Munich: Cars, Beer & Christmas Markets

We had so much fun visiting Berlin last year during the Christmas season that we decided to visit another German city this year to experience some more German Christmas markets.  I had previously been to Munich back in 2003 and thought that it was a city David would like (they are known for their many beer halls so it wasn't too difficult to know he would enjoy it).  We were only there for a quick weekend visit but made the most of our short trip.

Munich is the capital and largest city of the German state of Bavaria.  It is the third largest city in Germany, behind Berlin and Hamburg.  The city is well known as the home of Oktoberfest, a 16 day festival in late September and early October.  Even though we weren't there over Oktoberfest, we did sample some German beers including enjoying liter steins at the famous Hofbrauhaus.

Munich is also home to BMW.  We visited the BMW Museum which was a pretty cool display of a lot of classic BMWs and Rolls Royces.  Across the street from the museum was the BWM Welt which exhibited all the new BMW models.  There was a pick-up zone outside for pre-ordered BMWs.   I am not sure why we didn't do this!  Colin, of course, was in his glory getting to sit in cars and pretending to drive them.  The BMW Museum was located right outside of Olympic Park which hosted the 1972 Summer Olympic games so we took a walk around and toured the stadium while we were in the area.

The main agenda of our visit was to check out the Christmas markets.  Unlike Berlin which had many markets spread out around the city, Munich only had one main Christmas market.  It was a huge market located right in Marienplatz, a large open square in the center of the city bordered by Munich's most famous landmark Neues Rathaus (New City Hall).  We spent some time walking around the market and enjoyed some drinks and food but got sick of fighting the crowds fast.  We ended up finding a tiny Christmas market nearby our hotel that was more for locals and way less crowded that we liked much more.  In fact, we visited it twice.  I was able to get in my annual quota of Gluhwein (mulled wine) on this trip so I would consider it a success.

Here are some photos from our time in Munich:

I thought this little car at the BMW Museum was cute!

David at Olympic Stadium 

Colin loved this fire truck at the Deutsches Museum

Enjoying my stein of beer at the Hofbrauhaus

Colin is thrilled to be at another Christmas market

Gluhwein (mulled wine) = YUM!

Colin does like Christmas markets!

Exploring Ireland with my Parents

I am finally getting caught up on my blog.  Too many travels in late summer followed by an autumn full of visitors caused me to fall a bit behind, but I think this post will mean I am caught up on blogging about our travels.  Perhaps, I will have some time to write some London related blog posts in the future now that our travel schedule is calming down.  That may be wishful thinking though!

Earlier this fall, we met my parents in Dublin, Ireland.  They were a day late arriving in Dublin due to a cancelled flight and a not-so-convenient rescheduled flight through Madrid.  We still tried to see as much as possible in the little amount of time we had in the city.  This was my second visit to Dublin, and I still really like the city.  I know the draw of Ireland to most is the beautiful countryside and while that is also great, the city of Dublin itself shouldn't be missed on a trip to Ireland.

After spending the weekend in Dublin, David flew back to London due to a slight inconvenience known as having to work while my parents, Colin, and I picked up our rental car and headed out of the city.  My dad was the brave driver for our group.  There were a few moments of panic and driving on the wrong side of the road, but overall, he did a great job.  I am glad I didn't have to get behind the wheel.  I still haven't driven since we have been here and plan to keep it that way!

We were able to explore a lot of the Irish countryside during the day and stayed at some cute family run bed & breakfasts at night.  We had typical Irish weather with stretches of rain closely followed by stretches of sunshine and rainbow sightings.  The countryside is so beautiful, and we were able to see a lot in the short amount of time we had in the country, especially considering we had a two year old travel companion.  We certainly won't forget the flat tire we had late Sunday night at the Cliffs of Moher anytime soon, but we also have a lot of fun memories from this trip.  It was great getting to travel with my parents just like in the old days of family trips, and I am glad Colin got to spend a lot of quality time with his grandpa and grandma.  Much of the trip was spent with him walking side by side my dad holding hands.  So cute!  He got to spend even more time with them in London where they stayed with us for six more nights following the time in Ireland.

This is definitely a trip where the pictures are way better than anything I have to say about the visit.  Here are some of my favorites from the trip.

Learning the proper way to sample Guinness in Dublin

Enjoying our pints following the Guinness Storehouse tour

Cliffs of Moher

Happy at the Cliffs of Moher before finding out our car had a flat tire

Exploring an Irish cottage

Bunratty Castle

My wonderful parents! 

Best buds holding hands in Dingle

Traveling for Colin means multiple ice cream stops

So many different shades of green

Inch Beach

Ring of Kerry

Hi Mom!

Greek Isles Cruise: Back in Venice

After a chilly day at sea, we made it back to Venice and disembarked from our ship.  We were sad to say good-bye to the Splendour of the Seas but glad we still had a day to enjoy Venice before flying back to London.  I had visited Venice back in 2003 with my sister so had seen most of the main tourist sights in the city on that trip.  During this visit, we walked around St. Mark's Square and toured St. Mark's Basilica and Doge's Palace but other than that our day was spent just roaming around the streets and canals of the city.  We made numerous stops for pizza, gelato, prosecco, and wine and just spent the day leisurely exploring Venice.  It was a great end to our cruise!

We really enjoyed both our Mediterranean and Greek Isles cruises this summer.  I am not sure if we will become regular cruisers, but it is definitely something I can see us doing again in the future.  The cruises were a perfect way to see a lot of Europe without having the hassle of having to worry about how to travel from place to place.  Plus, we had a consistent place to sleep and store all of our luggage which makes traveling with a two year old much easier.  Both of the ships had pools and other amenities that made the trips fun for Colin too.  The Greek Isles cruise marked the end of a busy summer of travel.  We have so many great memories of all the places we visited over the summer, but I think we are all ready to spend some time in London without any more major trips planned until heading back to the US for Christmas.

St. Mark's Square

St. Mark's Square

St. Mark's Basilica

Rialto Bridge

Boats!

The iPad is better than the view of the Grand Canal

Greek Isles Cruise: Port of Katakolon

The final port of our Greek Isles cruise was Katakolon.  The main attraction at this port is a visit to Ancient Olympia, the site of the original Olympic Games.  Having found out that toddlers and ancient ruins do not mix well (we still had fresh memories of carrying Colin's stroller over the ruins of Pompeii), we decided this would be a good day to leave Colin on the ship in the nursery and do an excursion on our own.  We booked an excursion with Royal Caribbean that first visited the Olympic ruins and then toured a nearby winery.  A perfect, kid-free day.

Ancient Olympia is located a little under an hour from the cruise port of Katakolon.  Upon arrival, we were given a guided tour of the ruins.  We had to use our imaginations quite a bit to understand what the area used to look like.  We saw the ruins of the gymnasium and Olympic stadium including the finish line from the original Olympic Games.  The sanctuary was also an important place of worship as well as the site of the games.  We saw the ruins of a number of the temples used for worship of the Gods.  The Temple of Zeus was the former site of a giant statue of Zeus which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  After our guided tour, we had some time to explore the grounds on our own before taking off for the winery.

On our way to the winery, we received a page from the nursery on the pager that we were given to be used in emergencies.  We received a number of other pages right after this.  We asked the tour guides how to get in touch with the ship, and they told us there was no way to contact the ship and that we would have to wait two more hours until we were back to find out what the pages were for.  Needless to say, our time at the winery wasn't the most relaxing as we were both very worried about Colin.  After taking a tour of the winery, each table of five people was given two bottles of wine which took a bit of the edge off of our worry.  We also got a large platter filled with feta cheese, olives, tomatoes, and bread. Yum, I could live on that kind of food.

When we got back to the ship, Colin was perfectly fine and the nursery team said they must have accidentally paged us.  So, all that worrying was for nothing!  It was formal night on the ship so we enjoyed a yummy dinner and then went to bed early (well, Colin and I did - David went off gambling).  Another fun but busy day!

Ancient Olympia

Finish line in the Olympic stadium

Entrance to the Olympic stadium

Trying to enjoy or wine and appetizers despite our worry about Colin

We made it back to the ship!

Reunited with my baby (who was perfectly fine) and heading to formal night

Greek Isles Cruise: Port of Athens

The forth port of our cruise was Athens.  Athens was a great city for a cruise port.  There are some pretty amazing sights in the city, but you can easily cover them all in one day.  We got an early start off the cruise ship and were planning on taking a taxi into the city center and seeing the sights on our own. However, we were able to negotiate a private tour with a taxi driver for a reasonable price which ended up being an efficient way to see the city, especially with a toddler in tow who could care less about the ancient sights of Athens.

We started out our tour by stopping to see the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the remains of the largest temple in Ancient Greece.  Our next stop was the Athens must-see, Acropolis, the most important ancient site in the Western World, where the Athenians built their ancient masterpiece; the Parthenon.  The trek up Acropolis hill to get to the Parthenon was incredibly hot and crowded but well worth it.  Seeing the Parthenon in person was yet another bucket list item that I can now cross off thanks to all of our European travels.  After the Acropolis, we made a stop in the Plaka (Athens shopping district) for lunch.  We tried some traditional Greek souvlaki, meat and vegetables grilled on a skewer served with pita bread and cucumber sauce.  We then concluded our tour by stopping at the Panathenaic Stadium, the stadium which hosted the first modern Olympics in 1896.

We were able to see more in our four hour tour of Athens than most of the cruise excursions saw in a full day.  Plus, we were able to get back to the ship early and enjoy a nap and then some pool time while everyone else was still in Athens.  Colin spent some more time in the nursery this night while David and I dined at the specialty steak restaurant.  Another great day of cruising!

Temple of Olympian Zeus

Making the climb up Acropolis hill

Parthenon - pretty impressive

Parthenon

Panathenaic Stadium

Nap time after a hard morning of sightseeing

Greek Isles Cruise: Port of Santorini

The third port of our cruise was the one I had been most looking forward to; the Greek Island of Santorini.  It definitely lived up to my expectations.  The ship couldn't dock at this port so we had to take tender boats from the ship to the island.  We booked a Royal Caribbean excursion this day since people on excursions got priority to get off the ship and on the tender boats the earliest.  I wanted to spend as much time as possible on the island.

As we approached the island, all the white buildings on the edges of the cliffs made the island look like it was covered in snow.  We started our excursion in the village of Oia, which is the picture perfect, to-good-to-be-true place you picture when someone mentions the Greek Islands.  The city is perched at the top of a cliff and is a maze of whitewashed houses and churches with blue domes.  I felt like I was walking around in the movie "Mama Mia" (although the actual location of the film was on the Greek Island of Skopelos).  We did a bit of shopping and a lot of photo taking and then ended our time in Oia with a gyro and beer break for David and I and an ice cream break for Colin.

After some time to explore Oia, our next stop was at Santo Winery where we got to try some local wines and have some Greek snacks including olives, feta cheese, tomatoes, and bread.  Yum!  The tour concluded in Fira, the island's main town.  We had drinks and a Greek salad (and more ice cream for Colin) at a cafe with yet another unbelievable view.  There was definitely no shortage of breathtaking views on the island.  We then meandered back to the cable car which we took down to the dock where our tender boat was waiting to take us back to our ship.

Santorini was such an unbelievable place.  I really hope I am able to make it back there someday.

Whitewashed buildings looking like snow approaching the island

Picture perfect Oia

My two favorite guys

I think I should move to Oia 

Wine tasting with an amazing view

View of our ship while enjoying drinks at a Fira cafe

Colin was not impressed at all with the view

Greek Isles Cruise: Port of Corfu

The second port of our cruise was the Greek Island of Corfu.  We had to turn our clocks forward an hour this morning so it was an early start.  Ordering room service for breakfast helped with that.  The joys of cruising!

We had arranged for a private driver to show us around the island.  Our driver picked us up in his Mercedes and already had a car seat installed for Colin.  Not a bad start to the tour.  We spent the next three hours exploring the island.  We made various stops including the cliffside village of Lakones, the beach town of Paleokastritsa, a store known for its homemade olive oil, and a cafe with a view over Mouse Island.  The island was beautiful.  What we noticed most were olive trees everywhere.  The islands two main sources of revenue are tourism and olive products so this makes sense.  I managed to purchase quite a few olive products including olives, olive oil, olive spread, and olive soap during our short trip there.

After our tour, we were dropped off in Old Town.  We walked around a little and did some shopping before heading back to the ship.  We had some time for swimming after we got back and then Colin spent some time in the nursery while David and I enjoyed a kid free dinner at the sushi speciality restaurant.  It was another fun day!

10:00am beer in Lakones

Paleokastritsa

David and Mouse Island

Races back on the ship

Brrrrrr

Drinks after our sushi dinner