http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/mnmhull/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from mnmhull en-us Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:19:46 +0000 Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:19:46 +0000 I've got probably 10 blogs that I need to catch up on but I just had to tell you all about our ice cream man. He comes around every day between 730 and 800 in the evening in his little truck playing typical ice cream truck music. He's from Italy...Sicily to be exact. He speaks a little bit of English but speaks fluent German and Italian so our conversations are a mix of all three these days. I'm http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Baden-W-rttemberg/Mannheim/blog-422735.html Okay just so you know most of this entry is going to be about dinner. It was really fantasticBut before we get to dinner we have to get up in the morning. We didn't have a lot on the agenda for today. We visited some outdoor markets I got a new leather coat yay me and we wandered and ate gelato of course. One thing I did want to do since we had the time was visit a few more museums. I http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Tuscany/Florence/blog-399825.html I know...it's been ages since I've been on here to write more about our trip. Let's see what I can remember 2 months later So I believe that I left off with our last night in Cinque Terre. The next morning we got up ate breakfast checked out of the hotel and caught the train to Florence. We had to change trains in Pisa anyway so we just allowed for a little bit longer of a layover there so w http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Tuscany/Florence/blog-399296.html After a great night's sleep in our beautiful hotel we decided to check out the free breakfast I really try not to book a place unless they have free breakfast. Typical breakfast in Italy is bread meats cheeses cereal yogurt and hardboiled eggs along with water juice tea and cappuccino. You can get regular coffee at a lot of places in Italy...they call it Caff Americano American coffee http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Liguria/Cinque-Terre/blog-399295.html It never fails. Whenever we have an early morning flight I never get to go to sleep regardless of how early I start getting things together and this was no exception. We had a 635am flight out of Frankfurt Hahn to Milan Bergamo which meant that we had to be in the car driving down the road by 4am. Ugh. I'm SO not a morning person. I can still be up at 3am but PLEASE don't ask me to wake up and http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Liguria/Cinque-Terre/blog-399286.html Today Matt got to cross a pretty major item off of his To Do list...we walked across a country. Yep a whole country. You're probably wondering which country...Liechtenstein.For those of you not up on your European geography Liechtenstein is located between Switzerland and Austria and before you go getting too impressed it's only about 8 miles across. Liechtenstein is the 6th smallest country in http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Liechtenstein/blog-395934.html So Hillary and I went on to Venice from Milan and stayed in a bed and breakfast set somewhat into the city. Now I can't remember if I've told you about the streets of Venice before but I think that hedge mazes were modeled after Venetian streets. They twist and turn and sometimes have street names...not that it matters because since there are no roads they're no narrow and packed together you can http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Veneto/Venice/blog-338626.html So after we finished our tour of the Salt Mines in Berchtesgaden we had lunch and hit the road for...ViennaOkay it sounds crazy but really it's only 3 hours from Berchtesgaden and a 6.5 hour drive back to Mannheim. We thought it was worth it to be able to see Vienna. Well Matt had already been there for work last summer but I hadn't been and we were SO close already It was very spur of the m http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Austria/Vienna-State/Vienna/blog-390065.html Our original plans for this weekend were to go to Ireland since Matt had a 4day weekend Friday and Monday off from work but as it turned out he had to work Friday after all. There was some speculation that he was going to have to work on Saturday he didn't so our road trip was kind of thrown together last minute. Matt didn't get home from work until 3am Friday nightSaturday morning so we h http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Bavaria/Berchtesgaden/blog-390061.html If you've seen Forrest Gump then you may recognize the title of this blog as a quote from the movie. If you haven't seen it well you should Matt and I spent a short weekend in Paris from March 68...and anyone who knows me will never believe why we were there...for a half marathon that's 13.1 miles by the way.Yes that's right I ran.On purpose. No no one was chasing me.And for more than http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Ile-de-France/Paris/blog-382629.html It all started one night a few months ago in Mannheim when a bunch of us were all sitting around talking and someone I'm not naming any names Tom and Heather suggested it would be fun to run the Athens Marathon. I wasn't fooled but apparently I was the only one not to jump on that wagon because 12 of us met up in Athens this weekend for the marathon. We all arrived in Athens on Thursday and mo http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Greece/Attica/Athens/blog-344171.html 18 Euros is about 24 dollars at the current exchange rate so when I saw a roundtrip flight from Frankfurt Hahn to Milan Bergamo for 18.01 Euros the flight itself was a penny...seriously We were charged 10 Euros for checkin at the airport and 8 Euros credit card fee I called my friend Hillary and asked if she wanted to go to Italy for free because it pretty much was lol. Italy for Hillary i http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Lombardy/Milan/blog-332498.html Holy Cow MiamiFort Lauderdale in July is hot hot hot with 125 humidity After living in Germany where it's cloudy cool and dry unless it's raining this was a huge adjustment for me. Luckily even though it's a million degrees outside it's practically freezing inside because of the air conditioning. I forgot how nice it was to go from your air conditioned apartment to your air conditioned car http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Florida/Fort-Lauderdale/blog-332501.html How's that for an eyecatcher of a blog title For those of you that don't get it read on Amsterdam is a beautiful town and the Dutch people are SO friendly However in addition to the wooden shoes and the Anne Frank house which I'll tell you about in a minute Amsterdam has legalized drugs and prostitution and they're not subtle about the fact that it's there either. It's difficult to fin http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Netherlands/North-Holland/Amsterdam/blog-336698.html Matt got back from Romania Wednesday evening at 9pm and by 9am on Thursday August 24th we were on the train to Paris He had already missed the whole summer and we didnrsquot want to waste any more time. This was our first trip just taking the train and wow itrsquos WAY less hassle than flying The train station is so much closer than the airport you donrsquot have to arrive 2 hours earl http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Ile-de-France/Paris/blog-332496.html So on Saturday the 15th we flew out of London Gatwick to Shannon Ireland. Our flight arrive just after 11pm and we rented a car we got a Nissan Micra...not a bad little car. We opted for the upgrade which was only 4 Euros because it was an automatic. Now Stacie and I can both drive stick but didn't want to be bothered trying to drive stick on the wrong side of the road on the wrong side of http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ireland/County-Clare/Cliffs-of-Moher/blog-260467.html I got to take my third trip to London and Matt finally got to go for his first We flew RyanAir of course which meant we arrived at London Stansted at 640am Friday morning August 29th Matt wasnrsquot thrilled about leaving for the airport here in Germany at 330 in the morning but that meant that we arrived in downtown London by 9am and had the whole day ahead of us. We went to our hotel a http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Greater-London/London-City/blog-332495.html Okay so if you haven't seen National Lampoon's European Vacation you probably don't get the title of my blog but picture Chevy Chase going around a roundabout in a car for hours on end going Look kids there's Big Ben And Parliament Big Ben Parliament Now you sort of get the joke Anyways my sister Stacie arrived in Germany on Thursday the 13th and we spent most of the day running around http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Greater-London/blog-260458.html So our original plan for this weekend was to go to Rome but work told Matt he was going to have to work this weekend he ended up not working after all though. So Megan Maria Catherine and I their husbands all had to work too decided to take a girls trip to Budapest for the weekend. Catherine found two 2person apartments right next door to each other which ended up costing us each 20 Euro http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Hungary/Central-Hungary/Budapest/Pest/blog-247852.html Well when you travel as much as we do you're bound to have a bad trip now and then...and apparently it was time for us to have one. This trip was doomed from the beginning and we should have just turned around and stayed home but we really wanted to see Prague. This was just going to be a short trip...leave Friday evening and return home on Sunday evening so we had a lot to cram into two days. We http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Czech-Republic/Prague/blog-235508.html