Hiking in Spectacular South Tyrol!!

Yet another amazing trip for us!! We spent 6 days in the spectacular province of South Tyrol while hiking in the Dolomite Mountain Range in North Eastern Italy and we all loved every moment!! It was sensational!!

The spectacular peaks of the Dolomites have been named a UNESCO world heritage site. They attract a tremendous number of visitors both in summer and winter. In winter it is a huge skiing location. In summer visitors enjoy hiking, climbing, base jumping, hang gliding, para gliding and cycling. In July there is an annual single day road bike race over seven of the passes in the Dolomites - (not sure if Nick knows about this one yet but no doubt once he reads this it will be added to his bucket list). In the First World War protected paths were created called via ferrate and many people (including us) visit the Dolomites to experience these paths. They are made up of metal ropes, iron ladders and rungs that make it possible to climb a wall of rock. The first vie ferrate were built during World War I until the end of 1917 and recently the via ferrate has been carefully restored and many new routes added for visitors to enjoy...or to suffer through ;-)

Cortina d'Ampezzo

After just 4 hours in the car we arrived in the gorgeous ski town of Cortina d'Ampezzo, the heart of the Dolomites in an alpine valley. Cortina hosted the 1956 Winter Olymipcs and has been the location for many movies. We stayed at a fabulous hotel in town with our own kitchen so the first stop on our trips to Italy is always the grocery store ... we LOVE going to the Italian grocery stores and stocking up on all the delicious Italian food for our hikes....mmmmm...the cheese, salami, bread, pasta, wine....HEAVEN!! Once the fridge was fully stocked, we enjoy an early night before our first big hiking day. Our first hike is to visit the famous Tre Cime di Lavaredo (three peaks). As we approached the car parking lot to begin our hike we are surrounded by snow - lots of snow...it looks like a fairytale ... so very pretty, blue sky, sunshine and a lot of snow ... and then we start hiking - in our runners. We were totally prepared for dry weather hiking. Snow hiking? Not so much. We pushed on - once our feet were numb it wasn't too bad ;-) What a spectacular part of the world. We did a 5 hour hike around the three peaks and it was fabulous. Hiking with the kids always includes lots of rest stops but we never break for too long because as soon as we stop we start getting cold so short, quick stops were all we needed. We are so lucky that the kids enjoy hiking as much as we do - they both did a wonderful job. Home for warm baths and warmer dinner and an early night so we can do it all again the next day!!

Tre Cime di Lavaredo (three peaks)

We decided snow/hiking boots were the first purchase of the day. After we were all fixed up with fabulous waterproof hiking boots - we set off for our next hike. Mostly dry hiking today but almost 8hours - the new shoes were well worn in by the end of this day. Today involved some of the via ferrate. Henry had been adamant that he didn't want to put on his rock climbing harness and clip into the wire cables but once we were there he was so brave and decided to give it a go. Nick roped us all together which provided a challenge for us to even walk together without tripping one of us. Once we made it to the base of the rock face Nick gave us a little lesson on climbing; Polly and Nick make it all look so easy as they elegantly scramble up the rock ... Henry and I on the other hand huff and puff and grunt and groan but we made it eventually and we were having a blast!! We were really out in the elements. The rock face was freezing cold and we couldn't wear gloves because we couldn't grip the rock with gloves on so our fingers were numb ... oh yeah ... and it was snowing and cold but we soldiered on!! Polly was in heaven and was keen to keep climbing all day but it became apparent that there was still A LOT of via ferrate ahead of us and poor little Henry was struggling and we were worried about running out of daylight for us to return to the car so we decided enough was enough and that we should turn around. It took twice as long to navigate ourselves safely down the rock face but once at the bottom we huddled in a cave to warm up and enjoyed a delicious warm hot chocolate which was becoming part of our daily lunch while hiking. We still had another 2-3 hours of hiking to do to get back to the car so off we set ... what a great day ... almost 8hours of hiking and we were all wiped out!! This was the only night we ate out during our holiday. We literally fell into a restaurant, ate whatever we could and stumbled into hot baths and then into bed. Phew ... what an awesome day!!

Lana

Next, we drove 2hours west to Lana, a small town located in between Merano and Bolzeno and is a popular for it's many hiking options. Lana also produces most of Europe's apples and I understand chestnuts are pretty popular in Lana also. Lana has a much more German influence than Cortina d'Ampezzo but with the hillsides covered in vines you could not mistake that you were still in Italy. The day we arrived we did a 4hour walk around the town and discovered some wonderful waterfalls along with seeing our first ever salamander, in fact we must have seen about 10 salamanders on that walk - gorgeous black lizard like creatures with bright orange paint like spots. Gorgeous!

On our second day in Lana we did a walk along the ancient paths of the irrigation channels that were originally built to water fields and meadows surrounding the town. The path itself was built mainly for maintenance purposes and is now a gorgeous walking path that winds through vineyards, apple orchards and chestnut groves - such breathtaking views from this walk! We walked for several hours then caught a bus back to Lana - another wonderful day!

We did not want our holiday to end. So on our last day in Lana we decided to pack up the car, hike all day then drive home in the evening. We decided to spend the day hiking one the many trails around the San Vigilio mountain pass. We cheated a bit today and caught a cable car and then a chair lift before we started hiking. It didn't really feel like cheating though because we still did a lot of climbing in the snow. We were headed for the Hochwart mountain top at 2,608m above sea level ... we didn't quite make it but we were pretty close!! We hiked through the clouds and the weather was starting to look pretty dodgy so after yet another most welcome cup of hot chocolate and some lunch, we headed back down the mountain. A quick change of clothes and shoes in the parking lot and we were on our way back to Munich. Such an exhausting, yet fabulous 6 days in spectacular hikers paradise of South Tyrol!! Ti amo Italia!!!

A long weekend in Prague ...

We finally made it to ancient city of Prague!! We've been planning to visit this stunning city since last December but we had to cancel our trip due to Nick being hospital bound so we've been trying to plan another trip since then. Nick's parents, John and Julia are visiting us from Australia for 5 weeks so we thought this would be a great opportunity to do our first international train trip and visit the largest city in the Czech Republic. The kids had a long weekend at school so we packed our bags, walked to the station and we were off ... our train left Munich at 9am on Friday and arrived in Prague at 3pm. It was that easy!! Train travel was a very stress free way to get to our destination ... it took a little longer than driving but we'd do it again in a heartbeat - sipping champagne while chatting in our cabin ... what a wonderful experience and a great way to travel when we couldn't all fit in our tiny car anyway! Our hotel, "The Red Chair" was fabulously located in the historic center of Old Town which was a perfect location for us to walk to all of the attractions Prague has to offer.

The best part about our hotel was that it had a cafe beside it called The Choco Cafe ... WOW!! This cozy cafe offers every style of divine hot chocolate you can imagine ... enjoy your decadent hot chocolate with a slice of your favorite cake and you will be in heaven!! If you too are a chocoholic, add "The Choco Cafe" to your list of "must sees" in Prague!! ( I always skipped right to dessert so can't review the lunch options but I believe the lunches and snacks here are equally as fabulous as the dessert menu!!)

A little bit of history for you ... Prague is the capital and the largest city in  the Czech Republic; it is situated on the Vltava River and is home to about 1.3 million people. It is home to a number of famous cultural attractions, many of which survived the violence and destruction of twentieth century Europe. Prague has more than ten major museums, along with many theatres, galleries, cinemas, and other historical exhibits. Ok, ok ... enough of all that ... here's what we covered in our short time in Prague ...

We arrived late afternoon on Friday so we had a little window of time before dinner so we did a short bus tour of Prague to get our bearings so then during the rest of our time in Prague we walked to all the well known sights - what a gorgeous city! We visited the castle grounds and climbed the 285 steps of the Cathedral tower, saw the changing of the guards, Old Town, we caught the funicular up to Petřín Hill and the observatory, visited the stunning rose gardens and mirror maze all in and around Petřín Hill. We walked through and enjoyed a fabulous lunch in the Jewish quarter of town and across the stunning George Bridge a number of times and touched the St John Nepomuk statue plate for good luck. We admired "The Dancing House" which is a nickname given to a building in downtown Prague. It was originally named Fred and Ginger (after Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers - the house resembles a pair of dancers) the house stands out among the Baroque, Gothic and Art Nouveau buildings for which Prague is famous. We saw the Apostles and other moving sculptures perform their hourly show at the medieval astronomical clock in Old Town Square. The clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the

world and the only one still working. We also enjoyed a wonderful meal with some great friends we've met through the kids' school - it was so fun to catch up on their experience of Prague while we were there! The shopping in Prague is mind blowing ... soooooooo many fun shops, boutiques, malls ... this town certainly offers something for everybody!! The highlight of the trip for us all was the most wonderful performance by the Prague Baroque Chamber Orchestra  held in St Climent's Cathedral right near our hotel. Polly has just started learning the violin and Henry is learning about Mozart at school so both kids were so excited to have front row seats for this outstanding performance. If we were to return to Prague one day, we would fill our time with these various concerts that are held in many Cathedrals around this stunning city. While we definitely enjoyed Prague and we are thrilled to now, finally, cross it off our "must see" list ... personally, I found Prague to be way more touristy than I expected. I didn't realise that Prague has 4.1 million international visitors a year! That's a lot of tourists!!  All the tourists made it pretty uncomfortable to just walk around town and also made us a bit nervous getting from place to place with the kids. To accommodate the tourists there are many, many little stores selling every tacky tourist item you can imagine - for me this was an unattractive aspect in this gorgeous city and gave it an out of character "Vegas" feel that didn't suit such an ancient city so rich in history. Two and half full days of sightseeing and we are all worn out!! John and Julia continued by train to Vienna and we returned home to Munich.

I couldn't let my October blog be posted without a quick photo of us all at Oktoberfest! Last year, we arrived in Munich during the last weekend of Oktoberfest and we were totally unprepared for this huge festival that takes over our city ... but this time around we celebrated our one year anniversary of living in Munich by dressing up in our dirndls and lederhosen and we did Oktoberfest in style!! Who's coming to visit next year so we can show you how the German's like to party at Oktoberfest?!!

Time to get ready for our next adventure ... we are off to Italy to hike in the Dolomites at the end of October!! Yay!! Can't wait!!

Breathtaking Botswana!!

WOW!! WOW!! WOW!!

Our big Summer trip this year was a 10 day camping safari in Botswana, Africa. This holiday was a dream come true for me - such magical memories for our family during this spectacular trip of a lifetime. I have been wanting to do a safari for many, many years now and this trip far exceeded my expectations - it was completely  and utterly amazing!!

I could try to describe the animals, sunrises, sunsets, waterfalls and new friends that we made but I could never fully explain how it really truly felt to actually BE there - to actually see and soak in these incredible sights ... but I'll do my best here so you too can share in our fabulous memories of beautiful Botswana!!

Firstly, some quick facts ...

Geographically Botswana is flat and up to 70% is covered by the Kalahari Desert. Botswana is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. It meets Zambia at a single point. The Chobe River lies to the north, providing a boundary between Botswana and Namibia. The official language of Botswana is English although Setswana is widely spoken across the country. Ok – that’s enough of that … here’s a little bit about our trip … 

We started by flying the red eye from Munich to Johannesburg with a connection to sunny, warm Maun in Botswana where we discovered one of our bags of luggage was missing... booooooooo!! Thankfully it was Nick's bag. Yaya!! Joke!! It was a pain in the neck actually but we weren't about to let that ruin our holiday!! We were met by our guide and after filling out all the paperwork for the lost bag, our guide rushed us to the nearest store to pick up some clothes for Nick and then we were off.

Our safari guide was Anthony and his apprentice, Joe joined us too. Both really fabulous guys. Anthony is a very smart, knowledgeable  guy and is absolutely passionate about his country - he was a sensational guide who we are lucky enough to now call our friend. Anthony and Joe were with us for our entire trip and they cooked all our delicious meals and even better - they did the dishes too ;-) The truck Anthony had been given to use to navigate the deep sandy roads was a 20 year old Toyota Hilux and we bounced around in the back while pulling a trailer that held the camping equipment and food. The kids thought the truck was "awesome" ... no seat bets, no windows, no doors - they loved it!! With Anthony's help we saw every animal imaginable....elephants, giraffes, leopards, cheetahs, lions, buffalo, antelopes, impala, warthogs, hyenas, wildebeests, zebras, baboons, and so, so many different varieties of the over 570 species of birds in Botswana ... we saw it all ... no rhinos in Botswana though :( We stayed in 5 different campsites - each day consisted of dawn and dusk game drives with a few hours at the campsite during the day for lunch and relaxation.

The weather was fabulous - cold mornings and evenings but hot days with endless blue sky and sunshine - perfect!! The sunrises were gorgeous and very welcomed but the sunsets were outstanding ... absolutely breathtaking - the colors were mindblowing - so beautiful!! One of our campsites had a waterhole where up to 40 elephants at a time would come to drink and play in the water several times a day - it was amazing. We floated off to sleep to the trumpeting of elephants enjoying the water at the end of a hot day - it was such a wonderful sight to see! 

We enjoyed a fabulous boat trip on the Chobe River where we watched elephants swimming across the river and we were chased down by hippos and saw crocodiles up way too close for my liking!! Yikes!! On our last day we left Botswana on the ferry and crossed the Chobe River into Zambia to experience Victoria Falls - WOW!! Victoria Falls are the largest falls in the world located in southern Africa on the Zambezi River between the countries of Zambia and Zimbabwe. What an amazing sight!! We were so sad that our African adventure had come to an end :( We flew out of Livingstone in Zambia, through Johannesburg (where we collected the long lost luggage - yay!!) then home to cold and rainy Munich :(

It was with heavy hearts that we left Botswana ... before this trip we were calling this holiday a "trip of a lifetime" but already we are planning to return to this spectacular country.

Bella Italia!!

We are just home from the most wonderful trip to Italy. We were about 10kms out of Trieste in Northern Italy and words cannot describe this fabulous trip so I'll let the photos do all the talking.

... there was a lot of this ....

plenty of this ....

tons of this ....

some of this ...

and after 4 gorgeous days it resulted in Nick and I looking like this ...

Ti amo Italia!!

Hiking & Biking in Bavaria!!

This is just a short little entry today to share with you all our recent fun filled weekend adventures of hiking and biking in Bavaria.

Last weekend we were invited by a super fun family from school to go hiking with them. It's funny actually, this family is from Switzerland and they lived in Pleasanton, California the same time we lived there!! We totally could have crossed paths there but never did and here we are now hiking in the German Alps with them...crazy - it really is a small, small world!! Anyway, we met Michele, her husband and their 3 girls in mountain resort town of Garmisch about an hours drive from our home. We were well equipped with sandwiches, snacks, water and Henry's new walkie talkies that he bought with his pocket money. In fact, the walkie talkies were a great way of keeping in touch when we broke into 2 groups so we can highly recommend taking them on your next group hike!! It took us 3 long hours of steep, steep climbing to reach the top of Stepbergalm and it was well worth the sweat and tears (of which there were plenty of both!!). Our view from the top was simply breathtaking - we overlooked Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain (2,962 m). 

First sighting of the hut!! Hooray!! We made it!!

The German Alps have many long distance hiking tracks. Many of the original routes were used by cattle drovers, bandits and the military. Dotted throughout the Alps are huts that offer a warm, hearty meal and a cold beer as a much earned reward after your tiring climb. I believe in some cases the food and drink is delivered by helicopter due to the remote locations of some of these huts. The alpine huts are quite solid buildings that are maintained and staffed by the local alpine associations and some of the huts can accommodate up to 70 people. Most huts are open from May/June through to Sept/Oct. These huts are a wonderful resting spot after hiking these steep, rough tracks and it also means you don't need to pack a lot of food with you so you can treat yourself with a delicious German meal to energize you for the treacherous hike back down. All the kids did fabulously on the hike. The hut was a very welcome site after our challenging 3 hours of hiking in the warm, humid weather and the beer went down way too easily ;-)

It took us 2 hours to get down in the thunder, lightening and heavy rain. A weather change that we were not prepared for at all!! The hiking was steep and long and I couldn't walk for 3 days afterwards ... but I loved every minute of it and would do it all again in a heartbeat - in fact we are already planning an overnight hiking trip where we will stay in one of these huts and then continue climbing the next day. When you all come to visit, you need to do this hike ... here is the link to this hut: http://www.stepberg-alm.de/

From hiking to biking ... 

We had more gorgeous sunny weather this last weekend here in Bavaria and on Sunday we all set off to watch Nick race 20 laps of a 3km course amongst 100 other German racers. Nick's race was fast and furious and fabulous to watch. It makes me want to race bikes too ... until I learned of an awful crash and saw two ambulances arrive on the scene .... I think I'll stick to my recreational riding for now ;-)

One huge difference I noticed from Nick's Californian races are that apparently the German fans don't cheer. However, this Australian family does so we showed them how it's done!!! Polly, Henry and I were THE ONLY people cheering out there. Polly had made a sign for Nick, we were ringing bells, screaming and jumping up and down every time Nick rode by. Nothing and no one was going to stop us cheering!!

The kids and I walked the course during the race and yelled out our support at every possible moment. We got many, many strange looks from the Germans but we are getting used to that in our every day lives so that was no big deal ;-) Henry was cheering in full face paint as he wanted to be the tiger from Kung Fu Panda - I guess face painting, too is very unGerman as he was quite the talk of the race, posing for photos in between cheering for Nick.  Nick did a great job and had a blast ... it was a long day in the sun but loads of fun too. GOOOOOOOOOOO NICK GOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Very happy, sun burned racer post race!!

So much for the 'short little entry' ... haha!! I just have sooooooo much to say about all the fun we are having here!! We really are doing our very best to make the most of this wonderful opportunity of living in Germany and we are enjoying every moment .... while the sun is out at least ;-)

This week we have a long weekend and we are headed to the beaches of Trieste for some rest and relaxation in gorgeous Italia!! Italy, to me, feels like going 'home' ... I love the smiling faces, warmth and yummy food and wine in bella Italia!!

Until next time!!

Ciao!!