Five Countries In Two Weeks

Recently my sister, Melissa came to visit us (yay for our first visitor!) and we had so much fun! She came with her friend Ashley. Ashley was here for a week and a half and my sister was here for two and a half weeks. They had already been to Spain, France and Holland by the time they came to Germany. We figure that since we live here visitors will not only just want to see us, but of course Europe. So off we went traveling and boy did we t-r-a-v-e-l! So here is the re-cap of what we did. It's going to be a long one!

When Melissa and Ashley first got here we showed them around where we live. We took them to Rothenburg, Nurnberg and ate at some of our favorite food places. Our first big trip out of Germany was to the Czech Republic. On our way there we stopped at Cheb that has a big market. We got some fun stuff after whealin and dealin. We spent the night in Prague and toured Prague. What an awesome city!

In front of a church in Prague.

The next day we went to Austria. On our way there we went and saw the Neuschwanstein Castle. I think this was Melissa's favorite place to go. It really is a neat castle.

We stayed the night at Edelweiss which is the military's "resort" and the next day we went to Salzburg, Austria. We went on the Sound of Music tour. We took a tour bus that was four hours tooooo long. We really should have drove ourselves around, but it was a good experience and still had fun. Nathan kept teasing me because he gave me a grill for mother's day, this was his pay back for father's day by taking him on the sound of music tour. It's really not a guy thing.

My boys, enjoying the tour, while I am out doing this:

I can pretty much sing the whole movie. I watched it a lot growing up.

This is the church they got married at in the movie.

This is where the young lovers sang "you are 16 going on 17" oh great, now I have the song stuck in my head again for the trillionth time. Funny thing about this gazebo is they won't let you go in it anymore because too many old people were trying to be young again and jumped from bench to bench and many bones were broken. So the doors are closed or else you would see pictures of Nathan and me jumping from bench to bench... singing of course.

This is where Maria sang with her suitcase in hand ready to go meet the family.

The nice part about the long tour is midway into the tour we stopped randomly to go down the mountain on a little carts.

It had nothing to do with the tour but I guess they saw we were a little tired and bored so they livened it up by letting us go down the Alps. It was really fun!

Then a few days later we went to Switzerland. Nathan couldn't come with us on this trip because he had to work. So us girls and Carter went. Switzerland was not so excited to see us. I felt like everything was going wrong. Traffic was horrible, there was no hotel anywhere because a big conference was in town so we had to drive over an hour away. But we made the best of it and still had fun. Switzerland is beautiful.

We went to the Temple and of course it was amazing! The lawn was beautiful and Carter had fun crawling around on the grass.

The next day we went to where they make Lindt chocolate. You could smell the chocolate from outside the factory. Next to the factory they had a shop to buy discounted chocolate.

The next morning Ashley flew out of the Switzerland airport, so Melissa, Carter and I headed back home for one day to go get Nate.

Then we were off to Italy for one week! Our first stop was Venice.

We stayed at a military base really close to Venice in a really nice hotel. We stayed there for two nights. Venice was my absolute favorite!! To think that people actually live in a place like that is amazing to me. Venice is super expensive because everything has to be shipped by boat. There is no transportation here other than boat. We were told that once you get there to just get lost. So we did. We walked and walked and was amazed with every turn we took. I really felt like we were in a movie or something.

The boat ride to Venice. Melissa holding Carter, Carter loves her! Melissa taught him a trick that every time she says "kiss" he leans his forhead to her for his kiss.

At one point we just wanted to know where we were so we brought out our gps. This is what the streets in Venice look like. Crazy!

We ate by the water and watched the gondalas and boats go by. We never went on a gondala ride because it was too pricey. It was fun to watch them go by everywhere.

Re-living the "lady and the tramp"

We ate so many gelato cones. They are the best! We let Carter have a couple because of how hot it was.

Next stop was Pisa! It was such a hot day so we spent as much time as we could there without melting. There was also a lot of people. It was really neat being there and seeing how that big building doesn't fall over.

That night we stayed at Camp Darby which is another military base in Italy. It wasn't as nice as the other base in Venice but it was close to the beach so we didn't mind. We went to the beach when the sun was setting. I want to go back!

Then we went to Cinque Terre. I think this is my next favorite. The Cinque Terre is five different cities along a mountain-side and you take a train to each of them, or you could hike and walk to them but with a stroller that was out of the question.

Each city overlooks the ocean so the last city we got out our swimming suits and went swimming!

The water was pretty cold at first and Carter didn't want anything to do with it, but with time we all got used to it and had a blast.

Then off to Florence! I didn't get many pictures here because the main thing we went to we couldn't take pictures. We went and saw the Statue of David that Michelangelo sculpted. It was so much bigger than I thought. We waited in line forever to see it. We walked around and saw some awesome churches.

We left our car in Florence in an underground parking lot and took the train to Rome. A lot of people told us to not drive in Rome, that it was too dangerous. Boy were they right. Craziness. We were really glad we didn't have to drive in that.

Final destination: Rome! We spent two full days here and spent a lot of time walking to each history site. There is just too much to see here that we had to choose between a lot. It was also really hot so we had to take a lot of breaks and eat more gelato! We took a tour bus that was a hop on hop off. It saved our feet the second day.

We went to the Vatican.

The Pantheon (the heart of Rome)

The Colosseum

Can't forget the Hard Rock Cafe!

The next morning my sister flew out of the Rome airport. We were sad to see her go and really enjoyed the time we got to spend with her. She and Carter had great bonding time and he still keeps up his trick that she taught him.

We took the train back to Florence to get our car and drove the whole way home which took all day. Carter was a good trooper and has gotten to know his car seat very well. It's great to be home and settled for at least a little bit. It's so fun to see the world!