Calling my name...

Beginning to plan this years vacation

The time has come to begin planning our summer vacation. I think we will be going to Munich, Bavaria, Germany, Salzburg, Austria and Switzerland. We will be going with the Handsome Husband's brother Lance, his wife Cindy and their daughter Emma. Cindy's mother, Alma, came to the U.S from Bavaria when she was 16. We are just beginning to plan and might try to throw in some London if possible. Above is Neuschwanstein Castle, a day trip from Munich.

Munich skyline

Austria

Salzburg, Austria

Interlaken, Switzerland

Zurich, Switzerland

Capri, Italy

In 2007, we took a FABULOUS Mediterranean cruise. We were gone 15 days in total and I highly recommend this vacation to everyone. You wake up everyday in a new wonderful place and you didn't have to slep your stuff all over the place or spend precious hours waiting in airports or train stations. One of the places we stopped was Naples, Italy. From there we took a boat to Capri. My girls absolutely loved Capri. We arrived at this beautiful harbor.

We then took the funicular up to the ritzy shopping area. Valentino, Versace, etc... you get the picture. We just window shopped.

The island is made up of these beautiful little alley ways that you walk along and take in all the sights. It was really hot this day and there were lemonade and lemon cello vendors everywhere. It was really good.
We so wish we could have rented a boat for the day, but there was not enough time. We also wanted to go to the blue grotto, but it was closed because the water was too rough. Alyssa got seasick on the way over, but after awhile she was okay.

We hope to go back someday.

Girona, Spain

On one of the afternoons that we spent at the beach, we decided to drive into Girona. It is about a 30 minute drive from our hotel. After a miscue from Garmin GPS on finding the old town center (ending up in a neighborhood in front of someones house, who happened to be on their front porch) and finding parking, we finally found our way to the old medieval town. I loved this fountain. It is the second time I"ve seen plants growing on the fountain. I loved it.
Let me just say, it was worth every wrong turn down one way streets that we made! It was everything the handsome husband was looking for. It was very medieval and it was very picturesque and clean. We loved it. It was one of the highlights of the trip.

The castle wall that runs the perimeter of the historic old town. You can walk along it.

Inside is a rabbit warren of tiny streets filled with restaurants and shops. Loved it. It is built on a hillside and we climbed a lot of stairs.

View towards the church and castle. Everytime we turned a corner, we were in awe.

You could walk all through the castle passageways and on top of the turrets and walls.

I could just imagine these torches lit at night lighting the streets.

Platja D'Aro, Spain

For the last couple of days of our vacation, we stayed at the Hotel Jorge in Platja D'Aro. It was a beautiful resort on the Mediterranean. The hotel grounds were gorgeous and we had two beautiful coves to frolic on. The hotel rooms were super clean, but were just utilitarian. I was very disappointed. The walls were paper thin and the shower was tiny and went back and forth from hot and cold. But, we had a beautiful sea view and an enormous balcony. The public areas of the hotel were awesome, just not the rooms.
This is one of the coves. We didn't really hang out here, we liked the other side better. The other side was less crowded.

The guard rail was missing in a lot of places along the path. There was just a tiny homemade sign that read, "pay attention to the missing guard rail". If this was California, the whole trail would be shut down for months while they fixed it.
The sand was not as fine as the sand in Cal., but it was great for laying out on. It moved and conformed to your body super easy and made for a comfortable base to put your towel.

Checking out the water upon arrival

I loved the water. It was the perfect temperature, cool and refreshing. NO WAVES!!! This is what I liked best. Because it is the Mediterranean, it has a lot of salt and it was so easy just to float and bob in the waves. I loved it. It was not crowded. We began everyday at the beach and stayed until about 2pm. Then we would go in, shower up and head out to sightsee.

The girls found this little black cat on the first day and loved him up every chance they got.

Venice, Italy -Day 2 (last day)

The winged lion, the symbol of Venice at the entrance to St. Marks square.

After breakfast the girls sat out on the hotel's dock waiting for us to finish and begin our day.

We walked over to St. Marks Square where the Doge's Palace is. We were scheduled to take the Secret Itineraries tour. Inside the courtyard of the Doge's Palace.

Entering through the Gold Staircase. We took the secret itineraries tour and this was the last place pictures were allowed to be taken. It was super, super hot that day and we did not take any water into the palace with us. Big mistake. It was about 30 minutes longer than it had to be (we had the slowest speaking tour guide in existence and she wasn't nice to top it off). We all felt dehydrated and had to go back to our hotel just to recover. I thought at one point Katie was going to pass out. The tour was interesting, especially the bits about Cassanova, but it was not riveting. (probably because all I could think of was how we needed water).

More of the Doge's Palace.

Right outside the Doge's Palace is St. Marks Basillica. We did'nt go in because the line was over 2 hours long and we were not feeling good as I mentioned above. But it was beautiful on the outside.

You can really see the asian influences from when Venice was a thriving port between Asia and Europe

Venice, Italy Day 1

Venice was one of the highlights of our trip. We love Italy. If you have been thinking about going to Venice, don't put it off, go now! We were met at the airport by a water taxi. We did a shared water taxi with one other couple and it cut the cost in half. The water taxi took us directly to our hotel. I totally recommend this. We used a company called Venice Link. It was also so fun and you felt like such a jetsetter cruisin' in the speed boat.

As we entered the grand canal. Our hotel was only a short stop away. They delievered us to the hotel's dock. One of the hotel guests said they took the vaporetto from the airport to the stop by our hotel and it took him two hours to find the hotel that was only a 5 minute walk away. It was 10pm so there wasn't anyone to ask directions.

This was a beautiful street near our hotel where we ate lunch twice (best pizza I ever had).



This was the view from our little balcony in front of our hotel. Across the canal is the Ca d'Oro Palace.

This is the little restaurant where we had the best pizza ever!

In front of the Rialto Bridge. This was a 5 minute walk from our hotel. Lots of shopping and restaurants and an open air market where we were able to get some fresh COLD fruit.

We took a gondola ride just about sunset. It was so beautiful and calm. It is worth every Euro. You have to do this in Venice, so don't cheap out! Set aside the money just for it.

We loved it! I would go again in a minute!