Hever

Well, this week starts travel season.

Maybe you'd say it started last weekend with Austria, but since the next five straight weekends will be spent out of the country, this feels like the real kickoff.

Starting the weekend of the 24th, we will spend 7 of 10 weekends travelling, seeing 21 cities in 7 countries. Since we had just gotten back from Austria, the weekend of the 18th was one of the few that we had no travel planned. But since the travel bug is here to stay we decided we couldn't stay in London!

Jenna has been reading a few historic fiction novels that cover the time period of King Henry VIII, and we're big fans of The Tudors which is about the same thing. So, Jenna was really wanting to make a trip down to Kent to see Hever Castle, where Anne Boleyn grew up. If you don't know, Anne was Henry's second wife, and the one for whom he basically turned his back on Rome and created the Church of England, which still exists today and is still led by the monarch. She was also the first of his wives to be executed, the thing that he is probably most famous for. If you haven't already, we would highly suggest doing some research on Henry, because his story is pretty interesting. And we found that all the little children over here know all about King Henry VIII and all of his wives.

Anyway, Hever is just a 45 minute train ride from London, so we took a quick day trip out to see it. We got to the Hever station and had a mile walk to get to the castle. We were smack dab in the middle of what you would imagine when someone says, "the English countryside". There were green rolling hills and beautiful gardens. We passed several farms filled with sheep and horses. It was actually a bit sunny out so we thoroughly enjoyed our walk to the castle.

We got to the castle and it was on a big piece of land filled with mazes, gardens, waterfalls and of course the castle. It had a double moat, complete with a drawbridge, that we don't think is in working order anymore. It was a smaller castle but we thought we could make a lovely home out of it!

We of course toured the castle and read all about it on the posted info inside. It was taken from the Boleyn family after their fall from grace, and ended up changing hands a few times, including going to one of Henry's other wives. Through the years it had several owners, but in the early 1900's it was bought by William Waldorf Astor (of the Waldorf-Astoria). He made many renovations, and basically got it completely updated and in the form it is today (gardens, sculptures, fountains, etc). To be honest, it is probably significantly different from when Anne was there, but it was cool none the less.

After touring the castle, we wandered some of the grounds and went through the hedge maze. Then we went to lunch to the cafe on the grounds. After lunch we did some more exploring. There were lots of beautiful gardens full of flowers. They had a rose garden that was not in bloom yet, but I am sure it will be gorgeous when it is.  There was a big lake that Anne Boleyn supposedly walked around, which we decided we could not pass up.

Luckily, we were both fit and adventurous, so we didn't have much trouble with these stairs:

We were lucky we had a beautiful sunny day and we enjoyed being outside. This was something that was on our list of "if we have time", but we ended up being very glad that we went. The grounds were beautiful, the weather was incredible, and we were just very happy that we decided to make the journey.

Salzburg

This is the final installment of our trip to Austria, so make sure you've read the posts about Vienna and Munich first...

Monday, April 13th - Salzburg

We got up early Monday morning and hopped on a train from Munich to Salzburg, which is at the foot of the Alps on the Austrian side of the Austro-German border. It was a short (hour and a half) train, and because it was so early it was practically empty. We were able to have our own compartment for the ride, which was nice.

We went straight to the Marriott where we were staying and got checked in, and just as we finished the rest of our group was arriving from the alps where they'd been skiing. They had a great time, but came back very red, as it had been a bright day and nearly 19 degrees C (65F) on the mountain. They all got checked in and settled, and we started off for the city.

Salzburg is quite small, with only about 150,000 residents, but the old city center is very quaint. There is a large plaza with a nice fountain and cathedral (which, surprisingly, was holding an Easter Monday mass, thereby sealing our fate of not seeing the inside of any of the main Austrian churches). The main thing to see, though, is a fortress that towers above the city:

This area of the country was originally run by archbishop-princes, so essentially it was run by the Catholic church. This fortress was built bit by bit over several centuries by these various rulers. It is famous for being the only fortress in Europe to have never been conquered. I found it funny, though, that when we listened to an audio tour, we found out that when Napoleon showed up, they gave up the fortress without a fight. So, somehow giving up without fighting counts as not losing.

We took a tour of the fortress, which was somewhat interesting but totally beautiful. The tour ended with a view from atop the highest tower, which looked out over the city on one side and the mountains on the other, and the view was amazing.

We came down from the fortress and after grabbing a quick bite, went off to the main attraction of the city - The Sound of Music Bus Tour.

We had watched the movie in the week before the trip in order to prepare and get psyched up, so Jenna was really looking forward to this tour, and I was dreading it, imagining a bus full of crazies singing "Do-Re-Me". It turned out to be much better than expected. The tour was about 4 hours and really focused more on the city and surrounding countryside, mentioning the landmarks and a few random facts from the movie when we came upon them.

We saw all the main sites - the Von Trapp houses (there were different ones filmed for the front and the back in the movie), the gazebo, the abbey, and the main gardens where they did some dancing.

The best part, though, was that they took us up into the lake region, which is where you could see all the mountains, lakes, villages, and hills. The views from here were great:

After the tour ended, we headed back to the hotel to "freshen up" for dinner. We were meeting before dinner in one of the people's rooms and planned to go to another traditional Austrian beer garden. People got ready and showed up bit by bit, and people were just sitting around chatting, and nobody was really ready to go once we all were assembled. We ended sitting around chatting until there was no way we were going to get into the restaurant, which closed pretty early and wasn't exactly close to the hotel. Instead, we ended up running across the street to a little Italian spot that was pretty good, and actually a nice change from the past few days of local grub.

After dinner it was off to packing and bed. We were smart enough to schedule a flight where we didn't need to leave the hotel before 8:30, but not smart enough to schedule a flight where we got back to London after working hours. It was nice to sleep in a bit, but I basically had to run home from the airport, change clothes, and head into work, which was a huge pain (although it did save a vacation day!).

It was hard for us to get on that plane back to London. We had fallen in love with Salzburg and the beautiful scenery of the Alps on their doorstep. The weather was perfect, the country was amazing, and we had a really good time travelling with our friends.

Munich

This is a continuation of the previous post about Vienna, so make sure you've read that first...

The original plan for the trip was that everyone would go skiing for a day in the Alps in between visiting Vienna and Salzburg. Based on our ski experience in Switzerland, though, we thought it might be better to skip the slopes and see more of Europe. Munich was about the same distance as the Alps, and it wasn't in our master plan to ever go there, so we thought this would be a perfect opportunity.

We left Saturday evening and had a four hour ride across the Austrian plains, which was a nice ride while the sun was still up. The only bad thing was that the train was completely packed, so we ended up in a 6-person cabin with a bunch of strangers, but we got there okay. It was about 10:30 when we got in, so we just headed straight to the hotel - the Atlas City Hotel - to plan the next day's activities.

Sunday (Easter) in Munich

We knew that there were several historical and architectural sites in central Munich that we wanted to check out, but we also really wanted to make the half-day trip to the Dachau concentration camp. The problem was that everyone said we needed to get to Dachau at 11:30 to see a video about the camp, which was pretty terrible timing. So we got up early with plans to see a few sites in the city, then head for the camp, then go back into the city (not the most efficient, but our only real option).

It turned out that our plan was perfect, because we had allotted several hours to see the sites, which all ended up being closed for the holiday so we flew through them. There were 2 main squares in the city that we visited:

The Marienplatz

The Odeonplatz


The photo of the Marienplatz is of the New City Hall (built 1867-1908). It was in a nice plaza (although a little touristy) and surrounded by a bunch of high-end shopping. There was supposed to be a great view of the city from the top, but the place is closed weekends and holidays, so of course we were out of luck.

 
The Odeonplatz is just a large square outside of a church (the yellow building). I think the church is mostly famous for the outside color, but being Easter morning we wouldn't have been able to see anything inside anyway, so we didn't even attempt or research. The main draw of the plaza is that it was the location where Hitler had his first major run-in with the police, and was put in jail, where he wrote the (in)famous Mein Kampf.

We also walked past a few other landmarks and churches, but all were closed and there were also no good angles for photos, so you'll just have to go see all of that for yourself. We ended up seeing all the main sites by the time we needed to leave for Dachau, so it worked out perfectly.\

Dachau was a rural town outside of Munich (which has now just been incorporated in the city as a suburb). It was the site of one of the first Nazi concentration camps, and supposedly ran longer than any other in the Reich. It was also used as a model for many of the camps that were built later. This was a work camp, and at the height of its operations there were actually about 160 camps and work sites in the region where the prisoners worked.

Although it was a work camp, being sent here by no means meant safety. Thousands were either sentenced to death or were simply unfit to work and were sent away to one of the death camps. There was also a crematorium on site to handle the thousands who were literally worked to death, or later on in the war, arrived at the camp dead. Since this camp was in Germany, as they started losing the war the Germans evacuated the camps in Poland and elsewhere and brought them to Dachau. At the end, the camp that was built to hold about 4,000 held over 32,000.

It was a little surreal to be at the camp, especially on Easter. First, all of the old bunkers had been taken down, either as a decision after the war or due to dilapidation after 60 years (not sure which). They had rebuilt a couple to add to the experience, but I thought it meant much more to see the empty foundations where many bunkers had once stood. It was also humbling to think about the fact that Christ died (and rose!) even for the likes of Hitler and the Nazis. In all, we were very happy that we made the visit up to the camp.

After returning to the city, we made a stop at a museum that was in our "1,000 Things" book. It was okay, but we flew through there in about 45 minutes, so I guess not that good. We then grabbed a gelato (which was excellent!) and went to the main city park. We were searching for the mouth of a man-made river that runs through the lake where people surf. Not sure exactly how it works or how to explain it, but to keep it short, there is a small wave created in this river where people surf.

We had been warned that on sunny days (like the day we were there) people will sunbathe nude in this park, so we were a little worried about seeing something we didn't want to see. We searched around for a while but couldn't seem to find what we were looking for. We did find our way into an open area where people were laying out, but most of them were fully clothed. We did see one set of breasts, but they were on a 300 pound naked man, so that was gross. Eventually, we did make it to the waves, and watched the surfers for a while. Here is a little photo the helps explain it a little better:

After watching the surfers for a while, we headed to the Hofbrauhaus, a famous beer hall where they play/sing old German songs, wear traditional clothing (lederhosen!), eat pretzels, and of course, drink beer out of enormous mugs. The food looked really good, but it was only about 6:00 and the receptionist at the Hotel had suggested a different beer garden to eat at, so we held off and just had a pretzel (which was pretty good) and a beer. Unfortunately Jenna does not like beer so she just had a few sips and then I did what I could to get my moneys worth! We hung out for a while and enjoyed the music and atmosphere, and then headed out of the city a little ways to this suggested beer garden that was supposed to be more authentic (less touristy).

We got there and decided that regardless of authenticity, the food didn't look too good and was pretty expensive, so we immediately regretted the decision to leave Hofbrauhaus. In the end we decided to give up on it and ate in the food court of the train station near the hotel (which was good and cheap, but still kinda depressing). By this point it was pretty late and we had a pretty action packed day of seeing the city, and we needed to catch a 7:30am train, so we headed back to the hotel to pack up and get to bed...