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I’m finally getting to a write up on our trip. It's long and I typed it and didn't read it before posting, so it may have lots of mistakes. Don't feel like you have to read it. It's amazing how long it got considering how much I left out.
The day we left, we were up at 3:00 am. Ridiculously early, but it gave us time to clean up the nice pile of vomit one of our cats left us. It also gave hubby time to get ready before driving to the back woods of WI for his father’s uncle’s funeral. Hubby got home from that around 1:00. I quickly wrapped up what I was doing for work and we left by 1:30. We drove into Chicago and parked at the hotel lot we always use, paid and took their shuttle to the airport. We got to the airport ridiculously early as they want you there 3 hours ahead of time. We got through check in and security in about 10 minutes. Yep, 10 minutes at O’Hare. Then we had to sit for hours. We got on the plane on time, but because of lightening, we sat on the ground for about 90 minutes before taking off. Since we were both up at 3:00, we were able to sleep for about 6 hours of the flight. We got to Frankfurt around 10:30 and hopped on a train to Bacharach. A group of very drunk young guys got on the train half way to Bacharach. We think they were at a bachelor party. They were singing songs in thickly accented English. With a lot of concentration we could figure out what they were singing.
We spent the rest of our day walking the small city streets of Bacharach, seeing a cathedral that was bombed in WWII and not rebuilt, hiking up to the youth hostel/castle, drinking beer and eating. We each had .5 litters of beer sitting outside with 4 chickens and a rooster. I had a wonderful schnitzel with rosemary at dinner. I had a riesling gelato for dessert. It was worth trying, but not something I would buy by the pint.
On Sunday we had a great breakfast at our bed and breakfast that was similar to what we would have most mornings. Bread, cheese, meets, butter, home made jams and honey. We also each had a boiled egg, but that was not common in our other hotels. The woman who ran this bed and breakfast reminded me of my aunt and the place smelled like my grandma’s house. My grandma’s house always smelled wonderful and I felt right at home. After breakfast we took a boat to St. Goar. We had to act like the locals and got a beer to share on the boat. We hiked up a trail for about 15 minutes to a castle in St. Goar carrying our back packs. I know mine weighed around 25 pounds. It would have been a lot less if I hadn’t brought so many books with. I just can’t go any where without a book. The castle/city was very interesting to see, but much like every other walled city the two of us have visited. The one thing we both found very interesting was the city’s jail. It was basically a tiny room about 50 feet deep. The inmates were lowered into the jail by rope through a very small hole. The floor was covered in their slop, so they spent all their time on wooden beams that ran from one side of the room to the other. I think the book we read said that the longest anyone survived was 2 years.
We ate a picnic in St. Goar and then hopped a train to Koln (Cologne) because of a friend's suggestion. I’m glad we did. We checked our bags in the automated lockers at the train station. The lockers reminded me of the bank in Harry Potter. You put your money in and an empty container appears. You put your bags in, close the door and the container is whisked off. A bar code is printed so the machine knows where to retrieve your bag from when you return. The cathedral here was gorgeous! We hiked the 509 steps up the church spire and had an amazing view of the city. When we hiked back down, we walked the streets seeing street performers, artists and interesting people in general. We didn’t do any shopping here as the prices were way out of my range even when the exchange rate wasn’t taken into consideration. We had white sausages, pretzels, spicy mustard and beer for dinner before hopping on our night train to Vienna.
The night trains can be hit or miss. We decided to get a 6 person couchette instead of paying a few hundred Euro for a private one. We shared our couchette with a woman and her two small boys from Holland and a young woman from Austria. They were all very pleasant and got off the train a few hours before us. This allowed us time to wash up and change in our compartment. Our reservation for the night train was for Frankfurt to Vienna. The same train originated in Koln. We’re glad we jumped on there instead of in Frankfort as we originally planned. The train was running 90 minutes late and we would have been in the Frankfurt station until about 12:30 am waiting for the train. We were told that’s not a station you necessarily want to spend too much time in at night.
Vienna was great. Partly because my mom’s family is from there and I really enjoyed seeing where my great grandmother grew up. We had a picnic lunch while sitting at a fountain. Every time we’re in Europe we eat a ton of fresh mozzarella. I’m always amazed at the quality offered in Europe at very inexpensive prices. We would pay about 1.50 Euro for a 150 to 200 g mozzarella ball. That would be at least 3 times the cost around here and would not taste nearly as good. After lunch we took the public tram around the ring and then stopped at my mom’s favorite ice cream place. Zanoni and Zanoni. I had a sundae with marscapone, tiramisu and chocolate ice cream, marscapone, whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Hubby had one with fiacco, hazelnut & coffee icecream, carmel, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and hazelnuts. We then went to see the crown jewels. A group of locals asked if us we wanted to join their group for admission. It was cheaper per person to enter if you had a group of 10 or more. We agreed to join their group since we only had to enter together and then could go our own ways in the museum. The crown jewels were spectacular. This was really the only museum we did on our whole trip. We both felt like we’d done enough museums on our other trips. We spent about 90 minutes in a park hanging out, enjoying the beautiful weather. For dinner that night, we went to a place my parents highly recommended. The place sells enormous schnitzel and wonderful salads with dabs of different vegetable salads around the plate. I couldn’t finish my schnitzel, so it was packed up for lunch the next day. We didn’t have a refrigerator in our room, but I figured for most of human history people at food that sat out overnight, so I wasn’t going to get food poisoning if I ate it. After dinner, we went to the opera. We wanted to buy standing room tickets, but didn’t have any small bills after just going to an ATM and the ticket office wouldn’t sell us a ticket. We decided to stand outside for a few minutes to see if we could buy tickets off any one who may be leaving. We quickly saw women who were in the group we’d joined at the crown jewels earlier in the day. They wouldn’t take money for their tickets, but gave us theirs for helping them out earlier in the day. Madame Butterfly was playing and we entered right after intermission. This is one of my mom’s favorite operas and I grew up listening to the music. Hubby had never seen an opera and was expecting something totally different. I don’t think he enjoyed it as much as I did.
The next day we had about half a day in Vienna. We went to their parliament building and a few other places just bumming around. They were getting the city ready for the May Day celebration. We went back to Zanoni & Zanoni for a second time. I had a sundae with vanilla, hazelnut and chocolate ice cream, meringue, chocolate sauce and chipped cream. Hubby had one with mixed berry ice creams, fresh fruit and whipped cream. Both were better than what we’d had the day before. We got on a train headed to Halstatt and met a young man who was turning in his final assignment for college. He was very excited and we shared our bottle of wine with him in celebration. He gave us his email address as he’d like to visit Chicago sometime soon. It rained while we were on our way to Hallstatt, but that was really the only rain of our trip. We got to Hallstatt in time for dinner, but could only find one restaurant. Most things are closed there on Tuesday nights. Our meals were mediocre, but we split a goulash soup that made up for the meals.
On Wednesday, we spent most of the day hiking in the mountains. Hallstatt has a salt mine that has been used for at least 7000 years. There is a train/lift that tourists can take up the mountain to the mine. The look of the lift freaked me out, but we would have hiked even if it hadn’t. We got to the salt mines not knowing if we would do the tour. We asked for the price and no one knew what it was without the tram. Only tourists go on the tour and evidently no tourists hike up the mountain. We were the local’s entertainment for a while as they all were thrilled we’d used their trail. After finding out the price, we decided we’d both rather keep hiking. We kept hiking higher and higher. Each time telling each other we’d stop at a certain spot. We’d get to that spot and see something else we wanted to get to. Eventually we decided we needed to head down. The decent was much quicker than the climb. At the recommendation of our bed and breakfast owner, we ate dinner at the youth hostel. The food was great and the restaurant had more locals in it than tourists. After dinner, we went to the town’s tiny park and drank beer at picnic tables with the community, listening to a polka band. The city was getting geared up for May Day.
Thursday was May Day. We were woken at 6:00 am to the sound of gun being fired in celebration. At around 6:15, the city’s band marched by to make sure anyone who had slept through the guns was now awake. We got ready and went to the city center to hear the band playing. It decided to pour while we were out and the band was soaked. The trumpet players were dumping water out of their horns at the end of their performance. It stopped raining by the time we left the city around 9:00. We met a man from India on the boat taking us across the lake to the train station and chatted with him on the trains until we got to Salzurg. We didn’t do much in Salzburg as most things were closed for the holiday. I bought my only souvenir for the trip here. It’s a wooden figure held together by strings. You pull the strings and his arms and legs move. I had one of these in my room as a child and loved it, so couldn’t pass this up. We were in Salzburg for about 3 hours and then headed to Munich. We’d been eating all day, so split a sauerbraten. I think it was the best sauerbraten I’ve ever had. We ate at a beer hall that invented heffeweisen beer. I love good unfiltered wheat beer.
We spent the next morning bumming around Munich and buying olives, mozzarella & tomato salad, pickled garlic, pickles and kiwi berries at a market. We hung around the cathedral to see the glockenspiel on the hour. I’m glad we did it, but once was enough. While we waited, we were approached by an American who lives in Germany to join his free bike tour of Munich. We were leery at first, but it really is free. It was expected we’d tip at the end, which we did, but it was not high pressure. We rode beach cruisers and had to listen to a long explanation of how to use back pedal breaks and why we shouldn’t skid out. Of course I didn’t listen and was skidding out right away. I think most of the people in our tour hadn’t been on a bike in years. Hubby and I were always the first few people following our guide. The tour was informative, but very humorous. Halfway through, we stopped at the Chinese Pagoda in the English Gardens for beer. An hour, lunch and a full liter of beer later, we were back up on our bikes. I was riding about as fast as I could, following the tour guide a bit too close and almost took him out when he stopped suddenly to point out glass. No worries though and he found it amusing. We were sausage and schnitzeled out at this point and split a wonderful pizza margarhitta for dinner. We weren’t beered out though and went back to the wheat beer hall for drinks. We sat at a table with a couple from NJ and spent a few hours chatting with them. By the time we left, hubby and I had managed to together consume 2 litters of beer. That’s a lot for 2 people who rarely drink.
On Saturday we took a train to Rothenburg. There wasn’t much to do in this city, but by this time my toes were covered in blisters and I needed a relaxing day without much walking. My feet are prone to blisters no matter what shoes or socks I wear. I was amazed I had gone the full trip to that point without any. One thing hubby was excited for in this city was their Christmas stores. The idea of the stores was better than the stores. We went into the stores and were quickly in my shopping nightmare. They had Christmas music playing and parts of the store roped off so you had no choice but to wind through all the levels before finding the exit. I checked my email for the first time in Rothenburg to see if my dad had been given clearance from his doctor to travel. We were supposed to meet my parents in Rothenburg, but I didn’t want to try to find them if they were still in the States. We left them a note at their hotel, but saw them walking through the city square while we were having a picnic. Yep, we picnicked a lot. We walked the city wall with them, had some ice cream, some wine and then dinner. We had another great meal here at a place our bed and breakfast recommended.
Sunday morning we had a breakfast with bread, sliced cheeses, meats, 3 kinds of baby belle cheese, nutella, home made rhubarb berry jam, apricot jam, butter, honey, meat balls, mustard, pineapple, yogurt, coffee, tea, lemon pound cake and 3 kinds of liverwurst. There were too many things to choose from and I didn’t get to sample everything. I wish I’d tried the liverwurst as I’m sure it’s much better than what we get here. Yes, I will eat liverwurst. It’s great stuff! We were driven to the train station by the bed and breakfast owner and took the train back to Frankfurt. Our plane ride home was uneventful and I didn’t care to watch either movie they played, so I probably read about 7.5 hours of A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin.
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Cel's EuroTrip
Sounds like a lot of fun and so much to do in a short period of time! I miss Europe tons and can't wait to go back, hopefully soon. Thanks for sharing!
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