Andes to Amazon

Geo: 39.2795, -76.5696Think we all slept pretty well and with our pre-packing last night, our check out went pretty smooth. Grandpa up and showered by 7:00, Grandma by 8:00 and Brennan by 8:30. Times may vary but this has generally been the routine all week. We caught the 9:15 bus (#635), right outside the Hotel Novotel. The stop also serves one of the remote parking lots so the bus was full. At the airport, we didn't know if Air Canada was in Terminal 1 or 2. After asking several "Official" looking people, we were sent back and forth in Terminal 1 before finally getting the right info that we were to be in Terminal 2. {As a side note, we think Brennan was a little disappointed that he didn't get to ice skate at the airport ... read more

Geo: 47.8005, 13.0444Good night sleep until the bells of the church rang 100 times at 6:00am -- obviously time to get up!Breakfast was included with our room so we enjoyed a typical bread, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, fruit, yogurt, cereal and pastry breakfast. You would think there would be something there Brennan would enjoy, but for some reason he was not a fan. He went back to the room without eating, complaining of an upset stomach. G&G enjoyed a nice breakfast. We made him a ham and cheese sandwich for later.We stopped once again at the larger hotel to check email and headed out to Partnachklamm, a hiking trail through a gorge. We did not have time to spend 1-1/2 hours doing the circuit hike nor the desire to spend over 10 Euro to hike through the ... read more

Geo: 47.5544, 9.69024We were down for the typical breakfast around 8:00. Typical seemed to be: cold cuts, cheeses, boiled eggs, pastries, cereal and fruit. After checking out, we walked the same route Grandpa and Brennan had done last night. St. George's was much prettier in daylight with light streaming through the stained glass. The men were still busy setting up the Christmas village. The soon to open Christkindle Markt was also busily setting up and businesses were all hanging evergreen garland and lights.We made every effort to avoid the autobahn on the drive to Ulm, which would be about the halfway point on our drive for the day. Ulm brags of the tallest steeple of any church in Germany. It was a visual G&G had from 40 years earlier. Our desire to avoid the autobahn, had ... read more

Geo: 49.4505, 11.0805Two very full flights but pretty uneventful. With a 45-minute delay out of BWI, all it meant was a shorter layover in Newark.On the flight to Munich we had a nice dinner, movies, and Brennan got over three hours of sleep. G&G, not so lucky. Brennan slept through breakfast but we saved a couple of yogurts for him which he ate on the drive to Nuremberg. We got into Munich about 30 minutes early, before 7:00. We had not checked our bags so we were through immigration, customs and car rental really quickly and on our way by 8:00. The Budget rental agent asked if we wanted a GPS for 60 euro, and we opted for it. We would have found Nuremberg without it, but probably not the Jacobmarkt Hotel! As it turned out, ... read more

Geo: 40.6355, -73.7807This is the day we had planned to get to Santiago which would have given us a couple of rest days. This is why we had a reservation at Hospederia San Martin Pinario, the huge monastery next to the Cathedral. It is now a very nice hotel. So, we checked out of Hotel Horreo and headed to our new hotel. We had not had our heavy packs on since Sunday and now they seemed almost impossibly heavy! Both of us wondered how we ever carried them 775 kms!We were trying to stall in order to ensure our new room would be ready so we walked around, window shopped and had a cup of coffee near the University. Since we couldn't go in any small shops with our packs on, we decided to check out ... read more