Our Winter Vacation Part 2- Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

Vacation Day 4

Today was mostly a travel day! We took a train from Zurich, Switzerland to Garmisch, Germany. The trip took about 6 hours total. We did a lot of reading. Unfortunately the weather was terrible, so the scenery wasn't much to look at. We had to switch trains in Munich and had about an hour to kill. We shared some mediocre sushi...it was nothing like Seattle sushi though! 

We arrived at the train station around 5pm and took a taxi to our hotel. Edelweiss is a military hotel, and you need a military ID (or be with someone who has one) to stay there. Instead of staying in the hotel, we stayed in “Vacation Village” in a rustic cabin. The cabins were dirt cheap, so we saved a lot of money this way. We checked in, and then had to walk about 15 minutes to our rustic cabin, pulling our giant suitcases behind us. It was snowing and quite cold. We actually had to leave one military point, and show our ID to get into another one. It was quite a hassle and we were cold and tired by the time we made it to our cabin. The cabin was warm and comfortable. The only downside was that we had to use the public bathroom, but our cabin was very close, so we didn’t have to walk far.

We warmed up a little bit and then headed back inside the hotel to have dinner. The hotel was just beautiful, all decorated for Christmas. It was so festive! After dinner we headed out to the hot tub. This outdoor hot tub was absolutely amazing! It was huge and had a fountain and lots of jets. There was even a rule that all kids had to leave at 8:30pm, so it was nice and quite when we were there. After we had our fill of the hot tub, we showered in the locker room and headed back to our cabin.

Unfortunately, no one informed us that the back gate closed at 10pm and there was no shuttle service. We had to take a taxi back to our cabin because it would have taken half an hour to walk in the freezing snow with wet hair. Sigh. That’s the price you pay for staying in the cabins, I guess! 

Vacation Day 5

Before our trip, I looked up the weather in each place that we were going. I also looked at the trends the last couple of years as well as the average temps for the time of year we would be there. I wanted to be prepared! Everything I looked at said that it would be in the low 40's the whole time with no snow...so that is the weather we prepared ourselves for. Wrong! It was only in the 40's our first 2 days in Zurich. Needless to say, I was unprepared for snow and did not bring appropriate footwear. We spend most of this day shopping for boots in town (which was a highly unsuccessful endeavor). 

Garmisch is a cute little town surrounded by mountains. They bring in a lot of revenue from winter sports. They even had the winter Olympics in Garmisch in 1936. Garmisch was just getting it's first snow of the season while we were there. The townspeople were very excited for winter! 

The whole name of Garmisch is Garmish-Partenkirchen. Back in the day they were two separate cities, close to each other. In 1935, in preparation for the Olympic Games, Hitler asked the two cities to become one for economic reasons. The rival towns refused, but when Hitler threatened to send them all to Dachau (the first concentration camp), they reluctantly conceded. To the dismay of the Partenkirchen's, the town is now mostly referred to as Garmisch. 

Downtown Garmisch is very small, and there is a cute, cobblestone street through the center that is for pedestrians only. It's a very endearing little town. Jordan and I had a very nice time walking around town hand-in-hand. It was horribly romantic with the big fat snowflakes falling all around us. 

Jordan was a little apprehensive about German food. In fact, he wasn't even sure he wanted to go to Germany because of the food. Boy was he in for a pleasant surprise! He loved it! German food is serious man food.  His first German meal was sausages, saur kraut, and beer. You couldn't rip that smile off his face! 

After spending the day walking around the little town, we headed back to the hotel and had a nice dinner at the restaurant there. There was a sweet old man playing piano to entertain us. He was fabulous! He didn't even have music and he didn't miss a note the whole night. 

Then we headed for the hot tub again, and off to bed! 

Vacation Day 6

We had planned on taking a cable car up to the top of the mountain, but the weather was terrible, and the hotel staff advised against it because of visibility. So instead, we took a bus to Partnach Gorge. The base of the trail was where the 1936 Olympics were held. There was a huge area with a ski jump. Since there was hardly any snow it looked kind of silly. We finally found the head of the trail. It was ridiculously cold, but we stayed warm enough hiking. 

The hike was beautiful! We walked along a quite road with a creek running alongside. There was a small fee to get into the dripping gorge and we followed a slippery path. The river looked icy cold and was crystal clear. You could see fish swimming lazily below. The gorge was just huge! There were breathtaking views and pitch black tunnels to walk through. Our pictures, unfortunately don't do it justice. When it gets colder, the water dripping from the rocks freezes and the gorge is full of huge icicles. Unfortunately we came too early in the season, and there were just little icicles starting to form. We still had a lot of fun and enjoyed the beautiful hike. 

We took the train to the other side of town and went to a traditional German restaurant. We ate some delicious local cuisine, sipped some gluhwein and warmed up. The food was delicious and Jordan loved it so much that he took a picture of it. 

After lunch we walked around town and went shoe shopping for Jordan. He only brought one pair of shoes and they were hurting his feet something fierce, so he got purchased some good, comfortable shoes.  

We headed back to the hotel for our brewery tour! We took a bus with 13 strangers to a local brewery. We had a delightful German tour guide who clearly loved his job and we learned all about German beer and how it is made.  In 1516 the Reinheitsgebot, or German beer purity law was created. This law said that German beer can only be made with four ingredients: water, yeast, hops, and malt. The breweries in Germany still follow this law today, so German beer is "the healthiest in the world", according to our tour guide. We were able to try 4 different kinds of beer, and a very special treat...beer liquor! It is served hot with a dollop of whip cream on top. I cannot describe to you how delicious it was! After the tour, we all ate some delicious German food, and were able to try more beer if we desired (we did). Jordan and I tried "pork knuckle" for the first time...and boy was it delicious! Man food. We talked and laughed with the people at our table and left with four new friends. We also took a quiz about everything we learned and received Brewmaster certificates! Don't worry mom, we had a designated driver to take us back to the hotel. Those Germans sure know how to have fun! The motherland beckons to me. 

Vacation Day 7

This was one of my favorite vacation days. We woke up early and got on a big bus for a tour of Neuschwanstein castle. Our first stop was at a wood carving shop. Apparently they are really into wood carving in Bavaria. We saw lots of pretty pieces that were way out of our price range. I thought of my Uncle Rick and his mad carving skills. I think that some of his work was better than many of the pieces we saw in Germany though. 

Our next stop was at Wieskirche, a beautiful pilgrimage church of the

Baroque-Rococo style. When we went in the church, they were just starting their first advent mass, so Jordan and I were able to stay for that. It was freezing cold and we could see our breath. The church was ridiculously ornate. I've never seen anything like it. 

Our last stop was the beautiful Neuschwanstein castle! We could choose to walk about 45 minutes up to the castle or take a horse and carriage. We chose to walk so we could keep warm. This place was a winter wonderland like you've never seen! The trees were just heavy with snow. It was absolutely beautiful! We finished the hike pretty quick and had some time to kill before our tour started, so we bought some gluhwein (big surprise there) and had some "snowballs" for a snack, which are basically fried donuts dipped in sugar. Delicious!! We also had time to take some pictures outside the castle. 

The tour of the castle was great! King Ludwig II was the King of Bavaria in 1864 until his death. He was believed to be mad. He devoted much of his life to having beautiful castles built. Neuschwanstein was built for his personal living quarters. No one was allowed inside except for his servants, not even his mother.  According to the stories, King Ludwig was out on a walk with his psychiatrist on Lake Starnberg and both were found dead the next morning in waist deep water. No one knows exactly what happened. The castle and unfinished, and he had only lived there for 180 days until his mysterious death. The inside of the castle was very impressive. He was quite an eccentric guy. One of the rooms in the castle was like the inside of a cave. It was so random...you walked through his dressing room, and the room next door was a cave with stalagmites and everything. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the castle. 

This castle is also the model for Walt Disney's Cinderella Castle. If it looks familiar to you, that's probably why!

After the castle tour, we hiked back down the mountain, stopped in for a beer (I had been telling my liver to prepare for this trip for weeks), and then took the bus home. The sky cleared up for about 3 minutes and we saw our first glimpse of the alps around us. They were absolutely beautiful! Then the fog descended once again. 

As usual, we had some delicious dinner, enjoyed the hot tub for the last time and then hit the hay! 

This is the hotel lobby! It was so beautiful! That fire in the fireplace is real, and there were rocking chairs in front of it. It was super duper cozy. We came here to use the free wifi. 

Jordie's first taste of German food. He likes it!!!

This is our humble rustic cabin. There was room to sleep 6, a fridge, microwave, table, and even a TV! No snow on the ground yet! 

Here were are in Partnach Gorge! It was very chilly!

The is a glimpse of the gorge. These pictures do not do it justice at all! It was ridiculously beautiful!

Here's another Gorge picture. Do you see the dripping water from the walls? That is the part that turns into giant icicles!

That little cave is where you exit the Gorge. This is looking at the backside. It's just a peaceful pebble beach with a lazy little river.

This is Jordan's delicious man lunch. Mmmm German food!

This is our German brewery tour guide. Can you tell he loves his job? At the beginning he said, "Feel free to take pictures of me!" So we did. 

This is jordan pouring his own beer straight from the source! 

This is my "Healthiest beer in the world" face!

This is the delicious beer liquor! He was showing us how to drink it. 

Jordan's ready for his delicious beer liquor! 

This is the infamous pork knuckle! Mmm mmm good!

This is the outside of Wieskirche church. Where did all this snow come from??

Panorama of inside the church. I look like a dork. 

This is the front of the church. Isn't it just ridiculously ornate??

This is the Hohenschwangau castle. We didn't go inside, we only saw it from afar. 

Our very first view of Neuschwanstein Castle! It looks like a fairy tale!!

Here it is a little closer. We were almost there!!

Donut break. Mmmmm!!

I like donuts too!!

Winter wonderland! You can see the castle a little in the far right. 

It was so stinkin' beautiful! Some nice people volunteered to take our picture together!

We're just chilling in from of this awesome castle. No big deal. 

This was on our way back down. Beautiful snow. Beautiful man. =)

Stay tuned for the next leg of our journey...Munich! I feel like I have to give a disclaimer about our pictures. It was just so ridiculously cold that we didn't take as many pictures as we would have liked to. Even though we brought a camera, most of our pictures were taken on our phones because our hands were too cold to get the big camera out. We're a bunch of babies, I know. Turkey is making us soft!

Our Winter Vacation Part 1- Zurich, Switzerland

Jordan and I were extremely blessed to be able to go on an amazing European winter vacation together!  Instead of Christmas presents to each other, we decided to make some memories together! Our first stop was Zurich, Switzerland!

Our good friend, Katherine, took us to the airport on our day of departure. I always get a little nervous traveling over here, mostly because of the communication barrier. For some reason both Jordan and I were feeling a bit uneasy about our trip. Katherine is a professional at traveling, living in Turkey...and just about everything else, so I was verbally going over everything with her. She casually mentioned that we needed Jordan's orders to get out of Istanbul, because they were stamped when we came into the country. We had no idea we needed Jordan's orders!! We thought our passports were enough! So Katherine, being the amazing woman that she is, turned the car around. We drove the 20 minutes back to base, grabbed the orders, and headed back to the airport. We made it just in time! Thank God for Katherine, or we would still be stuck in Istanbul! Thankfully the rest of our travel was uneventful.

Vacation Day 1
Hotels in Europe are different, especially if you are on a budget! By the time we made it to our hotel, it was about 11pm. There was no reception and we got our key out of a little box after punching in the magic code. Our room was very basic. The bed was actually 2 twin mattresses, and we both had our own bedding...apparently if you both want to sleep in the same bed you need to request a "French bed". Who knew.

Our first day in Zurich was a Sunday, and we didn't realize that practically everything is closed on Sundays! We walked around for ages looking for coffee and breakfast. We finally found some at the museum cafe and it was slap-your-momma expensive. Around $5.00 for a single shot of espresso. We begrudgingly paid $10 to feed our coffee addiction. We then decided to check out the museum...but it would have cost $50 for both of us! This is when we realized that Switzerland tricked us! They roped us in with ridiculously cheap plane tickets only to realize that we can't even afford a cup of coffee. What jerks!

We walked all around the old town, which was just beautiful. Everything was decorated for Christmas and there were twinkle lights everywhere! We stumbled upon a very talented man playing the accordion. He played Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor".  Jordan was really excited, because it's his favorite Bach piece.

Awhile later we stumbled upon the Singing Christmas Tree! We were able to have our first taste of Gluhwein, which is hot spiced wine. They serve it all over Europe in the winter and it is just delicious! We also had some roasted chestnuts for the first time!

While we were out and about, Jordan spotted a sign advertising a free Mozart concert at a church. Free sounded really good at this point, so we hopped on a bus and found the church. The concert was great! They did Mozart's Requiem and we both really enjoyed it a lot.

After the concert, we stumbled upon our first Christmas market! We had a blast looking at all the booths and enjoying the festivities.

Vacation Day 2
Our second day was rainy and dreary. After we ate a granola bar and got a little expensive coffee in our systems, we decided to spend the day at the zoo! We both love the zoo so much, so we had a lot of fun looking at all the animals, even though the weather was terrible. It actually reminded us of home, so we weren't disappointed at all. There were lots of animals at this zoo that I have never seen before. My favorite exhibit was the rain forest in a giant green house. It was hot and humid and there were all sorts of birds and monkeys roaming free.

After the zoo, we were hungry for dinner. We brought a guide book with us, and there was an "inexpensive" Thai restaurant that we wanted to try. Unfortunately there is next to no Asian food in Turkey...and we have both been craving it for months! Once we finally made it to the restaurant, it was closed! We were about starving by this time. We were very excited to stumble upon a Pho restaurant, but when we looked at the prices...it was literally $20 for a bowl of Pho soup! The same exact soup costs $6 at home! So we decided to have pizza instead. The pizza was expensive too. Sigh. I would not recommend traveling in Switzerland on a budget.

This was the day we discovered Swiss Truffles at the chocolate shop. This is literally the most delicious chocolate I have ever had in my life. Melt in your mouth chocolatey deliciousness! My mouth is seriously watering right now!

Vacation Day 3
Jordan finally caved and bought us coffee at Starbucks. It was slap-your-momma expensive, as usual. We then took a train to Old Town to do some good old window shopping! We walked around town munching on delicious soft pretzels having a grand time.

We went to look at the Grossmunster church, which was built in 1100. It was crazy to be in something so old! We spent a lot of time exploring. We climbed 194 steps to the very top and enjoyed a great view of the city. It was so peaceful to be up above the bustling world below us!

We found an amazing toy store in town. It had 5 different floors of any kind of toy you can imagine! Most of the toys in Europe are much less complicated than the ones at home. I don't think there were any toys in this store that even required batteries. They were just good, old fashioned toys! We probably spent over an hour looking around and playing. =)

We were starting to lose some steam by this point, so we had a coffee break! Then we were off to a giant music store to explore! I really wanted to buy some piano sheet music, but as usual, it was way too expensive. It was sure fun to look at all the nice pianos though!

We decided to head back to the Thai place for dinner...because we were still craving Thai and we knew they would be open. We fully enjoyed some pad thai and tom ka! I have a feeling that it will be a really long time until I have Thai food again. We then headed back to out hotel to pack up our bags for the next leg of our journey!

This was a beautiful fountain in the courtyard of old town, Zurich

Swiss cheese!! This cheese smelled TERRIBLE, but sure tasted delicious!

This was a gigantic Christmas tree in the middle of the Christmas Market. Beautiful!

This is downtown Zurich at night. The street behind me with all the lights is supposedly the most expensive shopping district in the world...mostly because of all the expensive jewelry stores. We did a lot of window shopping!

Poisonous frogs at the zoo. They're so cute!! 

A very stoic looking bird at the zoo.

Jordan always got really excited whenever we went in a store with point things. He is such a boy.

The door to this Victorinox store had a sword on it! I know I'm tough...you don't have to tell me.

This is the door to Grossmunster church. It's all carved out of wood. Beautiful!

This is us at the top of Grossmunster church, with a view of Zurich in the background. Unfortunately we don't have many pictures of us together, but this is a good one!

I wish I could make this picture bigger! I feel like the small version doesn't do it justice! This is a panorama view of Zurich from the top of Grossmunster church. Notice the clouds. We barely even got a view of the alps the whole time we were in Switzerland! The city was sure beautiful though!