Christmas 2013

This last Christmas, we did a tour of Austria, Germany and a day trip to Switzerland and Lichtenstein.  It was a great getaway!  I fell in love with Innsbruck and Germany was wonderful, too!  I am still having issues with finding all my pictures now that we have switched to the new computer, which means I might be missing pictures from some locations.  However, this post will not be short photos!

The first part of our trip was spent in Innsbruck.  The main goal of the trip was to go to the Christmas Markets, and they are all I  had hoped!

Tommy and Sam with the Alps in the background in Innsbruck

This is the train that brought us up the mountain, about halfway.

This is a view from up the mountain.  We were clearly slackers taking the train.
There were several groups of people walking up.

A really "cool" bar at the top.  Who needs to ski when you can
take the train up and hang out here?

It was surprisingly warm.  I could have sat there for hours.

Some goulash, Austria style.

We went from Innsbruck to Salzburg where we walked through the house where Mozart was born and saw some of the places the Sound of Music was filmed.  We also grabbed a warm white Russian at the Christmas Market there, and it was delish!  Unfortunately, these are the pictures which are currently lost.

From Salzburg, we drove to Garmish, Germany.  The DoD has a resort there which is so nice.  Most of the hotels we have stayed at in Europe are nice, but really small and not what we, as Americans, are used to.  Edelweiss is all that we had hoped.  Large rooms, a nice bar/grill kind of restaurant, a hot tub, and plenty to do.  We spent Christmas here and they had a nice buffet dinner.  It was a relaxing day of hanging out at the resort, walking around Garmish, and sitting in the hot tub.

Edelweiss is a great place to stay while being able to do some exploring.  We were able to visit 2 of King Ludwig's 3 castles

Linderhof, a small yet over the top castle.

Neuschwanstein Castle, the inspiration for Cinderella's Castle

The kids while we waited for our number to go into the castle

 In addition to the castles, Mike and I went for a brewery tour.  The trip to the Griesbrau Brewery was offered through Edelweiss.  The kids had no desire to go, so they stayed back at the hotel and chilled.  Tommy really enjoyed having some down time on this trip.  Usually we are constantly on the go, this was a nice break.

Our Brewmeister, Wofgang. He was the best part of the tour.
You could tell he loved every part of his job, especially sharing it with tourists.

In addition to several different kind of beers, they also make a beer liquor, which he is holding here.

To make the beer liquor shots look more like beer, Wolfgang added some whipped cream.

Dinner at the Brewery

Since we were so close, we decided to take a drive to Liechtenstein and Switzerland.  We had to leave the Eurozone and were hoping to get our passports stamped in Liechtenstein, because how cool would that be.  Well, going into the country the boarder guards barely looked at the car and waved us on.  If we wanted a stamp, we had to go to the visitors' center and pay for one.  

Main street Liechtenstein, not a lot happening there.

The castle of Liechtenstein

 After a quick walk around Liechtenstein, we got back into the car and drove to Switzerland.  The town that would be the quickest trip in and out of Switzerland was this little one called St. Gallen.  It was really very cute.

The kids had clearly had enough exploring for the day!

We had to buy some chocolate.  I am not sure we got a good sample of Swiss chocolate, but this stuff was not good.  I would have Belgian chocolate over Swiss Chocolate any day!

We flew in and out of Munich, so the day before we left we drove to Munich and spent the day and night there.  Before going to our hotel in the city, we toured Dachau, a former concentration camp.  It was educational and really opened up my eyes.  Reading and learning about what happened there does not prepare you for what you see and the conditions the prisoners had to live in, and words can't describe seeing where they cremated all the bodies.  

From Dachau we headed to Munich.  Unfortunately, it was a Sunday and not a lot was open, but there were a lot of people walking around, and I loved the spirit you felt there.

The view from our hotel.  It doesn't look great here, but it was pretty cool

Behind my crazy kid is the Glockenspiel

The one thing we wanted to do while in Munich was go to the Hofbrauhaus for dinner.  The kids felt like they were in Epcot.  It was a great experience.  Girls walking around selling pretzels, beer served by the liter, live music and some decent food.  Again, not sure where all the pictures here are, but below is the ceiling, very elaborate.

One of the days we were in Garmish, we went to the Ettaler Monastary.  The monks there make cheese and beer.  Mike bought a sampler pack of the beer, which we had to bring with us to Munich.  We also bought some of the cheese.  Both were pretty good.

We opted not to pay the 20+ Euro per person for breakfast the next morning, so Mike and I walked down to one of the bakeries we had seen the day before.  I think Mike got a pretzel.  The kids each picked the cream filled donut and I had the apple strudel.

The top of the Alps from the airplane.

That is pretty much the story of our Christmas break.  We got back home in time for New Year's eve, and we spent that with friends, munchies, and a little guitar hero.