinner. We stayed up visiting until after midnight.
Our first day in Haselbach, we went to another small town in the country so our friend Tina's daughter could ride her horse while we hiked in the beautiful woods. Later that day we drove to Markt Schwaben where we are now staying which is closer to Munich. We ate a delicious dinner at a Schnitzel Haus that reminded me a lot of the Bavarian Restaurant I worked at in Eugene. The sign in the picture translates to: Come eat with us or we both will starve. We had so much food that Scott and I thought we were going to burst, and it was inexpensive especially for Munich prices.
On Sunday we went to the Austrian Alps and went to an incredible look out. The group photo above was taken from a cantilevered ledge that juts out from a rock cropping, and the view below is high enough to give you the heebie jeebies. We couldn't look through the glass floor especially because the platform bounced when you walked on it.
Josephine cooked us a wonderful dinner of garlic prawns over potatoes with a cucumber salad. We also enjoyed a nice sunset.
The above photos are a little chapel near Haselbach in the country.
We spent a day touring downtown Munich with our friend Josephine, who was excellent at showing us around. We went to the big clock in Marian Platz and were just in time to watch its dancing chime. Then we went to the marketplace for brunch, and we really enjoyed walking around and looking at all the various produce and food stands. The eating area in the middle was a delightful park setting, and the weather was perfect. We also went to see where they are setting up for Octoberfest, which I was surprised to see is like a big carnival with rides in addition to all the beer tents. It doesn't start until Sept. 22nd or so, but we decided to skip it because our friends said it involves a lot of drunks puking on the sidewalks and is actually pretty gross. I know we are getting old when I say things like that but our friends are younger so it was their perspective, and we are taking heed. In Munich we capped the day off by going to the historic Hofbrauhaus, where a great brass band played. We shared a plate of roasted pork with fresh shredded horseradish and veggies. Josephine had a big potato dumpling, and she also bought a huge fresh pretzel for us to share. We really enjoyed our adventures in the city of Munich.
We took the train back to Markt Schwaben where we were staying at Tina's really nice friend Jacques' house. We met up with Tina's son Christoph, whom we have known since he was a baby because they used to live next door to us. For those of you who have met Christoph because he visited with us a couple of times and also went to Wilson High for a quarter--he is now working as an IT guy for Boston Server, an international company. Unfortunately, we were so involved in our visit that we didn't take a picture. He is 25 now and has filled out so he is a very handsome young man -- different than the skinny teen we remember. He is supposed to email me a photo, and when I receive it, I will post it here.
On our last day in the Munich area, our sweet friend Tina took us to the Herrenchiemsee Castle, which was more like a palace and modeled after Versailles. It was one of the residences of King Ludwig II, but really built as a future museum. Sorry, no photos of the inside are allowed, but there is lots of marble, gold leaf and so many candelabras that Liberace looks like a country mouse. We visited two islands and also saw a monastery chapel and we had an afternoon snack in the garden of a restaurant with a view of the lake. It was a beautiful day with perfect weather and a trip in the BMW Cabriolet. We had a wonderful three-course dinner that Tina prepared for us, and watched another gorgeous sunset. We have been spoiled by Tina and her friend Jacques who have housed, fed and taken us sightseeing. We appreciate their friendship and hospitality and hope to see them in Portland in the near future. Many Thanks to Tina and Jacques!!!
We are now in Prague. We actually took a Flixbus from Munich to Prague for about $30 total for both of us. Scott had lots of legroom, and the trip went quite quickly. We had booked a room at Hotel Prokop for about $45 a night including breakfast, and we knew it was a bit out of town. However, it was a bit of an adventure to get here. We had to take a tram and two buses then walk a few blocks to our hotel so we didn't arrive until about 7:30 pm. The good news is that because we are senior citizens we get to ride all the public transportation for free-- we just had to pay to get our photos taken at a photo booth then $40 crowns for them to make our passes. We've been riding around for a total of $10 U.S. dollars.
We were pretty proud of ourselves for making it to our hotel via public transportation because a taxi was going to cost $35-40. We found a neighborhood restaurant where we had a delicious dinner and a couple of beers for less than $20. The plate above was Scott's first dinner of braised beef, polenta cakes and sauerkraut. I ordered a tortilla, which was the only word I recognized on the menu==thinking I might get an omelette such as in Spain, but instead I got a burrito type thing filled with cole slaw and fried chicken pieces in a thousand island type dressing. It was good, but it was not very photogenic. We were overwhelmed with Prague from the beginning, the architecture is amazing, and there's so much to see. More news to come...
More views from Prague. We spent most of a day at the St. Vitus Cathedral and Prague Castle, which are all in the same compound. The chapel directly above this text is a part of the castle, the other interiors include the cathedral and the palace. It was all quite opulent with lots of marble, gold, and amazing stained glass. The gal in the red dress was posing for photographs outside the cathedral-- think she was a bride as a guy dressed as a groom was close by. Another bride and groom also were having their photos taken in another area on the grounds. The cathedral also had gargoyles at the top if you look closely above Scott's head you can see a few. After we left the castle we headed toward the center of town where we came across a farmer's market. We bought food for our dinner as we had done a lot of walking and already ate out for lunch as well. And we love buying at a farmer's market where we have to guess at some of the items such as the sausage we bought. Here's a photo of our dinner: oops, the food pictures added above for some reason. Afternoon snack of drinks and plum cake-- creme d' menthe for me.
Spent my birthday in Prague--walked around the Jewish Quarter and Old Town. The highlight of the day was coming on a beautiful outdoor choir performance of Dvorak's music. Some of the songs made me cry. Performed by the Prague Symphony Choir. When we returned to our neighborhood, an Arber Fest was happening with lively music. Ended the day at our neighborhood pub, which also had a band performing some Czech folk music. Made some new friends, Tom, Giles and Vidor. They knew the Portland Trailblazers.
Birthday cake, a spice cake with cream cheese in between the layers. Creme d'Menthe for me and local brandy for Scott. We left Prague and ventured down to Velke Losing, a beautiful quaint village in the hills of Czech Republic. The town is known for its health resorts for elderly people, and I know we are not far away from that time. It reminded me of the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. We found a pension to spend the night and then walked into town where a folk band with a singer was playing in a really nice park. We sat and listened to the music for quite awhile and enjoyed watching the audience sing along with many of the songs. The area around the park contained a lot of pine trees, and several of the resort hotels were tucked away in the forest. It's also an area where people go hiking and biking. We had a delicious dinner at a little outdoor cafe. I had roast beef with potato bread dumplings, and Scott had duck with roasted potatoes and red cabbage. We also had garlic soup with smelly cheese as it was described on the menu. We enjoyed a gorgeous evening with just a light breeze-- perfect weather.
Next stop Bratislava...
Above photos are all of Bratislava, Slovakia. It is a much bigger city than I expected and full of life. We had a wonderful dinner of pork knuckle, which was like a quarter of a ham cooked on a rotisserie with veggie sides and a salad. Loved the architecture again, and the people also were very nice. We rent an apartment for the night, and unfortunately it was booked otherwise we would have stayed another day. The Danube is very pretty flowing through town, and the view above is with a half moon shining at night. The large building in the evening shot is the Slovakia Philharmonic Hall. Here are a few photos of our huge apartment and pork knuckle dinner at outdoor cafe.
From Bratislava we took a short train ride to Vienna where we amazingly found another smaller apartment for $44. We did a lot of walking in Vienna and really loved it. Our apartment was on the edge of the University of Vienna campus so we walked through it in the evening, which was really fun. We did a lot of walking the next day as well as we worked our way to the bus station for our Flixbus ride to Ljubljana, Slovenia. The public transportation system in Vienna was pretty easy to use, and we were "honored citizens" once again so we rode at discounted rates-- usually $3 E for both of us to go through a couple of zones. Definitely could have spent more time here, but we decided we wanted to move on and spend several days in one spot-- Slovenia. Below are some views from Vienna:
More Vienna: the ones at night are around the University of Vienna campus.
We have spent the past three days in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It is a larger city than expected, but the old town is very quaint. We rented a two-bedroom apartment for $68 a night-- the most we have spent on this trip, but it was the best deal we could find believe it or not. The people here are incredibly nice and helpful. We have visited most of the main places of interest in the city, and we went to the Slovenia Symphony last night. The music and performances were wonderful, and the conductor exuberant. I also went up to the castle, which is very different from the opulent palaces and castles we've visited elsewhere. This castle is more of a fortress and was used by the Austrians to house prisoners during WWI. We finally caught up on our wash, did a lot of walking and also got in some just plain relaxing. We're taking a bus to Venice today then hopping on a plane to Barcelona. I think we are about half way through our trip and wanted time to spend in Spain and Portugal. Photos to come later as the wifi is slow here for uploading.
Views from top-- church door in Old Town Ljubljana, Old Post Office, first dinner in Slovenia, traditional Slovenia restaurant. More photos below:
Photos from top: castle from the top of the tower, Slovenia Symphony Hall, View of Old Town from top of castle tower, front of Slovenia bank, view of Old Town square.
We took a Flixbus from Ljubljana to the Venice airport where we hung out for a few hours then flew to Barcelona. Our trip was about half over at this point, and we wanted to get to Spain and Portugal to spend some time. It was an hour bus ride from the airport into Venice so we didn't go into town-- and people we talked to said just a venture would have been very hectic. The Venice airport is very crazy filled with one tourist group after another and very confusing as to where you are supposed to go to check-in etc. We flew Veuling airlines, which is Iberian's economy arm. It was actually a very smooth flight although it was about 45 minutes late so we didn't arrive at our Airbnb until about 8:30-9 p.m. Of course on a Saturday night in Spain that's when things are just getting going. We received good instructions for taking the metro from the airport to our Airbnb from our host, but it was still a long haul-- and a rude awakening to stifling humidity. We were both craving cold beers after checking in so we just walked around the corner to a local bodega and had a bite to eat and each had a couple of beers. We explored the neighborhood and found a grocery store to buy some water, wine and a little something for a light breakfast. Plans for the next day-- Sagrada Familia as I wanted to go inside since it wasn't open when we were here some 34 years ago. Unfortunately, tickets were sold out when we got there and weren't available for a couple of days. It was still a sight to see because so much construction had taken place since we had seen it in the past-- and it gave the structure a different flavor. Scott liked it better, but I'm not so sure myself.
From top: Gaudi's Sagrada Familia showing new construction since we were there in 1984. Las Ramblas.
Barcelona street and me with Linda juice at Barcelona train station as we were having breakfast before departing for Pamplona. We have now been in Pamplona for a couple of days and really love this town. Went to the Cathedral of Santa Maria, the street where the bulls run, and the Rincon de Caballo Blanco where there is a majestic view of the surrounding hills and town. Had drinks and some bites at an outdoor restaurant to take in the view at sunset.
Top: Scott going to book fair, and no he didn't buy any books because they were all in Spanish. Plaza de Castillo is where the book fair took place, and the closest plaza in old town next to where we stayed. The narrow street where Scott is standing and the one below is where the bulls run-- it's really hard to imagine them running down that street because it is so narrow and filled with obstructions. Various views of the central part of Pamplona except the one second from the bottom is the street where we stayed in our pension. More photos to come.
From top: We walked a portion of El Camino de Santiago de Compostela; view from our bathroom window of our "penthouse"; walking to El Rincon de Caballo Blanco; view of Pamplona from Rincon; Pamplona downtown; little book boxes also are in Pamplona just the same as Portland!
Our first day in Haselbach, we went to another small town in the country so our friend Tina's daughter could ride her horse while we hiked in the beautiful woods. Later that day we drove to Markt Schwaben where we are now staying which is closer to Munich. We ate a delicious dinner at a Schnitzel Haus that reminded me a lot of the Bavarian Restaurant I worked at in Eugene. The sign in the picture translates to: Come eat with us or we both will starve. We had so much food that Scott and I thought we were going to burst, and it was inexpensive especially for Munich prices.
On Sunday we went to the Austrian Alps and went to an incredible look out. The group photo above was taken from a cantilevered ledge that juts out from a rock cropping, and the view below is high enough to give you the heebie jeebies. We couldn't look through the glass floor especially because the platform bounced when you walked on it.
Josephine cooked us a wonderful dinner of garlic prawns over potatoes with a cucumber salad. We also enjoyed a nice sunset.
The above photos are a little chapel near Haselbach in the country.
We took the train back to Markt Schwaben where we were staying at Tina's really nice friend Jacques' house. We met up with Tina's son Christoph, whom we have known since he was a baby because they used to live next door to us. For those of you who have met Christoph because he visited with us a couple of times and also went to Wilson High for a quarter--he is now working as an IT guy for Boston Server, an international company. Unfortunately, we were so involved in our visit that we didn't take a picture. He is 25 now and has filled out so he is a very handsome young man -- different than the skinny teen we remember. He is supposed to email me a photo, and when I receive it, I will post it here.
On our last day in the Munich area, our sweet friend Tina took us to the Herrenchiemsee Castle, which was more like a palace and modeled after Versailles. It was one of the residences of King Ludwig II, but really built as a future museum. Sorry, no photos of the inside are allowed, but there is lots of marble, gold leaf and so many candelabras that Liberace looks like a country mouse. We visited two islands and also saw a monastery chapel and we had an afternoon snack in the garden of a restaurant with a view of the lake. It was a beautiful day with perfect weather and a trip in the BMW Cabriolet. We had a wonderful three-course dinner that Tina prepared for us, and watched another gorgeous sunset. We have been spoiled by Tina and her friend Jacques who have housed, fed and taken us sightseeing. We appreciate their friendship and hospitality and hope to see them in Portland in the near future. Many Thanks to Tina and Jacques!!!
We are now in Prague. We actually took a Flixbus from Munich to Prague for about $30 total for both of us. Scott had lots of legroom, and the trip went quite quickly. We had booked a room at Hotel Prokop for about $45 a night including breakfast, and we knew it was a bit out of town. However, it was a bit of an adventure to get here. We had to take a tram and two buses then walk a few blocks to our hotel so we didn't arrive until about 7:30 pm. The good news is that because we are senior citizens we get to ride all the public transportation for free-- we just had to pay to get our photos taken at a photo booth then $40 crowns for them to make our passes. We've been riding around for a total of $10 U.S. dollars.
We were pretty proud of ourselves for making it to our hotel via public transportation because a taxi was going to cost $35-40. We found a neighborhood restaurant where we had a delicious dinner and a couple of beers for less than $20. The plate above was Scott's first dinner of braised beef, polenta cakes and sauerkraut. I ordered a tortilla, which was the only word I recognized on the menu==thinking I might get an omelette such as in Spain, but instead I got a burrito type thing filled with cole slaw and fried chicken pieces in a thousand island type dressing. It was good, but it was not very photogenic. We were overwhelmed with Prague from the beginning, the architecture is amazing, and there's so much to see. More news to come...
More views from Prague. We spent most of a day at the St. Vitus Cathedral and Prague Castle, which are all in the same compound. The chapel directly above this text is a part of the castle, the other interiors include the cathedral and the palace. It was all quite opulent with lots of marble, gold, and amazing stained glass. The gal in the red dress was posing for photographs outside the cathedral-- think she was a bride as a guy dressed as a groom was close by. Another bride and groom also were having their photos taken in another area on the grounds. The cathedral also had gargoyles at the top if you look closely above Scott's head you can see a few. After we left the castle we headed toward the center of town where we came across a farmer's market. We bought food for our dinner as we had done a lot of walking and already ate out for lunch as well. And we love buying at a farmer's market where we have to guess at some of the items such as the sausage we bought. Here's a photo of our dinner: oops, the food pictures added above for some reason. Afternoon snack of drinks and plum cake-- creme d' menthe for me.
Spent my birthday in Prague--walked around the Jewish Quarter and Old Town. The highlight of the day was coming on a beautiful outdoor choir performance of Dvorak's music. Some of the songs made me cry. Performed by the Prague Symphony Choir. When we returned to our neighborhood, an Arber Fest was happening with lively music. Ended the day at our neighborhood pub, which also had a band performing some Czech folk music. Made some new friends, Tom, Giles and Vidor. They knew the Portland Trailblazers.
Birthday cake, a spice cake with cream cheese in between the layers. Creme d'Menthe for me and local brandy for Scott. We left Prague and ventured down to Velke Losing, a beautiful quaint village in the hills of Czech Republic. The town is known for its health resorts for elderly people, and I know we are not far away from that time. It reminded me of the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. We found a pension to spend the night and then walked into town where a folk band with a singer was playing in a really nice park. We sat and listened to the music for quite awhile and enjoyed watching the audience sing along with many of the songs. The area around the park contained a lot of pine trees, and several of the resort hotels were tucked away in the forest. It's also an area where people go hiking and biking. We had a delicious dinner at a little outdoor cafe. I had roast beef with potato bread dumplings, and Scott had duck with roasted potatoes and red cabbage. We also had garlic soup with smelly cheese as it was described on the menu. We enjoyed a gorgeous evening with just a light breeze-- perfect weather.
Next stop Bratislava...
Above photos are all of Bratislava, Slovakia. It is a much bigger city than I expected and full of life. We had a wonderful dinner of pork knuckle, which was like a quarter of a ham cooked on a rotisserie with veggie sides and a salad. Loved the architecture again, and the people also were very nice. We rent an apartment for the night, and unfortunately it was booked otherwise we would have stayed another day. The Danube is very pretty flowing through town, and the view above is with a half moon shining at night. The large building in the evening shot is the Slovakia Philharmonic Hall. Here are a few photos of our huge apartment and pork knuckle dinner at outdoor cafe.
From Bratislava we took a short train ride to Vienna where we amazingly found another smaller apartment for $44. We did a lot of walking in Vienna and really loved it. Our apartment was on the edge of the University of Vienna campus so we walked through it in the evening, which was really fun. We did a lot of walking the next day as well as we worked our way to the bus station for our Flixbus ride to Ljubljana, Slovenia. The public transportation system in Vienna was pretty easy to use, and we were "honored citizens" once again so we rode at discounted rates-- usually $3 E for both of us to go through a couple of zones. Definitely could have spent more time here, but we decided we wanted to move on and spend several days in one spot-- Slovenia. Below are some views from Vienna:
More Vienna: the ones at night are around the University of Vienna campus.
We have spent the past three days in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It is a larger city than expected, but the old town is very quaint. We rented a two-bedroom apartment for $68 a night-- the most we have spent on this trip, but it was the best deal we could find believe it or not. The people here are incredibly nice and helpful. We have visited most of the main places of interest in the city, and we went to the Slovenia Symphony last night. The music and performances were wonderful, and the conductor exuberant. I also went up to the castle, which is very different from the opulent palaces and castles we've visited elsewhere. This castle is more of a fortress and was used by the Austrians to house prisoners during WWI. We finally caught up on our wash, did a lot of walking and also got in some just plain relaxing. We're taking a bus to Venice today then hopping on a plane to Barcelona. I think we are about half way through our trip and wanted time to spend in Spain and Portugal. Photos to come later as the wifi is slow here for uploading.
Views from top-- church door in Old Town Ljubljana, Old Post Office, first dinner in Slovenia, traditional Slovenia restaurant. More photos below:
Photos from top: castle from the top of the tower, Slovenia Symphony Hall, View of Old Town from top of castle tower, front of Slovenia bank, view of Old Town square.
Barcelona Library with me below sign. Very hot and humid.
We took a Flixbus from Ljubljana to the Venice airport where we hung out for a few hours then flew to Barcelona. Our trip was about half over at this point, and we wanted to get to Spain and Portugal to spend some time. It was an hour bus ride from the airport into Venice so we didn't go into town-- and people we talked to said just a venture would have been very hectic. The Venice airport is very crazy filled with one tourist group after another and very confusing as to where you are supposed to go to check-in etc. We flew Veuling airlines, which is Iberian's economy arm. It was actually a very smooth flight although it was about 45 minutes late so we didn't arrive at our Airbnb until about 8:30-9 p.m. Of course on a Saturday night in Spain that's when things are just getting going. We received good instructions for taking the metro from the airport to our Airbnb from our host, but it was still a long haul-- and a rude awakening to stifling humidity. We were both craving cold beers after checking in so we just walked around the corner to a local bodega and had a bite to eat and each had a couple of beers. We explored the neighborhood and found a grocery store to buy some water, wine and a little something for a light breakfast. Plans for the next day-- Sagrada Familia as I wanted to go inside since it wasn't open when we were here some 34 years ago. Unfortunately, tickets were sold out when we got there and weren't available for a couple of days. It was still a sight to see because so much construction had taken place since we had seen it in the past-- and it gave the structure a different flavor. Scott liked it better, but I'm not so sure myself.
From top: Gaudi's Sagrada Familia showing new construction since we were there in 1984. Las Ramblas.
Barcelona street and me with Linda juice at Barcelona train station as we were having breakfast before departing for Pamplona. We have now been in Pamplona for a couple of days and really love this town. Went to the Cathedral of Santa Maria, the street where the bulls run, and the Rincon de Caballo Blanco where there is a majestic view of the surrounding hills and town. Had drinks and some bites at an outdoor restaurant to take in the view at sunset.
From top: We walked a portion of El Camino de Santiago de Compostela; view from our bathroom window of our "penthouse"; walking to El Rincon de Caballo Blanco; view of Pamplona from Rincon; Pamplona downtown; little book boxes also are in Pamplona just the same as Portland!
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