Sunday, October 27, 2013

Our trip to Germany

This year for our 10 year anniversary we decided to go all out. We hooked up with Steve and Gena and planned a week long trip to Germany. We flew to Germany October 15 on a red eye nonstop flight to Munich. We got in around 5 the next day in Munich. This was our first view of Germany. It was so pretty with the fall trees. 

We flew Luftansa and they were great. We had a our own TV screen and could watch movies to pass the time. I turned them on to put me to sleep. We got more sleep than I thought we would in an 11 hour flight. I was just glad there was only 2 seats in our row and it was just us two. I was nervous leaving the kids and Jon was nervous that bart would strike and we couldn't make it to SFO. Lisa and Mom were so nice to come and watch the crazies for a week. 

This was outside the airport in Munich.  We met up with Steve and Gena and took a train to our hotels. We stayed at the Motel One and they stayed  next door in the Marriott. Our hotels was fine except our toilet broke the second night we were there and we had to change rooms at 1 in the morning. The first night was hard to sleep but it got better after that. I was glad Steve and Gena had a fridge in their hotel. We had granola and yogurt for dinner twice. The stores closed early around 5 so it was hard to find a place to eat at night. 

I love this shot of Jon. On Thursday we took a segway tour around Munich. Jon was a natural at them. They were fun and could go fast. It was interesting to get used to them because you used the motion of your body to move them. Our tour guide Matt was from England. He was great and instead of an 4 hour tour we were gone 5 hours. We moved fast but were able to see a lot of Munich.  They were actually a lot of fun to drive and we got around way faster and could see more. I was worried we would run over people but it was just fine. 



The parks were so beautiful to ride through and the weather was great.

This is big catholic church that we walked through. Then we were even on TV. A station wanted to record us for a moment. Sweet. 
The inside was so ornate and pretty. I couldn't believe all of the detail they put into it. 


The segway's had names and mine was Bob Marley. I actually lost control of mine when we went up this big hill. It scared me and after that I didn't want to ride any more. Luckily it was towards the end. Jon blames it on my camera that was in the way and kept hitting the handle bars. 

Inside King Lugwig's winter castle. 

We saw a piece of the Berlin wall. 

A river that went through the city. 


This is how much Jon loved the old buildings and the architecture in Germany. 

We saw the river surfers. Hilarious. There is only one big wave that is on river in Munich that people love to surf. We loved watching them. The water was waist deep. 

More pictures of the inside of the church. 

We learned a lot about Hilter and the role he played in Munich. We didn't realize how much he did in Munich. 


Inside the winter palace. 

The opera house. 

Watching the river surfers.

The was Hilters's headquarters during the war. The eagles were a symbol of Germany and they had quite of few of them all over the city. 


Matt told us this was the prettiest building in Munich. This was Maximillian's castle. I loved the red vine on the front of the building. 

Another cathedral in Munich. 


This was the Glockenspiel in the middle of Munich. 





These last two are in the richest part of Munich. 

This was the name of Jon's segway. 









We learned about the history of Munich.  Ludwig build all of these buildings in the city square. I can't believe how much of the city was left untouched during the war. He did show us on the buildings where they were bombed and the parts missing. 



Inside of the cathedral. Lisa got me into wearing scarfs. They kept me so warm that day. I am hooked now and tried to find one from Munich but didn't.


The confession booth inside of the church. 







Winter palace fountation. 

This was inside of the English garden it was a government building still used today. It was a courts building. 




The bath house. 



The river was really pretty and we rode across it. 

This picture was of downtown Munich our second night there. We had a hard time finding a place to eat. We finally sat down in this outside restaurant. Our waiter wasn't very nice to us. We had to ask for menus after sitting there for awhile and we asked for pretzels and we never got them. Every one loved their food but mine was 2 pieces of bread with this shredded white radishes. They are big into sausages and sauerkraut. We really weren't that impressed with the food there. They had all of these pastries but they weren't as good as they looked. We liked the apple strudel we had.  So we usually had sandwiches for lunch and dinner was always whatever we could find. 

I loved seeing German everywhere. We tried to figure things out but menus were impossible. I was surprised at how many people spoke English. People didn't smile a lot so we were grateful when we did find someone that was nice to us.  I was grateful they spoke English so we could ask about trains and food.  Part of the fun for Jon and I was talking to the people on trains and finding out their history. We met some really nice people. 

2 comments:

jocie said...

That is awesome. Happy anniversary!

lisa said...

Oh I loved looking at all those again!!!! There were some I hadn't seen and to hear it all again! I'm so glad you got to go and had such a great time!