Tales From The Travels

We didn't spend much time in Kufstein. It was just a transit stop to and from S öll  with a train station. We left right away when we arrived but spent a couple hours there waiting for our train when leaving. It was an attractive town and had a lot to offer. We might have to go back some day.

Deciding to get out of the city was a great decisionand it turned out well. We started looking at maps and researched places to go and available rooms. We were scheduled to go to northern Italy for a hiking adventure soon so we focused on things in that general direction. We finally decided on a small town in the Austrian Alps -  Söll. Söll i s just across the border from Germany, only a hundred kilometers from Munich. The tourism industry was geared for Germans and people were generally surprised when we said we were from the US.  I noticed the multilingual signs usually didn't even have English. It was nice. In terms of being an American, this was what I would call "out of the way." Surrounded by beautiful mountains and with hundreds of miles of trails, we did the natural thing and went hiking, including a cable car ride up to a mountain peak. I'll let the pictures tell the story.

After a train ride through the lovely countryside, we found our apartment in the middle of Vienna, not far from the train station. We try to stay in apartments when we can. They're more comfortable than hotel rooms, usually more affordable, and we can do our meals in the kitchen. Our apartment in Vienna was located on a walking mall and was very nice. Using the kitchen means one of our first chores after checking in is to make a run to the grocery store. It was a Sunday when we arrived and everything was closed except a small shop run by a Muslim family. That limited our options but there was enough. We had to get a bottle of wine at the restaurant though. Way over paid. A big part of our stay here was to recover. It had been a demanding couple of weeks and we needed a rest. There was a laundromat in the building and we took care of the dirty clothes, sat on the terrace, and took some much needed naps. We had reached the point of saturation when it came to museums, castles, palac...

I  read years ago about how the Eastern European countries still maintained their old-world charm because the Soviets wouldn't allow them to tear buildings down to put up new ones during the occupation. I've wanted to go there ever since but never got the chance. It was an easy decision to head to nearby Prague when we left Berlin and it was a good one. We got checked into the apartment - which had some issues but served the purpose - and went exploring. All total, we spent about three days in the medieval part of the city (Praha to the locals). Prague is very photogenic and you see another beautiful scene every time you go around a corner. After Berlin, it was nice to see a city that kept it's old world history intact. We visited the main square in town with the world's oldest functioning astronomical clock, toured the underground city, the Jewish sector, the old main bridge over the river, and even did a boat tour. The last day we went up to the hilltop to tour the c...

One month ago this morning we landed in Dublin to begin this huge adventure. I'm struggling to keep up with the updates on this blog - partly because of our schedule and partly because it's a lot of work to do these posts using my phone - and will continue trying to catch up, but I wanted to mark the milestone. So far, we've visited six countries, hiked five days, and pretty much got our fill of castles, museums  and churches. We're currently in Florence, Italy and have a little more than three weeks to go. We're hiking Tuscany all next week and will be in Paris for a week for the Olympics. That gives us one more week in the middle to wander around. 

After a few days of the (rude!) crowds in Paris, we were ready for something a little less of the summer tourist crowd. We talked about it and settled on Berlin. It was away from the Olympics zone and was a start into eastern-Europe, a region we were interested in seeing. In retrospect, we should've done some more research. I think there are probably more charming towns in eastern Germany than Berlin. The city was leveled in WWII and choked during the Cold War. Nearly everything has been built in the last eighty years in that post-war cinderblock chic that was so popular. There are also many new, beautiful buildings but a distressing amount is blase. But, it was still fun. We went to the Bradenburg Gate and the Reichstag and got to see Checkpoint Charlie. This area of the world was off-limits to me due to my Navy duties. I was a Cold War warrior so it was interesting to see where the West faced off with the Soviet Union and nearly ended human civilization. The street was marked w...