Our trip home for Thanksgiving

This year Tom and I journeyed back home to Sacramento for Thanksgiving and 2 weeks at home with friends and family! We had been looking forward to the trip for months! All of our flights were smooth and we landed safely at Sac Int. on time. We did a lot of shopping (trying to boost the economy!) and visited with a lot of great people that we really miss! The first few days was spent catching up with family and running errands. Over the weekend we had a lot of plans! We went out to Wilseyville to watch my mom race her dirtbike. It was so much fun hanging out with my dad and seeing all of the familiar D36 people, hearing the dirtbikes, walking around the start line and the race course!

I was invited to join in with the old W&O ladies for thier bookclub meeting! I even read the bookclub book. We all got together and had a great dinner at Chevy's and then had desserts and champagne while we discussed the book. It was great!

Tom and I spent the night at our friend's Tracy and Brandon's house one night. Their house is beautiful and we had so much fun! We had dinner at our favorite place, Chipotle :) Then the next morning they took us to a delicious breakfast at the Granite Rock Cafe. After breakfast, as per tradition, we had to climb the granite rock :) I took my little tiny American flag that came in my stack of pancakes and claimed the rock for the USA!

That weekend, we also drove up to Apple Hill with Ken and RoseAnn. We had so many delicious apple treats and we did some caching with the GPS. It was raining a little bit, but not enough to put a damper on the day :)

One night, we met up with a group of friends and went to dinner at Pyramid Brewery and then afterwards we all went bowling!

Our second week in town, we decided to go out of town for 2 days and go to Disneyland with Michelle and Scott!! We had a great time! We even convinced Shelly to ride Space Mountain and Splash Mountain! The scariest rides in the park :)

We got back from Disneyland the night before Thanksgiving and on Thanksgiving morning, Tom and I participated in the Run to Feed the Hungry! Tom and I were interviewed for an article in the Sacramento Bee promoting the run! There was a mix-up with our online registration and the event coordinators discovered that we were coming from Germany to run the race and asked if it would be okay for someone from the Bee to contact us. Of course, we agreed :) Here is a link to the article: http://www.sacbee.com/kushman/story/2322111.html

On our last full day in California, we went with Ken and RoseAnn to San Francisco, to see the King Tut exhibit. It was very interesting and made Tom and I want to visit Egypt!

Then we went and had lunch at Boudins and had fun looking around the shop afterwards :)

We had a great time and we were so sad to have to get back on the plane and go back to Germany. We really miss everyone back home and are looking forward to visiting again soon!!

Epic Roadtrip 2009

It has been brought to my attention that I am slacking off big time on writing new blogs! Sorry everyone :) I will get back on track and first things first, I will write about me and my friend Whitney's big European roadtrip in October!

My friend Whitney came out in October for a 2 week visit. We planned a very ambitious 9 day roadtrip across Europe while she was here. It was quite the adventure, I would even go so far as to say it was Epic, yep, the Epic Roadtrip 2009 with Sarah and Whitney!

We started in Wiesbaden of course, homebase, and took off for Garmisch and the Edelwiess Resort for military families in Southern Germany. We arrived at the hotel, checked in, unloaded our suitcases and then immediately headed out for the Neuschwanstien Castle. We just barely made it there in time to buy tickets for the last tour of the day! Whew! The tour was great and the walk up the mountain was challenging since it was snowing! But the snow made the castle look beautiful!

Our room in the hotel was very nice. It was a nice American transition into the very European hotels to come. The next morning we got up and had a great military dining facility style buffet breakfast to start our day! We continued South into Austria and stopped in Innsbruck at the Swarovski Crystal museum. It was very . . . sparkly! We had someone take our picture at the entrance to the museum.

The Swarovsky Museum was a pitstop on our way to Milan, Italy. We arrived at our hotel in the evening and got everything figured out as far as parking the car, checking in to our room and figuring out how to get to the train station in the morning. In the morning we chose to forgo the complementary breakfast and just have some of the breakfast foods we brought along with us like cereal bars and pop-tarts. Italians usually have an expresso and a cigarette for breakfast, maybe with a croissant if you're lucky :) We rode the train into the city center of Milan enroute to see the Leonardo Da Vinci's The Last Supper. Here is the church where it is located (the Santa Maria delle Grazie):

You had to purchase tickets ahead of time and then you waited for your time slot and were escorted through a series of hallways and sealed doors until you get to the chamber where the mural is. It is huge and very impressive. The room is almost empty except for the mural on the wall. We bought some souveniers in the shop on our way out since they don't let you take pictures.

Next, we walked through the city to Milan's Duomo. It was also huge and very impressive! The facade is all marble and very beautiful. The detail is just amazing. Inside was all marble as well and gilding everywhere!

After visiting the Duomo, we hit the streets on foot yet again and meandered our way through the high end shopping district just for fun. We ended the day at Castello Sforzesco which is a big fortress type structure conveiniently located near the train station where we caught our train back to our hotel.

One last thing to do in Italy before we say Ciao! and continue our journey through France and into Spain, we had to have some real Italian gelato!! It was yummy!

All odds were against our having a good time in Barcelona. We had a grueling drive from Milan to Barcelona the day before. Although we had a lovely lunch stop in Monaco and I got to drive my car on part of the Monaco Grand Prix course! We arrived at our hotel on the outskirts of Barcelona late in the evening and ready for some rest! When we woke up the next morning it was pouring down rain. We again had planned to take the train into the city center. So far, so good and the rain was letting up a little here and there and things looked optimistic. We stopped at Starbucks first thing for some nice warm coffee and then headed out to see some gorgeous Gaudi architecture. We did a self guided tour of one of his buildings called La Pedrera. It started raining harder so we ducked into the Hard Rock Cafe Barcelona for some lunch. Then we were headed to the subway and the famous Sagrada Familia when we got caught in a torrential downpour! We got soaked to the bone but decided not to let it ruin our day! We enjoyed the massive and still under construction basilica and even got to see some of the craftsmen in action! After that we were cold and wet and tired so we decided to call it a day. We gave up on visiting the outdoor Parc Guell, but rated the day a success anyway!

This is the view from our hotel room. It finally decided to stop raining once we got back to the room!

We got a good nights rest and woke early to begin our longest drive yet from Barcelona, Spain to Paris, France! It was going to be a full day of driving with no fun pit-stops planned in between. It was rough going and we arrived in the neighborhood of our hotel right at dusk. The GPS navigation device failed us for the first time in the trip and we could not find our hotel. We finally found it and when we checked in, we were exhausted and in no mood for what we found. The bathroom looked like it was taken out of a camping trailer, there wasn't even a shower curtain - the whole bathroom was the shower. There was only one twin size bed in the room and there was a little kitchenette that smelled badly of someone else's cooking. We went back down and asked for a different room, one with two beds, hoping that it would be better but when we opened the door to the second room, it was exactly the same only there was a futon instead of a twin bed. We made a few phone calls and went and stayed at a different hotel right next to the Disneyland Paris Park and Resort. This hotel was MUCH better and we both went right to bed and had a good night's sleep before a fun day at Disneyland the next day!

We had a blast at Disneyland Paris and were very excited to head into the city of Paris the next day! We again hopped on the train and rode into the city center. We hit almost all of the big tourist attractions in Paris and had a very smooth day overall. It was a great end to the Epic Roadtrip!

And the icing on the cake was that we ended the day at the Eiffel Tower and unbeknownst to us, they were having a Anniversary light show on the tower! As we were leaving to catch the train back to the Resort, we caught up with a gentleman and his two daughters who agreed to walk with us to the subway station since we didn't know exactly where it was and it was dark by then. He was very nice and we stayed with them and watched the light show for a little while before heading back.

It was a whirlwind trip - I think I wore Whitney out a little bit, sorry Whit! When we got back home to Wiesbaden we just relaxed at home for a few days and didn't do much of anything. One day we walked down to downtown Wiesbaden and explored a little bit. I had a great time! I just wish that Tom didn't have to work so he could have enjoyed it with us. But we will have plenty of travel opportunities to come :)