Fairy Tale Road Trip

Color me excited!! Wait, what color would excitement be if it were a color?? Anyway...

I'm already in the process of planning Eric & I's vacation for our fifth year wedding anniversary. Fifth!? Wow! Time flies! Yes, I realize it's not till July, but still...you gotta be on the ball when it comes to taking time off from work and making reservations where ever it is you're wanting to go, especially in Europe. 

So, we have about a year left in Belgium (sigh) and I don't wanna leave Europe without seeing some really beautiful, fairy tale style castles. Sure, I've seen various castles throughout Belgium and the Netherlands, a few there and there in Germany..but I wanna see the ones that'll make you stop dead in your tracks and stare in awe. After checking various sites, I found a hotel for us to stay at that's only 10 minutes away from three fantastic castles!

Neuschwanstein Castle

Whoever hasn't heard of this castle must be living under a rock. Word on the street is that Neuschwanstein was the inspiration for Walt Disney's famous fairy tale castle that you always see at the beginning of his movies. 

Then again, there's so many gorgeous castles throughout Europe..especially Germany, it wouldn't surprise me if he made a hybrid castle out of all the various ones they have. Here's some info on the place via Wikipedia.

Number two is a different style of castle I wanna check out is Hohenschwangau Castle. Obviously, it's nothing like Neuschwanstein, but hey, it's Germany :) What else would you expect? Info from Wikipedia.

 The third castle is Hohes Schloss Castle. It's not as high profile as the others, but it's still a castle to check out :)  It's one of the oldest standing Gothic castles they have for that area. 

While we're in the midst of all that greatness, I really wanna check out the Museum of Bavarian Kings. 

When Eric and I were in Berchtesgaden last year, we learned some pretty interesting things about the various mountains and lakes and the kings they were named after. So, I figured it'd be pretty interesting to see some of the actual things from the kings who owned these amazing castles and their history, aside from their fantastic homes.  Although if I remember correctly, it was King Lugwig II that built the majority of the massive castles in southern Germany. 

Last but not least...

Hohenzollern Castle

This one was actually suggested to me by a gal here since she & her husband had visited it. She even said that this particular castle is better than the previous two I listed! That says a lot since Neuschwanstein Castle is a pretty heavy hitter! Here's some amazing information on the castle provided by Wikipedia. 

We'll be hitting this one up on the return leg of our trip since it's about three hours from where we'll be staying. After looking through their site, I already know that cameras aren't allowed within the show rooms (which is everywhere I wanna be), so, I'll see what I can do in terms of getting some sort of pictures during the visit :) At least they offer guided tours! I figured it'd be for the best that we get there, go on a tour and take our time since it looks like a pretty large castle, chill for the evening then head out the next morning back for home since it's a five and a half hour drive. 

 Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVED our trip last year when we went to Berchtesgaden (here's the second part of that trip) , but that was such a long long drive that by the time we got home, we were pretty spent. 

I'M EXCITED!!!! :D

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Down Time Therapy

Ahhhhh...I feel SO much better! Getting out of Belgium and hanging out with some friends was just what the doctor ordered. Don't get me wrong, I have people here that I enjoy hanging out with, but it's different when there's not various hidden strings attached or underlying motives. 

Eric & I headed over to Olsbrücken,Germany which is about a half hour from Ramstein Air Force Base. The town is very pretty and nestled in the hillsides, no high amounts of traffic. All around, it was very very peaceful and totally loved it. Our friends live in an old flour mill that was restored & converted into various "condos", there's several different units and it's right next to a little river and surrounded by trees. Ah! I loved it! Sorry, I didn't bother taking my camera with me because, frankly, I wanted to enjoy my down time rather than lugging it around. 

We got to catch up with friends, tormented their red head son, and attempted to steal their 2 year old Basset hound which is nicknamed "Dumb Drops" because she's a little on the "special" side..all while hanging out, enjoying the amazing weather (yes! I actually got some sun!) AND getting our retail needs filled. For the most part, I behaved as well as I could with my diet over there considering there's a current  E. coli outbreak and all of the restaurants we ate at weren't serving lettuce, tomatoes, spinach or cucumbers..sooo that kinda took away the majority of my options! So, even though I ate at The Big Emma's and even at Macaroni Grill, I managed to get a good amount of walking in..so I think everything balanced out :)

 Since we were able to raid Ramsteins massive BX, I managed to pick up some things I've been wanting:

The last few times I've been there, I always see this vendor with wood-burned family signs (you can have them customized) with various pictures of Germany on it. You can get a standard German village with a bell tower, the German mountains, Neuschwansein Castle (the one that looks like the Walt Disney castle) or you can have a blank board with your family name on it. I opted for thenmountainside with a watermill. Most of the signs said," Germany" or " Deutschland"on the banner, but I preferred to have it say "Est. 2007" considering we live in Belgium, not Germany (TONS of people back in the States always ask me how Germany is...I'm not in that country!) and I know whenever I look at the sign, *I* know that we got it in Germany ;) It's painted very nicely and the whole piece is about the size of a large dinner plate:

Since I was waiting on the guy to do my sign, I ventured around and ended up finding a new lock wallet by Vera Bradley in addition to some makeup bags I was looking for. I'm sure you're asking "Erika, why did you get two makeup bags?"...well, the smaller one is for my purse and it'll help organize the chaos in there and the other one is for my weekend travel bag :)

One thing lead to another and I some how ended up over at The Body Shop. So, I got some much needed olive body butter, coconut lip butter, face cleaning stuff as well as some goodies to pamper my feetsies.

  All in all, I'm really looking forward to going back there later in July / early August!

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Week 12

Maybe it's a good thing that Eric was gone this week? lol. I managed to lose 1.8lbs!

Hopefully my plateau was short lived *fingers crossed* so maybe I'll start making some additional progress. I'm just SHY of being 20lbs lighter and I can definitely tell since my pants are literally getting too lose for my hips! When I was doing some errands yesterday, I was in the midst of checking out at a grocery store in The Netherlands and I forgot something I was supposed to get. So, while the cashier was doing her thing, I jogged over to the aisle I needed to go to and my pants started sagging! A LOT! It felt like they were gonna fall off! I guess it's time to drop down a pant size (score!!!) to see how those feel. 

This weekend is going to be a bit of a challenge for me since I'm going out of town to Germany for the three day weekend. For one, I love German food. Two, we're going to our favorite restaurant, which is "The Big Emmas"..they have huge serving portions. I know Eric is chomping at the bit to eat there, but I still need to behave while enjoying myself. 

Before, I really wanted to have pork Cordon Bleu with their fantastic potato medallions, but now I'll stick with their awesome chicken salad (even that's gonna be too much for me to eat!):

I hope everyone has a fantastic Memorial Day weekend! Tah!

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Welcome to 2011

Gosssshhh... 2011. Where has the time gone? Time has flown by so much, it's crazy.

So at this point, we have almost a year left in Belgium. It doesn't even feel like we've been here for two years already! I absolutely LOVE living here! Seriously, I love it. If we could stay in Europe and live here for the rest of our lives, I'd totally do it. Sadly, Eric has another five and a half years left with the Air Force before we can settle down for good. I'm hoping we'll end up at another overseas base after here, preferably over in Germany! Oh man, if we can do that, I'll be a happy camper! We should be finding out around June whether or not it's a possibility for us.. so here's to crossing our fingers! 

In other news, since we have a year left, I'm in this mode to get rid of junk. I don't like clutter, but our house isn't exactly spacious and our garage still looks like the day we moved in. Boxes are everywhere! We're horrible little procrastinators when it comes to that kinda stuff. Hopefully I can blow through it before the springtime hits because, don't laugh, I'm afraid of working in there with all types of spiders. The spiders in Belgium are HUGE! They seriously freak me out! Right now, it's too cold for them (yay!) so the sooner I can hammer out the garage, the less spider filled boxes I have to deal with. Well, not me. Eric has to deal with them. The second I see a spider, I ninja vanish. 

We went through some of our stuff the other day and decided to sell off our Wii, it's accessories and games since it doesn't get much attention anymore. Rather than sit and collect dust, it found its way to a loving, new home. Yay! Now I'm considering going through my "Purse Tomb", as Eric calls it. I have tons and tons of purses... Coach, Dooney and Burke, Kathy Van Zeeland, Jessica Simpson..the list goes on and on. I'm to the point where I don't want to hold onto these anymore, so hopefully I can find a new home for them.

I guess the whole point of this post is "PURGE! PURGE! PURGE!", hahahaaa

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Smash & Grab, Baby!

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll remember the post about when I attended the Bazaar in Germany a few weeks ago in addition to venturing over to Bernkastle to pick up some pottery for Eric. Well, that day didn't end well...so Eric and I figured we'd attempt again sometime in the Spring to return there since the winter weather doesn't exactly make the drive very enjoyable.

We didn't stick with that plan. 

Yesterday, we made our way over Spangdahlem AB to do some shopping since our "local" base isn't exactly known for their wide selection of goods. For the last several days, Europe has been getting smacked with numerous snow storms which has made life a lil more...errr.. difficult for people who aren't exactly experts with driving in those type of road conditions. Since Eric gets to drive to Spangdahlem several times a month, he was volunteered to do the driving since I'm usually a nervous wreck when there's snow / ice on the road. I will say, though, that the scenery was really pretty!

 For the life of me, I don't understand why Belgium only salted one lane of the highway. You could tell that only one side was done, which sucked! Made the drive take ten times longer and people were driving rather stupid to bypass slower moving vehicles. 

 Perfect example of how the roads looked in Belgium. You can see on the left hand side that there's road tracks from cars that passed by, but you could see them slip and slide a little bit when driving through the snow / ice.

Once we hit the German border, the roads INSTANTLY got better! It was SUCH a relief! The whole highway was plowed and salted..so nice! 

Random cow statue I liked when we stopped to refuel:

Once we reached Spangdahlem and did out shopping, we ran over to Bitburg since I was wanting to check out the Polish pottery shop I had heard about. Honestly, I was expecting a decent amount of selection...I was wrong, sadly. When we were leaving the shop, I stopped into a small antique shop that had some really cool little signs and paintings. I fell in love with a pizza paddle that had edelweiss painted all over it! I love love love edelweiss! In addition to the pizza paddle, I found another cute little sign that is rather fitting for our bathroom...haa...

 From there, we headed on over to Bernkastle to attempt, yet again, to invade the pottery shop since Eric was really wanting those bowls and I wanted to get them for him as his part of his Christmas gift. We ended up taking a different route to get there and the countryside was SO so pretty! 

I was getting a little nervous once we actually got to Bernkastle since we started seeing signs with huge red "x"s through them as if they were saying the town was shut down or something. It was a little unsettling considering we had driven the extra distance JUST for that shop and it would've been our luck that it was shut down or something. Who knows...maybe the town was inaccessible due to heavy snow fall or something. Turns out that the heart of the town was shut down due to road reconstruction. We managed to find a parking spot not too far from there and walked the rest of the way in :)

A pretty view of the vineyard:

There was actually a Christmas Market going on in the town, but it was a little on the disappointing side. I guess I'm used to the larger ones from Aachen, Brussels and Brugge. This one mainly had vendors selling food and drinks and everyone was hanging out and getting drunk, lol. I suppose that's really the only thing to do when it's all cold and snowy...eat, drink and gossip!

Got to the store, gathered up all the bowls that Eric had wanted in addition to a a few butterbells that were requested on the behalf of some people, then rolled out! I think we spent barely ten minutes in the place since we were just wanting to get our stuff and head on home. Word on the street was that there was another snow storm that was inbound..and we could feel it in the air, as funny as that sounds. 

Here are the bowls we picked up...Eric's a very happy camper, lol. You can see how large they are (figured that holding one of 'em can help gauge the size)...two of 'em have handles cause they're deemed to be used as soup bowls, lol.

So! Not too shabby! Got to run around the Belgian / German countryside, picked up some TV shows we've been wanting for a while, got some cool goodies for the house in addition to the coveted bowls that Eric has wanted for some time. NO MORE traveling around in crappy weather for a while :)

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LOL..ahh...

Remember several weeks ago how I posted about a bad day where I should've "paid attention to the signs" of something not wanting me to go anywhere. I totally should've listened. Really.

One, Eric and I had planned to go back to Bernkastel a while ago so we can get some bowls for him from that wine / pottery place. Since today was considered a "Family Day" at his work, he "had the day off". Well, something happened at work, which caused him to no longer have a day off due to being on call. Since he was on call, he wasn't allowed to go with me. Thanks, Eric's work! Doesn't seem like a big deal since several other peoples husbands ended up not having the day off, but, it screwed up our plans (like usual) and it's left me a little bitter. 

A friend of mine ended up coming with me to Germany to check out a local bases "Bazaar". A Bazaar is when a lot of vendors get together and sell their products (wine, toys, signs, rugs, pottery, etc). I've missed the last few due to people usually planning their Pampered Chef parties on those specific days, but I finally managed to attend one! They happen twice a year (typically)..in the Spring and in the Fall. While trying to get there, I experienced extremely heavy fog, rain, bad traffic, stupid drivers..by the time I tried to park, I dealt with rude volunteers for the event. It was fantastical.

Once we got there, we checked out the two hangers where the event was taking place. At first, it was pretty impressive because there's all these cool things to check out and lots of stuff to pick through. Then after a while, you realize there's alot of things you can get from there, locally, and the majority of the stuff is over priced. Yes. Yes. I realize it's an event where you can get "unique" gifts for friends and family for the upcoming holidays, but I can't help but the vendors tend to gouge the customers. *Just my opinion*

The first hanger I went to really didn't have anything of much interest...then I found a booth that had shopping bags. Shopping bags...how exciting? Right? Actually, when you go grocery shopping over here, you have you bring your own shopping bag and bag things yourself. I actually like it considering you don't come home with tons of plastic bags. Anyway, these bags were really cool...they fit ONTO your shopping cart (it's elastic!). There's hooks on the support handles you snap onto your cart and put your groceries into, once you're done at check out, you put your groceries back into the bag, pick it up, then go on your merry way. Not bad for $13.50! 

Relaxed:

Stretched as if it's in a cart:

The hooks on the bag to snap onto the cart:

Another friend of mine attended a different Bazaar about a week ago and there was a vendor there who sells tapestries. I, for one, love tapestries and have a few various pieces around my house. She ended up posting pics of hers and I instantly fell inlove with one of  'em, which was an old school map with leafs bordering it. 

Here's a pic of it supplied by her site (it's a gorgeous color in person):

I finally located the vendor that my friend had purchased hers from, but noticed there was a second tapestry seller and checked out what she had. A lil' old lady named Roza was the owner and was extremely friendly and very helpful. When I say helpful, she helped me look through tons of tapestries, educated me on the various different types she carried, she even had tapestry purses! I loved her stuff because the back of the pieces were layered and padded (helps it hang better), the yarn was weaved together wonderfully and she was very accommodating with the prices. I REALLY wanted to get a "Tree of Life" for my wall because it's a great piece, plus I have a table runner and throw pillow with the same pattern. Luckily, she had a nice large piece AND even had matching euro sham covers for throw pillows (I wanted 'em for our bedroom). A plus: She has a shop over at Ramstein, so if we're wanting to pick up more stuff from her, we just need to make an appointment and she'll help us out. Nice!

Here's the stuff I ended up with from her (keep in mind, Eric is 6'3"):

The back of the tapestry:

The pillow shams...don't mind Eric, he just missed me and wanted to give me a hard time while modeling my goodies! They're nice cause they have zippered bottoms so I can just take them off when I wanna clean them (dry clean, only).

I went to talk to the other vendor (the one with the world map ) and I didn't buy anything. His stuff was nice, but, very expensive. I found the map tapestry, but when I was asking him about where it was made, he seemed to get a little defensive and kept referring to the price is guaranteeing quality. His rant went on for five minutes (atleast), which made a few shopping customers put their stuff back and move on. Not only that, but he was talking about the vendor I had just shopped with and was speaking badly about her to whoever was in his booth area ...that made me put the 160 euro piece back and keep walking. I don't mean to speak badly about the guy, but his whole domineer really bothered me.

When we were on our way out, my friend stopped off at a booth that had like a wine liqueur. It almost tastes like Bailey's Irish Cream! It's AMAZING! I ended up getting two bottles of it, figured we could use it for the upcoming holidays. ONLY THING IS: You should only have a shot glass of it and call it a day. It's VERY sweet, so you don't wanna go overboard on the stuff.  Good news? The gal who sells this stuff has a shop at Spang, so if we're wanting more, we can stop off there and pick more up :) 

"Likorspezialitat of fresh cream and high-quality "fine wine edge," a distillate of fine wines. Perhaps check it straight, keep with ice or with coffee, after opening the bottle please cool".

From there, we headed over to Bernkastel since I was still wanting to pick up some bowls for Eric (he's been really wanting some). It's about forty-ish minutes from the Bazaar. I might as well go the extra forty something minutes than drive two and a half hours all over again, ya know? SO, we get there and there's all kinds of parking! What luck! The last time I was there, we had to park half a mile away...it sucked to carry all that pottery then! When I found a spot pretty close to where I needed to be, I was stoked! 

Well. I found out why there was so much parking.......

Everything was closed....on a Friday. Of. Course.

It's funny cause I was joking earlier saying "Watch. With the way this day is going, that place is going to be closed". Go. Me.

Now, the following pictures I'm posting are because some gals were asking me where exactly this store with the German pottery is. I attempted to look it up through Google, Google Maps, Google Earth and all that jazz, but I suppose the Google Car hasn't made it's way over there yet to get better detailed pictures of streets and such (they really need to get on that). So, hopefully this helps: 

Here's an overhead view to get an idea of distance... I parked in the parking lot right behind a German restraunt (you have to go up some stairs to get to the main sidewalk).. the circle is where I parked, the star is the pottery / wine shop.

When you get into the sidewalk, go to the right and walk down about two streets (two streets on the left). If you get to the intersection that takes you over the bridge, you've gone too far!! See the peachy colored building? Go to that.

You'll get to the peachy colored building and when you look between it and a dark / older looking stone building, you'll see a statue down the way of (what looks like) Medusa. Walk towards the statue.

Once you get to the statue, keep walking past it in the direction of a yellow building (it's a cafe). You'll pass by a tourist / souvenir store to the right (lots of clutter in the window)..you only have to walk about 30 seconds till you reach the wine / pottery store:

TAH DAH! You can't miss it! It's right down the alley way! Hopefully when you go, IT WON'T BE CLOSED!! 

All of the stuff that was waving to me from the window saying "Ne ner ne ner neee nerr..you can't get me!!".

I think what super irked me was that there were no store business hours posted...nothing. I searched all over the damn windows, peered through the gated glass doors to see the main entry area...no hours. NOTHING! I guess I have to call in advance to see if they're open, then drive three-ish hours once they answer the phone next time. Lovely. 

So... yeah... that topped my day. Had a very....very long four hour ride home due to more idiots on the way back (stupid drivers, accidents, bumper to bumper traffic, more idiots). Loads of happiness with a side of migraine.

I can now say I've officially been to a Bazaar...don't think I'll make it a point to go to another one since they seem a little overrated. I'd much prefer to go to a Christmas Market (which I'll be going to on Tuesday) since I can get alot of the same things there (except pretty tapestries) amongst other cool / unique things.

The End.

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