European Adventure 2022

  Day 26 - Salzburg, The Sound of Music Today was a great day!  Our first day in any city is always a little hit and miss. The travel sneaks up on us, we need to get our bearings, and then by day two we soar!  It helps to understand this in our motus aparende because it keeps expectations low for day one.  Day two in Salzburg lived up to our hopes.  We grabbed a quick bite for breakfast at our apartment and walked to the Mirabelle Gardens to catch our Fraulein Maria Bike Tour.  Every blog I read about Salzburg raved about this tour, and given the fact that the boys fell in love with The Sound of Music this past year, it just felt right.   Our tour guide was a young guy from Newark, New Jersey who is studying music at the conservatory here in Salzburg. He spent two summers at Interlaken Music Camp in Michigan.  Given his camp background, I would have expected him to have a bit of a camp counselor vibe. Not the case.  While he was a wealth...

  Day 25 - Discovering Salzburg Aaron started today with his longest run on this trip, over eight miles throughout the city of Salzburg.  The boys enjoyed breakfast and a few rounds of Uno, while I carried on my Nespresso coffee and devotional morning routine in my newest location, a chair near an open, breezy window which overlooks downtown Salzburg.   We gathered ourselves to head out and immediately discovered a park, where the boys played for a bit.  A few things have kept us sane on this trip, parks being one of them.  We let the boys play for a while as we determined our plan for the day.  Having approached this city with far less research than others, I’ve booked the next two days with activities, but this day is free.  We decided to head into the Alstadt to discover the town and head up to the fortress.   We’ve gone a few days without ice cream (having taken it away on more than one occasion as our only weapon of parenthood!) so ...

  Day 24 - Travel to Salzburg We allowed ourselves a slow start this morning, with an 11am checkout and healthy breakfast at Cafe Lumee, a vegan smoothie bar that hit the spot!  I had the best coconut milk cappuccino I’ve ever had, and had to get one for the road.  Peter kindly checked us out and helped us navigate the carport, a first for us.  This carport requires you to drive onto a car elevator, then wait for the green light, and it descends into the ground.  Unfortunately, Aaron and Colton got stuck in the basement and couldn't read the German to get out on their own.  Peter came to our rescue, and we were on our way to Salzburg. The drive to Salzburg through the Bavarian Alps was stunning, and we rocked it out to One Republic, continued our riddle game, and also had some rough moments per usual these past few days.  All in all, we made it into the city in three hours, and greeted Wilfred, a German tax attorney who now owns three flats in the Alst...

  Day 23 - Hohenschwagnau and Neuschwanstein Castles, and The Luge at Tegelbergen We chose to come to Fussen, Germany on our way to Salzburg, specifically to visit two famed castles in the region, Hohenschwagnau and Neuschwanstein.  The boys are not enthused about visiting castles, churches, or monuments of any kind, and given that we’d spent the prior day cooped up in a car, the day started out pretty rough.  In order to make things fun, I’ve tried to engage them in scavenger hunts, like we did in Barcelona for Parc Guell. Unfortunately, I came unprepared for this day, and they came pretty tired out and disengaged.  Aaron and I still enjoyed the history while doing some extra parenting.  We first took a bus up to Schwagnau from Fussen to make our 9:50 tour time at Hohenschwagnau.  Commonly underestimated in comparison to Neuschwanstein, I truly enjoyed this castle more than any I’ve visited.  It was most interesting to see the intersectionality of Eur...

  Day 21 - Travel to Fussen Today was our longest travel day by car of our entire trip, and it was a doozy.  What should have been a roughly 5 hour car ride from Grindelwald to Fussen, Germany, took us nearly 8 hours due to rain, a lunch stop, grocery shopping, more rain, traffic, a wrong turn, and slow and windy roads.  While the drive was gorgeous, the boys struggled to behave well and kept us on edge.   Thankfully, when we arrived in Fussen, our VRBO host Peter greeted us at the parking garage and helped us carry our things into the apartment.  Perfectly situated in the center of town, this little Sissi apartment has a bunk bed for the boys, a large bed for us, a tiny bath and kitchenette.  It’s our smallest place, but the boys love it!  We had in mind a specific restaurant for dinner, Ritterstuben, after reading about it on a blog.  Peter provided us with a list of his favorites, and agreed it was a great choice.  It was already afte...