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

Surprise!

...The surprise being that I am updating the blog.

Middle Rhine Valley in October.

Obviously, I haven't taken the time to update this with the second half of our Norway trip or any of the adventures we've done since then.

Since August, we've enjoyed our last fall living in Germany, our last Christmas markets, a short trip to France, a visit from Greg's sister and brother in law, an ill-fated "ski" holiday to the unusually warm Alps and a recent trip to London. Now, we're gearing up to say goodbye to Germany, and (more importantly) the Army, for good.

Partnachklamm

I recently found out that I was accepted into one of the three grad school programs I applied to. I am still waiting to hear from one sometime in the next few weeks and another has invited me for an interview in February which I am debating whether or not I want to attend. I'm feeling pretty confident, though, because the one program I was accepted into is probably the most selective, only admitting 8-10 students per year.

Greg has started preparing for his upcoming job hunt and is feeling very positive about the end of his military career. We're ready to move on with our lives. There are a lot of things that we are going to miss about Europe, but we can always come back in the future if we would like.

Tower Bridge

We're debating about whether or not we will do any more traveling in our last few months here. There are a few more places we would like to visit, but may not make it to all of them. And, ultimately, that's okay. We've had a lot of fun in the past 3 years but we're ready to focus on our next stage of life: building careers that we value and enjoy.

What will happen to this blog? Well, depending on where I decide to go to grad school, there may still be some extensive travel in our future. In the meantime, I should probably just focus on updating all of the fun things we've done before we return stateside!

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.

Backlog Blog

I promise that I have not forgotten about this blog. I have lots of day trips to update about but haven't had the time or energy to do it. This weekend we should have plenty of down time which should allow me to do some blogging! Until then, here is a cute picture of Augustus in a hoody.

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

Cruising the Mediterrenean Part 5: Dubrovnik, Croatia

After leaving Greece, we sailed along the Albanian coast before reaching the final destination of our cruise, Dubrovnik, Croatia. When I first booked the cruise, I sort of shrugged off Dubrovnik as being just another location like Bari that we didn't particularly care to visit. After a little bit of research, we quickly changed our minds.

Cruising the Mediterranean Part 4: Athens and Corfu, Greece

I apologize for the long delay since my last post. Work got extremely crazy and all of my downtime has been spent trying to catch up on things around the house. Anyway...
After an amazing time in Santorini, we headed towards Athens, Greece, to explore the capital city.

The Parthenon.

Cruising the Mediterrenean Part 3: Olympia and Santorini, Greece

We made 4 stops in Greece on our cruise of the eastern Mediterranean. Our first stop, Katakolon, was a short drive from Olympia, the home of the first Olympic games. The second stop, Santorini, was very possibly one of the most beautiful places we have ever seen. It also was home to some of the most delicious food. Greg still claims he is going to take flight to Greece some time just to eat lunch and fly back home.

Town of Oia on the Island of Santorini

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.

Cruising the Mediterranean Part 1: Getting There

Greg and I have been talking about visiting Greece since before we arrived in Germany. Actually, most of the talking was me, with him nodding in agreement. There aren't many things that I feel I absolutely MUST do while in Germany, but visiting the Greek Islands was at the top of my list. When I was reviewing the cost of such a trip, I was a bit turned off by the idea. We don't have a years worth of salary to spend on a trip exploring Greece. Our best alternative was a cruise through the Greek islands to hit up the main destinations. We've never been on a cruise before and I always kind of viewed them as either for the elderly with disposable time and money to spend on a boat or for college kids looking for a cheap spring break trip. Cruises in Europe are a bit different and attract a much wider variety of people, but I'll get to that later.

Our boat tendered off the island of Santorini

Because of our reasoning for the cruise, itinerary was my number one priority. Since we've never been on a cruise, I didn't care much about which company we cruised with or which boat we were on so long as we got to visit a few key places. For me, the most important things to see were Santorini and Athens. I would have also liked to see Mykonos, but there were no ships sailing to all three locations. Also, Mykonos is a little easier to visit on its own according to our German friends, so we may choose to do that in the future if we want to visit Greece again. Another important thing for us was that Greg was adamantly against visiting a few certain countries which were on several itineraries we debated. Ultimately, only one ship met the criteria of what we wanted, the MSC Fantasia.

MSC is an Italian company that started out as a shipping company and now also does cruises. We got mixed reviews about them from people we've met in Germany. Some think they are awesome and a great deal, others feel that they lag behind on the luxuries that most American cruise goers have grown accustomed. Obviously, being our first trip, we wouldn't know the difference between one or the other. Most of the complaints we heard were things that didn't matter to us personally, like lack of activities for kids or serving too much Italian food. It wasn't enough to deter us, and I'm happy for that because we actually really enjoyed our trip and don't have any of the complaints that other expressed.

Our cruise originated in Venice, Italy and had a port of call every day. In order, we visited Bari, Italy, Katakolon (Olympia), Santorini, Athens and Corfu, all in Greece, with a final stop in Dubrovnik, Croatia before heading back to Venice.

My goal is to post about each of our destinations, but getting to Venice was actually an adventure of it's own. Our plan was to fly from Frankfurt to Venice on Friday evening after I got off work so that we would have all of Saturday to explore the city before setting sail on Sunday. Unfortunately, at around 11 pm on Thursday evening, I received an email informing us that our flight was cancelled due to Lufthansa pilots organizing a strike at Frankfurt airport. At around 1 AM Friday morning, we were re-booked on a flight at 8 AM Friday morning. Obviously, we couldn't make this, so we missed that flight. When Greg finally got through to customer service at 10 AM on Friday, our only option was to fly in very late on Saturday. After some debate, we decided to forgo the flight all together and were refunded the money. At this point, our best option was to hop on an 11 hour train ride to Venice.

Sun rise at the Munich hauptbahnhof

First time we've ever traveled by train with cabins.

With the stress over our travel plans and lack of sleep all of Thursday, I ended up being pretty sick on Friday and went home from work early to attempt to relax. We were able to plan out our train trip with the help of the Deutsch Bahn service desk at our local train station. I seriously cannot stress how awesome it is to be able to have someone else plan your whole trip for you and explain all of your route options. Also, it's cheaper to book this way than to use the internet. We save about 80 euros off of the price listed online.

We ended up leaving the hauptbahnhof around dinner time on Friday and arriving in Munich around 10 pm. Our train was full of disgruntled Germans complaining about the Lufthansa strike. I guess we weren't the only ones who were forced into using the train. We hadn't been to Munich before, so at least we're able to cross that off of our list for Germany. Honestly, it was nothing special. Looked pretty much like any other German city. We pretty much headed straight for the hotel to go to sleep.

At 7:30 AM on Saturday, our train left the Munich hauptbahnhof for Venice, Italy. It was a 6 hour train ride through the last bit of the Alps in Austria and northern Italy. I'm not going to lie, we actually really enjoyed this trip. I think the Lufthansa strike was a blessing in disguise because we got to see so much beautiful scenery that we would have missed otherwise. The mountains were incredibly gorgeous and we met some Californians in our cabin that were traveling Europe for the first time. Meeting Americans who are traveling in Europe after having lived here for a year is always an interesting experience. Taking the train was also much more relaxing for me than flying and helped me to get over the cold I had been acquiring, at least for the time being.

 Mountains in Austria from the train window

The 6 hours actually weren't as miserable as we had expected. I got some decent pictures of Austria and northern Italy. It really sparked our interest in taking a snowboarding trip to Austria this winter. We arrived in Venice around 1 PM refreshed and ready to explore the city.

View from the Venice train station.

My next installment will detail our time in Venice and aboard the ship! Unfortunately, Greg and I both managed to get some sort of upper respiratory infection last week, so we've been pretty sick the past few days. As time allows, I promise to update all about our trip for anyone interested!

Tulip Season in Holland: Amsterdam, Zaanse Schans, Voldendam and the Keukenhof gardens

Next on the blogging agenda is our trip to Holland for tulip season! Spring time is the peak of tourism for the Netherlands because of their world famous tulip fields and gardens. If you've scrolled through the travel boards of Pinterest, you've probably stumbled across at least one beautiful picture of a big wooden windmill surrounded by colorful fields striped with tulips as far as the eye can see. Of course, we had to be one of the millions worldwide who venture to Holland from mid-March to mid-May to check out the Keukenhof tulip gardens. We had a lot of fun, but I will say that it was a good reminder that when you're traveling, sometimes you have to accept that expectations do not equal reality.

Day Trip: Cochem and Reichsburg, Germany

In the past few weeks, it finally getting sunny and warm outside! This glimpse of spring time sadly did not last long before it started raining every single day. Of course, in a month it will be burning hot and neither our house nor work have air conditioning, so we have to enjoy the weather before it turns miserable again. Several weekends ago, we drove to Cochem with some friends of ours to get out of the house and explore somewhere new.

Bad Blogger

It's true, I've been pretty horrible at updating recently. Within the next week, I hope to finish 3 posts that I'm drafting about our recent adventures. I swear I didn't completely give up blogging, but we've just been extremely busy!

As a sneak peak of what is to come, here is a picture of a giant pig made out of flowers.

Does it creep you out? If not, it probably should. That thing is terrifying.

Day Trip: Idstein Spring Festival

For the past two weeks, it's been unusually sunny, warm and beautiful here. This weekend, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. On Saturday, we got caught in the middle of a hail storm, something I have never witnessed outside of Colorado. When I say "hail storm", I don't mean the typical strong thunderstorm with accompanying hail that was more common in the southeast, I mean that it went from being sunny and calm to 30 mph wind gusts with pea sized hail stones (no rain) within 5 minutes. We just so happened to be leaving the store with a car load of groceries when it started. I always assumed the reasoning for the hail storms in Colorado was due to the high altitude and inability for the hail to melt into rain before hitting the ground, but that wouldn't explain why it suddenly hailed here. Welcome to springtime in Germany, I guess. It was obviously the best weekend possible to take a trip to a Spring festival a few towns away.

London Trip for Valentine's Day 2014

This past weekend, Greg and I visited London! No, it wasn't technically "for" Valentine's Day, per say, but this year Valentine's Day fell on the Friday before President's Day, meaning that it happened to be the first day of a 4 day weekend. Since we won't get much time to travel very far in the next few months, we decided to jump on this opportunity to take a trip we've been discussing since we landed in Germany: a trip to the UK!

I could probably write a post for each day we spent there, because we crammed so much stuff into 3 days. Instead, I'll try to limited it to the basics.

Good Things Come

I apologize for my lack of blogging recently! We have been rather busy,  but not with anything particularly interesting. However, we have a lot of fun and exciting changes coming our way soon, which we are thrilled to share with everyone!

2 Year Anniversary: Trier, Germany

Sunday was our 2 year wedding anniversary! I must say, the second year was much more stressful and trying than our first year. Actually, despite Greg being deployed for most of it, our first year of marriage was a cakewalk compared to this past year. Hopefully year three will be a little more quiet!

Thinking Happy Thoughts

Some days, living in Germany just really, really sucks. I'd like to think of a more eloquent way to put it, but there just isn't one.

Greg was assigned today to a month long duty in January that requires him to be within 3 hours of post at all times. It wouldn't be so bad if, you know, I hadn't already booked and paid for a 4 day snowboarding vacation in Garmisch for MLKJ weekend. I get it, the unexpected is part of "army life", but that doesn't make it any less irritating. Plus, from the second you step off the plane in Germany, everyone is telling you how you need to go travel. Then, the second you do attempt to travel, the Army makes other plans. We almost didn't get to go to Switzerland because of his school and now we probably won't be going snowboarding again this winter between his extra duties and my new job.


Instead of being frustrated, I'm going to attempt to be positive and think of all the good things we have going on right now. Today, we custom ordered a 2014 Jeep Rubicon X from ENCS. While Greg was still in Afghanistan, he expressed a desire to trade his car in for a Jeep again. Most of you know, when we met, Greg had recently bought a Rubicon and managed to win his first date with me by offering to take me for a ride in it. I know, it sounds incredibly cheesy looking back, but I'm sure girls have fallen for worse things than that. After moving to Colorado, Greg traded his Rubicon in for his GTI which he's loved, but also outgrew. We were planning on trading his GTI for another Jeep when he returned from deployment last year, but changed our minds when Greg received orders to Germany. Having a VW in Germany seemed like a much better idea than a huge Jeep. For that reason, we left my Jeep Sport with my Dad in Georgia and only shipped his GTI.
After spending a few months here, we started to rethink our decision. Sure, the GTI is great for small parking garages, but it's also quickly depreciating in value and our financial situation is not permanent. Right now, we both have good paying jobs with benefits, very few bills and disposable income. That very well may not be the case when we return to America, and we know it. We have always talked about eventually getting a larger sized Jeep as a "family" car and realized that we're better off taking on a car payment while we can still afford it. Will the Jeep possibly be a little inconvenient here in Germany? Probably, but we know our situation here is not permanent and we still have the "beater" BMW we bought when we got here. Ultimately, we decided to buy the Jeep because we want it for the future and would like to be able to pay it off before we leave Germany.
Because it was ordered from the factory, we won't get to pick it up for a few more months when it comes to port in northern Germany. Once we get it, I'll have plenty of pictures to post!

Today, I also got a letter in the mail from the 4 year old Nepalese girl I sponsor through a charitable organization. I've sent her a few letters and gotten some updates from her caregivers, but this was the first letter I received from her. It was just a very simple page allowing her to circle pictures that showed things she like to do and eat. Even so, it helped to put a smile on my face this afternoon.

She drew me a flower.

Greg completed his GoPro compilation from Zermatt which you can view here. I tried in vain to link it directly into the blog entry, but it wouldn't work properly. Fair warning, it gets really loud after the first song.


We may be taking a day trip close by this weekend to celebrate our anniversary and my birthday. Since Greg can't leave the 3 hour radius, we'll probably visit Trier, a city in western Germany known for his Roman history. Others around here have told us that it's a cute city to visit with a lot of interesting things to see, so we're hoping it will be worth the drive!

Zermatt, Switzerland and Snowboarding the Matterhorn

Before I start what is about to be a very long and in depth post, Greg and I had a really awesome time on our snowboarding trip to Zermatt, Switzerland. The weather was great most of the time and we got a lot of great pictures and GoPro videos. It was a wonderful break from Germany that left us really missing Colorado and my Jeep. By the time we got home, we were both exhausted and ready to sleep for a full day straight. After the jump is all of the details of our trip and some advice for anyone planning a trip to Zermatt or Switzerland in the future.

Nuremberg and Our First Train Experience

I have been a miserably bad blogger recently. I currently have at least 3 posts saved as drafts that I have yet to finish. I'd like to say that I have been busy lately, but that's not entirely true. Although I have been somewhat more busy over all, I also had enough free time to binge watch all of Dexter on Netflix last weekend and feel horrible about myself afterwords. One of these days, I may just pick up a hobby that doesn't involve my computer.

Anyway, Greg left several weeks ago to play Army at a school in Bavaria. He's nearly done and has been very proud of himself for everything he's accomplished, so we decided to have some fun this weekend while he was off. We decided to head to Nuremberg!