*WARNING* This post contains an excessive amount of photos because Europe is Europe
One of the awesome advantages of living overseas with Rob's job is that he is given extra vacation time. We choose to turn this extra vacation time into an extended Europe vacation exploring a bit of Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium & Amsterdam. It was an amazing 28 day filled trip. Full of exploring, hiking, eating, learning, driving, more driving and having my parents join us for the last week of our holiday.
Started the trip out right with a gelato shop in Trieste Italy
Exploring castles, one of the many on our trip
From Italy we went into the Slovenian Alps
About 10 years earlier Rob and I had explored the capital of Slovenia and Lake Bled and
knew at some point we wanted to go back to the country and see more
Slovenia is a gem and one of our favorite places we visited
Driving over the hairpin pass through the Julian Alps
For my Brasilian girls finding snow was amazing
Hiking through Victor Gorge outside of Lake Bled
and more gelato
the Lake Bled region is famous for their honey production
our family enjoyed a private tour of one of the honey farms and
enjoyed tasting all the varieties that are produced in the region
Views of the church in the middle of Lake Bled
We canoed to the church and rang the bell in the tower as a good luck charm
The Hills are Alive!! For my Sound of Music junkies Salzburg was a dream
We found the church that was used for the filming of the wedding scene
the following day we joined a bike tour taking us through the city of
Salzburg stopping at the movie sights,
playing movie music from the guides speaker and just soaking it in
Recreating a few of the scenes
For my unicorn lover this statue absolutely made her day
Jo sad about one of the signs noting that ice cream was not allowed on the tour
Posing before our salt mine tour in Austria
I'm so thankful for this man
What an adventure we've taken together the past 20 years
Daily parking lot picnics
Great way to save those euros for more important things
like gelato and chocolate
For our journey we rented a 9 passenger van
Rob did an amazing job driving it everywhere including tiny parking spots,
narrow roads and short parking garages
Little one thought it was grand to sit up in the front seat and have controls
of the music and look out the giant window
A little driving detour one day that afforded these beautiful views in Austria
Little one was not impressed
Doing whatever we could to cool off in Garmisch
The weeks that we were there
Europe was going through a serious heat wave
a bucket list item completed...
making a visit to Neuschwanstein Castle
Walking along Highline 179
the longest suspension bridge in the world
If you look closely you can see the itty, bitty tiny cars on the road down below
Cuties waiting for the bell tower to ring in Munich
Feeling blessed and humbled to have taken my older three to Dachau concentration camp
The charming town of Rothenburg
and...more gelato
Sister sandwich
These two cuties in their German ware for church
Another spontaneous excursion,
Renting bikes, loading them onto a boat that took us down the Rhine river for 7 miles
admiring castles, churches, vineyards and beautiful landscape and then
pulling our bikes off the boat and riding back to the car
A lovely way to spend an extremely hot afternoon in Germany
and then suddenly we found ourselves in Belgium, the land of chocolate
This particular place was a warehouse that allowed you to sample as much chocolate as you wanted
We all walked out sick and happy and totting a few pounds of chocolate to take home
and then of course there are waffles
and the women's world cup
which my kids have never watched before but somehow being in Europe
sucked us in and every game night would mean staying up late,
huddled around the tv watching those amazing strong women play their hearts out
Adorable charming town of Ghent Belgium and more chocolate
Climbing the bell tower in Ghent
facing off with a chocolate dragon
Boat ride through the town of Bruges
We found my parents!
Discovering a train museum outside of Amsterdam
and then just like that we arrived to the bicycle country of the world
Taking our big girls to the Hague Netherlands LDS temple
Windmill heaven while we explored the Kinderdijk
A museum of sorts that has a few windmills open to the public that you can walk through and view
Many of the windmills in the area are privately owned and people still live in them now
Awesome opportunity to attend a church that my Dad attended
45 years ago when he served a LDS mission in this area
Welcome to Amsterdam!!
and just like that 3654 km later our Grand European Adventure came to an end
until next time!!