Destination: Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic (Part 1)

Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays...  Well, we decided to ignore the advice of the old Christmas classic and left London the week before Christmas for a seven day adventure to Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic.  With no family coming to visit us for the holidays and us not making a return trip to the US, we figured we might as well use the opportunity to see more of Europe.  This trip would be the first of it's kind for our family.  We typically like to go to one spot and just stay there, spending our time just exploring that city and the surrounding vicinity.  But as we were planning this trip, it didn't lend itself to that type of traveling,  thus staying in five different hotels over seven nights and traveling via plane, train and car.  Anyways, without further ado, here's the trip recap of Germany. (Salzburg, Austria and Prague, Czech Republic will come later in a separate post.)

Germany
We flew from London into Frankfurt, Germany to begin our travels.  We spent our first night in Frankfurt but since we arrived early evening, we didn't bother to spend any time seeing the city other than what we saw driving in and out of our hotel.

Beautiful views from our hotel

After leaving Frankfurt, we set out on the "Romantic Road".  The term refers to a stretch of road that runs from Frankfurt down to the southern border of Germany, near Switzerland.  The road itself is not romantic.  Just your typical freeway or autobahn.  However, quaint German towns are splattered around the stretch of road, therefore lending itself to somehow being "romantic".  We were about 45 minutes into our Romantic Road journey when we heard a flapping noise coming from our rental car.  We pulled off at the first exit we came to and sure enough, it was a flat tire.  While Geoff pulled all of our luggage out of the car and put the spare on in the freezing cold and had random people approaching him speaking German, the girls and I had made ourselves comfortable in a nearby Burger King.  

After talking to Avis about the flat, they directed us to another town where they had an office to change out for a different car.  While slowly making our way to the Avis location, Olivia started complaining that her mouth hurt.  I didn't give too much thought to it as I was helping Geoff navigate the German city streets, but a couple minutes later I turned around to see her throwing up all over herself and the car.  Fortunately, it happened shortly before we pulled into the Avis office.  So while Geoff again dragged all our luggage out and arranged it into a different car, I got her cleaned up.  I'm not sure what caused her to be sick because she was fine afterwards and it never happened again.

Anyways, after all that, we finally set out again on the Romantic Road which after that less than promising start, had a long way to go to prove to us how romantic it was.  We spent the next two days stopping at a few towns along the way:

Rothenberg

Loved this town!  When you think small town Germany, images of this town must come to mind.

The car and nutcracker above were outside a massive Christmas store in the town.  I've never seen anything like it.  Rooms and rooms and rooms of more Christmas ornaments and decorations than you could possibly imagine.  Unfortunately, it was not the place to take a three year old who wanted to touch absolutely everything within eye level.  Particularly anything that could break, which was about 98% of the stuff in the store.  Even when she wasn't trying to touch shiny ornaments, between it being crowded and her puffy coat, her just walking was a floor-full-of-broken-ornaments moment that was waiting to happen.  A bit stressful for Mommy and Daddy to say the least.

 

Just for the record...I didn't eat this whole thing.  Geoff, Olivia and I shared it.  :)

Best tasting hot apple cider I've ever had

Geoff made a new friend out on the streets

Nurenburg

Nurenburg hosts the country's largest Christmas market.  It was massive with rows and rows of stalls selling their goods.  It also had a children's area which included a few fun things for Olivia to ride on.

Fussen

Fussen sits at the foot of the Alps bordering the Switzerland line.  The main draw to Fussen, besides the breathtaking Alps, is Neuschwanstein Castle, also known as the Disney castle as the palace served as a model for Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland.

Hohenschwangau Castle built by Ludwig II who also built Neschwanstein.  We didn't tour this one but parked our car at the base of it so we got some good looks from there.

Neuschwanstein Castle

Hohenschwangau Castle in the background.  As you can see, we had to climb quite a bit to get to Neschwanstein.  Fortunately, the walk was on a nice, paved road. 

This little girl was such a trooper.  We made her walk a lot.  Not just this day, but the whole trip.  I hope that we are instilling in her a sense of adventure with all the things we make her do.

The picture below was taken inside the castle during a brief tour that we took.  If you look closely, you'll spot a small bridge known as Marie's Bridge.  From that vantage point, the bridge provides amazing views of the castle.  In order to get from the castle to the bridge, there's a road you can hike.  Unfortunately during the winter months, the road is not maintained and access was fenced off.  However, from afar we noticed a few people on the bridge and people we're easily climbing over the fence to hike the road.  The road was snowpacked and icy in spots but not dangerous according to the people we questioned who were climbing back over the fence after returning from the bridge.  Nevermind that we had a toddler and baby in tow, we weren't going to let a fence and snow stop us!  

Views from Marie's Bridge.  So worth the slippery walk.

Small waterfall when looking down from the bridge

Stay tuned...Salzburg and Prague coming soon!

Grow, Baby, Grow

Time is flying by and my little baby is almost 10 months.  Before I forget what she's up to these days, here are some of her recent developments:

9 month stats:

Weight: 17 lbs. (50th percentile)

Height: 27 inches (50th percentile)

- She started crawling on her hands and knees at the end of the October and she is all over the house now.  And she's fast!  When she spies something in the distance that she wants, she gets herself there very quickly.  Olivia is learning to act fast if she wants to keep her toys!

- As you can see from some of these pictures, she easily pulls herself up into a standing position.  She hasn't started moving along whatever she's holding onto, but I'm sure that will be any day.

- She LOVES to eat.  We've moved off of the pureed food so now she's getting little pieces of whatever were eating.  She eats so much I frequently have to give her Olivia's leftovers.  Whenever she wants more, she kicks her legs up and down and they seem to kick for a long time!

- Back in mid November, she got sick for the first time.  She ran a fever off and on for a week along with some congestion and a cough.  She was still a pretty happy baby though despite all that.

- She is finally consistently sleeping through the night.  We haven't had to get up with her, even just to give her her pacifier, in weeks!  She had spurts before where she would sleep through the night for 2-3 days in a row, but then she would revert back to waking us up several times a night.  We are most definitely fans of her newfound sleeping habits.  Although it does now result in her frequently waking up way too early.  It's pretty normal to hear her start to babble in her bed anytime between 5:30-6:00am.  Definitely not fun, especially on the weekends.

- She has three teeth, all on the bottom.  However, she's about to cut at least one on top.  Other than being extra droolly, she hasn't seemed to be in any teething pain. 

- She hates having her diaper changed and has developed an ugly angry cry that she lets loose to make sure I don't forget how much she dislikes it. 

- She has the best laugh and it makes the rest of us laugh.  What a joy she is to our family! 

Video Round-Up

For those of you who would like to spend your precious free time watching random videos of my adorably cute girls, you're in luck!  None of them are very long; the longest is about 90 seconds.  Enjoy!

Half-term happenings

Unsurprisingly, the school year here is different than what what we are accustomed to back in the US.  The school year consists of three terms: fall, spring and summer.  Summer vacation is shorter, with the summer term not ending until the beginning of July.  However, there are more frequent breaks during the school year, including a four week break between the conclusion of the spring term and the beginning of the summer term.  There are also weeklong "half-term" breaks around the middle of each term.  So towards the end of October, Olivia had her fall half-term break.  The week it occurred was far from optimal as it happened to be the week that Geoff was back in Houston for work and my nanny that comes several days a week was also away on holiday, so no breaks for this Mama.  To make the days go by quickly, I tried to keep our days full of activities.  Here's a recap of some of the things we did:

Pumpkin Painting
As soon as pumpkins began showing up in the grocery store, Olivia started talking about getting one to paint as she thoroughly enjoyed painting last year (See here).  So we pulled out the paints and she got to work.

Shake Shack & London Transport Museum
I don't usually ventured out of our surrounding neighborhood very much with the girls by myself as managing alone with the both of them on the Tube is challenging.  It involves carrying Ashton in the stroller up and down stairs at the stations while also making sure Olivia doesn't get get run over or lost within the shuffle of people.  However, in my need to get out of the house, I decided to put my brave face on and do it.  We went out for lunch at Shake Shack, the famous New York burger joint that just opened up here, before heading to the London Transport Museum.  The museum was pretty cool with lots of full size replicas of various carriages, trolleys, trains and buses.  Perfect for my small child that likes climbing on anything and everything.

Playdates
We had four different playdates with four different families from school/church in two days.  No pictures from them, but Olivia had fun playing with her friends and I enjoyed have adults to talk to for a little while. Although I have to admit, by the fourth one, I couldn't remember which mother I had told what to and was probably repeating myself with various stories and pieces of information.

Tea Party
One morning during Ashton's nap, Olivia and I enjoyed a tea party together along with some of her invited friends.

Lots of Silliness (which we actually have all the time, not just half-term!)

Olivia's attempt at a scary face