Trip to Europe 2018 - Germany, Austria, and France Thursday August 30 and Friday 31 (with the time warp) We went to the Salt Lake Airport and ran into our friends Mark and Ashleigh. They were on the same flight to Amsterdam as us. We ate McDonald s at the airport and flew to Amsterdam, wandered a little bit and ate fried eggs for breakfast. Then we basically hibernated, waiting for our connecting flight to Germany. The hibernation was good, we knew we would practically be zombies by the time we got to Germany. We got to Munich, and took the S8 train to Marienplatz. Kaylynn seemed impressed by Munich but I was focused on finding our hotel, Mercure Alstadt Munich. It was just a few blocks from Marienplatz, easy to find. We were starving, but wanted something simple, so we went and found a Subway. It was good, and we shopped a little on the way back to our hotel. We found the official Bayern Munich store which was cool. Saturday September 1 We woke up and started wandering the city. We went in to the massive Frauenkirche with its huge green towers. The Rick Steve s guide book suggested seeing Peterskirche, right next to Marienplatz. We went in, wandered, and then climbed the tower. There were a lot of stairs, and we took them fast. We also had a huge breakfast that morning. We took the stairs a little too fast and Kaylynn threw up. Thankfully there was no one around. And thankfully, Kaylynn was wearing her sister s rain jacket which she threw up into. She said she felt ok though, so we continued to the top, and got a great view of the city. We walked back down and watched the statues moving around (and tossed the puked-in jacket). It was hard to focus, as the rain picked up and Kaylynn was without a raincoat. The statues finished moving and we went down the street and found SportScheck, a huge 5 floor sporting goods and outdoors store. The top floor had a huge waterproof jacket section, so Kaylynn got a purple one. Then we went to find the Nazi museum. We went in and learned about how the Nazis came to power. It was information overload. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped and ate lunch/ dinner at a pizza place. The ladies next to us ordered crab, and were using a hammer to smash it into pieces. That night, I watched some random Bundesliga 2 soccer on TV. Sunday September 2 We woke up and took the train to Dachau. Then we took the bus to the concentration camp. It was really green in Dachau and we would never have seen the concentration camp if the bus didn t get us there. We walked through the gate saying Work will set you free. The camp was huge. We went through the museum area for an hour, then walked outside and saw the living quarters, incinerators, and the memorials. We stopped at the cafeteria on the way out and had
Lasagna. We got back to Munich and wandered the main train station, and found where we would go the next day. That night, we had a pretzel for dinner and wandered around downtown. We went into the Hofbrauhaus it was loud and stressful, I m glad we didn t eat there. Monday September 3 We woke up, had breakfast at the hotel, and went souvenir shopping. Kaylynn found a shirt and a magnet. My favorite shop we went in had a bunch of fancy wooden clocks. I would have wanted one if they weren t so expensive and fragile looking. Then we went to the train station and caught the train to Salzburg. Boarding the train was a madhouse. Most people didn t board the right carriage, so there was a traffic jam of people trying to walk through the train cars for at least half an hour. Kaylynn slept the whole way while I watched the alps come into view. When we got to Salzburg, we took a bus to our hotel, which happened to be in a really old Catholic Church. We dropped our luggage off, and went out to explore Salzburg. We were starving, so we went into an Italian restaurant and had spaghetti. It was awesome. Then we left and went into some old churches. We were making our way towards the huge Hohensalzburg Fortress, looming high above town on a hill. Kaylynn s knees were hurting from all the walking we d done over the trip, so we took the funicular to the top. Exploring the castle was really cool. We finished by getting a Salzburg magnet.
Tuesday September 4 We woke up to pouring rain. We ate breakfast at the hotel, and wandered around outside a little bit, but Kaylynn was miserable in the rain so she went back to the room. I continued wandering outside, and found our bus stop for later that day. Mirabellplatz stop, marked very clearly in our instructions. A few hours later, we stood in the pouring rain at the stop to catch the bus into Berchtesgaden, Germany. We waited and waited, and then it came and blew right past us. I couldn t believe it. Thankfully, we were a little early, so we had time to catch the next bus to Berchtesgaden. But I didn t want to get left behind at Mirabellplatz again, so we booked it to the main train station. I asked the guy at the info desk there what to do, and he unhelpfully said to wait near the McDonalds, which was very clearly not a bus area, but taxi only. Thankfully, we saw the bus stuck in traffic near the station, so I ran up and asked what to do. The driver pointed to a super obscure stop, where we went and he picked us up and took us to Berchtesgaden. Our original plan was to be in Berchtesgaden early enough to eat lunch. But since we missed the first bus, we had no time at all to eat. We quickly ran into a grocery store, looking for something quick, as we had less than 5 minutes before our tour started. We grabbed some sketchy looking pizzas from the bakery section. Then, to my horror, all the checkout lines were super long. But we had already grabbed the pizzas, we couldn t put them back. Thankfully, another line opened up and we got outside. We had just a few seconds to eat our pizzas, and hurry to the tour area. Our tour guide was a young guy named John Mark, he seemed nervous but did an ok job. The tour took us around to former houses of Nazi leaders. But they were all blown up long ago, so there wasn t really much to look at. This didn t stop our fellow tourists from taking a million pictures. The next stop was supposed to be the underground bunker built for the Nazis to make their last stand. But it was under renovation, and closed to the public.
Finally, we got on a bus to go up the steep mountain to the Eagle s Nest. It was covered in cloud, but occasionally you could see through it, and realize how high we were above the town. We took the elevator to the top, and got to see the building on top of the mountain. It was really cool. We got a small tour of the building, and then had free time to wander around ourselves. I climbed to the top of the mountain outside, and came back and got a coke and ice cream at the restaurant inside with Kaylynn. The Eagle s Nest was super cool. When the tour ended, we had some time to kill so we ate dinner at the Burger King near the bus stop. That evening was the first day of the whole trip that the sun came out. We walked around the Mirabell gardens back in Salzburg that evening, they were supposedly in The Sound of Music. Wednesday September 5 Wednesday was the first truly nice day of the trip. We ate breakfast at the hotel, and got on bus route 25, toward the Untersberg, a huge mountain right outside Salzburg. We took a gondola to the top, but it wasn t really the top, it was just really high up the mountain. We went on a hike to reach the real peak. It was a great hike, not easy, but easy enough for Kaylynn. The top of the mountain had great views. At the end of the hike, we decided to eat lunch while we were still on top of the mountain. We had bratwurst, sauerkraut, fries, and coke. It was our most German meal of the whole trip. It
took forever for the gondola to take us back down the mountain, and we really got squished in. We were tired and took the bus back to town. We walked along the river, and then ate at the same Italian restaurant as before. We shopped and found Austria t-shirts. Kaylynn went back to the hotel and I went and got some snacks at a grocery store near the train station. Thursday September 6 We woke up early and checked out of the hotel. We took the bus to Salzburg Hauptbanhof and caught our train to Stuttgart. We had first class seats and a train cabin to ourselves, it was like the Hogwarts Express. Then some old people got on with us at the next stop. We rode for four hours. There was some emergency and our train was stopped on the tracks in the middle of nowhere for close to half an hour. I was worried we would miss our connecting train. But it was ok, we made it to Stuttgart and found our next train. This train was very fancy, and got going super fast, around 180 miles per hour! We rode through a storm in eastern France, and got off at Gare d el Est in Paris. We took the subway to St Germain and easily found our hotel. Our room was tiny, and had a tiny elevator, but thankfully it had air conditioning. We dropped our stuff off and went to walk around. We were kind of fatigued from the long train rides and lack of lunch, so we went and found the Subway restaurant next to Notre Dame. We walked around Paris that night, and Kaylynn realized it wasn t as fancy as she thought, it was much more crowded and dirty. Friday September 7 We woke up and found Paul bakery and had breakfast there. Then we went into Notre Dame surprisingly it wasn t crowded. We thought about trying to go to the roof, but the line was a madhouse, not a line at all, more just a mass of people so we decided to skip it. Then we walked to Sainte Chapelle, which was also not crowded. It was cool, but hard to recognize what any of the stained glass pictures were trying to depict. We went back to the hotel and took a break. Then we tried to find the station to catch a train to Versailles. On the way, we stopped at St. Germain church and wandered around. After this Kaylynn decided she was sick of churches for the trip. We got to Versailles, skipped the massive line into the palace, and went directly out to see the gardens. They are absolutely massive. We walked 12.5 miles that day and barely scratched the surface. We ate bad french hot dogs at a small cafe in the gardens. The fancy hedge maze area was cool, but I liked it better when it became more of just real trees and meadows. We walked to Marie Antoinette s area and saw the smaller palaces there. Marie Antoinette s area was just a small fraction of Versailles, but still huge. I would love to have a giant paintball game there, maybe 200 vs 200, it would be the most fun thing ever! On our way back from Marie Antoinette s area, we decided to stop and get ice cream. As soon as I took a bite, I realized it was a mistake, as the ice cream was clearly made from fresh raspberries. It was great, but I could tell I would be allergic so I had to toss it. We were pretty beat from wandering the gardens all day, and the line to the main palace was still huge, so we decided to skip it.
That night we decided to go eat and be fancy like the Parisians. We found an Italian restaurant and sat outside, watching people as they passed. We counted a lot of dogs too, Paris seems like such a horrible place to have a dog, but there were a lot. We shopped a little on the way back to the hotel and Kaylynn found a cardigan at H&M which was fun. Saturday September 8 We woke up and ate at Paul again. We then made our way to the Arc de Triumph. Taking the subway on line 4 was horrible. The train cars were almost always filled to the brim, and multiple times were too packed for people to get on. We started taking alternate subway lines that were less crowded. Mabillon was our secret subway station, close to the hotel, and a thousand times better than St Germain on line 4. The Arc de Triumph was cool, we walked all the way to the top without incident and got our first good view of the Eiffel Tower. Even thought we were fairly close to it already, Paris s streets are like slot canyons in Utah, the buildings are so high and close together that you can t see anything around you other than up and down the street. After the Arc, we went down the fancy shopping street, and found a PSG store. I had been looking forward to going in there, and seeing what I could find. It was totally packed with people. They were selling their new away uniform for about $250 yikes! It was too packed in there to really enjoy but I did stand in line and got a shirt (not a soccer jersey). After the PSG store, we decided we wanted some normal food, and went in to a Five Guys. Five Guys in France sucks. Drinks there are four Euros a piece, and there are no free refills. It is supposed to be an American restaurant, and there is no way that would fly in the United States. Each cup has a little computer chip in it that prevents any refills. It was insane. We then made our way back to our hotel for a while.
That afternoon we decided to go to the Louvre. We went in and quickly found the famous statues. There were crowds but they weren t too bad. Then we searched to find the Roman statue taking a selfie. We had that whole room of statues all to ourselves! Kaylynn was so embarrassed to be taking selfies with a statue in a museum, but I was loving it. It is ironic because that is the only time I have actually wanted to take a selfie, while Kaylynn usually likes them. After the statues we went and found the Mona Lisa. It was fun to see, but really small and had a huge crowd around it. We liked the other paintings in that area more than the Mona Lisa. It is too bad the Louvre didn t have modern art, we wanted to judge how horrible modern art paintings are, but everything in the Louvre was really high quality. We made our way outside, but we were tired from so much walking over the past few days. We sat in the shade in a park by the Louvre for at least an hour, watching pigeons and listening to somebody play piano. We eventually got up and wandered north through Paris. We found another Paul bakery and had a snack/ dinner, then went into an Asian market and were excited to see they had plenty of Ok Su Su (disgusting Korean corn juice) in stock. Then we took our alternate subway line to Trocadero, to get a view of the Eiffel Tower at night. But it wasn t night yet so we sat there for over an hour watching it get dark. We had a great view of the tower and it was fun just hanging out. As it got dark we walked under the tower and tried to catch a subway home but the station was closed. So we just kept walking. We were clearly out of the tourist area and went into a grocery store and stocked up on weird snacks. Then we made our way to another secret subway line and rode back to our hotel.
Sunday September 9 We woke up and were beginning to feel like zombies. We were Paris-ed out by this point, but still had a full day in the city. We decided to go to Luxembourg Gardens, which turned out to be really cool. It was a huge park, and did not feel very toursity. Locals were there running laps and playing some proto-tennis game I couldn t quite figure out the rules for. It was 4 on 4 on a large court without a net. We watched and learned the sport is called Paume. I still have no idea on the rules. We were tired, so we sat on a bench for an hour and watched people playing in the park. It looked like a super cool park for little kids, the jungle gym areas were awesome not the dumbed down safety-first lame jungle gyms of today. We went back to the hotel and hung out for a while. Then we decided to get normal food somewhere and picked a Burger King. We took our secret subway line to get there, and saw a Ramen noodle restaurant across the street. I had been craving some fancy ramen, and we went there instead. It was really good. Then we went back across the street and ate ice cream at Burger King. Then we took the subway to Trocadero again and killed some time before we had to get in line at the Eiffel Tower. My new advice for anyone in Paris enjoy the Eiffel Tower from afar, it is not worth the trip to the top. It took FOREVER waiting in line to get to the top. So many inconsiderate people bring strollers onto the Eiffel Tower, and it is just way too crowded. If you must go on the Eiffel Tower, buy a ticket to the first floor only, and take the stairs. You ll avoid any crowds that way and it will be much more enjoyable. We went back to the room and weren t really hungry for dinner. I went out to a bakery and got us Croissants for dinner. Monday September 10 We woke up super early, checked out, and caught our cab. After a few blocks down the road, I realized I still had our room key, and the cab driver reversed through a bunch of Paris blocks and I ran back to the hotel and dropped it off. Kaylynn was freaked out. Then he drove us to the airport. The airport was uneventful, however, there were free video game areas scattered around the airport and I played some fun games of Michael Jackson s Moonwalker which was awesome. The flight home was fine and it felt great to be back home.