The Ultimate Playground of the Rich & Famous

After arriving into Monaco much later than anticipated due to an insane level of traffic coming from Switzerland into Italy, we did little more than find the AirB&B we rented and crash for the night. The next morning with clearer heads, we set off to explore the country.

We walked out of our apartment to discover that the Tour de France was in town for the weekend - on the last leg of the tour. Not being huge cycling fans, this totally wasn't on my radar but we quickly adjusted our plans so we could take part in watching some of the race.

Pre-race exhibition event

Turns out the last leg was a time trial, so everyone started at 90 second increments. We were about 1/3 of a mile from the starting line, so though the enthusiasm level from the crowd was high, the action was a bit slow. We watched the first 15-20 racers go through and decided that we had all the excitement we could handle.

We then journeyed along the waterfront and picked out our future yachts. 

Some of us were more successful than others...

From there we toured the Prince's personal auto collection. Both Prince Albert II and Adam have an eye for the luxurious ones. The difference being that the Prince, apparently, can afford this type of luxury.

Aunt Becky - It's a Porsche 9 - 1 - 1!

Sticking with our auto fantasies, we walked part of the route of the Monaco Grand Prix. Adam tells me this tunnel and curve are famous. I'll have to take his word for it.

We ended our day with a walk around the palace -- the family was in residence, so no tours :( -- and giving our greetings to Prince Rainier and Princess Grace.

The Great American Road Trip (through Europe)

 The next 10 posts or so are going to be of our epic "Great American Road Trip (through Europe)". We have planned a 23 day, 8 country, 3,400 mile trip through western Europe. It's going to be a wild trip.

Oh, and we're taking an octopus with us.

And Amanda has car potatoes.

Please don't ask how I'm doing.

The six-hour driving Day One turned into almost 10.

Here's the stops along the way:

Monaco

Luberon Valley

Andorra

Madrid

Segovia

Porto

Santander

Bordeaux

Geneva

St. Beatus / Interlaken

Hope you enjoy the trip as much as we did!

The Heidi Trail

Heidi is quite possibly the most famous Swiss child. She embodies the spirit of Swiss children with her love of nature and the mountains. Though her story is a bit dark with being orphaned at a young age, living with her grandfather in the Alps then being shipped off to other family in Germany while always yearning to go back to the mountains, she always seemed happiest in her little corner of the Alps. The author, Johanna Spyri, is said to have named the town of Maienfeld in Switzerland as Heidi's home. This village is about 40 minutes from where we live and the Heidi Trail hike through the mountains which inspired the book has been on my list since we knew we were coming over here. Despite it being so close, we've struggled to carve out the day to go hike it as it is quite high up so the mountain has a long ski season, but a short hiking season. Thankfully the stars finally aligned today with good weather, running cable cars, and no plans on our part.

As you walk the trail, there are 12 of Peter's goats who were lost for the kids to find. (Human kids -- not goat kids...) At the start of the trail everyone is given a card to stamp at each goat. If you do them in the right order, it's supposed to reveal a message from Heidi. Either we didn't do it in the right order or my German is even worse than I thought, because we have no idea what the message is.

You put the card in the goat's mouth and pull it's horns to stamp

We were supposed to stamp with the goats not kiss the goats

Regardless of our inability to complete simple tasks, we had a great time on the trail.

We did some yodeling. We walked on a "barefoot path" (I don't recommend this...ouch!). We sat in a large hand??? We chilled in hammocks in the forest. We found a playground to swing & slide on. 

The best part for me was the huge swing near the end of the trail to rest and take in all the views.

München: Germany's biggest village

Have you ever not visited a place because it was simultaneously not close enough to go without spending multiple hours traveling to get there but not far enough to justify spending multiple nights away from your own bed? Munich is that city for me. It's between 2 - 2:30 hours by car away with enough interesting things to see and do that you can't fit all of it in one day but too close to really justify spending the night. That is until our last trip when my friend and coworker, Javi, stayed with us for the weekend and we all decided that it would be a good opportunity to see a new city.

We left on Saturday morning and took what was supposed to be a quick three hour train ride from Feldkirch, Austria to the Munich, Germany. What we didn't discover until after we made the transition from Swiss rail to Deutchse Bahn was that our route on DB had been cancelled and we were placed on a longer route that would arrive an hour later. But this was a holiday trip and we didn't have any crucial plans so we rolled with it. And everything was generally fine for the first hour until we were informed that the train was going to split and everyone in our carriage would need to deboard and walk to the front of the train and reboard if we wanted to be part of the train going to Munich. We quickly followed suit and jogged down the platform to the last carriage going to Munich, hopped on and proceeded no further. The train was full! So for the next 90 minutes we stood, shoulder to shoulder in the windless breezeway with no AirCon as the train meandered the rest of the trip to Munich. To suggest that it was a challenging situation would be a severe understatement when traveling like this with two young kids. But we all made it.

When we finally made it (and after some much needed lunch and a rest), we headed off to the BMW museum in search of fast cars and hopefully a little air conditioning. Fast cars there were plenty of. AC not so much. The kids were thankfully undeterred as they tried to decide which car they wanted to take home with us. There's free samples, right??

If you look really closely at the wall behind me there is a pickup area. I wonder what Amanda got me?

If only it came in a petrol version

I'm really not ready for this!

No.

absolutely not!

After a crowded train ride back to the hotel and a nice dinner out it was time to turn in ahead of packed Sunday.

Mental Note: When Germany is hosting the Euros and Germany is playing, it's busy -
EVERYWHERE!

Javi and I made our way to Dachau early Sunday morning and arrived before the crowds got too large. As we were both well versed in WWII history and been to other holocaust sites, we skipped the guided tour and made our own way around the camp. Walking the grounds of Dachau wasn't exactly other worldly but as you stand there in the huge area set aside as the prisoner camp with the remaining foundations of the 34 prisoner barracks it's difficult to envision that this area constituted less than 1/3rd of the entire facility. As you continue to walk around and read about what took place, from the experiments on and executions of prisoners to the utilization of nearly 100 additional subcamps in the surrounding area from which prisoners where forced to work it becomes clear that any local populace claims of ignorance are absurd.

It is estimated that nearly 200,000 inmates where housed at the facility and of those just short of 42,000 where killed from 1933 until liberation in 1945. As we continued our tour I found it increasingly difficult to photograph the facility as there is simply no way to properly express through images what it's like to view the recreated barracks, or walk from the disinfection room, through the gas chambers and into the crematorium. It was a challenging visit and I certainly won't forget the experience but it was well worth the time and I would recommend everyone who gets the chance to visit Munich to come and see and remember what took place here.

While Javi and I were taking in the depths of human depravity towards one another, the girls had a decidedly more light-hearted schedule for the morning. It all started with donuts for breakfast and a very patriotic Dachshund statue in the hotel.

From there, they made their way to the tour bus with minimal distractions along the way.

From what I was able to understand listening to my three year old they rode a "tall bus with no top" around the city and "watched pretty buildings" and "horses fighting". According to the photographic evidence, this all checks out.

Apparently horses fighting is how Olivia interprets jousting...

As Javi and I made our way back to Munich, Amanda and the girls were just finishing up an American lunch so we met them at the home of the golden arches and walked back to the hotel for a brief respite before heading back out in the afternoon.

Our last journey of the weekend was to the Alte Pinakothek to see their exhibit on Rubens. During our time in London a few years ago I got to spend a significant amount of time at the National Gallery and among the hundreds of paintings we saw from many of the great masters my favorites were three landscapes by Peter Paul Rubens (A Landscape with a Shephard and his Flock, A Shephard and his Flock in a Woody Landscape and A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning), so when Amanda found a museum in Munich that had an entire gallery devoted to Rubens she added it to our agenda.

While the exhibit is mostly devoted to his religious works and portraits the scale of the paintings on display is immense to the point that I couldn't effectively capture the works on film and do them any justice. But it was enough to spend a some time taking them in alongside a few other Flemish greats like Van Dyke and Jan Brueghel. It has always fascinated me how artists from similar times and geographic areas seem to produce art of a similar style.

On our way out of the Museum we were treated to a few pieces from one of my other favorite artists, Van Gogh. On display were a landscape of Provence and one his paintings of sunflowers.

We then closed out our last day in Munich with dinner at the quintessential German Beer Garden, Hofbräuhaus. Fun fact: When Munich was bombed in WWII, the Hofbrauhaus was one of the first buildings rebuilt in the city. Ahhh, Germany priorities. For our visit, the food was hot, the beer was good and the girls loved the music. Could there be any other way to end a stay in the "Heart of Bavaria"?

I had 9 pictures to choose from of this shot. In not a single one was Olivia in focus.