To the Canals of Venice!

After waking up from our nine-hour train ride, we were in Venice! We arrived just before sunrise (around 6:45am), so we were able to find a great spot to watch - a bridge over a canal of course! After the sunrise, we decided to find our hotel. Only problem... we didn't have the name or address of our hotel, so we started a 2.5-hour search for free Wi-fi or an open internet cafe. We finally found an internet cafe and then our hotel - Hotel Zecchini. Once our packs were secure, we were ready to wander the streets of Venice.

We saw the Grand Canal, the Rialto Bridge, San Marco, Santa Maria della Salute and many other amazing churches and buildings. Gelato, masks, pastries and restaurants were everywhere! While the sites were amazing, my favorite part was wandering all of the pedestrian-only streets (no vehicles of any kind allowed on Venice). The Vaporetto (water taxi) proved to be a great way to get back to our starting point once we walked the length of the Grand Canal. The sites and sounds of the city of Venice are spectacular.

Venice pics are up on Picasa now!!

Observations on Venice...

Bring lots of tissues and allergy medicine if you are allergic to mold.

The romantic allure of a gondola ride is off-set by the Vegas-like antics of the gondoliers trying to entice you to take a ride.

The masks in Venice are amazing, but look for a store where the person is actually making the masks if you want to bring one home.

Write down the name of your hotel and its address prior to getting to Venice because there is no Wi-Fi and internet shops don't open until after 10am.

Set aside your map and enjoy the streets... you will get to your destination eventually.

Venice is small...two days was plenty of time to feel the romantic charm of the city.

Oktoberfest (by Tim)

We spent the entire day drinking, singing German songs, eating sausages, and watching incredibly gorgeous women walk around in drindels; it was a good day.

Like the professional partiers we are, we got to the Oktoberfest before it opened and went to one of the best tents, the Paulaner. We got a table that we split with a group of Italians and an American, Zack, who moved to Italy two years ago. Zack speaks no Italian and will travel to Kazakistan next month - awesome guy.


After two hours of being in the tent, we realized that Germans only know two songs, which I believe contain a total of 12 words, and they sing them every 10 minutes. Italians on the other hand, sing the same tune from a White Stripes song about every 10 minutes, usually in response to the Germans singing their drinking song. Another discovery we made is that the beer and pretzels at Oktoberfest are great, but although it looks good, dipping the pretzel in beer does not taste good; it's kind of like pickles and milk.

After a few hours at the Paulaner, we decided to try our luck at a different beer tent; this time we headed to the Hippodrom. After sneaking inside and then waiting in line for an hour, we finally got to resume our partying. Again, absolutely fantastic time. I can't overstate how incredible Oktoberfest is.


We capped the day by spending the evening at another beer tent drinking and trying to learn German. Parting thought: beer and the drindel are the greatest inventions to come out of Bavaria, if only you could combine them into one.....

- All of our Munich and Oktoberfest pictures can be seen here

Oktoberfest in Munich!

What an amazing experience! We were told that each tent holds 10,000 people (I am not so sure that I believe that) and man is it fun to drink and sing with 10,000 of your closest German and Italian friends (it was Italian weekend)! The beer was actually really good, the chicken was amazing, but I think my favorite part was the pretzels! Huge, fresh and soft on the inside! Tim's favorite part was the Drindl outfits (you will see evidence of this by the pictures that he, Kenny and Josh took at the event). All I can say is bring on David!

The other best part about Oktoberfest... we were able to nab two beer steins from the tents!! One from the Hippodrom and one from the Hofbrauhaus! Prost!!

Btw... Kenny is our friend from San Francisco. He used to work with Tim at Ernst and Young, but he works for Cisco now out of Amsterdam. As some of you may remember, we visited Kenny for Queen's Day in Amsterdam earlier this year. Kenny brought his friend Josh to party it up with us at Oktoberfest.

We woke up Sunday morning and for some reason, Tim did not feel like drinking anymore, so we headed out to explore the city of Munich. Munich looks more like a typical US city than any of the European cities that I have been to before. A lot busier (paritally due to Oktoberfest), more businesses and chain stores, and more car traffic. It did have a number of gorgeous buildings and churches. The best part about Munich, besides Oktoberfest of course, was the English Garden - very similar to Golden Gate Park. We spent a couple hours there walking around and looking at the sites, as well as taking a break to listen to one of the many bands playing in the park.

After enjoying the park, we headed to a beer haus for weiners and kraut. Then, we headed to the train station for our nine-hour, overnight ride to Venice. The train was a sleeper train, so the chairs were removed and beds were in their place - three beds stacked on top of each other with six beds total in each room - sounds a little cramped, but it was actually quite comfy for me (Tim may have a different opinion).

View Oktoberfest pics here.

Observations on Munich...

Germans are a lot of fun and they can drink!! However, I never saw a drunk German... drunk Italians, drunk Americans, but no drunk Germans.

A drindl can make even an unattractive woman attractive... or maybe it was the beer.

Get to English Gardens early during Oktoberfest if you want to see naked Italians.

Munich, Germany

We left Prague around noon for a Munich-bound train. Like every other 20 something in Europe we were going to Oktoberfest. The train was completely packed for the six-hour ride. By the time the train left the station not only was every seat taken, but every hallway, corridor and open area were filled with people as well.

Munich has a nice, modern train station and cops that don't swindle tourists out of $50. Compared to the crap-hole Prague Station with its crooked cops, Munich already had a leg up on Prague. After Lara and I checked into our hotel; bought a sim card; and spent 2 hours trying to get the sim card to work to call Kenny, we decided to go to the Oktoberfest fairgrounds. Oktoberfest is a lot like the Alameda County Fair (the best fair in the East Bay!), except way cooler, with beer and there's no livestock auction. We sat down at the Hacker beer tent and quickly hit it off with the group next to us. One of the guys in the group insisted I smoke one of his 'Domincan' cigars. Assured they were not Cuban, I tried the cigar... it turned out to be Cuban. As you can tell from the picture, it didn't go well.

The drinking did go well. By the time we all had to leave we were invited to next year's Oktoberfest, stay at our new friend's house in Munich and Lara could even borrow their daughter's drindel. Oktoberfest 2010!

Off to Prague...

Our first Eurorail trip was a lot of fun. Seeing the countryside of both Austria and the Czech Republic was a cool experience. We sat in a 6-person cochette that was only occupied by four people (the other two people were a professor and a program director from University of Tenesse's accounting department - we ended up seeing them four more times in Prague!).

We arrived in Prague in the morning, eager and ready to explore the city...possibly a little too eager, as we got to the intra-city train platform and missed the sign to validate our ticket. A train cop witnessed this innocent mistake and decided that we were going to pay for our mistake... 700 krowns. After a long conversation and coming to the realization that 700 krowns equates to 30 Euro, we paid the man and left for our Prague journey.

We walked from the train station to our hotel, the lovely Hotel Athena Palace. From our hotel, we started our walk around Prague. We visited the National Museum, Mustek (like Market Street in San Francisco), Henry's Bell Tower, the Poweder Tower, Tyn Church and the Astronomical Clock. And, we ate Trdelnik, an amazing cinnamon-sugar doughnut-like thing, in Staromestske Namesti.

Day two in Prague, we walked through the Havelska Market, where we saw tons of handmade arts and crafts, vegetables and fruits for sale. Then, we headed to the Josefov neighborhood. Josefov is the Jewish area within Prague and houses six Synagogues. All six now contain museums that educate people on the lives of Jewish people in the Czech Republic with a particular focus on pre and post WWII life. One of the most amazing sights that I have seen so far on this trip was that of the 80,000 names of Jewish people from Prague who were murdered during WWII inscribed on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue. You have no idea what 80,000 names looks like until you see them written on every wall in a Synagogue in size 14ish font. It is truly chilling.

From the Josefov neighborhood, we headed across Charles Bridge to St. Nicolaus Church, Prague Castle, St. Vitus Cathedral and Petrin Tower. During our visit to Prague Castle, we were able to witness the changing of the guards - not very dramatic, but they sure are cute!! We have seen a ton of churches on this trip so far, but the St. Vitus Cathedral has been the most amazing thus far. They are actually getting ready to receive the Pope this weekend in Prague and St. Vitus is one of his stops!

On our walk to the hotel, we came across a couple of interesting spots: the John Lennon Wall, a mill with hundreds of locks attached to the gate and an awesome microbrewery. Check out our pics of Prague!

View our pics of Prague here.

Observations on Prague...

The puppets here are amazing, especially the ones farther from the tourist areas - handmade, wooden, scary and adorable at the same time.

The Soviet influence on the Czech Republic is highly visible in the city's buildings, people and culture. The main attractions in the city are all pre-Soviet buildings.

Vienna Day Two

Day two in Vienna was eventful as well (I think that all of our days on this journey will be eventful!). We decided to take a train from our hostel to the northern part of the city and then walk from there. After walking through the Vienna hospital for 20-minutes (don't worry Mom, no one was hurt), we were able to see the sights of Vienna: Hofburg Schloss, Stephansplatz, the Rathaus and more! We also toured the Albertina, a musuem that houses Impressionist and modern art. My favorite pieces were titled, "Peeing on someone's rug" and "Spit in someone's soup."

Vienna is known for its opera and we received an insiders tip on how to score cheap tickets. Although neither of us are fond of the opera, we decided to "go for the experience." Plus, at four Euro a piece for Madama Butterfly, you can't beat the price! It was a cool experience to have in Vienna.

Dinner on day two of Vienna, I will never forget. As most of you know, I am an adventerous, picky eater, but I promised Tim that I would try to try new meats on this trip. At the selected restaurant, the menus were all written in German, so I had no clue what to pick, so I suggested two meals to Tim and those were what we ordered. When my dish arrived, I thought, "hmmm this looks interesting..."

First bite, this tastes weird...

Second bite, this doesn't taste like meat...

Third bite, well, that was a potato...

Fourth bite, maybe its crushed lentils...

Our conversation at this point turned to our trip in Ireland when I unknowingly ate an Irish specialty called bread pudding (XX). And I said to Tim, sarcastically, wouldn't it be funny if this was some kind of blood dish...

Fifth bite, I really hope it is crushed lentils...

Sixth bite, I can't eat this any more...

I was done.

When I got back to our hostel, I looked up our dishes... Clotted blood and veal. Can't wait for Prague!!

A couple of observations on Vienna...

In Vienna, we rarely heard people speaking English (maybe five conversations max). However, everyone that we spoke to was either fluent in English or knew enough English to help us out. We overheard one woman saying that students in Vienna must take at least four years of English before they turn 14! I wish it was a requirement for Americans to have that amount of education in a second language by that age as well.

Vienna seemed to be a pretty homogenous city. Mostly caucasian with just a sprinkling of different races. Everyone seemed to act and dress the same. There were no alternative people at all; no rockers, no goths, no supermodels, no punks, no homeless, no elaborately dressed people - no one stood out from the crowd.

I also noticed strategically placed rainbow stickers on select restaurants and businesses throughout the city. I am not too sure if the rainbow stickers were to show gay pride or to say that the restaurant/business was a safe place for gay people to hang out. Any insights on the topic would be appreciated.

Vienna, Austria

The first city in our trip!

Vienna is gorgeous! We arrived by plane (obviously), hopped on the train to the city and we were downtown in minutes. When we packed our bags we were most concerned about keeping the weight of our backpacks to under 45lbs to avoid the extra fees; however, we really should have worried more about making our bags as light and comfortable as possible, as the 5k walk from the station to our hostel was not very comfortable with 35lb bags that haven't been broken in yet. Once we got to our hostel (The Happy Hostel) we dropped off our bags and explored the city. We checked out the Schonobrunn first. The Schonobrunn is the Austrian response to the Versaille; a beautiful palace with well manicured gardens and parks. We took full advantage of the Schonobrunn gardens by laying in the park and catching up on some sleep.

Vienna has a really cool market along one of its main boulevards with shops and outdoor restaurants in the middle of it. We grabbed a nice meal there.

In our second day of Vienna we walked the whole city. We saw the huge old churches, concert halls, huge old churches, parliament, huge old churches, the Spanish Riding School, huge old churches, the national museum, and lots more. At night we saw the opera 'Madama Butterfly' at the Vienna Opera House. Even though I'm not an opera guy, it was cool to attend.

We capped the day in Vienna with some traditional Viennese food; Blunzengrostl and Kalbsrahmgulasch. Since the menu was completely in Austrian we ate our food blindly. When we got back to our hostel we checked out what we ate; clotted blood with potatoes and veal, yumm.

You can check out our full Picasa album here.

The First Stop!

We arrived in Vienna around 9am, took a train from the airport to Vienna and then started walking to our very first hostel! What we thought was a one-mile walk turned into about a three-mile walk, which for us is generally no big deal; however, 35+ extra pounds on our back did not feel that great. I felt like I was on an episode of the Biggest Loser during one of the challenges! Despite the packs, the walk was amazing! The sites, sounds and smells of the city were amazing. Everywhere you turned there were gorgeous buildings, sculptures and parks. We walked through Stadtpark, by Karls Platz and around Naschmarkt.

When we got to Happy Hostel, I think Tim and I were both pretty nervous as neither of us have been in a hostel before. We were both shocked when we opened the door to our room and found it spotless. A comfy bed, nice bathroom and even a full kitchen were at our disposal for the next two days. Once we checked out our room and dumped our bags it was time to explore the city, so we headed to Schonbrunn Schloss (one of three castles in Vienna). We toured the inside of Schonbrunn and walked through the manicured gardens. As Tim mentioned, we even took a nap in the gardens! In the evening, we headed back to Naschmarkt for a great meal and people watching. Tim sampled the local beer, while I drank Sturm - a Vienna specialty.

Lara's First Post

Today is my first entry on our blog. Before I get started, I would like to thank Tim for doing such a fabulous job creating our blog and keeping it maintained thus far. His posts have been insightful, humorous and timely! Moving forward, I hope to be a more active blogger, so look for posts from both Tim and me.

Although it is now day five of our trip and we are literally on the train from Prague to Munich, I would like to back-track a little bit to fill all of you in on my experiences to date (then I will move on to Prague).

First, I will start with our plane ride over. We had a lovely ride to the DTW airport with my parents and Azzie, complete with Champagne, chocolate covered strawberries and something called Turkish Delight (not so delightful). The champagne and strawberries were a great way to start off our trip. Lots of hugs, kisses and tears later, we hopped on our plane for an uneventful trip from Detroit to Washington D.C. The D.C. to Vienna flight proved to be another story...

Within thirty minutes of take-off, a stewardess dumped a glass of red wine on the shorts that Tim planned on wearing for the next three months!! After about an hour in the lavatory, Tim came out looking like he had wet his pants; however, the wine stains were gone! Two days later, he decided to test his stain removal mastery again when he dumped coffee down the front of the same shorts. Thankfully, Tim is a really good stain remover, so his shorts are stain-free for now...

Road Trip, Day 4

St. Louis, MO - Ann Arbor, MI

[509 miles, boring level 7/10]

Arriving in Ann Arbor never felt so good. Although the drive was long and boring, the three of us had a great time, especially Azzie.

Road Trip, Day 3

Amarillo, TX - St. Louis, MO

[756 miles, boring level 11/10]

We have decided to pay $5 to ferry across the Mississippi River but we must wait two turns. Tim is sick with dysentery.

Road Trip, Day 2

Kingman, AZ - Amarillo, TX

[751 miles, boring level 8/10]

After a great night's sleep in the Day's Inn - Kingman, Arizona #2 we took off for a full day on I-40. One of the cool things about I-40 is that it parallels (or is) the old Route 66. We decided to grab breakfast at an old diner in Seligman, Arizona that's on a piece of Route 66. Apparently, we weren't the only ones who read the tour books. In this ghost town of 500 people there were no fewer than 6 tour buses filled with German and Japanese tourists, which was great because we were just starting to miss Pier 39. I was just waiting to see someone with an 'Alcatraz Psycho Ward Patient' t-shirt on.

Also in Seligman grabbing breakfast was the San Diego Mazda Miata Club doing a road trip of their own. 8 convertible Mazda Miatas driven by 50+ year olds with their wives, it was like a moving Viagra commercial.

Road Trip, Day 1

Pleasanton - Kingman, AZ

[590 miles, boring level - 6/10]

After a final round of tearful good-byes we left P-Town at noon. We decided to take the southern route to Detroit because..... well, we still haven't figured that one out. But we're headed to Detroit via I-40. Today's route was along I-5 to Bakersfield, then east across the desert until I-40.

We spent the night in Kingman, AZ for one simple reason, it has the last In-n-Out, which we more than enjoyed.

Thanks SF!

After 5 incredible years the day to leave San Francisco has finally come.

When we moved to the Bay Area we only had a few friends, we (Tim) were afraid of living in the big city, and we had mediocre jobs. As we leave we have more life-long friends than we thought anyone could have, we have great jobs and resumes, and we've come to love the City by the Bay and can't imagine why anyone would ever want to be a bridge-and-tunnel person.

We've effectively put all of our stuff into 980 cubic feet of storage space (right) and our car and we will be leaving SF Saturday morning. We'll start driving across the country Sunday, attend a wedding in Michigan the following weekend and then start our journey. When we get back to the States in December we'll be moving to Chicago to check out the Midwest and be closer to family.

Thanks to everyone for making the past 5 years so amazing!