Arcachon/ Saint-Emilion/ Bordeaux

Before we went to Barcelona, we were invited by Thibaut's parents to spend time in the Bassin d'Arcachon, which is an area on the ocean not too far from Bordeaux.  We spent five days there with his parents, sister and his brother-in-law.  Everyday we had a different activity:

The first day we hiked the Dune du Pyla, which is the tallest sand dune in Europe.  Walking uphill is hard. Walking uphill on sand is even harder. It was a beautiful view from the top, and we had a nice walk on the beach too. 

Day two we took a boat across the Bassin d'Arcachon, and spent the day hiking around, a little over ten kilometers! Thankfully it was all flatland. 

Day three was our lazy beach day, and I loved every minute of it. 

Day four we spent the entire day in Saint-Emilion, which is a really cute little wine village about an hour away from Arcachon.  Thib's parents have friends that live nearby and we all decided to meet for lunch and some sightseeing, and even some wine tasting for the day.  On the way back we visited the Chateau Michel de Montaigne, which is a famous chateau where the author Michel de Montaigne lived in the 1500's.  

Finally, we visited the Oyster shacks, and learned all about how oysters are made.  You might think it's easy, but there's a whole method behind it.  Who knew?  Unfortunately for the others, NOT for me because I hate oysters, there was some kind of oyster plague happening and no one was allowed to eat Arcachon oysters during the time we were there. 

On the last night we decided to stay in Bordeaux since our flight was on Sunday afternoon.  We kind of just wandered around, had dinner and drinks, and most importantly, finally found Thibaut some oysters!

thibs and his dad at dune du pyla

view from the top

walking on the beach

and back up the dune...

Arcachon

our hotel

Saint-Emilion

the wine purchases! 

Bordeaux

finally got them.

Barcelona

Well it's been a very busy couple of weeks for me!  I had three weeks off of school (spring break combined with a reading week to prepare for exams) and I decided that I needed to take advantage of visiting more of Europe while everything is still easily accessible.  I'm going to start at the end because I remember it the most...

Thibaut and I booked a last minute trip to Barcelona. I had been there before in 2006, and he was there when he was little, but neither of us seemed to remember it very well.  We found a really cheap flight from Bordeaux, and booked a room through his hotel company and were on our way.

Our trip was amazing, we had such beautiful weather, saw so many things, ate great food and were just so happy with every place we visited.  Our favorite things were everything that is Gaudi, the famous architect of Barcelona.  It's a great change from all the typical museums, roman ruins etc that most European cities have to offer, Barcelona is much more modern.  Some days we would leave the hotel at 10am and not get back until 1am, there was just too much to do. Our favorite Gaudi things that we visited were :
Casa Battló
Park Guëll
Sagrada Familia cathedral
Casa Mila
Casa Vincens

The two that were well worth the money to go inside were the Casa Battló, and Sagrada Familia.  I stole the first picture below from Wikipedia to give you a better idea of how Sagrada Familia looks inside, it's amazing. We spent at least two hours in each place and listened to every word of the audio guide, it made us notice so many more things that we never would have noticed otherwise.

Otherwise we visited Poble Espanyol, which is an outdoor museum, the BEACH, which was barely relaxing because there were people trying to sell us stuff the entire time (I gave into this cute little asian woman giving 5 euro back massages), and the Barcelona soccer stadium, which is one of the biggest in the world.  Obviously the last one was not for me, but it made Thibaut's year. It was definitely hard to leave this city after only 5 days, we could have stayed another week and never run out of things to do!

Click on the pictures to see the full image:

inside the Sagrada Familia

Sagrada Familia

Casa Battló

inside Casa Battló

roof of casa battló

mosaics in Park Guëll

view from the park 

Casa Vincens 

Poble Espanyol 

Stockholm

I'm a little behind here as usual, but in March my friend Devin and I went to Stockholm for a weekend.  I was getting antsy since it had been a full 3 weeks without traveling, so we found a cheap flight and went to check out some more of Scandinavia. I visited Norway last year and pretty much loved it so I was excited to check out another place. 

We were so lucky to have such amazing weather, it was a little bit chilly but we had blue skies the whole time!  This seems to be my luck with vacations, and I'm not mad about it.

The first day we arrived we just checked into our hostel, which was so nice, clean and welcoming, and then walked around the city.  We thought we'd have a casual beer, but when we saw the prices, we went to the 7/11 and decided to just drink in the streets, as you do.  I was shocked at how expensive beer was!  It was like ten dollars for a pint of beer.  I am not paying that. 

The next day we walked around the city, explored a local zoo/outdoor museum called Skansen which was awesome, checked out the Vasamuseet and enjoyed the sunshine. The Vasamuseet is a museum where they restored and entirely put back together a ship that sunk right outside of Stockholm in the 17th century.  They somehow salvaged it over a hundred years later, got it up from the bottom of the ocean and brought it back to life.  I fell asleep during the video so that's all I can really say about that, but the ship was cool to look at!

Our favorite part of the trip was the concert and bar that we went to that night, where they had FREE live music playing and lots of cool-looking hipster kids.  Those Swedes really know how to dress, and I have never felt so midwestern and uncool in my life.  Both of the bands that played were great, we met a few really nice Swedes, and this time we learned to BYOB so we didn't have to worry about the absurd drink prices! 

The next day we didn't have much on our schedule, we just wandered around the old town, did some shopping, and visited the Grand Hotel, where my Grandpa and uncle Charlie went to years and years ago.  We just sat in the lobby and people watched pretty much, but it was funny being somewhere where I knew that they were so many years ago. 

Overall my favorite Swedish custom that we picked up on (thanks to Rick Steves I have to say) is fika.  Fika is the Swedes ritual coffee break.  They have a big coffee, american style, and some sort of pastry (my fave was the cinnamon buns. so good.), sit outside, and enjoy their coffee break with friends.  Since it's just a few dollars, this is a custom we really got into.  Our favorite part of the day was enjoying our fika break and taking in as much people watching as possible.  One thing that we really noticed is that pretty much every young couple is pushing around a stroller, and usually has another baby on the way.  It's a major baby boom in Stockholm!  Something else that caught our attention is that Sweden is way more progressive than France.  France does everything to keep their culture, old buildings and customs, and in turn always seems just a few steps behind the rest of the world. Sweden is the complete opposite, and almost seems a little bit too far ahead. If you've ever stepped foot in an IKEA, you know what I mean.  Anyway we loved Stockholm: fika, hipsters and all. Great weekend getaway! 

Skansen

Devo with the swedish mascot, the Dalahäst

reindeer!

What they used to use for scuba diving, called a diving bell.  It pretty much just gave you a tiny air pocket to breathe in, it must have been terrifying 

The Vasa

extremely lifelike and creepy replica of a man's skeleton that they found in the Vasa

Alsace & Munich

Ok I'm a little behind on my blogging here!  Two weeks ago my Mom came into town for a very short one week visit!  I picked her up at the airport and we spent the first day in Reims, so she could picture my house and where I am living.  There's not much to do here, so we saw the most important thing first, which is the champagne cellars.  The one we decided to visit was Mumm.  We had a nice tour and got to taste THREE different champagnes, a rosé, and two grand crus. After that we visited the cathedral, had dinner, and met up with my friends, who were very excited to meet this Carol Ann that they'd been hearing about!  That just about sums up Reims, not the most exciting city around...

From Reims we headed to Turckheim where we spent two nights with Thibaut's parents, who were awesome hosts as usual.  We visited some of my favorite villages in the region, Kaysersberg, Riquewihr and Eguisheim.  Thibaut was able to come for one of the nights too, so we all had dinner together in Colmar. We were very lucky with the weather, the sun was shining the entire time we were there! 

Kaysersberg 

From Alsace we moved onto Munich.  I had visited Munich a few years back with Shannon for Oktoberfest, but I didn't feel like I really saw the real city since it was during such a crazy time. We stayed in a really nice hotel close to the station, with a HUGE breakfast buffet so obviously I was in heaven.
The first day we shopped and walked around the city, had an amazing lunch at one of the local restaurants (Rick Steves recommendation of course) and just hung out. At night we went to dinner at this awesome little hole in the wall restaurant with an accordion player.  He apparently was hilarious, but unfortunately we had no idea what he was saying!  It was fun anyway and a great atmosphere.

The next day, we had our own personal tour guide, Maryvonne, who is Thibaut's Mom's best friend.  She met us in the morning and showed us her favorite thing in Munich, she's French but has lived there for over ten years.  It was really cool to walk around with someone from there, we got to see different neighborhoods, stores and places that we never would have known to go!  We kind of got more of a feel for the city and were able to decide where we wanted to spend more time over the next few days That night we went to the HOFBRAUHAUS, a must-see for anyone visiting Munich.  So fun. We sat next to some young german guys, and after a few biersteins they of course got brave with their English and started talking to us.  It was funny at first but after their 3rd or 4th liter of beer Mom and I thought that was the right moment to leave!

The next day we decided to get out of town and take a little day trip, and we ended up choosing a town on the border of Austria, called Mittenwald.  It was a few hour train ride away but the scenery was nice and we really didn't have much else to do! It was nice to have a more relaxing day. We arrived in Mittenwald around lunchtime and found our way to the cable car up the mountain to catch a view of the surroundings.  Unfortunately we missed the memo to wear hiking shoes, whoops.  Once we got up the cable car, you needed to climb a little higher to see the view, it was a little difficult to climb up the snow in my converse shoes and Mom couldn't make it at all!  We still enjoyed some views from the top of the mountain and soaked up the 70+ degree sun.  I could have worn a bathing suit and been happy!  It was soo hot. Aftewards we went down the mountain and walked around the charming town of Mitenwald, with painted buildings and a very Bavarian feel.  We got some dessert- apple streudel of course- and hopped on the train back to Munich.  This night we decided to try another brewery, called the Augustiner, great food and a little bit calmer atmosphere than the Hofbrauhaus!

On our last day we decided to go back to visit a few places in Munich that we had seen during our visit with Maryvonne.  The place I was the most intrigued by was the outdoor market, called the Viktualienmarkt, where we saw tons of people outside drinking beer and enjoying the sunshine. We walked around the market, made some cheese and sausage purchases, and enjoyed a sausage and beer lunch outside with all the locals.  I could have stayed there forever just people watching! Afterwards we visited the palace in the city, did some shopping, and eventually ended back up at the market for another beer. That night we decided to go back to the hofbrauhaus, which was a MUCH different atmosphere than a thursday night.  It was so crowded and hot!  The guys next to us were so drunk I almost had a heart attack laughing at them.  

The best part about it all was the excellent company it was nice to spend some mom and daughter time, thanks for visiting Mom!! xoxo

brave man surfing on the river! must be freezing

the town hall

Maryvonne

hofbrauhaus

cable car wayyyy up the mountain

Mittenwald

the outdoor market