Christmas Time is Here!

So it snowed in Beaumont! Last Thursday I woke up to 4 inches of snow outside, with no time to play in it! Apparently this only happens once every 20 years or so haha, so I did manage to grab this quick pic with my phone (all the other ones turned out way blurry!):

With the snow, it finally felt like Christmas time! It's really snuck up on me this year, especially with the warm Texas weather, and the long work hours - which of course means I am quite behind on Christmas shopping! I did manage to finally put together an array of mint-chocolate treats for our gift exchange game tomorrow at work, and I've got the family covered (almost...) but I've got nothing yet for Rob - eek! I'm sure I can come up with something this week though.

I'm flying home on Saturday night, and I am super excited! Although work has been stressful, I can definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel. Can't wait to see the fam and spend 6 days in NC!!!

Good Reads

So I really enjoy learning about other cultures and places, so for the past year or so, I've been searching out books that will teach me something about somewhere new. Luckily, these sorts of books seem to be popular with the rest of the world recently too - so it isn't too hard to find a good piece of fiction that will teach you something new!

I just finished reading "Three Cups of Tea" - a book along those same lines, but instead of a novel, a nonfiction account of the work of Greg Mortensen and the Central Asia Institute in building schools in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was a great book with a different perspective on two countries that we are generally influenced to fear/despise in America - I would highly recommend reading it! (Other awesome books: The Poisonwood Bible, The Power of One, A Thousand Splendid Suns... annnnd lots more)

Thanksgiving in Sugarland!

For Thanksgiving I was unable to go home to NC, but I had a great time at the hospitality of the Morgan family in Sugarland (outside of Houston). Erik Morgan is a co-op at ExxonMobil and a good friend of Rob's, so we, along with our friends James and Braden, spent Thanksgiving with the Morgans. A few pics:

James and Braden working hard on the Christmas decowhile Rob and I attempt to make lemonade
with tons of lemon we found beside the house

Lunch for James's birthday
Decorating the tree
Finished product!

We had such a nice time with the Morgan's and I'm grateful that they took me in over Thanksgiving! Luckily its not so long before I'll get to spend the holidays with my family in NC!!

Halloween fun!

(Three blogs in one day, whoo!)

Thought I would share some fun pics from my post-Halloween celebration. I had to work the morning after Halloween, so I didn't engage in many festivities, but on Nov 1, my friend Kate and I stumbled across an awesome Halloween deal. Since we didn't have time to carve pumpkins before Halloween (so much working!), we set out on Saturday afternoon to find any decent leftover pumpkins in town. After a few unsuccessful stops, we found a Kroger selling pumpkins for $1!! So naturally, we bought 8 haha :)

Two of my masterpieces, Pirate and Pierre.
We managed 6 before we were exhausted...

As you can see, we made quite a mess of Rob's pool deck. Later we roasted the pumpkin seeds and tried to pretend it was fall in the 80 degree weather! Anyway, it was a fun day :)

Meet Rob :)

Meet Rob Chang. I met Rob my second weekend here while we were out with a bunch of friends. The next week, I asked him about the Bible study that he goes too, he asked me to dinner beforehand, and the rest is history, I suppose. I certainly didn't expect to move here and meet someone, but sometimes life is full of surprises!

Us at a Gavin DeGraw concert in Houston.

For those of you who need the quick stats, Rob is from Westchester, PA (outside of Philly), attended Penn State for mechanical engineering, has been working for exxonmobil for a year longer than I have and is probably one of the nicest people I know. Coincidentally, his Dad was an NCSU chemical engineer! (which reminds me, go NC State! we killed Carolina yesterday!!)

Time Off!

So I mentioned in my last post that I've been working a ton... and nothing much has changed! A few weeks ago I was able to get some much needed time off to go home for my Mom's 50th birthday! We had such an awesome time hosting a party at our house (and a big one at that!) and just hanging out for the rest of the weekend. I wish I had some good pictures to show, but I slacked off and didn't get any good ones...

Since then, I haven't had a full day off - I've taken half days off, and even on my full days "off" I've usually had to go in for at least a few hours for meetings, etc. But this weekend, I enjoyed a full day off yesterday, and today, I only worked 8 hours (a hard thing to come by!) - which allowed me to reclaim my apartment from the depths of messiness, and do some shopping! After almost 4 months here, I finally have lamps!!

I don't mean to complain about my job - I love my job and my coworkers, and I would never expect to work this schedule if our plant hadn't been destroyed by a hurricane - but it really makes those days off sweeter! I spend a lot of time dreaming up all the things I'll do when I have weekends again, and could even take vacation days!

Anyway, here's some long awaited pics of my apartment!!

Living room (with new lamps!!)

Dining room (notice my dresser lives here since it won't fit in the bedroom)

Bedroom!

I'm definitely discovering that the less time I spend here, the messier it gets - and the messier it gets, the less I want to spend time at home! Funny how that works. Now that I've got it all cleaned up, I can't wait to come home and love spending time here! Now if Target would just get in the tv stand that I want....

Beaumont!

ok so we see how well i've done with keeping up this blog since returning to the states! i think my obsession with having things organized has kept me from writing an update - ive felt that i needed to finish out the europe stuff before i could write a new one, but i dont have time to sit down and remember the details of the last few days in europe, so i haven't written - go figure. i'll get to that eventually.

well long story short, i moved to beaumont, tx just one week after my fabulous last few days in italy. i started a job that is really challenging, and met a lot of nice people here even in the first few weeks. then the hurricanes started - first Gustav, over labor day - and i got my first hurricane evacuation vacation - two days in houston and two days in austin with some friends. i think it rained about half an inch in beaumont. two weeks later, we got hit by hurricane ike and spent another "hurrication" in dallas for a week. this time we got much more than half an inch, and a lot of the areas around beaumont were severely flooded - i had no damage to the apartment though. however, the chemical plant that i work at at exxonmobil didn't fare so well - at least 10 feet of water in the entire plant. so now, in order to get the plant back up and running, we work every single day at the chem plant - one day off every two weeks! we hope to have our first units up and running by the first of december, and the final ones in february. working so much is really tiring, but im learning a ton. more on the job later. outside of work, ive met some great friends, started dating someone, joined a Bible study, and started taking a whole plethora of dance classes...!! i miss my family, but its fun to be on a new adventure. that's the quick summary, annnnd i'll fill in the details later :)

Orvieto - July 18

I left Rome early Friday morning (I'm almost caught up with this blog!) and then stopped in Orvieto, and Umbrian hill town (google image search Orvieto and you'll see what I mean by hill town...) for the day. I first stopped by the post office to mail some postcards, and then off I went to the beautiful cathedral - inside they have a blood stained altar cloth that was involved in some miracle involving transubstantiation, so that was cool but mostly the church was just really stunning - lots of black and white marble stripes but a really colorful facade on the outside. I took some pics of the landscape over the city walls and then took at tour of the 'Orvieto Underground.' Wayyyy back in the Etruscan times, they started digging caves under the city to find water, as well as to use for temples, and then they became oil mills for olive oil... and then some of the special volcanic rock was quarries, and then some of the caves were used as dove cotes for raising pigeons, and then as ceramic factories, and then finally some where even used as bomb shelters in WWII. Crazy! There are over 1000 caves, most of them attached to private homes in the city, and we spent over an hour touring just 2! Basically the idea was that people lived above the city, and worked under it, for centuries. Very cool tour and only like $5!

After the tour I wandered around the city and went to lunch where I had some super good homemade pasta, and finally ate a full meal! As I walked back towards the funicular down to the train station, I stopped in the park and walked the old city walls with great views of the countryside - awesome! Before I caught the train to Florence I got some ice cream, of course, and before I knew it I was on my way to Tuscany. Orvieto was a great stop for the day, very quaint town with good things to see, and a good intro to the beautiful Italian landscapes in Umbria and Tuscany!

Rome - July 17

Yep, Rome in one day! Basically :) I arrive in Rome fairly late from Venice after a fun train ride... Kasey had picked up the book 'The Kite Runner' at a book sway in Salzburg in exchange for my Jason Bourne novel, and although I had already read it, it was all I had, so I started reading it again on the train. The problem was, I had forgotten how sad it was, and since I had read it before, I had all the knowledge that made the beginning even sadder, annnnnd I'm a book-crier anyway, so there I am on the train, sitting with people I don't know across the table, trying not to look like the weirdo who is crying on the train. I had to keep playing Solitaire to take emotional breaks haha. Great book.

Anyway, after arriving in Rome, I followed the directions and caught the bus to my hostel, but the bus was crowded and I had to stand with all of my stuff the whole time, which was just not good considering my omnipresent blisters were in a bad state after all the walking in Venice, so I was pretty tired when I got to the hostel! I got settled in and used their free internet (I loveeee free internet, it can be so expensive at the internet cafes!) and decided to not even venture out for dinner because I was so tired. I hadn't eaten a very large lunch, so in retrospect, this was probably not the best decision, but oh well. I set the alarm for early and hopped in bed.

I got up early the next morning and headed first to Trevi fountain, where I ate my last ziploc bag of Oatmeal Crisp cereal I had brought from home and enjoyed watching them clean all of yesterdays change out of the fountain! After the fountain I walked to the Spanish steps, and then headed to join the crowds at the Vatican Museums/Sistene Chapel. Since the museums open at 10, I tried to beat the crowds by arriving at 9, but there was still pretty many people there. I didn't have to wait too long to get in though, and soon I was enjoying the vast, and I mean vast museum... you have to walk through most of it to even get to the Sistene Chapel, which is the main attraction, and towards the end I basically just wanted to be done. I'm not a big museum lover anyway, and they are even more boring when you are by yourself. I had rented an audioguide though, so at least I knew what I was looking at for the most part! In the end, the Sistene Chapel was really impressive and beautiful, and I did get to see a lot of cool things. I was incredibly tired by the end though, most likely due to the lack of food over the past few days, so I ate right there in the overpriced museum cafeteria, and felt a lot better after I did! Post-museum, I headed to the cathedral, which was humongous and really great- I love taking pictures in churches - and St. Peter's square was huge and amazing also!

Around 1, as I was sitting in the square planning the rest of the day, I realized that the Colesseum, on the other side of town, would be closing at 3:30, so I booked it back to the metro
and headed there right away. Luckily the metro stop is literally right next to the Colesseum and Roman Forum, so it was easy to find, and I had a great time walking around and seeing where the gladiators and prisoners and Romans and caesers had been, and thinking about what an awesome movie Gladiator is! My feet were reallllly killing me at this point though, so I elected not to spend much time looking at the ruins in the Roman Forum and pressed on to the Pantheon and a few other squares I wanted to see. The problem was, it was only like 3:30 and I was out of things to do! How could this happen in Rome? I don't know. But I was so tired that I didn't want to keep looking for things to do until dinner, so I got ice cream and headed back to the hostel around 4:30. I guess I hadn't needed to get up so early after all! I figured I'd go back out for dinner later that night , but I never did... I just ate some of a leftover sandwich from my big lunch and worked on updating this blog and catching up on emails, and on my written journal, which I am unbelievable behind on!

I tried not to go to bed too early so I wouldn't inconvenience the other people in my room by turning the light our early, but I was still in bed by midnight so I could catch my 9AM train in the morning. This plan turned out to be flawed though, because at 4:15, two of the guys in my room came home drunk and louddddd and turned on the light, and proceeded to joke with each other and yell and hit each other with towels, etc. So dumb. And it was only a 6 person room, so of course the rest of us are all awake. I figured there was no real reasoning with them, but then the Italian girl in the room started fighting with them over whether or not the fan should be on, and the whole ordeal went on for like 20 minutes, including the guy from reception coming to tell them to be quiet and settling the fan dispute, so the whole thing was just ridiculous. But oh well, I ended up feeling rested the next morning anyway, and had a nice breakfast with the hostel staff before I left. You never know with a hostel haha.

With Rome, I almost felt that it was a waste of a day that I could have spent elsewhere, even though I did enjoy the day. Before I came on this trip, I had thought about skipping Rome to spend more time in Tuscany or Venice, and decided not to, and I think it was a wise decision... I think I would have regretted not going it I had skipped it. Anyway, Rome was nice, but I was tired and it was a little boring by myself! But if you are into history and art, Rome is for you - just bring a friend!

Venice - July 15 & 16

We left Ljubljana pretty early for Villach, Austria, where we would connect to Venice... seems silly that we went all the way up through Austria, but whatever! Our train was running late even when it left, and we were really worried about missing the connection since another train wasn't coming for quite a few hours, and would cause Kasey to miss her night train, but it all worked out and we got there in enough time to make the second train, and we arrive in Venice around 1:30 that afternoon. I was really excited, because I've always wanted to go to Italy and Venice, and Kasey was excited to go back because she had loved it when she was there earlier in the summer. Kasey stored her stuff and I bought my train reservation to Rome for the next day and off we went!

In Venice, as you may know, everything is on canals - there are some streets, but only pedestrian streets - no cars, and everyone travels around by boat! So that includes public transportation, so we got to take one of the water buses, or 'vaporetti' to get to by hotel. Yep, that's right, I said hotel, not hostel! I decided that since I wasn't going to have a lot of time in Venice, I wanted to be close to the action, and since most of the hostels are way outside town, I splurged for once and booked a real hotel in the middle of Venice! We found it without too much trouble, although it was really hot out, the hottest its been on this trip. I checked into my nice room and ditched the stuff and we set off to see the city for a few hours before Kasey left.

Venice is famous for quite a few things, one of them being the glass-blowing industry, so they have tons of glass jewelry and other items for sale evvvverywhere. So we had fun souvenier shopping, and I actually bought stuff for once! We had a good lunch and trekked to St. Marks Square to see the tourists and pigeons swarming everywhere, and had a great afternoon strolling around and trying to get pictures of the gondolas. We cruised down the Grand Canal on one of the water buses (the gondolas are wayyyyy to expensive) and before we knew it, it was time for Kasey to go! So I sent her off to Paris, and suddenly, I was traveling alone!! Crazy!! So I got myself some ice cream to console myself over my loss of traveling companion and headed back to the hotel, I wasn't even hungry enough for dinner, and eating alone is no fun!

I went to bed pretty early that night, because I wanted to get up early in the morning and see St. Mark's Square before all the people came, but when the morning came, I didn't want to get up at all! haha. So I showered and waited for my free hotel breakfast with really good hot chocolate and packed up my stuff. Around 9 I checked out of the hostel, and set out to accomplish my first goal - see if maybe Italy would allow me to ship my wine home... the UPS store said its near impossible, but they did sell me some bubble wrap so I could bring the wine home on the plane, and hence I have been carrying it to this day, and will be carrying that darn wine until I get home haha. But after that, I went to visit the church of St. Giovanni, which was near my hostel, and then headed off to Murano, which is the glass-blowing island. I got to see a few different furnaces and cool glass objects being made, and did a bit of shopping, or more like window shopping, for quite a while. I just couldn't being myself to buy at $200 vase that I'd have to lug around or pay to ship haha, but they were beautiful!

After my morning in Murano, I headed to join the crowds in town and went to St. Marks, which was very beautiful, and then fed pigeons in the square with my granola bar crumbs, and ate lunch at one of the expensive cafes on the square with live classical music - fun! I wandered around quite a bit, and cruised down the Grand Canal for a bit before heading back to the hotel to get my stuff and head for Rome. It the heat, I was so tired - I had had plenty of water, but I still felt exhausted and a little dizzy. Luckily I made it back to the hotel fine, and then to the train station, where I caught the train to Rome and sadly have to leave Venice behind.

Venice was really great, and not a bad place to be alone. There isn't a ton to actually see, I guess, but its a great place to wander around and enjoy, every inch of it is beautiful!

Ljubljana - July 14

Monday morning we left Split as early as we could in hopes of making it to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, by that afternoon. Since we had decided to stay the extra night in paradise, we knew we were sacrificing time in Slovenia, so we wanted to get there as soon as we could! Our train from Split back to Zagreb was running about 20 minutes late, and we were so worried that we would be stuck in Zagreb again! We knew we would miss the first train we were trying to catch, but now even the backup plan was looking questionable, since we needed reservations and didn't have time to get them... so basically when we arrived, we sprinted off the train, and thought we found the train we had missed still on the platform and hopped on it! Turns out the train we were on was actually the backup-plan train, but no one cared that we didn't have a reservation, so all was well. We had to change trains in a small town we had never heard of, and we soon found out why. It was a realllllly small town haha. But not a bad place to spend 45 minutes, and we were so glad not to be stuck in Zagreb again!

When we arrived in Ljubljana late that afternoon, it was pouring, which is really not an ideal situation when you have all your stuff! So we spent the time getting our next train reservations, and the super helpful lady in the ticket office was even able to book Kasey's train to get from Venice to Paris the next night so she could fly home. That was a big relief for her. We attempted to walk in the rain, but we were so wet even with the umbrellas that we stopped at a kebab place across the street and split a kebab sandwich thing, and had soda while we waited for the rain to slow down. It finally did, and we made our way to the hostel, which turned out to be soooo nice - really nicely decorated rooms with comfortable, non-squeaky beds, and really nice staff, so that was just wonderful. They gave us a dinner recommendation, and we had a good time wandering around the city before dinner, where we ate stallion steak, aka horse, which is apparentely a Slovenian specialty. It was good, but not super tender - I see why we eat cow instead :)

stallion steak!

Franciscan Church of the Annunciation

We also took the funicular up to the castle above the city and walked around for a bit, even though it was too late to go in, and then had quite the event trying to find an ATM that would take our debit cards... but we were eventually successful, and came back to our nice hostel and used the free internet until bed. Other than the rain, we loved Ljubljana, it was a really beautiful town (not to mention the great staff!) and I wish we had had more time there!

Split & the Dalmatian Coast - July 12 & 13

We finally arrived in Split on Friday the 11th, and we were so excited to be there. As we set out to find the hostel, we walked by the beautiful harbor, and palm trees, and live bands playing - Split is an uber-beach town, full of tourists and excitement. It's the launching point for several major cruise lines, especially to Greece, so its a hopping place! It wasn't hard to find the hostel office, and luckily, from reading reviews online, we were prepared to move to a different building, and weren't surprised when we did. Basically, this hostel is not really a hostel, but a family who is marketing their homes as guesthouses on a hostel website. I don't think its uncommon, but I'm glad that we knew beforehand or it would have seemed sketchy! But anyway, one of the women walked us and a few other people to her house, which was right near the water, and we stayed in a cute room up on the 3rd floor of the house... it was so neat, laundry hanging everywhere, narrow staircases outside and terraces... it was like what I picture the Greek islands to be like! Our room was just two single beds, and it was nice to have our own room! We just had to share the bathroom and terrace with the room next door, so that was really nice. I don't remember what we did for dinner... maybe we just went to bed?

main plaza by the water/harbor in Split

Saturday we had made plans to head out to one of the islands where the beaches are, and we decided on Brac, because it is the closest and easiest to get to. So after stopping by the grocery store for lunch supplies and snacks, we headed off to catch our ferry, and almost missed it! The dock was muchhhh farther away that we had anticipated, and we had to run part of the way and basically hopped on the ferry as it was pulling off - but we made it! And didn't have to wait another hour and a half for the next one. We were really hot and gross on the ferry, but it was worth it to save the time! When we got to Brac an hour later, we then took an hour long bus to the other side of the island to Bol, which is where the best beaches are. Our goal was to hunt down 'Zlatni Rat' or the "Golden Horn', which is apparentely one of the best beaches on the Adriatic Sea. The bus ride was really fun, and we got to see the whole middle of the island, which is full or marble quarries (some of the marble for the White House came from here) and then take a road around a bunch of seaside cliffs down to Bol. It wasn't too long of a walk to Zlatni Rat, and totally worth all the trouble. The beach was beautiful - a nice pebble beach and not nearly as crowded as I thought it might be on a Saturday, and best of all the water was calm and completely clear and soooo blue! We found a good spot on the beach and spent about 5 hours there laying in the sun and swimming in the refreshing waters of the Adriatic Sea! It was unreal and so relaxing! After we caught the bus back across the island, we got to watch a beautiful sunset over the water before we boarded the ferry back to Split, it was such a great day! We had a good dinner at a restaurant near the hostel and then drank some of our Croatia-designated wine on the terrace - perfect!

on Zlatni Rat!

sunset as the ferry pulled into Split

Sunday we wanted to accomplish our second goal - finding our own private beach! We had originally planned to leave Split that night on a night train, but to make things easier for ourselves and improve the beach logistics, we decided to stay a night in our awesome guest house. So since we didn't have to pack or take our stuff down to the train station, we were able to make it on a pretty early ferry to the island of Vis, which is a little over two hours from Split. I had read somewhere before coming that Vis was one of the best places in the world to 'find your own beach paradise' so I was excited to be going there! When we arrived, we got a map and directions, and started on what we hoped would be a short walk to a nice little cove outside of town. Turns out we walked about 45 minutes, partially uphill, but it was worth it when we found a cove with just a few families and a ship pulled up inside. We fought our way through some bushes down the hill and had a whole side of the cove to ourselves - mission accomplished!

We put on our shoes to swim around, since we had heard there were sea urchins, and we could see something under the water that looked like it might be coral... and we saw a snorkeler from the boat, so we were definitely curious. Then Kasey scared me to death by telling me that most coral is poisonous, and since we couldnt really tell how deep it was due to the ridiculously clear water, I was not exactly thrilled haha. But we swam across the cove nonetheless, and borrowed some goggles and a snorkel from one of the families. To Kaseys dismay and my relief, it was not coral, but some crazy looking seaweed, and the water was pretty deep anyway - it's weird when you can see the bottom in 20 ft water! But despite the lack of coral, we had a great time swimming around and looking at all the fish and sea urchins everywhere! It was definitely tiring swimming with the clunky shoes on though, and soon enough we were ready to eat lunch (Pringles + salami = perfect beach food!) and lay out in the sun. Our beach was a lot rockier than the day before, so we laid on big flat rocks, and also took a ton of pictures in our own little paradise! The walk back to town wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered it being the first time, and soon enough we were cruising back to town, drinking the last of our wine and playing cards on the ferry. We had another great dinner that night and enjoyed our wine and terrace once again - happy for our extra night in paradise!!

about to snorkel around on Vis!

The beaches in Croatia advertise themselves as 'the Mediterranean the way it used to be' and although I haven't been to the Mediterranean (yet!) I'd definitely agree. There were a lot of tourists, yes, but most if it is relatively tranquil and undeveloped - so for all you beach lovers out there - skip Nice and head for Split!

Zagreb - July 10 & 11

Alright soooo, Thursday morning we left Budapest for Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Our train was at 6AM, so we were up super early, after not sleeping very well in the crappy beds, but it was worth it because the next train wasn't until noon and was 3 hours longer! On the train we met a nice guy who taught us a new card game, which we desperately needed after pretty much playing the same game for 3.5 weeks! I mean, there are a lot of card games out there, but not many that can entertain you for hours on a train, with only one deck of cards and extremely limited space to put down cards haha. So it ended up being a pretty good train ride, and we made it to Zagreb by noon.

Our hostel was a bit far from the middle of town, but easy to get to by tram, and it was pretty nice, so that was good. We got to stay in a 7 person dorm, but in a double bed, and I was pumped not to have to climb into the top bunk. I actually like sleeping on the top of bunkbeds, but its nice to have a break every once in a while! The hostel also had free internet, and was clean and in a cute neighborhood, so all was looking good! We were really hungry, so we tried to find somewhere to eat relatively near the hostel before we headed into town, and we ended up at a pretty crappy restaurant with mediocre pasta, which made us pretty unhappy but we were starving so we ate it. At this point I realized I was completely exhausted and unhappy, so we decided to go back to the hostel and nap for awhile before going into town. Kasey isn't much of a napper, but I figured I could sleep for an hour or so and she could use the free internet! It ended up that I napped for 3 hours, and Kasey got some sleep too, which was good because we really needed it after our crappy Budapest hostel and early early train! So most of our time in Zagreb was shot, but that was alright because we had only planned it as a stopping over point on the way to the beach. We went into town that night and ate at a much better restaurant after trying unsuccessfully to find the ones recommended in the guidebook, but it was fun, and we saw some street performers, and the big church and some other sites along the way.

main plaza in Zagreb by night!

That night, we used the free internet for quite awhile, and headed to bed around 12:30. I had a hard time getting to sleeping because one of the guys in our room was breathing soooo heavily... not snoring, but still loud, and my earplugs just were not effective enough... I eventually got to sleep, only to be woken up at 4:15 by actual snoring, and super loud! I wasn't even tired enough to go right back to sleep, probably due to the long nap, so I admitted defeat, and headed back upstairs to the internet, where I proceeded to watch all the episodes of the Bachelorette that I have missed since I left, including the finale. It was great, actually. So I basically got no sleep, but I still felt pretty good, and by the time Kasey got up, we had enough time to get ready and head out to the train station to catch our 11AM train to Split, on the coast. Unfortunately, reservations were required on the train, which we didn't know, and it was full, so we ended up stuck in Zagreb for 4 more hours, with absolutely nothing to do! I tried to find a way to ship my Hungarian wine home, but with no success, apparently you need a wooden box to ship the wine from Slovenia... oh well. We found a cafe and ordered Carlsberg (we had already had our Croatian beer the night before, no worries!) and played cards for 3 hours while we tried to make the beers last that long haha. But finally, we were off to Split, on a 6 hour train, and glad to be leaving Zagreb. We didn't necessarily have a bad time there, there just didn't seem to be anything to do, not to mention we were anxious to get to the beach for the weekend!!

Hungary - July 8 & 9

Well, after our day in Bratislava we arrived in Budapest with a bang... we had traveled back to Vienna from Bratislava, gotten our stuff, and gotten on the train to Budapest without much problem. The Hungarian countryside was really pretty - lots of sunflowers, etc., but by the time we arrived in Budapest it was late and we were tired - our train was running late, and we called the hostel to let them know, as well as to make sure we had good directions. When we got to the train station, it was pretty much deserted, and we tried to find the metro entrance, unsucessfully. It was also raining, and we found a tram stop but didn't know which one to take, there were some homeless people sleeping around in the tunnels leaving the train station - it was the least safe I had felt on the trip so far. Eventually we found someone to ask in the train station, and found the metro entrance, only to realize that we had no coins to buy tickets with. I had exchanged the Slovakian money for Hungarian money earlier, but I only had bills, and Kasey only had euros... So eventually after some debating we decided just to get on the metro and hope we didn't get asked for our ticket/try to buy a ticket or talk to the people when we got off, since the metro was about to stop running and that was the only way we knew to get to the hostel! Bad plan, apparentely, because when we got off to switch lines, we did get checked, and they weren't very understanding about the deserted train station situation.... and so we got fined 6000 Forints each. Which, luckily only amounts to about $36 - in more developed countries its more like $100+. So that was a bummer, but at least we could get where we needed to go. Kasey was definitely frustrated, because it was preventable, but I was honestly just glad to get to the hostel successfully and not be fearing for my safety. So after that mishap, our first, it didn't take too long to find the hostel... and since the hostel was so cheap, over three nights, the cost of hostel + fine averaged out to about what we pay for a hostel other places. So whatever. We also had our first bad hostel night that night too... there were 5 girls in our room who went out and came back drunk and loud at 5:30AM... I somehow managed to sleep through it, but they woke Kasey up and kept her up for a while. The beds weren't to comfortable either and sooooo squeaky - I guess we had been spoiled before at other places!

So needless to say, after that night, we weren't to chipper in the morning! But we set out to discover Budapest anyway, and the whole time, I was just thinking 'I hate this!' and I wanted my bed. I think Kasey felt the same way! But after a while, the day started to look up, and we had some food and walked across the river to the palace/castle/museum area, which was really fun. We went to this awesome marzipan museum with all these crazy models and creations, it was incredible and defintiely improves our mood! We also got to take pictures looking over all of Budapest at the Fishermans Bastion, and saw an amazing church there, and we were pretty cheered up by the time we left!

crossing the Danube from Pest to Buda
(Buda castle on the left - now museums)

model of the Parliament Building made of mazipan!
Mattias Church was the coronation church of Hungarian kings!
view from the Fisherman's Bastion

We crossed back over the river and went to look at the beautiful Parliament building, and had lunch at a pizza place and Hungarian beer this time - we always like to order whatever is on draught and find out what it is! We walked around for the rest of the afternoon and went to St. Stephens Basilica (where they have his mummified hand - crazy!) and saw the opera house (while we were there, a few guys came buy pushing a copy of the statue 'David' ...random! we took a lot of pics of David traversing Budapest haha) and the synagogue before returning back to the hostel. For dinner we asked the hostel for a recommendation, and the gave us free drink coupons for a restaurant down the road that turned out to be amazing. We had wine and really spectacular food in a great atmosphere for not even that much money! So it was definitely a great end to the steadily-improving day! We also used the internet for awhile that night at a cheap internet cafe, and I got to call my family again, which was great. So all in all, the day ended up being pretty good!

my attempt at an artsy pic in St. Stephens Basilica

David being pushed through Budapest!

amazing dinner!

Our second day in Hungary, we headed out to Eger, in Eastern Hungary, which is the heart of the wine region. When we got there, we walked into town and took this cute little tourist train/tram thing down to the wine valley for like $3, which was awesome. There are so many vineyards in the area, and they all have their wine cellars carved into this one hill in the valley, so you can walk to them one by one and taste the wine, which was the plan. We had some great wine, some okay wine, and some really bad wine. In case you were wondering, it is pretty easy to tell the difference between wine that you don't like and wine thats actually just bad. And some of the wine was terrible! But a lot of it was really good, and we ended up buying a bunch - 3 bottles for me to bring home (little did I know the burden this would be!) and 1 bottle for Croatia, as well as a 2-liter plastic bottle of more for us in Croatia on the beach. It was just so cheap that we couldn't help ourselves. In the plastic bottle we got 2L for about $6 - thats almost 3 bottles of wine, and really good wine at that! The wine in glass bottles was more expensive, obviously, but still not bad. One of the main wines of the region is Bikaver, or Bull's Blood, due to some old story or legend that I can't remember right now, but anyway, it was good, and I'm bringing some of that home :) The day was a success, and we had lunch before heading back to town, and then back to Budapest. Our train took us through the beautiful countryside and we spent a lot of time trying to get good pictures of alllll the sunflowers! It was really fun. That night we ate at the same awesome restaurant again (I even had the same food, it was so good) - and they remembered us and gave us free wine again! Excellennnnnt. We packed up and headed to bed early for our morning train the next day.

beautiful hungarian countryside!

excited on the little train to the wine cellars!

our favorite wine cellar!

All in all, we really did enjoy Hungary, despite the first 12 hours being absolutely terrible. I always felt safe there other than our arrival, and everything was definitely cheaper than in other countries! If I go back, I'll just definitely try to arrive earlier haha.

Bratislava - July 7

So, hmmm, what did we do in Bratislava? We were excited to be going to Slovakia, but not exactly sure what we would do there. We left Vienna early in the morning, and stored our stuff at the train station in the lockers since we were only going for the day. Our expectations were to discover eastern europe and see run down type things from back before the iron curtain fell haha - if you've ever seen the movie 'Eurotrip' then you understand...

this is how we imagined/wanted Bratislava to look haha

When we arrived in Bratislava, we had to take a bus into the city, and it was like 10 cents or something ridiculously cheap like that... and we went past these huge old apartment buildings... very 'iron curtain' we thought (see above) but actually Bratislava turned out to be rather nice. We walked through the old part of the city and went up to the castle, which was high above the city on a hill. On the way there we stopped for lunch and Slovakian beer, always a win. Our waiter was so nice, and said 'please' after everything, even when it didn't apply or make sense. When we got up to the castle, we had nice views over the city, and of this cool bridge that looks a bit like a UFO... I think its called the Millineum Falcom or Battleship Galactica or something like that, I can't remember :)

We spent the rest of the day strolling around and seeing the sights on our handy tourist map - we saw some churches, the American Embassy, and the parliament building, and shortly after, the rain began. Kasey found a pamphlet about the Euro, since Slovakia is switching soon, which excited her (strange friends I have!). Because of the rain, we decided to start heading back towards the train station, a different one this time, that we could walk to, and it was raining a ton. Miserable, but it seemed like a good dreary Eastern Europe experience at least haha. On the way, we saw the presidents house and the cool gardens behind it and took some pictures there. When we finally made it to the train station, we had pizza and soda while we waiting for the train. I had Fanta in a glass bottle and it was soooo good, I kept the bottle as my Slovakian souveneir, it'll make a cute little flower vase I hope! We hopped on our train back to Vienna feeling like we had accomplish our Bratislava goals :)

famous manhole statue on a random corner

American Embassy

Grassalkovich Presidential Palace

Vienna - July 4, 5 & 6

We arrived in Vienna with plans a little different than normal - this time we were staying with family! Kasey's Dad's sister's husband's sister moving to Vienna after college, way back in the day, and has been there ever since! So her daughter Ursula picked us up at the train station, and she was super nice, and took us to Ellen's apartment where we would be staying. There we met Ellen and Walter, her son, and they were so nice and welcoming and we felt at home right away! The apartment was so great, with tons of pictures and cross-stichings hung on the walls, and we had real beds and a real bathroom and real towels and it was amazing! haha.

Walter and Ursula took us out to dinner because Ellen had theatre tickets with her other daughter, Suzanne, and we had a great time - they all know so much about Vienna, so we spent a ton of time walking around the city and hearing stories. It was so cool to meet people who care about the place where they live and know so much about it! It was easy to see why they love it so much, Vienna was amazing! We went to dinner in an awesome restaurant at the top of a big building so we had a full panoramic view of the city - wonderful! They were both so nice and it was fun to be able to tell people about our trip so far - perfect night!

The next day, Ellen had breakfast ready for us, which was just so wonderful, and then we headed off into the city to actually see all the things we had learned about the night before. We started off at the Royal Palace and saw the crown jewels and the museum there. We also went to St. Stephen's cathedral, which is basically the icon on Vienna, and toured the catacombs there. We saw the church where Schubert played organ, and went to the Modern Art Museum (where we proceeded to be confused about how certain things could be called art...) and then went to the 'House of Musik', which was a super cool interactive museum where we learned all about sound and tonality and some of the famous musicians from Vienna and a million other things haha. We were there for a while! Somewhere in there we had a tasty lunch outside, which is always fun! It was a busy day.

outside the palace

St. Stephens Cathedral -
it's made of sandstone, so it turns black
and constantly has to be worked on

inside the cathedral
famous statue of Strauss in a Vienna park

When we finally returned back to the apartment, Ellen had dinner for us and wine - she was so incredibly hospitable the whole time we were there! We stayed up for awhile talking with her about her experiences and life in Vienna, and her family and grandkids, and her job (she used to anchor, and now writes for, a tv show in Vienna) and it was just a really nice night!

Sunday, we headed off to Schonbrunn, which was the summer palace of the emporers, just outside the city. We decided not to tour the actual palace, since they all seem to be the same, and are expensive! But we did go in to the carriage museum, which was super cool and had all sorts of carriages from different periods in time, most of the used by the emporers and royal family. Really cool. Schonbrunn has a huge garden area, and a ton of land - enough for even a zoo! So off to the zoo we went, and saw tons of animals, including a baby panda and polar bears, and watched the cheetah feeding (awesome!) and saw a reindeer with the biggest rack of antlers I have ever seen, we're talking like at 40 point deer. Not even kidding. We had a late lunch at the Gloriette, a beautiful building (where Walter had his wedding reception) up on a hill overlooking the palace and grounds, which houses a nice cafe. Annnd then we finished the day playing in the playground and labyrinths, which is always a win!

Schonbrunn
The Gloriette - where we had lunch,
and where Walter has his wedding reception!

Kasey & I from the Gloriette
(Schonbrunn in background)

That night Ellen had made us dinner (again!) and we talked some more and packed up to leave the next day, sadly! We had such a great time in Vienna, and I feel like we learned more about the city than we had about any of the other places we had been, just because its so nice to be around people who know and care about it all! It was so fun to meet Kaseys family - especially for her, because she has heard so much about them and finally met them! Loved Vienna. :) Beautiful city, great people, lots to do!

Salzburg & Werfen - July 3 & 4

Once we finally arrived in Salzberg after the forever long train for Zurich (it seemed) it didn't take too long to find the hostel, although we were dumb and when the wrong way a few times. Since we were arriving late, again, we had to be quiet getting into the room and such, but we finally got to bed, hopefully without disturbing anyone too badly!

Thursday morning, we got up and got ready to go on a day trip to see the Eisriesenwelt ice caves in Werfen, about 2 hours from Salzburg. Although the day got off to a slow start, we eventually got going, and headed off to little Werfen. Once we got there, we had to figure out how to catch the bus up to the ice caves, since we didn't have a car, but luckily we found it and took the bus pretty much straight up the mountain to the base of the ice caves hike! It was about a 20 minute walk up to the base of a cable car, which was probably the fastest and steepest I've ever seen (it saved us a 90 minute hike in about 90 seconds, if that tells you anything) and then we went 15 more minutes to hike up to the ice caves entrance. By this point we were so high up, and it was beautiful, yay for the Austrian Alps! Although it was hot outside, we had to also bring warm clothes, because the temperature in the caves is around freezing, obviously! So we bundled up and got in line for the tour. Kasey got to carry a cool lantern, that was actually lit with a flame, not even a flashlight type thing, and when they opened the doors, we got a blast of freezing air due to the temperature differences inside the cave and outside. The tour was really fun, although cold, and we saw some incredible ice walls and ice formations and all sorts of things. It was crazy to imagine the first explorers going in without the nice walkways we had! Google image search 'Eisriesenwelt' for pictures since I couldn't take any, and can't upload them yet even if I had! The tour was about 75 minutes, and was totally worth all the effort to get there - like I said before, the secret to traveling happiness is something new or different every day! During the walk back down we stopped for postcards and snacks and beer, which luckily did not affect our ability to hike the rest of the way down! I had somehow managed to lose my bus ticket, but luckily the driver had it, so I was well and we cruised back down to Werfen without any incident.

When we got back to Werfen, we made our way to this awesome playground we had seen, which is always one of the best things to do in a city, I think - survey how good the playground equipment is! Haha. Anyway, this one had an awesome tire swing zip line, so it was, by far, the best we had seen! After our playground adventure we got on the train back to Salzburg and arrived in the pouring rain. We tried to wait it out a bit by getting some 'chunky fries' at Burger King, and they actually turned out to be really good. After the rain had subsided a bit, we stopped back by the hostel before trying to find dinner. The really good beer garten that Kasey remembered from being in Salzburg with Lindsey the month before was closed because of the rain, and we couldn't hardly find anywhere else to eat because all the kitchens were closed at restaurants - it was only like 9:30! Oh well. We ended up eating sausages (me) and grilled cheese (Kasey) at a little place that wasn't really still serving food, but took pity on us anyway. After that mild failure, we headed back to the hostel and talked to the nice girls in our room for awhile before bed.

Friday morning (Happy July 4th!) we had planned to go to Eagle's Nest in Germany, which was Hitler's private vacation home/retreat - I have heard it is really cool, but we couldn't figure out enough about the opening times and ticket prices and buses required to feel confident that we could make it back in time for our train, so we decided not to go. I was kind of bummed, but its good if the trip leaves something left to be desired (like I don't already want to go back to most of the places I've been! haha). So instead, we walked up to the abbey where the real Maria (from the Sound of Music... all the sites are in/near Salzburg) lived as a nun, and it was quite the hike up the hill! We couldn't figure out exactly where the entrance was, so we Kasey walked in this door, looking around, and there were two men eating and they invited us in and gave us food - turns out one of the men was a bishop and the cook was a priest, and we saw the nuns walking around and such - Kasey was able to talk to the bishop some, but I know no German, of course, so I was clueless haha. It was funny though, as soon as they found out we were American they wanted to know how we felt about George Bush haha. He's not very popular abroad. Anyway, they fed us all this great food, for free, and it was great because we were so hungry from not really eating the night before! It was straight out of the Bible... they were feeding the tired and the hungry, which just happened to be us! Anyway, it was a crazy experience, and really fun. Afterwards we walked into the church, and then back down to the historical district of the city, and eventually went to the beergarten we had tried to go to the night before and split some schnitzel, since we weren't so hungry after having just eaten at the convent! We had Edelweiss beer, which was good and then I had the song stuck in my head for the rest of the day! Haha. After lunch we got our stuff, and we were off on the train to Vienna!

Switzerland - July 1 & 2

We arrived in Bern the evening after our Europa Park day, and had a bit of trouble finding our hostel in the dark, but we eventually got there! The hostel was nice, it was a Hostelling International hostel, which usually means more school groups and families, which can sometimes be good and sometimes be bad! Our room was 6 beds, with a table, but there were people sleeping when we got there so we had to be quiet and not turn on lights.... such is the curse of late arrivals. Luckily, the lockers were in the hall (major plus) so we didn't have to disturb anyone while we unpacked. At the reception desk they had told us that although our room was supposed to be all female, they had a guy who comes and stays for weeks at a time and doesn't like to be moved, and he was in our room. We didn't really care too much about it, but then later on, we discovered we should have pretended to care, because this man snored like no one I have ever heard! I had my earplugs in and it still sounded like he was 6 inches away!! Another exciting hostel experience... once I got to sleep is was no problem though.

Tuesday we caught a train to Interlaken with no real plans except to see the Alps and check out the town, which is a backpacker/extreme sports haven. Interlaken literally means 'between lakes', and we saw one on the extremely scenic ride in, so after we got there we set off to find one of these lakes, but it turns out we picked the one that was farther away... oh well. We had fun walking around and watching all the paragliders in the sky, and ate burgers from a stand for lunch... Switzerland is too expensive to get real food very often! We caught a train to Grindelwald, which is higher up in the mountains, because we wanted to take a cable car up the mountain to get to a luge that we could ride (thanks, guide book!). The train ride was really fun and we took a lot of great pictures... the weather was so nice (but hot!) and the Alps were beautiful.

pic from the train ride - just how I'd imagined Switzerland!

Once we got there we had to walk/hike up through the town to get to the cable car station, where we rode straight up a mountain and took even more great pictures - super! When we got to the top, the 'rodelbahn' was so fun, it was about $5 per ride, and the luge track went in big s-curves before it brought you back up to the top. We would even tilt totally sideways around the curves and everything! We took a lot of fun pictures of each other, and then hopped the cable car back down, and practically ran to the train station so that we could make it back to Interlaken before our next train!

at the end of the luge + Swiss flag :)

view from the cable car

From Interlaken, we had decided to take the 'Golden Pass' scenic railway to Lucern, and I think we got a little more than we bargained for! We first went past the lake we hadn't seen yet, which was nice since our earlier quest had failed, but then across the lake we could see it was raining, hard. We basically watched the storm come across the lake, and then in rained really hard and hailed, and we passed through the storm and watched it from the other side... there was a ferry boat trying to outrun the storm, I think he made it? The storm caught up to us again and followed us the rest of the way to Lucern, so we got to see the sights, but amidst crazy hail and lightning - I was so glad we were on a train and not stranded outside somewhere! We eventually made it to Lucern, and had time to walk around a bit before we could tell the storm was catching up to us again, and we headed straight back to the train station! It was only about an hour back to Bern, so all in all, it was a great day, and we got to see a lot of Switzerland!

Wednesday morning we stayed in Bern and a nice Canadian girl we had met in our room came with us to see the bear at the Bern bear park (Bern means bear in German) and then to the Einstein museum, which turned out to be more like a history of Judaism and Einstein and everything that happened during Einsteins life including WWII and every other important person from Bern. But mostly Einstein haha. It was actually fun, but it took a lot longer than we had expected!

view of the Swiss parliament building
(our hostel was right below it)

from the Einstein museum

After the museum, it was basically time to go, so we got our stuff and went to catch a train to Zurich. In Zurich we had just a few hours before our next train, so we went to the Lindt chocolate factory and discount store, which was the perfect 2-hr trip, complete with cheap chocolate!

The crowning touch of our Switzerland visit was that when we left for Salzburg, we went through Lietchenstein on the way to Austria - another country to check off! We had seriously considered going to Liechenstein that morning instead of staying in Bern, so we were excited to get both of those things accomplished haha. There was also no one else in our train compartment, so we were able to flatten all the seats our (the six seats can flatten into three beds) and basically have a gigantic bed for us and all our stuff on the 5.5 hr train to Salzburg!

Southern Germany - June 28, 29 &30

We arrived in Freiberg on Friday night after about a 3.5 hour train ride, and luckily the hostel had given fairly good directions, so we hopped on a tram and only had to walk a bit to get to the hostel. We hadn't really known what to expect, we had just planned to come to the Black Forest area of Germany because it is supposedly really nice, and because we wanted to visit some of the spas in Baden-Baden. We had heard that Freiberg was a good place to stay because its located in the middle of the forest, so we figured it was a pretty small town, but we were wrong! Freiberg was actually fairly large, and there was a ton of people out on the streets as we went through, even for a Friday night!

Our hostel was really nice - no bunk beds, which was amazing, and a lot more spacious! Since we finally had 3 nights in one location we could completely unpack our stuff and settle in, and we actually spent a lot of time in the hostel on Saturday. We didn't leave until around lunch, after which we climbed up this mountain/hill type thing that goes into the Black Forest, with nice walking trails and such, and we hiked for quite a while - there were great views from the top of the city and the surrounding forest!


When we went back out for dinner that night, there was a ton of people out again, and all the restaurants and bars had tables and stands out on the street, it was craziness! Luckily we found somewhere to sit and had really good dinner and cheap beer. We walked around the town that night and had ice cream and then there were tons of people out in the main square by the church... and a stage, and a crane, and a screen - so we had no idea what was going on! Then there were people on the stage, and we think a cardinal was there? But eventually Kasey used her awesome German skills to put some bits and pieces together and determined that it was a festival they have every year where they melt down and old bell from the minster and reform it. Crazy! So we got to watch them pour the molten metal, it was super cool, and that explained all the craziness in the streets we had seen that weekend. So a surprise festival, thats always good!

"spaghetti eis"

The next day was Sunday, and we had plans to go to Baden-Baden to see the roman bath ruins and go to the spa, which is so much cheaper than the US! We were there for like 3 hours in saunas and pools and had massages and lotion and got wrapped in blankets and put in a 'sleeping room' - it was good stuff. When we got back to Freiberg that evening I was able to call my family on Skype, an internet phone program, since our hostel had headsets, so that was great since I hadn't talked to them in 2 weeks! Then we went back out on to the beer gartens to try to find a place to watch the Eurocup finals, exciting since Germany was playing! There were people everywhere... it was convenient that the festival and the game were on the same weekend, they just left all the picnic tables out on the streets and we ended up going back to the same place as the night before and watching the game. Unfortunately, Germany lost in a rather boring game, but it was still fun!

Monday was our last day in Germany and we needed to get to Switzerland by that evening. Kasey and I had planned to just go to Bern in the morning, maybe stopping in Basel, but Sunday we had seen a sign for Europa Park, and decided we'd figure out how to go there instead! Europa Park is basically like Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, where each country has its own section, so that was fun, and there were tons of roller coasters and ride, and popcorn, which we were so happy to see! It ended up being a really fun day, and it was nice to do something totally different. I think thats the secret to traveling for a long time and not getting bored - don't do the same thing every day!

with EuroMaus!

So all in all, our whole German experience was great - much cheaper than the past few weeks, which ultimately resulted in us eating and drinking more, and therefore costing us about the same per day, but whatever!

Bacharach and the Rhine Valley - June 26 & 27

Thursday morning we left Copenhagen early (7:42!) for an alll day train marathon to the Rhine valley in Germany. Our first train was the same we'd taken before, the cool one where the train gets on a ferry, although it wasn't quite as fun or exciting this time since we were really tired, and most of the seats on the train we reserved, so we had to keep moving around to find free seats. We did, however, have some chocolate on the ferry to cheer us up, and use the last of our Danish money! When we crossed into Germany, somehow the train got stuck in Puttgarten for 2 hours... some sort of technical malfunction, which was not good for us since we were already going to be on trains all day anyway! But we eventually got to Hamburg, then Frankfurt, and finally arrived in Bacharach around 8:00.

The Rhine River Gorge is really beautiful, there's lots of small towns and castles everywhere - our hostel being one of them! But before we hiked up the hill to the hostel, we looked for somewhere to eat in tiny Bacharach. Luckily we found a nice place and had some really good riesling wine and Schnitzel, which is a traditional German/Austrian food... its like breaded and fried pork or other meat...hard to explain but very tasty. And apple struedel for dessert - always a win! It was so nice to be able to afford a full meal after Scandinavia, which it think made us go a little overboard!

Since the hostel had a 10PM curfew/gate lock time, we started the hike straight up this mountain basically, and arrived at a Stahleck Castle not too much later, but we were hot and tired! It was really neat to be staying in a castle, it had a great view and really nice accomodation too! We had a 6 bed room with our own bathroom, and there was only two others there with us.

We bought a bottle of wine at the castle, which is actually made from the vineyards right at the castle, and drank it outside while we talked to a really nice family from Phoenix who were traveling also. It was a very relaxing evening after a long day, and it was really nice to meet people and talk to them for more than just 5 minutes! Not to mention we were in a castle!!! awesome.

evening view from the castle

our room was off the side of the castle (upper windows)

The next day we decided to see the area by bike, since the paths next to the river are really flat and it was just really pretty! There are lots of boats that people usually take down the Rhine, but we thought it would be more fun to bike, and it was great! We rented bikes for the whole day for like 10 euros (15ish dollars), complete with basket and everything, and the hotel where we rented them let us store our bags there too - perfect!

Biking was so nice, we went two towns down through Oberwiesel to St. Goar, and even stopped at a cool playground for a bit, which I'm always a fan of! In St. Goar we had lunch and then turned back towards Bacharach, we weren't exactly sure how far we had been because our map didn't have a scale, but we got to see a ton of cool castles, and the river was pretty and it had taken about 2 hours to get to St. Goar so we figured we should head back! We stopped off on the side of the road and went down the steep hill to the river and waded in the water for a bit, and I took a ton of pictures as we rode back (safe, I know!)

Kasey biking like a pro!

We had pizza for dinner and more good Rhine Valley wine in Bacharach before we gathered up our stuff and headed to catch our train south to Freiberg. All in all, the Rhine Valley was beauiful and really fun. When we asked later, it turns out we had biked about 22 miles! Crazy! There we a lot of other people biking too... apparentely its a big deal to bike through Gemany on vacation, and I think it would defintiely be really fun to do - they are set up well for it, and you get to use the cool bike saddlebags for all your stuff - awesome!!