Wine Season

Fall is wine season in Germany and we spent a few weekends in September at some great wine events.  The town of Bad Durkeim has the largest wine festival in the world.  The wine and food were fabulous, but you definitely have to be careful; they serve wine in half liter glasses!  We went to a few different wine tents and had some local wine grown in the Mosel region and had a blast listening to some live music in one of the “party” tents. This festival has carnival rides and games as well and we even had fun on some rides.

A few weeks later, we went to the town of Freinsheim to a wine walk.  This event was a walk through the vineyards that featured different tents with wine and food along the way.  We spent the good part of a whole day walking around the vineyards and had a great time!

Before we moved here, I never really knew that this part of Germany was famous for their wines, but there are some awesome vineyards not far from our house.  We are hoping to figure out how to bring a bunch of it home!

A New Adventure...Camping!

So, as always we are long overdue for blog posts.  Lets beam back to the first weekend in August…we went camping in Garmisch, Germany just south of Munich.  The outdoor recreation centers on the bases here offer all sorts of camping equipment for very inexpensive rentals, so we rented a tent and a camping stove for a new type of adventure with Toni and Warren.    

What was supposed to be a 4-5 hour drive ended up being a few hours longer than that due to construction on the autobahn, but we eventually made it to our campsite (after dark) and attempted to locate our site and set up our tent.  This feat alone was an experience for sure.  Someone was set up on our site, so we had to find a different one and let the office know that we had switched (the office was about a 5 min drive away from the actual campsite).  We got everything set up and slept the best we could, but realized really quickly that we did not pack enough warm pajamas and blankets for the cold nights. Over the three nights we were there we purchased two blankets and a new air mattress (after waking up on the floor at about midnight the second night…not fun!). 

s'mores for breakfast

our campsite

Our first day we went hiking in a nearby town called Mittenwald.   This little alpine town was absolutely beautiful and although it was a pretty warm day, we had great weather for hiking.  We hiked around this town as well as around the Leutasch gorge.  They have constructed metal hiking paths that suspend from the cliffs on the side of this gorge and it was just an amazing way to see this awesome gorge.   We also hiked up a pretty steep climb to a little restaurant right on the Germany and Austrian border.  When you sit on the patio you are in Austria, but if you go into the actual building you are in Germany.  The views from this place were like a postcard. 

sitting in Austria drinking beer from a fridge in Germany :)

Mittenwald

Day two was the main reason we came on this trip.  We drove about an hour and a half to Haiming, Austria and spent the whole day white water rafting.  In the morning, we went on an easy river and learned the basic commands and got to know our guide.  This river was mainly class 2 rapids with a few class 3 thrown in.  We took a lunch break, were bused to a new start location and got back in the raft in the afternoon for the best part of the day.  We spent the afternoon paddling our butts off and experiencing constant white water with class 4+ rapids.  What an awesome adventure!  We were pretty sore the next day, but can’t wait to go rafting again.  We don't have any pictures from during the actual rafting, but here are a few while we were getting ready.

Day three we headed home, but took a pit stop at the Linderhof palace, one of King Ludwig’s palaces around Bavaria.  After taking some pictures and spending some time walking around the palace grounds, we got back in the car and headed home.

We had an awesome weekend filled with lots of beautiful scenery.  We will definitely be going back to Garmisch in the future.

The beautiful canals of Venice!

Our next big trip was to celebrate our 3^rd anniversary.  We decided a romantic place to go would be Venice.  We had a wonderful time, but if you ever decide to go to Venice, DO NOT go at the end of July.  It was around 100 or more with the heat index every day that we were there.  We spent the warmest part of the day in museums or back at our bed and breakfast.  At any rate…..here we go!

We flew RyanAir into Venice and had to take a bus from the airport to the island.  This should have been about a 45 minute bus ride, but the lady at the ticket counter for the bus told us to get on the wrong bus that didn’t go all the way onto the island.  So, we had to get off the bus and figure out when and where to pick up the next one to take us where we needed to go.  We ended up waiting for about a half hour or so for our next bus, but made our way to the island.  Brandon found a great bed and breakfast on the island about a 15 min walk from the main bus station.  We checked in, relaxed for a few minutes and hit the ground running. 

There are absolutely no vehicles in Venice except for by the main train and bus station, so to get around everyone uses boats.  They have a public transportation system that is all done by vaporetto (water bus).    To get our bearings and see some of the famous buildings we took a vaporetto ride down the grand canal and used our Rick Steves book to educate us on what we were seeing along the way. 

After our canal ride we walked around the city a bit to take in the sites of such a unique city.  Venice is VERY touristy, but off the beaten path is a lot more quiet and nice.  We love wandering around and getting away from all the other tourists when we travel; however, in such a small city you aren’t away from other tourists for long.  We saw some of Venice’s famous buildings and went back to our room for a little bit to cool off.    We had the top floor of our bed and breakfast and although it was a little warm even with the air conditioner on, the room was awesome!  It was a studio apartment with our own private rooftop balcony.  We have really come to love staying at B&Bs or apartments when we travel.  They are usually a lot bigger and more comfortable (and you get “free” breakfast!). 

We found a great place to have some local wine and cichetti (traditional venetian appetizers that were mainly seafood) along with some great pasta.  We ventured out of our comfort zones and tried some traditional food.  We ate sardines, squid and octopus (well, one of us tried all of those things…the one that doesn’t even like seafood to begin with).  If I tried something and said it was okay, Brandon would try it after me, haha!

After dinner, we walked to Piazza San Marco for a drink at one of the restaurants downtown to listen to the “dueling orchestras” and enjoy the ambiance of Venice at night. 

The next morning we slept in, had a great breakfast at our B&B and headed out to a day filled with (hopefully air conditioned) museums.  We visited Doge’s Palace which was really neat.  The palace is the old residence of the Doge of Venice who was the supreme authority of the Republic of Venice.  We also visited the Correr museum which was filled with paintings dedicated to depicting Venetian history.  We found a great little sandwich place to have some lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the back streets of Venice and climbing the bell tower on Piazza San Marco.  During the hottest portion of the day, we went back to the hotel for a few hours and scouted out a great place for dinner. 

Other than the heat, we had a great time in Venice and would love to go back some day when it isn’t so hot!  This was a wonderful place to spend our 3^rd anniversary and a trip we will never forget!