My bags and I went to Europe and I brought back some great photos...

This blog entry is about six months behind schedule but I thought I'd post some photos from my trip to Eastern Europe in September. We had an AMAZING time and I'm not one to say that lightly. We started off in Vienna, Austria and made our way to Budapest, Hungary, Prague, Czech Republic and Berlin, Germany. We had some lunch stops along the way stopping in Bratislava which is the capital of Slovakia (since my mom's family is "Slovak" this was a pretty cool place to see) and a few stops in Germany including visiting Dresden where my good friend Patrick is from and where he and Claudia spent a year before they got married.

My favorite city by far was Budapest, pronounced Buda-pesht, which is actually two cities, Buda and Pest (remember it's "pesht"). Buda is the hilly part known as the hills of Buda and the Pest side is flat. It's a beautiful city on the Danube River that is "illuminated" beautifully at night. Wendy and I got to know the city well after an adventurous "quiet evening" in which we tried to find a place for dinner---needless to say four hours later we finally made our way back home.

Berlin was a second favorite although it might have been that by the end of nine days (eleven overall) on the road, any city that more resembled home was fantastic. Plus, it was nice that we knew more about the recent history that occurred in Berlin.

The trip ended back in Vienna and we had a farewell dinner with what we called our North American contingent made up of a couple from Los Angeles and two men from Canada. It was quite funny that of all the 44 people on the tour there were only FOUR people from the U.S.! The rest of the group hailed from Australia, New Zealand, a few more Canadians, a lady from Ireland, a number of people from South Africa, a mother and daughter from Singapore and an extended family from Malaysia.

Here is our trip in photos (be thankful you don't have to sit through all 300 of them ; )

A protest on our first day in Vienna. We think it has something to do with carbon emissions but I just thought the blue people were so cute! Later on in the trip, Wendy and I would be protesting the fact that the U.S. dollar was at its lowest point, to date, against the Euro---a $5 coke anyone?


Look at the crosswalk signs in Vienna. The people are so dressed up to cross the street.


Wendy showcasing our lovely "narrow half pillow" in Budapest. The joke was on us though as two more hotels had the "half pillow."


Beautiful shots of Budapest. They even have a castle district!




Old Town Square in Prague at night


Prague in the daytime. If you visit, you will see the famed Astronomical Clock which chimes every hour.


I could show photos from Dresden and one of a church that money from Columbus helped restore, but really the most intriguing part of our lunchtime there was this sign for "fish hotdogs" in the mall.... ;)


Our ultra-modern hotel in Berlin. Thank GOD for bigger pillows! This hotel had an interesting set up as the sink and shower were right in the middle of the room and the shower had a clear glass door on it. It made for a couple of interesting mornings...



Here is an inside shot of the dome on Berlin's Reichstag Building which houses the German Parliament.


Here are some of our tour friends in front of the last remaining section of the Berlin Wall. Ian and John are from Canada and Alice is from Ireland.


Buy a Mercedes....buy a Mercedes. This was the view from our hotel window of this rotating Mercedes sign.


Cool museum on the history of West and East Berlin. I got to play soccer inside the museum with a native. It's cool how sports transcend the language barrier.


The most maddening part of the whole trip was having to go past about SIX IKEAs on our way and not being able to stop in any of them! Granted getting up at 5 a.m. and going to bed at 9:30 p.m. wasn't much fun either ;)


This is a photo you have all probably seen before. Picture this area full of people with the German flags on either side of the podium and Hitler speaking. This is Hitler's rally grounds which was sort of an eerie place to see.


A photo from the bus of the German countryside on our road trip back to Vienna.


Our own farewell dinner with half of the North American contingent.