Stateside!

On May 3rd, Greg and I landed at Hartsfield Latoya Jackson Intergalactic Spaceport and Nail Emporium. In other words, we moved back to the USA!

Our first week was spent visiting my family, who we hadn't seen in three years. After that, we drove out to Texas to visit Greg's family before starting a two week road trip of the Southwest. It was nice getting to visit everyone and enjoy some time visiting a lot of the sights that we told ourselves we would explore while living in Colorado, but never made it.

I'll share some information about our road trip soon. Even though we moved back to the US, we're still impatiently waiting to receive all of our stuff from Germany. We're going on month three without furniture and it's getting old quickly.

Taken our last weekend in Germany

Rome, Pompeii and Mt Vesuvious, Italy

[Disclaimer: I wrote most of this post a month ago and believed that I had already published it. Sadly, I hadn't and just realized that today!]

Fourth of July weekend was a four-day weekend for us, so we decided to take a trip. After reviewing a few different options, our best bet was a trip to Rome, Italy.

Ireland: Dublin, Belfast and Giant's Causeway

It's been a while since I've updated the blog. For several months, we mostly hung out around our town and patiently waited for the weather to warm up again. We planted flowers, bought bikes, pulled out our summer clothing and did just about everything we could to encourage spring to arrive. It finally did, and then we went on vacation to visit a still cold and rainy Ireland.

It stopped raining about a minute before this picture

Long Weekend: Normandy, France

This summer marked the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy. We thought it would be pretty cool to be able to see Normandy on the 70th anniversary, but that was not realistic. However, we definitely did want to visit while we lived in Germany, it was just a matter of planning the best possible trip.

Omaha Beach

Local: Iron & Wine

This past weekend, we went to Normandy, France to commemorate Veteran's Day. Before I get too caught up in our trip to Normandy, I wanted to take a moment to mention a great show we attend the day before heading to France.

Church turned into a stage.

I've been a big fan of Iron & Wine since freshman year of high school. When I saw he would be performing a show at a church in our area, I considered buying tickets but was turned off by the price. 60 euros to attend a Thursday night concert in a Gothic church did not sound appealing. By the time I decided to get tickets, they were sold out. At the last minute, I found someone selling a pair of tickets for 40 euros. That was much more in my price range.

We ended up walking most of the way to to show as it wasn't far from where we live. Some men stood outside selling beer and soda to take inside. The whole church was full of German hipsters, which I wasn't even aware existed until that day. There were very few Americans which surprised me.

It was an extremely intimate performance. He mispronounced the name of our city, which was cute. The majority of the show consisted of him asking people to call out songs they wanted to hear and him playing them on the spot. He had a few specifically chosen to play as a duet, but most of it was on the spot. The whole show was pretty impressive, included the choice of venue.

The next day, we packed up to leave for a pretty awesome trip to France!

Cruising the Mediterranean Part 2: Venice, Bari and the Boat

Grand Canal from Rialto Bridge

Because we were supposed to arrive in Venice Friday evening, we were able to check directly into our hotel after arriving on Saturday. When I was planning the trip, I read online to find hotels that allowed easy access to the port. Luckily, the hotel  ended up booking was also directly across the canal from the train station.

Berlin: ICE Trains and Beer Festivals

Fair warning, even though this was a short trip to Berlin, this will probably be a very long and detailed post. On Monday, I found a flier at the gym advertising the Berlin International Beer Festival this weekend. Since we've never been to Berlin, we figured this may be the best time to make a trip over to the east. The next day, we booked train tickets and a hotel. So, this was definitely a more spontaneous trip than we usually take. Aside from my trip via ICE train to Nuremberg to visit Greg when he was at training, this was our first long distance train adventure. There were a lot of bumps in the road along the way, but we made it there and had a pretty awesome time on our mini vacation.

Day Trip: Worms, Germany

One of the cool things about living in Europe is getting to go do and see some of the less popular or less "touristy" things. I can almost promise that no one has ever said they wanted to go to Germany so that they could visit Worms, but it was only a short drive for us to see. Worms was the (arguable) birthplace of the Lutheran Church and is the location of the oldest remaining Jewish cemetery in Europe. Neither of these things probably attract all that many visitors, but I have to make a very honest confession. I love cemeteries. At one point when I was a kid, I begged my dad to take me to Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. While I can't remember much about the Louvre or Versailles from my trip to Paris in high school, I can still recall exactly what I was wearing when we went to Cimetière du Père Lachaise and how disappointed I was when we couldn't go into the catacombs. I've been to Bonaventure in Savannah multiple times for ghost tours when I lived nearby and was even excited to find out there was a private family cemetery behind my house in Augusta. I know, this whole paragraph comes across extremely creepy. Some people like the beach, other people like cemeteries... right?

Day Trip: Idar-Oberstein & Gemstone Mines

Last Saturday was a beautiful day to go Jeep-ing, so Greg planned for us to take a trip out to Idar-Oberstein. Greg frequently makes trips to another military base further west of us that requires him to drive through several small towns. That's how he discovered Idar-Oberstein, the capital of gemstone mining in Germany. It also happens to have the only gemstone mines in Europe open to the public. When we were dating, it became somewhat of a tradition of ours to collect gemstones from different places we visited, so it was fitting that we visit the Steinkaulenberg gemstone mine while living in Germany.

Did I mention there is a church built directly into the side of the mountain?