Spring has broken.

Well, Spring Break is over. We’d been looking forward to it, and it met our expectations. We can also add another country to our list. More about that later.

We left on Saturday morning and drove to Verona, home of Romeo and Juliet, about a 4 hour drive north of here. We checked into the hotel and drove downtown to do all of the touristy stuff. Verona has an arena that’s a smaller version of the colosseum in Rome, but  it’s in better shape. It’s right on the main market square, surrounded by booths filled with local products (candles, ceramics, jams, etc.).With the aid of a not so detailed tourist map, we finally found Romeo’s house… well, really Romeo’s Plaque. There’s a faded plaque on an obscure wall that says “Romeo was here” (or something like that – but in appropriately flowery Italian prose). We took pictures, then wandered back to one of the main squares and found Juliet’s house, and it’s much more popular than Romeo’s house. The area was gated off, but through a tunnel you could see a statue of Juliet. Tradition has it that if you rub the breast of the statue, you’ll have good fortune. It was a bit dark in the courtyard through the tunnel, and we couldn’t see the statue very well, but evidently there are millions of lucky perverts now; the boobs on the statue are both extremely well polished, and poor Juliet’s chest was the only thing you could see in the courtyard beyond the gate. Palmer might be only 9, but he was a bit disappointed that he didn’t get a chance to rub her. The walls on each side of the gate were covered with expressions of undying love. These people know that both Romeo and Juliet committed suicide, right? Had dinner (with local wine) on the town square in Verona. Palmer got picked on by a street performer. Much fun was had by all.

Next day (Sunday), we drove to Garmisch Germany (through Austria). Very pretty drive, but nothing to report.

Next day (Monday), we went up the highest mountain in Germany, Zugspitze. We rode a cog train most of the way, then took a cable car the remaining distance. The mountain top is on the border of Austria and Germany; we spent about an hour up there hopping back and forth between countries, then took a cable car all the way down. Make sure you look at the pictures we took, there are some great views from up there (which our shoddy photographic skills can’t do justice to… but check the pics out anyway!).

Tuesday, we decided to do something “adventurous”. We did a ropes course. We got there right after a big group, so we had to wait almost an hour for our training, but it was a lot of fun. We started out on the lower difficulty courses, and were soon clambering like monkeys through the trees. We had a bit of a translation mix-up though; our trainer told us that blue course was one of the easier ones, because it was the highest one. I choose to believe that it was a language issue, rather than think that she would have told such an bald faced lie. Becca took some lovely documentary pictures of her trophy bruise. No permanent damage, except for her pride though. The kids were amazing. There was one particular point where we had to cross a fluttering plank bridge about 50 feet up, with nothing to hang on to; both of them were scared (and admitted it at the time, but would probably deny it now!), but they kept going and got through the whole thing.

The kids were enrolled in a “Kids night out” program on Tuesday night, and Becca and I went to a cooking demonstration while we didn’t have any youth supervision. One of the chefs at the nicer restaurant at the resort prepared a nice meal, and walked a small group of us through all of the cooking and preparation. It was pretty good, and an entertaining night off.

Wednesday we left the resort and drove to Gunzburg and spent half a day in Legoland. It’s a small park, but both the kids had a blast. We rode most of the rides, then found our hotel and checked in. It had been a long day, so we just went to Burger King for dinner.

Thursday we spent all day at Legoland. Kids had fun. Nothing special to report… but there is a cool section of the park where they have several different town settings recreated in Legos, including moving boats, cars, trains, airplanes, and helicopters. We took lots of pics.

Thursday night we wanted to have German food, but none of the places seemed to be open. We ended up getting lost among the small towns, and finally found a place that was open. I had a bit of a blonde moment while we were ordering… we were trying to get something to drink (to buy time to try and decipher the menu) and I stupidly asked the waiter “Do you have beer?” He looked at me with half a smirk on his face and said… very slowly, as if he had never had to put these specific words in a sentence before: “Yes, we have beer.” Looking back on it, he may have thought I had some… ummm… intellectual challenges. At least they don’t have rules against challenged people like me drinking beer.

I’m done talking about that night now. The food was good. So was the beer. Next.

Friday, we toured Munich. Lots of walking, but it’s a really pretty city. We had lunch in a famous restaurant (Hofbrauhaus) that’s been open since 1589 – one of Munich’s oldest beer halls. Kids and I had different kinds of sausage, Becca had some boiled beef something or other. We had beer there too.

As an aside, the Bavarians take their beer very seriously. There was a law (the Bavarian Beer Purity Law of 1516) that dictated the types of ingredients that could be used in Bavarian beer. The law has since been repealed, but many brewers continue to declare that they’re compliant with this law. Do with this information what you wish, but please keep it in mind if you’re ever a contestant on Jeopardy.

We waited for the 12:00 ringing of the Rathaus Glockenspiel in Marienplatz, but evidently, the Glockenspiel guy took the day off. It didn’t play for us at noon, and a tour guide next to us said that it didn’t ring at 11:00 either. That same tour guide said that this Glockenspiel is the second most overrated tourist attraction in Europe, but I haven’t seen any real sources on that, other than a quick Google search returning results about that same guide’s spiel.

We toured Nymphenburg Palace, where Crazy King Ludwig II (of Neuschwanstein Castle fame) was born… the only other connection I could find is that he sometimes visited here, and there’s probably a plaque written in appropriately guttural German prose that says “Ludwig was here”. Some of his carriages were on display though; incredibly opulent, as you can see from the pictures.

Dinner was over-priced Chinese at a restaurant down the street from the hotel. With beer.

Next day, we drove to Bern, Switzerland. Switzerland is a very expensive country to visit, and we probably won’t be going back there unless we win the lottery. Bern is very pretty; they have 3 (or possibly more) bears in an enclosure next to the town center. According to local legend, the founder of Bern vowed to name the city after the first animal he met on a hunt, which turned out to be a bear. No one knows for certain where the name came from, but the bear has been on the coat of arms of the city of Bern since 1220. We saw the bears, and took plenty of pictures. We were all hungry, so we found a place to eat. The kids had standard kids fare (one pasta, one chicken nuggets), Becca and I had fondue, Swiss cheese of course. Very expensive. Extremely expensive. Slightly cheaper than our room for that night, but not by much.

When we got back to the room, I looked around the hotel for a place to get coffee the next morning, and it would have been almost $11.00 for coffee (CHF 9.50) in the restaurant. I ended up having freeze dried Nescafe in the room. Yuk.

We got on the road early the next morning (to try and avoid spending any more money). As soon as we got into Italy, we had lunch at a rest stop. We stayed at the military base in Livorno, then drove back home the next day.

Whew!

Links to pics are on the right.