European Getaway Part 1

WOW. Hello blog land. I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot lately. I’ve fallen off the face of the Earth, apologize, come back for 2 days, and then repeat the whole process again.

Sometimes this makes me rethink this whole blogging thing. But then as soon as I open Windows Live Writer – or have a really fabulous meal – or have some beautiful photography, I get right back in my game and cannot imagine NOT blogging. I know, I know. You will believe it when you see (read) it. I find it hard to fathom how so many amazing bloggers out there can blog 1, 2 even 3 times a day! I envy you!! I wish I had the time and dedication – or maybe I can, it’s just I don’t devote my time or dedication to blogging.

When I come home from work I want to spend time with Eric. Eating dinner, chatting about our days – and really try and limit computer interaction (at least for a little while). This is my priority and the thing I look forward to most all day. I want to fit blogging in there, but I don’t think I can realistically keep it up every single day. I think this will become more of a weekly blog – or if I read, eat, see, experience anything extraordinary that I want to share with you all.

Given this realization I just returned from the most amazing vacation of my life. I spent 9 beautiful, glorious days traveling throughout Europe.

I was pretty stoked to get out and not be at work for 7 whole working days!! I woke up last Thursday morning confused as to why my alarm did not go off to go to work. “Oh yeah! I am going to Europe today!” is what I thought to myself. I had a few hours to spare, so I went for a long run as I knew I would not have the opportunity to go for a long run for a week. I ran 8.5 miles in my new Lululemon tights (OMG I LOVE THESE) and then packed up to go to the airport!

So a very tragic thing happened right away. I forgot my camera battery. O.M.G. Who does that? What blogger, person, traveler DOES such a horrible thing? Oh yeah, me. That’s who. Luckily Eric’s mom deemed me the sole owner of her digital camera for the trip!!! She does not take very many pictures so she was more than willing to hand it over to me.

 

After a 10 hour, long, sleepless flight, we arrived in Frankfurt on Friday morning. Needless to say I was pretty happy to be on the ground again!!

And very happy to find this….

Nutella. Highlight of Europe.

Even though I was super tired, we all tried to stay up the whole day so we would be on the right time zone. Europe is 8 hours ahead, so by the time we landed it was 9:45 AM – the next day!

Our first stop: Heidelberg, Germany.

Also known as my prior home for 8 months during my sophomore year of college. We came to Heidelberg to visit Eric’s younger brother who is participating in the exact same exchange/overseas program I did four years ago. After checking into our CUTE old hotel

(Bismarck and Mark Twain supposedly have stayed there) we decided to go out for some traditional German food and one of my old stopping grounds: Vedders. Here you can get HUGE beers and plates of cheese and sausages among many other super heavy German foods. I had a pretzel and some of the cheese along with a much smaller beer than you see in this picture 🙂

Eric and I fought off the urge to nap and walked around the beautiful city.

Heidelberg is home to a beautiful semi destroyed castle. We ventured up the long windy path to check out the castle grounds and see the beautiful view.

 

On our way I found my old house that I lived in while I studied here! Oh how I miss those days….

We were about to go home but decided to check out a super market/department store instead. Someone was very happy to find vegetables galore!

We eventually headed back and took a nice 45 minute power nap before dinner! It did wonders let me tell you. We went to one of my favorite restaurants in Heidelberg for dinner. Regie.

They serve this amazing dish called “flammkuchen” which literally translates to flame cake. Basically it is like a really thin crust pizza, but instead of red sauce there is a crème fraiche/sour cream sauce with multiple toppings. The most traditional is onion and bacon. These are the most tasty things known to man! I practically devoured the whole thing that Eric and I agreed to share.

This restaurant is really cute as everything on the menu (drinks included) are named after Hollywood actors or movies themselves.

The next morning Eric and I woke up bright and early for a run along the Neckar River.

We wound up at a local gym where we gladly paid 10 Euros each to use the treadmill and elliptical. I was immediately confused because everything was in kilometers per hour instead of miles per hour. The only distance I knew off the top of my head were 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) and 10 k (6.2 miles). I opted for the 5k.

Eric was as happy as a clam on his elliptical.

Thank you Jacky’s Gym!!

We spent the rest of the rainy, dreary day walking around town and chilling in cute little coffee shops.

mmm. Super frothy cappuccino.

And more coffee… hey, we were jet lagged.

The next day we woke up and had the AMAZING buffet breakfast the hotel offered.

They had EVERYTHING! Yogurt, granola, oatmeal, bread, cheese, meat, jam, nutella, eggs, salmon, fruit. You name it – they had it. I must admit I am a sucker for pretzel bread. I am surprised I did not turn into a pretzel or a baguette on my return.

Well kiddos, I will leave you there. I have much more to recap and will have to get to those later today or tomorrow.

I also used my crock pot for the first time last night!  A recipe will be posted soon!

xoxo!