Christmas Time Again!

We went to Vienna for Christmas with some friends and had an excellent time!

Here we are at one of the Christmas markets eating sausage and drinking Gluwine.

Later we walked over to this awesome grocery store - Julius Meinl.
http://www.meinl.com/

But they call themselves a Coffee Roaster.  Whatever.  It was incredible.  All these gourmet food items just calling out to us, to eat, drink, and be merry!

And of course there were pigs.  I never new how much Europeans loved pigs.  It's funny, and they're everywhere.

We were in Vienna for a few days and while we were there we were invited to dinner at our friends, friends house.  It was really nice.

And of course while we were in Vienna we went to the Schonbrunn palace.  This is my favorite sight seeing place in Austria.  So far.

While we were there Sammy practiced his artistic photo taking practices.  Which turn out pretty good!

And here is my artistic photo.  One day I'm going to have to take classes.

And here is my love muffin.  We were both freezing our buts off!  This is the first time we actually had snow during our Christmas holidays in 5 years of chasing the snow!

The Hotel Sacher - they are suppose to have excellent coffee and cakes.  FYI - this is more of a tourist trap.  It took us 3 trips to Austria to finally get here and we really didn't miss much.  Cafe Central is MUCH, MUCH better.

During our Vienna adventures we went to a monastery outside the city.  Yasuyo and Graham took us because they make wine.  Very good wine.

Here is the Monastery in the back ground from outside.  And my artsy rendition of the photo.  I just hit the Sepia button! Ha ha ha!  But it looks better than it did in color.

Before we left Vienna we had dinner one more time at Karin's.  It was a mini wok night where everyone cooked their own stir fry in a mini wok in the middle of the table.  We loved it and are thinking of getting a set for ourselves.

Next stop...Budapest where I was sick as a dog!

Christmas and New Years in Austria

Our first View of the Alps

Sammy and I spent the holidays in Austria where we had an incredible time. In Vienna we stayed in a hotel room that was as big if not bigger than the ground floor of our town home and was much nicer. Gotta love those upgrades from Starwood! It had two bathrooms, a sitting room and a little front room in addition to the bedroom. Heaven.
Vienna was wonderful and as glorious as I remembered from my visit back in 98. The food is excellent, the people friendly, and it's very easy to get around. We ambled around the summer home of the Hapsburgs, The Schonbrunn palace - oh to be King, or as they say in Austria, Kaiser. The grounds at the Schonbrunn are like a huge park and there are botanical gardens and a zoo. It was odd being in a city like Vienna, on the palace grounds, which are manicured parkland, listening to the lions roar. Very odd, I kept expecting to see one saunter out from around the corner licking its chops staring at me like I was dinner.

Our self portrait at the Schonbrunn Palace

After Vienna we drove to Salzburg - a very beautiful drive. In Salzburg we toured the fort above the city and viewed the Alps for the first time. What a romantic view. We took a self portrait using the camera timer and the photo turned very nice - thanks to Sammy. We were only able to get off one shot before the rest of the group (you have to tour the fort in groups) came thundering up the stairs. And it was an excellent shot as you can see for yourselves! We were also able to get a really great night photo of the city.

Salzburg at night

While we were in Salzburg we took a few day trips. One was to Innsbruck - but it was so crowded we left after we had a late lunch. We think the skiers were down en mass b/c there wasn't much snow this year, it was a cute town though.
The next day we went to a small town called Berchtesgaden in Germany. Berchtesgaden is right below Obersalzberg, Hitler's 2nd base during WWII. It was very strange going to a town walking in an area where you knew for a fact Hitler had been. I thought of my Grandfather while we were there because he fought during WWII in the Battle of the Bulge. It was a very interesting trip, but unfortunately things close early in Europe and the museum the German's built on the site where Hitler had his compound (it's no longer there b/c we bombed it to bits at the end of the war) was closed. Sooo we moseyed on to the next small town to check out the cleanest lake in Germany...Konigsee Lake. Incredible. I highly recommend going there.

Konigsee Lake was beautiful!

After touring around the country I booked us a tour for - you guessed it - THE SOUND OF MUSIC!!! It was a 1/2 day tour, it was cheesy, but it was fun! After we came back to London we popped the DVD in and watched it so we could pick out the places we went. If you love THE SOUND OF MUSIC!!! you have to take the tour!

The back of the house where the boat scence was filmed. This building is now owned by Harvard and houses grad students.

This weekend we are off to Northern England where Sammy is going to have a day with a falconer learning about and flying birds of prey. It was my 4 year anniversary gift to him last May. So I'll post more when we get back.
Ciao