Europa
June 27th, 2005
I love spontenaity. A few months ago, Jen and I watched the Sound of Music, a movie I remember watching as a kid and learning all of the songs, from “Do Re Mi” to “My Favorite Things.” On this most recent viewing, I was struck by the natural beauty of Salzburg, Austria where the film took place. I turned to Jen and said, “Let’s go there.” And so began our plans for our recent trip to Europe.
When Jen and I got married four and a half years ago, the thought of international travel seemed beyond us. Maybe it was the exotic aura surrounding travel, or maybe it was the perception that it was too expensive, but we just never imagined being able to do it ourselves. Then two years ago, we had the opportunity to take a trip to London, England. And what people say is true: Once you go, you’ll have the travel bug and always want to do it again.
So this time, the bug took us to France and Austria. Our French itinterary included Paris, the Loire Valley, and by mistake, Bordeaux. We both liked Paris, but the highlight of our stay in the France was definitely seeing chateauxs (castles) in the Loire Valley. My favorite was the river fortress of Cheneceau.
Our overnight train from to Austria included a stopover for a day in Zurich, Switzerland. The rain put a bit of a damper on our experience there, but we did get to spend time walking around the city, and we ate at a quirky place called “The Crazy Cow.”
Going on into Austria, our first stop was the gorgeous city of Innsbruck. The town sits in a valley the Inns river cut between snow capped peaks in the middle of the Austrian Alps. We couldn’t imagine a more picturesque location. Highlights included the castle, Olympic ski jump and views from the top of the mountains, and the red audio tour buses that whisked us around to all of the Innsbruck sights in under an hour.
After Innsbruck, we made it to Salzburg, which included the apartment Mozart lived in during his childhood, biking to Hellbrun Palace and up and down the river Salz, and a classic European car race through town.
The final stop was Vienna. Not much to say about it because by this time in the trip, Jen and I were so tired that we didn’t have much desire to go out sightseeing. We did take a train day trip southwest to Graz, traversing steep mountains on one of the oldest railways in Austria. That was cool, and I picked up a souveneir on the way, a replacement version of one of our favorite boardgames of all time, Settlers of Catan, only this one is all in German. Ooh, fun fun. Oh one other highlight from Vienna. We found a carnival the first night, rode the swings over fifty feet in the air, and an old time wooden ferris wheel. And I learned that Carnies, you know the seedy guys who work carnival games are the same everywhere you go.
So anyway, that’s a bit about our trip. Check out some pictures from our trip, and post comments if you’d like.