Disney called...they want their castle back :)

July 14^th

After a fabulous night out in Munich, we woke up bright and early to drive out through lovely German countryside to the crazy King Ludwig’s fantasy castle: Neuschwanstein. There was so much excitement in the area, everyone immediately went to sleep on the bus drive out, but the landscape was amazing (We stayed awake). It was like a slice out of the movie Heidi, little brown and white cottages with windows spilling with bright red geraniums. There are legends swirling around the King Ludwig, mainly that he was obsessed with swans (that’s an understatement… the castles filled with them!) and that he committed suicide when he was forced to abdicate. He chose the location out in the middle of nowhere and would ride in a white carriage drawn by white horses in the middle of the night. The castle was amazing. Just go watch Sleeping Beauty and you’ll see what I mean… We got to hike to the bridge behind the castle and get some sweet pictures as well.

When we got back we went to the famous 5 o’clock Glockenspiel cuckoo clock show. It’s been said to be one of the top 4 sights to see in the whole world.

The Augustiner monks, who originally founded Munich, to this day still have a world-famous restaurant and brewery. So that night we decided to partake in yet another great German tradition and go eat there. Pretty much had the most fabulous German meal until about 11:30 at night and then got to experience a true German thunderstorm. The fountains in the middle of the town center are available for running through if one catches the desire. Earlier, when passing through in the middle of the day, our tour guide recommended that everyone do it at least one, taunting us with a: “well I’ve ran through at midnight..” , but these southern girls weren’t about to ruin their makeup just to say we did it. I mean middle of the day mascara run? What a nightmare! But leaving the Augustiner with 30 minutes til midnight and a thunderstorm crashing around us, we decided to run through the fountains. It was great. Except Lauren didn’t. She went straight for the taxi… (Lauren note: Someone had to be responsible with all of the cameras! I know Chris is thanking me right now!)

Back to Hotel Maria and tomorrow we leave for Prague.

J & L

Guden Morgan

July 13th

The drive today was gorgeous! We were able to drive through Italy and into Austria on our way to Munich…and wow. (Jenny inserts here: "the hills are alive... with the sound of music...") We went through a portion of the Alps (Dolomiti), and Jenny and I were wishing for our skis! It was about a 7 hour drive to Munich, and once we arrived we checked into the Hotel Maria and got settled in before walking down to Marien Platz for a bike tour. Our bike tour guide was a one of a kind Canadian with a Mohawk who told us stories of Munich’s history with his own special flair. (Let’s just say he told us to just youtube the Glockenspiel clock show …need I say more?) He took us through the center of town and to the English gardens with it’s famous nude meadow. Jenny and I nearly fell off of our bikes from craning our necks … But we didn’t catch even a glimpse of any German bums. Our next stop was the famous Munich beer garden… With it’s liters of beer and delicious food. Needless to say….the ride back with this group was far from uneventful.
We finished the night at the Hofbrauhaus, Munich’s original beer house (did I mention that Germans love their beer???) This place was great because the waitstaff is dressed in old Bovarian style dress…and the girls bring out a minimum of 5 liters of beer at a time in each hand. Impressive. Jenny randomly ran into ome of her sorority sisters from UCA…in Munich of all places. So that was fun! Going to the Disney castle tomorrow!

Love ya, Lauren & Jenny

Venice

July 12th

Arriving in Venice is no small feat…considering it is a island city that uses only boats for transportation. So our water taxi arrived in Venice this morning, and we immediately met up with a local tour guide for a walking tour of the city. This city is amazing. It’s comprised of hundreds (thousands?) of tiny “roads” (alleys?) that are intertwined and TG informed us on the way over that most of us would probably be lost at some point today. I can see how that would be possible…however I tend to stick with my very own personal GPS (aka Jenny Willey begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting) so we never get lost. Knock on wood. So the walking tour was interesting to say the least…our guide was a 4 ft. feisty Italian woman who was constantly calling our group out for sitting down at every opportunity. So after the walking tour we went and watched a glass blowing demonstration, which was amazing. These Venetians can create a glass vase from nothing in about 30.43 seconds. He also made a horse for us to see…and I literally saw Jenny’s eyes light up. I knew then that we would be on a mission for a glass horse. So we were given free time for a couple of hours in which Jenny and I did a little Venetian shopping (surprise!) Jenny found her horse, but sadly all of the vases I loved were 500 euro. Surprise surprise. So needless to say I left empty handed.

We had a gondola ride booked for noon, and of course our gondolier (sp?) looked like a Venetian Fabio. This was the highlight of the city for me. We floated our way around the city’s canals…thinking of how different it would be like to drive a boat around town instead of a car. After the ride, we strolled around Venice, going to the Doge’s palace, which was interesting. Pretty much the equivalent to the White House for us American folk. We got to walk across the Bridge of Sighs, a bridge in the lower level of the palace where the prisoners would walk across and see Venice for the last time before being locked away forever. We made our way over to the Rialta bridge, and looked around in St. Mark’s church, where the gospel writer is buried.

Once back in Lido, a group of us went out for a traditional late Italian meal at a restaurant called Hemingways. We overheard blues music coming from down the street, so we stopped and listened to “Sweet Home Chicago” (our group’s request) and before we knew it there was a group of people standing around in the street listening as well. Random fun times in Lido!

Venice didn’t disappoint! Headed to Munich tomorrow…ciao!

Lauren and Jenny—aka Venetian gondoliers

July 11th, Another great beach
July 11th

We are currently in Lido, a resort town outside of Venice, Italy flooded with Germans… Yeah don’t worry about it… It’s basically the Florida for Germans. They need their topless sunbathing too. So apparently a quick pee pee around here is fairly precious because the b-rooms (aka "water closets" per European term) cost about 3 euro to partake in. Imagine that Americans… could you go to Micky D’s and ask Ronald if you could ask him to pay for his potty… Somehow it caught on here. Regardless, it is once again a fabulous location. Lauren and I dozed on the beach and cooled off in the amazing (sea-creature free) water and enjoyed a leisurely dinner with American 80’s music jamming in the background. Yes they played Rock Me Amadeus Chris… And we also ate the best Tiramisu known to man! We were definitely licking our lady-fingers on that one... We’re currently viewing the final World Cup game and enjoying the AC that we bought for about 2.50 each per day that we hear but can’t feel… awesome.
Tomorrow we water taxi into Venice and will visit St. Mark’s Square (pidgeons) and possibly a gondola ride!
Until then --- We’re having a blast. Miss yall.
-Jenny & Lauren-

Free day in Florence

July 9th

Ok considering we are a week behind on our posts…this one will be short and sweet! Today was our free day in Florence. We went back to the Pont de Vecchio, the famous Medici jewelry bridge, and explored the other side of Florence. Lauren got a book at a book store… English version. We met up with some of the gang and went to hike the 463 steps up to the top of the Duomo church. That’s not a typo people, 463 spiral steps. It’s said to be one of the greatest sights in all of Italy. Ironically, we waited in line for the privilege to flex our quads 463 times. However, it was so so so worth it. And as we neared the top we were reduced to about 2 feet of space and a completely vertical staircase. It’s like nothing we’ve ever done before. We also got to walk along the rail of the inside dome. Right next to the painted ceiling. You can’t imagine how high it is.

When we got back down, Lauren and I had noodle legs. So we went ahead and counter-acted with gelato. A great day.

We went out with a few peeps in our group to the San Lorenzo square for dinner. Quick trivia, this was the square where the author of Pinocchio lived. There’s Pinocchio stuff everywhere. We split the highly recommended “Florentine Steak”, this is a quickly charred steak that is still mooing on the inside. A local treasure. It was delish.

Tomorrow we’re going to help hold up the tower of Pisa.

-Shenny & Loren-

Photos!

Ok so slowly, but surely we're getting the pictures posted! So for the sake of uploading time and not to bore you, we're still just putting a tasty tidbit of each day so don't think you're getting out of the MILLIONS of photos we've taken and you'll have to see when we get back!

Firenze: Italian for Florence

July 8

So sad to be leaving Rome…but excited to see what Florence has to offer! We loaded up on the bus this morning headed to the city known for it’s artistic flair. We checked into the Hotel Meridian, where Jenny & I once again had a room to ourselves (we’re really starting to get spoiled here). We dropped our bags and headed toward the center of town for a walking tour. Entering the square, we were met by several famous statues, including a replica of Michaelangelo’s David, and Perseus slays Medusa. We had time for a quick lunch before the tour, so we headed down one of the many small cobblestone streets for pizza. Our tour guide took us past the apartment where Michaelangelo lived while in Florence, as well as the Piatza el duomo with it’s famous dome. The walking tour also took us across Medici’s bridge, a famous landmark that is lined with fine jewelry shops…don’t worry, we both drooled. And then we moved on. We also visited the Church of the Holy Cross to pay our respects to Michaelangelo and Galileo…two of the great giants of their time. I think it’s interesting that these men were so different in their accomplishments, but are buried together in a place where we can go and appreciate both of their lives.

And then the wine tasting. In Italy. Yes you read that correctly. Can we say major lifetime experience here?! I think so. We went to a little picturesque vineyard just outside Sienna and entered a stone cottage surrounded by vines. No I’m not writing fiction here. We were seated out on the patio and introduced to oh about 6 homemade wines and a dash of heaven! I interrupted Lauren’s post to add my experience…So back to Lauren:

That night we all loaded up and went to Tuscany to a local vineyard for a wine and olive oil tasting. Saying that the scenery was beautiful is the biggest understatement…hopefully the pictures were able to capture this place. Acres and acres of grapes growing on vines…just breathtaking. They had us set up outside on the patio, and we were able to sample 6 different homemade wines as well as homemade olive oil. They fed us bruschetta, salami, and fresh cheese. We felt like queens! It was just amazing to be in Tuscany drinking homemade wine at a vineyard…something I’ll never forget. We both bought too much wine…not really sure at this point how I’m going to pack it seeing as though my suitcase weighted 50.9 pounds coming over here :) Oh well…we can’t turn down homemade Tuscan wine and olive oil. Tomorrow we have a free day in Florence! So much to see!

L&J aka Tuscan wine connoisseurs

La Bella Vida!

July 7

Okie Dokie. Day 2 in Roma and it’s time to enter another country: Vatican City! We started in the wings of the Vatican museum which is almost too hard to describe. We wandered through room after room of sculpture, thousand year old tapestries, mosaics, painted ceilings, painted everything! Towards the end we stepped into the rooms of Raphael. ….. Next was the Sistine Chapel. Originally, Michelangelo was commissioned to create the tomb of a pope and then halfway through some of those works was abruptly fired. Bummer. But we all know about a tough economy… So Mike went off to Florence for a couple of years and was eventually called back to Rome on the suggestion of his arch-nemesis Raphael who was already workin up at the Vatican. So Ralph pretty much wanted Mike to fail and so he talked the Pope into hiring Mike to paint the chapel, aka the Sistine. Since Michelangelo had never painted a day in his life, Raphael was sure he wasn’t going to be able to pull off frescoes, which is basically painting with wet cement and never being able to fix a mistake. However, Michelangelo obviously put his game-face on and painted the heck out of that ceiling and 4 years later it was about halfway done. Looking so good, ole Raphael came back and told mike that he could take over the project from there. But luckily, Micheangelo held his ground and completed the chapel forever changing painting as we know it. Lauren and I have pretty much got a crush on Michelangelo now. This guy lived to be 90. Kinda unheard of back in the day and not only was a spectacular scuplturist, but fantastic painter too. He never saw himself as sculpting rock, but freeing the statue already inside.

Enough on Mike.

But seriously, the Sistine Chapel was thrilling. Apparently all of Rome and their grandmothers had come out to see it because it was very crowded, but that also provided a prime opportunity to snap some illegal shots of the ceiling. It had to be done quick so they aren't the greatest, but totally worth having.

Entering St. Peter’s Basilica was basically like entering the Santa’s North Pole... Something I’ve grown up always hearing about, seeing on TV, but never actually picturing in person. It’s hard to wrap your mind around the remains of the apostle Peter buried right where you're walking. We also went through the tombs of the Popes and saw where the late John Paul II was buried. People knelt and cried. It was overall an awesome experience. Highly recommending for both cathies and non-cathies to come to Rome to see.

Rome is so full of history, and art, and culture, and something to see on every corner. As they say in Rome: “a lifetime will never be long enough…”

We quite agree.
J&L

PS - After our amazing last day exploring Rome, our TG... Tyson invited all 38 of the group to go catch the Spain vs. Germany game with some of his local buds. You know, typical guys games night... Happens even for ex-patriots living in Rome. So Lauren and I, along with one of our "new", "older" friends in the group changed and came down to the hotel lobby to find we were the only 3 attending... We basically felt like the losers that our tour guide would probably joke to his buddies about: "sorry guys--couldn't lose these ones..." However, long night short, we had a BLAST. (And Lauren fell on the way to the irish pub--which really boosted our coolness trailing these guys into Rome...) We met up with several more TG's (yes I've already abreve'd them to TG's---they're like a dime a dozen around here). Lauren immediately started gettin her special smile on for a dark skinned ex-american TG. While in rome, we went to the Shamrock. Yep, that's irish. And then we went to Flannigans. Yep, that's irish. And then we ended up at a Roman wine bar. About time right?

Good times were had by all. And Lauren didn't skin her knees.

Goodnight Rome.