He's my favorite amusement

My birthday was at the beginning of last week and the card that Brian got for me was a card that I would definitely have given to him as well. On the front was a boy and a little girl looking up at him...they were at a carnival and I think they were eating corn dogs (i know, not really needed information). The front said, "You're my favorite amusement." Brian amuses me daily and I am always finding out something new about him. A few weeks ago he was vacuuming the house and then headed out onto the porch to vacuum it as well as the stairs leading up to it. I found this very amusing so of course iI had to take some pictures...now vacuuming the porch is a regular occurrence!

Ciao Bella!

Oh Italy...How I adore thee!  Even though we were only in Milan for one night it was great to be back in Italy again!  I had not been to Milan before so it was fun to see the gothic cathedral and drool over the amazing shops :-)  We didn't bother trying to cram anything in to our few hours there so we relaxed, drank the best coffee in the world (any coffee in italy is the best), had a yummy pizza dinner, and of course ate multiple helpings of gelato. We couldn't help ourselves...who knows when we'll get back to Italy again?

The most perfect espresso drink in the world...the cafe shakerato. Take one shot of fresh espresso and a small amount of sugar and put it in a cocktail shaker filled with ice.  Shake for about 30 seconds till it's nice, cold, and frothy, and pour into a martini glass. Sprinkle with a bit of cinnamon or some grated chocolate and you have perfection!

The famous gothic cathedral by day.  It really is amazing.  The detail is out of control!

And the night view.

Loving Italy and hanging out in the piazzas.

One of the reasons we had such a great time during our one night stay in Italy is because Laura speaks Italian.  She had just finished a semester abroad there before meeting me in Paris.  She was so excited to back, and I loved watching her interact with the Italians.  It was fabulous!

Budapest

Budapest, Hungary was different.  It was not like all of the other main cities throughout Europe...it is still up and coming.  Not everything is perfect, but it is still very romantic.  It sits along the Danube River which makes for some nice evening strolls along the river bank.  We loved Budapest!  We definitely knew we had crossed the border on our train when officials came through with their machine guns to make sure that everyone on board was ok to pass through to Hungary.  I would love to go back and explore deeper into Eastern Europe.

"The Baths" are huge in Budapest.  Supposedly people come from all over Europe to spend time in the different bath houses.  I didn't get any photos of my favorite outdoor bath house, but here are two photos from one of the indoor ones that we went to.  

The cool lap pool

The underground hot tubs

A little chapel we happened upon while on a walk.

The views of Budapest.

We also saw some beautiful castles, multiple bath houses, fun parks hidden throughout the city, and some super cool markets with all kinds of goodies and yummy pastries. Budapest was grand!

The hills are alive....

With the sound of music! I'm sure you guessed it...Austria. We went to both Salzburg and Vienna. Salzburg being more of a small town surrounded by rolling hills, and Vienna a beautiful city that brought us wonderful weather for the rest of our trip. I'm not going to write too much for this post because I am SO frustrated! I tried uploading a video multiple times, but something keeps happening so it won't finish and also uploading pictures is driving me crazy. I can't figure out how to put them side by side, then some of them get deleted and I have to start over, and the order is always messed up. I am not the most technically savvy person, but how hard can this really be? It's driving me nuts at the moment. Enough of that...


Vienna. This was my favorite building. I can't remember for the life of me what it's purpose was, but it was beautiful. We spent hours in front of it: soaking our feet in the large fountain, journaling, laughing, and eating gelato with the locals.

The Schonbrunn Palace (large, yellow building up a few pictures)! Quite the large establishment...it was built to rival Versailles in France, but apparently they lacked the funds and were never able to accomplish what they set out to do.

One of my favorite things to do when I am at a place like this is to imagine the parties that must have gone on. How amazing would they have been!

The two below that one are pictures of a portion of the grounds at this massive estate.

These last two photos are from Salzburg. I had others that I wanted to post, but again, my inability to figure blogger out has kept me from doing so.

Anyway, I want one of these houses to the left. Aren't they too cute? The whole river was lined with houses just like these, gorgeous!

Austria was a happy place. Everything was nice and perfect and clean and of course very expensive :-) We were able to see many of the place where the Sound of Music was shot (Laura and I were huge fans when we were younger) such as the gazebo, the VonTraps house, the lake and back of the house where the water scene takes place, and of course the horse fountain that Maria dances around. Call us cheesy, but we loved it!

Catching up to Munich

Oh Munich! We were able to spend a few days there and had a grand ol' time, sort of :-) One of the little joys of traveling is that things do not always work out...the weather isn't always perfect, the hostels are not always the best, ect. This is exactly what happened to us in Munich.

The photo to the left is from our ghetto hotel (I don't know if you can appreciate the full effect of it's nastiness in this picture...our light in the room was a tiny table lamp with no lamp shade)! We had booked it online and were supposed to stay there for 3 nights, but we weren't too fond of the four shaddy men that were running the hotel...they liked to wear their sunglasses while they were inside and watching t.v. at 11:00 pm, so we packed up our bags and headed out the next morning to find something that suited us a bit better.

By the way, the hotel looked nothing like this when we booked it online.

There is nothing quite like a beer garden! Lots of cold yummy beer to choose from and HUGE, delicious soft pretzels, so yummy. This picture was taken right before the skies decided to open up and pour on us for the 4 days that we were in Munich. It would have been fine if we had been prepared, but we packed all summer clothes. For days we layered item after item of clothing then threw on the one sweatshirt that we packed, along with our flip-flops and army hats and braved the cold rain and wind. We were FROZEN!!!

The above are a few pictures from our bike tour (yes, that too was in the pouring rain),but we had a blast! And below, one of the best meals EVER!  Seriously, so delicious.  I highly recommend eating at Augustiner brewhouse and restaurant (it's Munich's oldest brewery).

Yes everyone, the eating establishment you are looking at is a McDonalds!  It was so clean that you could eat off the floor...leave it to the German's to make something like a McDonald's seem much more incredible then it really is.

And lasty, we went to Dachau Concentration Camp.  What an experience that was!  It was the first German concentration camp to open and served as a model for the all of the others to come.  One of the interesting facts about Dachau is that they housed mainly political prisoners and a very small amount of Jews.  Below is the memorial that was erected in the middle of the camp (those are the sleeping baracks in the back ground).  It was such a sad place to go, and so crazy to see how horrible humans can be to one another.