Going Home...to Garmisch

all of us with Krystal in front of her apartment
in the shadow of friends.
dinner at Die Post in Wallgau
Jared tired after our 7 km hike
the guys geocaching
Just wanted to share a few photos of our recent trip to Garmisch. We had such a wonderful weekend. It was so relaxing. Every morning James and I would get up and walk to a local backerei for brotchen and cafe'. We walked around the Eibsee (7 km around) and found 3 geocaches. Also walked around part of the Riesersee and found a cache there. We walked to dinner one night with Krystal and then went to dinner one night with Krystal, Sebastian and his parents. It was so disappointing when it was time to go back to our house in Italy. We had a rather exciting and almost scary encounter with the polizei as well.

As we crossed over the border from Italy into Austria we were stopped by the polizei. They wanted our license, registration, passports, and James international driver license. Fortunately, I had, at the last moment as an afterthought, packed our passports. Unfortunately, I neglected to get James' International Driver's License. Yikes! They were nice enough and after holding us for about 20 minutes they let us go. We weren't the only ones they stopped but I bet we were the only Americans. view of the Eibsee

Muckefuck's - one of our favorite restaurants in Garmisch
They serve these wonderfully large and tasty salads
beautiful painted windows
Riesersee
Jared found the cache
Caleb & Krystal looking for the cache

looking down into Garmisch
Caleb
another view of Garmisch
fish in the Riesersee - huge most of them around 2 feet long
various shots of the mountains.


I am also adding this album so you can look at the rest of the pictures I took... Enjoy

Waldgeist XXXXXL Restaurant

Last night we went to this fabulous schnitzel place. The portions are XXXXXXXL. No kidding they are so HUGE! The sodas are served in 1/2 liter, liter and 2 liter portions. Di told me that the margarita (which is 60 Euros) is served in a bucket, it is so large. It was incredible. We had a good time and everyone went home with a full belly.

Brian and his 1/2 portion of jaeger schnitzel and pommes.


Andy and his one liter coke

James and Evan with their 1 liter mugs of coke.


Brian and Diana


James and me with my crazy neck pose (not sure why I always seem to do this)


double cheeseburger



Di with her grilled meat platter
My camembert & preiselberren (like mini cranberries) and salad.
Evan's 1/2 order of schnitzel
James' 1/4 portion of schnitzel.

Jared having a bite or two of Andy's schnitzel

Andy finishing his 1/2 portion of schnitzel.

You can't see me...

You can't see me


I can see you but you can't see me

still hiding

bet you can't find me.




Our funny, little, neurotic cat likes to hide in the curtains. Whenever someone stops by she likes to run and hide. Sometimes, she runs upstairs and hides in the boys' room, sometimes she goes under our bed and sometimes she hides in plain sight. I don't think she realizes that we can see her when she hides behind the curtain. Many times she will go behind the curtain and then walk forward and sit down. If you look at the last 2 pictures you can see how far away from the wall she actually is. Now, if she had stayed under the radiator with the curtain flush against the wall then she would be more difficult to detect. But no, she steps forward a good 18 inches from the wall and then sits. Silly kitty.

PS. if you look closely you can see her bare tummy. She had to have an ultrasound and as a result they shaved her stomach. The hair is taking a long time to grow out. At least the weather is warming up so she shouldn't be too cold.

MaMa Mia - Its'a beauty!

Alberto and his lovely wife with our amazing new table.

So after waiting for nearly 6 months we received our beautiful hand crafted Italian table. Our friend Alberto, the artist of this beautiful piece of furniture, and his wife delivered the table this morning. Oh my goodness, it is beautiful. Alberto is an artist with wood. He also makes his furniture so smartly, enabling it to be taken apart for ease of moving. Not only that but our table which seats four can also seat 8. The table starts out as a square but when you unlock the top and rotate it, the middle drops and you can the pull out 4 leaves making an octogon with seating for 8. Quite clever if you ask me. The center of our table has a large piece of Venician granite. It is so striking and complements the wood perfectly. We also had him make 4 chairs for us. Traditional wood design with leather seats. Alberto told us today that when our chairs arrived other customers liked them so much that he has had to make 20 more. The chairs are gorgeous and oh so comfortable. This was our "Christmas present" to each other. Definitely worth the wait.The new table and Alberto and his wife.

Our Trip to Rome...

We had a great time when we went to Rome this past weekend. We stayed at a Best Western Hotel that was just a 15 minute walk from the Colosseum. It was so amazing to be walking through the city, looking at the beautiful old buildings, such great architecture and then WHAM right in front of us the Colosseum. Almost 2000 years old the Colosseum was finished in 80 AD. Really was quite astouding to see such an old structure right next to buildings that were old by American standards (only a couple hundred years old). Wow!

I am putting the photos in a separate album to make it easier for viewing. You can find them here.

Trip to Rome

We didn't find great Italian food there in Rome but we found an excellent gelato place that was just a few steps from our hotel. We had ice cream there no less than 4 times in 2 days. It was so tasty. Their lemon gelato was so fresh, sweet and tart. They even made a pretty delicious cappuccino as well.

We took a Hop On/Hop Off bus tour. The bus takes you around the city showing you the sites. We were given headphones so we could listen to facts about each site in our own language. The great thing about this tour was you could hop off the bus anytime you wanted. The bus came back to each stop every half hour. So we could hop back on and go on to the next site. It was great and saved us a lot of walking. Plus we got to see some things we probably wouldn't have if we were walking everywhere. We walked a lot on Friday and were so sore that night. On Saturday we took the tour bus and really enjoyed it.

We even stopped at the Hard Rock Cafe and ate lunch on Saturday. While waiting outside we met a family that had traveled to Rome from Stuttgart, Germany. His parents had come to see them and take a trip to Rome at the same time. We had a great conversation and I know they really enjoyed chatting with Caleb. (He was just so full of interesting facts and had them laughing.) We realized after we got back onto the bus that we hadn't even stopped to find the Spanish Steps or the Trevi Fountain. So we stopped at the next bus stop and asked for directions to the Spanish Steps. We did walk down the Spanish Steps which were pretty and packed with people. There was even a bride and groom having their pictures taken at the bottom. She was absolutely beautiful. James didn't want to take a picture of them because he felt it was a violation of their privacy.

From there we made our way to the Trevi Fountain. It was amazing and so much larger than I had imagined. Not sure how it was possible but it was even more packed than the Spanish Steps. We had a difficult time getting close enough to even get a picture.

We realized on Sunday when we were getting ready to leave for the airport that we never even got to see the Pantheon. Don't know how we missed it. In between the hopping on and off the bus we just plain lost track of what we were looking at. So many amazing sites to see - The Roman Forum, Palantine Hill, the Pantheon, the Vatican, Colosseum and more. So Jared decided we need to go back to Rome. Next time we will tour the Vatican Museum and find the Pantheon.

Compliment? OR Insult?

I'm sure he meant well. Didn't he? Maybe he speaks really good English but knew he could get away with his comments? Or maybe he just thought he was saying something nice?

By now you are probably wondering what I am talking about. Well, I guess since I have peaked your interest I should probably tell you what happened.

So today I go to my local supermercato (I am sure you can tell that is supermarket) the Aliper. I went to find goat's milk for my sick kitty and then fresh produce. I just happened to get lucky and get there at a non-peak time (first time this has happened to me). Usually the store is extremely crowded and there is no 10 item or less aisle.

I pick up 2 pints of strawberries, some lettuce and date tomatoes. I head to the check-out and miracle of miracles I find an aisle without any other customers and is open for business. I greet the cashier by saying, "Buon Giorno." After placing my items on the conveyor belt I move forward and grab my cloth bag out of my purse. The gentleman ringing up my order asks, "sacceto?" I respond, "no", and show him my bag. He then says, "Oh, your own personal shopping bag." Yes, IN ENGLISH! This has not happened to me before - most of the time there is no one in the grocery store who can speak English and help me if I have questions.

So after speaking to the cashier for a moment I then ask him, "Is it that obvious that I am an American?" Is it my hair (not many natural red heads here in Italy), my clothing?" He responds by saying, "Yes, it is obvious, you are a large woman!"

WHAT???? I said, "Do you mean tall?" He says, "Yes, you are a large beautiful woman." Now, keeping in mind that many of these Italian women are barely over 5 feet tall and extremely petite, I am pretty sure he meant that I am quite tall compared to most Italian women. However, as a woman, I am normally insulted by the "large woman" comment. Even if it is followed by beautiful. I was chuckling so hard at this point. He then proceeds to tell me that he loves America, American woman and everything about America.

So, I ask you, do I laugh or cry? Insulted or flattered? In his defense he did seem very nice and he also complimented me on my use of Italian (I use the words I know as often as I can).

Anyway, thought you might be able to use a chuckle today!

Ciao for now!

AHHHH, Finally SPRING!!!!

the tree in our front yard has started to bloom
got these shots on Saturday morning

by the time we got home that afternooon several more branches had burst into full bloom