A Trip Down Memory Lane...

So, Charlie is on a Scout campout and took the camera with him so I have no new pictures to blog about. I've been reminiscing a lot lately, I like to remember the fun times of my past and decided to blog today about the most amazing trip I've ever been on. 5 years ago Charlie and I went with a couple of my good friends that I met in Germany as an au pair and traveled as much of Europe as we could in a 2 1/2 week period.

We actually started off in California where we met up with Sandra and Herman. I was able to go to Disneyland for the first time which was really fun. Then we were off to Munich, Germany, where Herman is originally from. We stayed a couple days with his parents there, Anita and Karl-Heinz. Charles and Karl-Heinz had the funniest relationship. Charlie doesn't speak german and Karl-Heinz doesn't speak english but somehow they had a friendship going through their hand gestures and smiles. We are seriously thinking about naming one of our kids Karl-Heinz. :)

Our next stop from there was Amsterdam. We went on a bike tour there and saw how they made the wooden clogs, we were able to see an authentic windmill, and of course see all of inner city Amsterdam. Which leads me to my next picture...
Charlie and Herman posing for me in front of the "Red Light" district. I'd never heard of this before but became very familiar with it as our hostel was right next to it. We had to walk through the alley where all the action was to get to where we were staying. I'll be honest and tell you that I looked. I felt so sad for the women there, putting themselves up on display while men stand outside and bid the best price. Pathetic.
I don't have a very high opinion of Amsterdam, but the Netherlands apart from the city is breathtaking. Our next destination was France and it just so happened the day we were leaving Amsterdam there was a massive strike so we had to take a detour and headed off for Zurich, Switzerland which meant we sat in the train station for 5 hours trying to get a ticket out of Amsterdam.
We did a lot of train sleeping. I'll throw out a little free information on the transit system in Europe, if you are planning to backpack make sure you understand your train tickets. We paid a lot of money for 1st class tickets and ended up only being able to sit 1st class twice and one of those times we got booted because even though we had 1st class seats on that specific train (in Italy, of course) you had to pay extra for 1st class. Sneaky. We almost always sat 2nd class because that's all the trains had, so paying for 1st class is a big waste of money.
Sandra and I posing in Zurich. I loved it there. If I could become any other nationality, I think it would be Swiss. I don't really know a lot about politics there or anything, but it is so beautiful and so clean and it was refreshing to meet people who spoke German but were actually really nice!
We had a lot of fun staying in Hostels. Especially in Rome, the toilet kept clogging so you had to wipe and put the paper in a massive trash can and try and get it to flush and the showers flooded so you had to wade through tons of water not to mention the bathrooms and showers were gender shared.
There were some hostels that were actually pretty decent, but you can't expect a whole lot from them when you don't have to pay a lot to stay.

We jumped the ropes for a quick shot in the pillars at the Colosseum in Rome.
It was really hard to imagine people watching other people being slaughtered here. I felt this creepy feeling as I put it all into perspective. I kept picturing the Gladiator and crowds cheering and wondering how many people died for entertainment there. It was however, an amazing structure considering the time it was built.
What we didn't know that going to the Sistine chapel and museum you have to be dressed according to standard, meaning shorts go to the knee and no sleeveless shirts. Not any different than LDS standards. At the Vatican there were even stricter rules, men can't wear shorts at all. Here is Herman trying to find some pants to wear to be able to enter the Vatican.
Outside the Vatican I saw this cute little Italian girl feeding the birds. The old man, who was a stranger, kept giving her bird feed. It was really sweet and she was so cute.
This is the balcony in Venice where Charlie proposed to me on my birthday. Super romantic.
I thought this was pretty cool. A gas station on the water.


Rome was our least favorite city in Italy. Mostly, because there was a lot of sneaky business going on and it was kind of dirty. But we did get to the older parts of Rome where it was just so beautiful.
We went to lots of museums and saw countless statues; here's a funny one of Charlie. Yeah, we could have probably gotten kicked out for that.

We loved being in Florence , that was definitely our favorite . Here we are all together enjoying our one night stay there.
For Charlie's birthday we went to Austria since it was on the way back to Germany. Sandra and the others left us and we were on our own to navigate back. I speak German but for some reason talking to people in German is really hard for me, I get focused on my grammar not being correct and freak myself out. This is Charlie after we got lost several times because I wouldn't ask for directions. It wasn't funny then but we laugh about it now.
This fountain was made in the 1800's and it is still functioning today. I loved being in Vienna, there is something magical about that city, maybe it's the history of music there or the Wienerschnitzel, I don't know but I love it.
Our trip ended in Germany, but we had one more adventure before we headed back home,
Castle Neuschwanstein. I've been there several times on several occasions and still don't know exactly what city it's in. I just remember it was a long drive to get there. It's definitely a fairy tale castle.

I know this all happened 5 years ago but it was fun remembering those weeks traveling together. I'm really missing Charlie right now and I thought this would help me not miss him as much but I miss him even more now and can't wait for him to come home already.
I'll post again soon on much more recent events.