18 Euros is about 24 dollars at the current exchange rate, so when I saw a round-trip flight from Frankfurt Hahn to Milan Bergamo for 18.01 Euros (the flight itself was a penny...seriously! We were charged 10 Euros for check-in 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 is like me and Scotland so she was all for it. We flew into Bergamo late Thursday evening and took the bus into Milan. It was pouring rain and even though our hotel was right near the train station where the bus dropped us off, we were on the wrong side of the train station and it took us a little while ... read more

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 doing stupid stuff. Like the front license plate fell off my car and they wouldn't let me on post without it so that took up a huge portion of the day. Exciting stuff, huh? We flew out early early early Friday morning on RyanAir (of course) from Frankfurt Hahn to London Stanstead. Our flight was at 6:20am so we had to leave the ... read more

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 didn't get to see much...here's why. Matt and I went with our friends Dan and Ali who were visiting for several weeks. They had rented a little itty bitty Ford car that ran on diesel so got GREAT gas mileage and volunteered to drive their car the 5 hours out to Prague. We had just gotten ... read more

We had booked a trip months ago through the Heidelberg International Ski Club here's the link to spend Christmas in Arabba, Italy. Arabba is a small town in the Dolomite Mountains and we were excited to see a new part of Italy. When we booked the trip it said that it had over 450 lifts...which we of course thought was a misprint. Holy Cow! They really DID have over 450 lifts! There are 12 towns/resorts throughout the Dolomites and all of them are connected to each other by ski lifts. You can buy one big ski lift pass, start in one city, and end up in a completely different one by dark. We ended up going with two couples who are our neighbors and another couple that we're friends with and stayed the 22nd through the ... read more

We spent Thanksgiving Day here in Mannheim (well, Weinheim actually but close enough) with our friends. There turned out to be about 15 of us for dinner so it was a really nice sized group. Originally I had planned on having Thanksgiving dinner at our apartment but our group soon outgrew our apartment so my friend Catherine volunteered to have it at her house (that's where the Weinheim part comes in) but I still made the turkey and the stuffing. Friday, November 27th The next day (the 27th, which is where the blog really starts) Catherine and Adam, Megan and Joel, and Matt and I all drove down to Garmisch for some skiing for the weekend. As always, I'll tell you all about our B&B...especially because this was another great find for us! Haus Lilly is ... read more