the random prague (& dresden!) excursion

 It was decided at the kinda last-minute that we'd join Bryan on his birthday weekend in Prague. Fortunately, not too many people are traveling in the middle of January, so booking it wasn't a problem.
We just had to take a train for two hours to Nuremburg, then a bus for four dang hours.

But it was worth it!

Blue skies and minimal crowds? Yes, please. When we were here in August with the parentals, it was slam packed with fannypack wearing Americans whose favorite Prague restaurant is TGIFridays. We nearly had it to ourselves this time...

The lovely part about revisiting a place is that you're not so concerned with seeing all the sites, rather, you're there to eat, drink, and be merry. There was a lot of that... then it was on to Dresden!


A simple two hour train ride north, and one of the cities on our bucket list. It was crazy beautiful with Baroque-style architecture and SNOW! Only a little, but enough for this Florida girl to be excited.

If you're reading this and planning on checking it out, stray from the old part to the Neustadt-- a hipster, vibrant neighborhood with loads of cool graffiti and shops. Eat at Lila Sosse, have a drink at any of the cool bars with mismatching old couches (and fantastic happy hour specials? pshhhhhh) and go check out the apartment building that was built to create music when it rains.

Fantastic weekend!

Good news on this end.. I got an administrative assistant job within walking distance from the house, a ticket home has been purchased, and I have the loveliest friends ever :) 

The rest of the trip!

The rest of the trip was quite a blur, and apparently I barely took any pictures. 

We were so very excited to meet up with our BFFs from Jacksonville who were visiting Alex's family in Holland. What a joy to connect across the pond and hear the latest from back home! Plus, there are wedding bells in the future for these two; I couldn't be happier for them :)

Paris was unfortunately packed to the max with tourists celebrating the new year. It failed to charm Bobby due to its excessive lines and crowds... I don't know what I was thinking when I imagined the streets to be empty and just for us. 

Don't worry-- I still ate my fair share of baguettes, macarons, and cheese. 

New Year's Eve was celebrated in style... first on the metro, packed in like sardines with hundreds of other hopefully Parisians attempting to arrive last-minute at the Champs-Elysees. Didn't quite make it; left the metro at a run and missed the countdown. A big downer, that one. Oh well! We kept our spirits high with pep talk of "At least we're here!" 

Couldn't stop the tears as the nuns sang in the Sacre Coeur. Captured this shot and subsequently got chased/kicked out. 

****************************************************************************

After Paris, we were off to Belgium with Bryan and three friends from the states. The weather was surprisingly good-- we even got to sit outside and drink delicious IPAs!

 I love Bruges. Seriously. 

New for us was Brussels-- we didn't have high expectations as we'd heard it wasn't that great... but we ended up really enjoying it! We rented bikes for the day and rode around for 8 hours on our own tour. 

Riding triumphantly through Brussel's own Arc de Triumph where waffles greeted us on the other side. They were consumed too quickly for photos. 

I even had the pleasure of getting caught in a Florida-esque storm! I miss them. All we have here in Frankfurt are gray skies and fog. None of the "15 minute downpours and then it's sunny again" storms from home. 

And finally, Amsterdam. So beautiful. Can't wait to come back with Amy and Paul in April, where we'll ride bikes through the tulips and eat lots of cheese!

This post was brief-- I have a soup date with the HausFraus in 15 minutes. I'll be late. I'm still in my PJs in bed. Whoops. 

northern lights & swedish meatballs

What comes to mind when you think of Sweden?

I know, right?

Welp, there's more to it in case you were wondering. 

For example, Stockholm is supposedly really great. 

Unfortunately, we wouldn't really know, because we arrived on Christmas day and everything was closed. Meandering through the old part of town rewarded us with a delicious dinner of expensive fish & chips at a cool hipster brewery. But that's about all I can say, because early the next morning we were on a plane headed towards Kiruna, a tiny town above the arctic circle in northern Sweden.

beautiful sunset at noon

 View from our hostel's porch, the bulldozers working tirelessly to clear the streets of snow

We were hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive northern lights, experience frigid below-zero temperatures (we could have just gone to the US for that- ha!) and play in snow, lots of snow.

The snow part was a success, at least!

The first night promised clear skies, so we walked for a while up to a ski slope and stood staring at the sky praying to see the lights. To no avail. It could have been the unseasonably warm weather (only 15 degrees instead of negative-whatever!) but oh well. Gives us an excuse to try again one day. 

The small mining town of Kiruna was on the radar initially not only because of the lights, but also it's proximity to the largest ice hotel in the world. We didn't stay (too expensive!) but you could tour its many rooms, half of them designed with different themes. 

 I don't know why this picture turned out like this? Bad editing, I suppose-- doesn't it look like I cut us out of a newspaper clipping and pasted it to the picture??

The guests don't arrive until the evening, meaning we could go in and out of the room as we please. Hopefully they change the bedding. 

I was getting a bit tired of pictures at this point...

It had an ice bar. Didn't feel like paying the outrageous amount for a shot, so we borrowed someone's glasses after they left. They were made of ice!

That pose isn't awkward at all, Bryan

The highlight of our stay was a snowmobile tour into the wilderness (initially to seek the lights, but we gave up on that and just enjoyed the ride.)

It was amazing, albeit slightly 'interesting'-- a woman, (who was hesitant from the get-go) ran into a tree and injured herself to the point of needing to be taken to the hospital. So we sat in the quiet of the trees and snow for the better part of an hour as our guide abandoned us to wrap her up in a sled.

not easy pictures to take, seeing as we were in utter darkness...

When she was all wrapped up and ready to go, the guide driving the snowmobile got stuck in the not-completely-frozen lake. So then we had to pull her out tug-of-war style. 

Then our other guide got stuck.

Our 4 hour tour turned into a 7 hour one, after midnight by the time we arrived back at the starting point! Good thing they fed us halfway through, a delicious reindeer stew...

Even though Kiruna wasn't quite the adventure we'd imagined, it was still a beautiful, quiet place that afforded us the experience of tons of snow and enjoying the beauty of God's creation! 

Kiruna had a cool church. The end. 

the christmas that wasn't really christmas

From Hamburg, we took the train 5 hours to Copenhagen. About halfway through, the train stopped and a lot of German things were announced as the passengers started to pack up their items and don their jackets. Finally, a helpful German realized we were clueless and explained that we would have to get off the train for a bit as we were about to board a ferry that would take us into Denmark. 

"But what happens to the train and all our stuff?" I wearily questioned. He patiently explained that the entire train would pull onto the ferry, continuing its journey on the other side. Mind. Blown. (I get a little overly excited at big machinery, especially when you tell me that the entire train is going to pull onto a massive ferry, complete with a duty-free shop and multiple restaurants.) 

We were greeted in Copenhagen with blue skies and not-too-chilly temperatures, first setting out on a lively walking tour with a hilarious Danish guy named Magnus, who did indeed live up to his epic name. Hans Christian Anderson resided here-- apparently he was a stalker and generally a pretty creepy dude. 

Changing of the guards at the royal palace

After the tour, we checked out Tivoli Gardens, the second-oldest theme park in Europe. It's fabled that Walt Disney took his inspiration from the different areas set up by continents (think Epcot.) It was a bit packed due to the holidays, but beautiful nonetheless. We gawked at actual reindeer & rode a 100-year-old roller coaster, each car driven by actual people manning the brakes. 

Also not to be missed in Copenhagen is a part of town called "Christiana," a lawless zone that boasts a slightly utopian society of people living together. Picture a cluster of old buildings with graffiti and gardens, ancient bikes and street art. Photography is not permitted within the town's limits due to the selling of weed that is allowed (no laws, remember?) If you ever find yourself in Copenhagen, it's worth a visit if only for epic people watching.

Christmas day was just another day in my book, which left me a bit hollow and missing home loads. We used it for a travel day, taking the train 5 hours to Stockholm in Sweden. Thank God there was wireless on the train so I could FaceTime the fam as they opened presents over mugs of coffee. When Annie was given a mandolin and an impromptu 'Christmas Time is Comin' 3-part-harmony was busted out I lost it right there in the dining car, ugly cry face and everything. 

I'll make sure not to ignore Christmas ever again, even if I can't be surrounded by family...

first installment-- hamburg

In this multiple-part series, I will attempt to remember all that we explored while on our romp through Scandinavia and other random countries.

Backtracking to October, I spent weeks trying to figure out where to go on this two week trip. We knew we'd be meeting up with our Florida friends Alex and Bobby in Paris for New Years-- the rest was up in the air as to what to see. An exciting time, but a bit daunting to research every possible place!

We decided to head north in the hopes of seeing the northern lights, and a trip evolved from that idea.

First stop was Hamburg, a large city in the northern part of Germany. We'd heard from a ton of people that it was worth checking out, so we found train tickets on a Friday night after Mike got off work and took off, overpacked-backpacks in tow and not knowing what to expect.

The rain held out as we joined a walking tour of the highlights:

Like much of Germany, this church was obliterated in WWII. But, unlike much of Germany, it wasn't reconstructed. What you were left with was the church's spire and bits of the nave. Definitely eerie (hence the obvious need for black and white photos.)

This next part might sound a bit dorky, but bear with me! Hamburg is known for its miniature train museum, and believe me when I say it was SO COOL. It was set up by different countries-- thousands of tiny figurines complete with moving trains, cars, boats... there was even a huge airport that had multiple planes taking off, landing and pulling into the different gates. We also found a chocolate factory that produced real chocolate you could eat. It was unreal!!

Oh, and every 10 minutes or so it transitioned to nighttime. No big deal. 

Funny story-- we went to check out a happenin' Hamburg spot (the Reeperbahn) that looked a bit like a mini Nashville/Vegas combo, stumbling upon a Christmas market. But given the area, the market had a certain saucy theme to it which manifested itself in the types of items sold and the Christmas 'shows' offered. I'll leave it at that.

But, enjoying some gluhwein by the light of a fake living-room setup, we heard small explosions and police sirens nearby, realizing we were caught in the middle of a riot! The market closed up and we were penned in, just enjoying our drinks on couches and listening to the craziness taking place around us. It was interesting to say the least. When we tried to go home, we kept getting turned around by riot police. Kind of crazy, but makes a good story, right?

Now the US is advising tourists not to visit, which I think is kind of silly.


So Germany has really awesome old-school playgrounds that would never fly in the US. You know, the old ones we used to play on, but a bit more dangerous? We stumbled upon one and of course had to try everything out--

Like this supercool wavy slide volcano thing that you entered from the middle by going up a ladder

Or check out this candid shot of the boys having a blast digging in the sand pit. Cute, huh?

Hamburg delivered indeed. 

I'll leave you with an obligatory kissing-under-the-mistletoe-not-forced-at-all shot:

Please note Mike's enthusiasm at having to take this shot 5 different times until it was just right. 

What a good sport :)