After a three week visit back home to Canada, I met Cindy in London in early June – the purpose being to catch a flight to Stuttgart for our week-long adventure in Germany, beginning with the Schwarzwald. Also known as The Black Forest, it is my old stomping grounds where I lived 8 of my childhood years. We met up with friends to tour with before heading south to check out some Bavarian castles on our way to Munich. Rather than recount our entire trip through long, run-on paragraphs, as I have been known to do, I will instead provide the narrative through the following pictures and their captions. Again, there are two pages of images and so make sure you check them both out.

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With Prague and Dublin behind us, our next European adventure will bring us to my old stomping grounds, Germany, for a week. More specifically, we will be in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) around Baden, Lahr & Freiburg, where I used to live for eight years of my childhood. We will arrive in Stuttgart where a BMW rental car will be waiting for us and, hopefully, Cindy will be able to keep her eyes upon as we travel on the Autobahn to Baden-Soellingen. I plan on checking out what the area around the old base is like now, as well as finding our old apartment. We then head to our gasthaus in the hills outside of Freiburg which will be our base camp for the next 3 nights as we explore the Schwarzwald. Also, Cindy has some friends that will be in Lahr for a wedding and so we will be meeting up with them for at least one day, and maybe an evening or two depending on the wedding schedule.

After the Schwarzwald we are heading into Bavaria next to see some mountains and Neuschwanstein Castle, the inspiration for the Disney castle. We plan on taking the mountain route to get there, weather depending, which could prove to be another adventurous driving experience for Cindy. After just a night in the Bavarian Alps, we head on up to Munich for a couple of nights, stopping at the Dachau concentration camp on the way into the city. We then park the car for 2 days (although not cheaply!) and I imagine we will walk the town during the day in order to earn our beers in the evening. Munich complete, as much as we can in 3 days & 2 nights, we head to our final stop, Esslingen am Neckar, a small, medieval town just outside of Stuttgart. We wanted somewhere close to the airport for our flight the next day but didn’t want to stay in Stuttgart itself. This little place seems to fit the bill perfectly.

With just a week-long trip, we certainly won’t see all of Germany, but we are going to have a great little trip in the southern part of the country. The next trip will have to be in the north probably, such as Berlin, Cologne & Hamburg, all places that would be new for me. Other than this German trip and the Spanish Honeymoon in October, I don’t think there will be much travel in the near future. That being said, friends of ours are planning on renting a villa in Tuscany for 2 weeks in Sept 2010 and I highly doubt we will be passing that opportunity up!

Earlier last week we made plans with our friends Erika and Ray to go for a walk on Sunday but we nearly didn’t go. When we woke up yesterday the mood wasn’t with us and we almost bailed in order to stay home, but better heads prevailed and we dragged our sorry asses out of the house. Erika and Ray picked us up shortly before 11am and we made a short, curse-filled journey (Erika is not the calmest driver I have met, perhaps quite the opposite) to the other side of town to meet up some other friends of theirs, Sandra and Laurie. Cindy and I hopped in the back of Laurie’s SUV with Homer and Sherman, her two beautiful dogs, where we were licked and whined at for the hour drive to our destination – The Cleveland Way Trail in the North York Moors.

We stepped out of the cars and into the sunshine, loaded ourselves and the dogs with our walking gear and proceeded to the trail. Within about ten minutes we were given a spectacular view of the countryside and it continued for the rest of the hike. Further along the trail we came upon a glider airfield and watched as a couple of them took off to the clear, blue sky. We continued along the busy trail with the dogs getting a lot of looks and attention due to the backpacks they were wearing, mainly to carry their own water, treats and No. 2s until they could be disposed properly. We then came across the highlight for part of the trail we were following, the Kilburn White Horse, although it just looks like white rocks when you come upon it on the path. You have to take the horribly uneven and difficult stairs down to the bottom of the hill in order to get a full view of it, and even still the head can not really be seen. You need to be quite a bit further away in order to take the entire horse in properly. The headless horse seen, we made the opposite journey up the stairs and then back to the car park (aka the place with ice cream!) With our mini-trek done and our ice cream lunch enjoyed, we hopped back in the cars and made our way home, this time a lot dryer and quieter as the dogs were tuckered out. Another beautiful day in the British countryside had.

The weather today, and the last couple for that matter, was absolutely fabulous – 17 degrees and sunny. I took the opportunity to take a hike through the Nidd Gorge that is about a 15 to 20 minute walk from our front door. It was so nice out that I had to lose my long sleeve shirt and was still sweating with just my t-shirt on. It didn’t help that the hike was far from flat I suppose, but it was a fantastic walk through the woods. Along the four hour walk I ran into a pheasant, some sheep and some ducks, as well as some pretty scenery. We really do live in a beautiful part of the world. Anyways, here are the pictures from the walk which will give you a better idea of the walk then I could put into words.

Oh! And when I got home I had two messages from employment agencies about some jobs I applied for earlier this week. I got home too late to return the calls and so I will be doing that tomorrow morning. Hopefully it is good news that they are picking up the phone to call me!

We had our car pick us up to bring us to the airport, which is where the insanity began. After getting through security, we came to the airport bar which was filled with green-clad partiers downing drinks like they were Irishmen. What were the chances they were on another flight other than ours? Pretty much nil. Sure enough, our flight ended up being a scene from some college road trip movie with large groups of drunk people encouraging each other to be louder. I have never been on such an insane flight and the only thing to compare it to is the buses in Ottawa on Canada Day. We wouldn’t have minded it so much since it was only a 40 minute flight, but I was on the verge of getting up and going a few rows forward to shove the loud, high-pitched whistle that one bitch insisted blowing the entire time down her throat.

After landing and biding our time in the non-EU customs lines, we grabbed a taxi to get us to the Hilton. The driver was a very nice bloke who had quite a few ties to Canada – even though it seemed that everyone he knew that went there died young. His chattiness made the ride go quickly and next thing we knew we were at our hotel. We checked in and simply dropped off our bags as we had a concert to get to and still needed to grab a bite to eat. Food being the first priority, we made the 15 minute walk to the city center and found a lovely Japanese restaurant, thinking it was a sushi place but it having only a sushi sampler on the menu. Nevertheless it was very good even if it was expensive, just like everything else in Dublin, and I got the chance to taste a delicious green tea beer. It is very light and summery and I will be keeping my eye out for it locally if I can find it. Next stop – The Button Factory to see the Q-Tip concert.

What a great concert it was! The doors opened at 19:30 and we got there about 20:30, stood in line to get our tickets that were waiting for us and made our way inside. First things first, we needed a drink! After having procured the necessary spirits, we proceeded to try to find a spot to settle in for the show. The opening act was wrapping up their set and the main floor was starting to fill up. With neither of us on the tall side, limiting our view at concerts, we headed up to the balcony to see what was there. What was there was a fantastic spot on a side balcony right over the stage. We had a great view for the whole show and Q-Tip rocked the joint, mixing it up quite well with his solo stuff and some old A Tribe Called Quest stuff. Here is one of the videos that I took during the show and more can be found here. Quality has suffered quite a bit in the conversion and upload to Youtube as the originals have a much better picture.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After the show we made our way back to the hotel to rest up for the next day and night, as we new they would be a long one. We woke up and had a very good buffet breakfast at the hotel and then started to make our way towards the city center. On the way into town was St. Stephen’s Green Park and so we made our way inside to enjoy the sunshine and green, and it was quite deserted at 9:00am-ish. Next, we wandered through the streets towards Trinity College, which was the meeting point for our tour. This time we decided that we would take a historical walking tour of the city to learn more about the history of where we were visiting, and it was a great tour. It was a large group due to the holiday celebrations, but our tour guide, a Trinity College phD student, did a great job of showing us around the city and giving a 2.5-hour history lesson at the same time. Well worth it and I think we will seek them out wherever we go.

After our walking tour we grabbed some lunch and then wandered around some more in the Temple Bar district before meeting up briefly with a friend of Cindy’s from Harrogate. They went their own way and we headed back to the hotel to shower and get ready for the evening festivities. We were supposed to meet Cindy’s friend Kat, who she went to high school with and now lives in London, but due to a passport issue (her not having it back from renewing it) she could not make it. Nevertheless, we met up with Kat’s boyfriend Ollie (the Englishmen), his sister Nicole (the Englishwoman), her boyfriend Dave (the South African) and Ollie’s friend Adam (another Englishman, a last minute substitute for Kat) at Busker’s Bar to watch the Ireland vs Scotland Six Nations Cup rugby match. Man, I have a new appreciate for rugby after that, watching it with knowledgeable people (Nicole plays) and getting a better understanding of the game – I really enjoyed it. The rest of the evening after the game was filled with Guinness flowing out of the tap and enjoying the spectacle of people making complete fools of themselves as the place transformed from a sports bar to a nightclub very quickly.

The next morning came a little too quickly, but a hearty breakfast filled the soul for some more sightseeing, the main focus being the Guinness Storehouse factory museum. It is seven floors about how Guinness is made and the history of it, with a small sampling on the third floor (shhhh, it was before noon). The seventh floor is the circular Gravity Bar with 360 degrees of windows giving you a panoramic view of the city, and a free pint of Guinness (this time it was 12:15), although I am quite sure the pint is worked into the price of admission. I really enjoyed the place and got myself a Dublin souvenir from the shop which has some exclusive items that can’t be found elsewhere. I really did grow a fondness for Guinness after the 7-8 pints the night before and then the tour. It is a mighty fine porter!

After the Guinness factory, we made our way back to the Temple Bar district for some lunch at Elephant & Castle where I had a tuna and avocado club sandwich and homemade ginger ale – oh so yum! We were both tired from our days of walking and partaking in the Irish spirit at the bars that we decided to head back to St. Stephen’s Green Park to relax on a bench and enjoy the weather before heading to the airport. I took the opportunity to pull out my telephoto lens and got some great shots of the ducks that seemed to be in a playful mood, one of which I have entered into a photo competition and it is getting a good response – see it here. With our relaxation mission accomplished, we headed to the airport and hopped on the short flight home, which was pretty uneventful except for the drunk woman behind us that proceeded to explain to the poor girl beside her about how she hates taking off (not the landing) and how when flying crashing is part of the risk – throughout the entire flight!

Another fantastic trip to add to the memory books, and maybe even a real book. I am not sure if I mentioned it, but I created a photo book with pictures from the Prague trip and I think I will do the same for this one. The quality is fantastic and it is a unique way of documenting our adventures. And now my short post is done haha. Here are some photos to chew on that show our trip – for night time pics look at Cindy’s as I left my camera in the hotel and we just took the compact with us.

And here is Cindy’s view and our night time shots….