Ok, I'm back!

Man, the older I get, the harder it is to be away from home for extended periods of time! There was a time in my life when I would have been happy to travel 365 days/year, but the last few days of our trip was me counting the minutes until I could go home again. Weird!

Anyway, we had a great vacation together. My husband and I haven't travelled all that much together - I usually go by myself due to work schedules or his inability to commit to making a decision, and frankly I really enjoy travelling alone. But, as my H starts in a new university program tomorrow and was unemployed this summer, he actually agreed to go with me this time, and it was really cool. We got along 98% of the time; we only had problems when he was driving and he didn't know where we were going or was otherwise stressed out. He tends to stress out easily in situations like that and screamed at me more than a few times... until I got fed up enough to get out of the car in Verona, grab my bags, and walk to a youth hostel by myself, leaving him to panic by himself for a few hours until I came back and got him. Don't mess with LMo.

Anyway, we spent most of our time in Germany, in tiny towns. For some reason, visiting cities didn't really appeal to me all that much this time, although usually I really enjoy window shopping and people watching. Not to mention the fact that it is insanely expensive to travel in Europe right now, and we blew our entire accommodation budget within the first week My usual M.O. is to not overplan and just see where I end up, but that is not a good strategy in Europe right now. The hostels that will accomodate "older" travelers were often booked, forcing us to cough up cash for a more expensive hotel, and unlike in the US, you can't just keep going until you find somewhere affordable because many hotels and inns close at 9 or 10pm. But, we kind of made up for it in Italy by staying with my ex-ex-brother-in-law (my ex's sister's ex-husband, who was getting married) in Milan for several days, and he had already booked and prepaid for two nights for us at the coast in the town where he was getting married.

I'm not typing this in any logical sequence, I apologize. I'll just bullet-point the highlights instead:

First week:
- small towns in Germany. Interesting architectural changes in different regions. Our favorite was a style of using dark gray slate tiles to cover not only the house roofs, but also as decorative yet functional siding. Gorgeous.
- Amsterdam; enough said

Second week:
- Brugges Belgium - man, what a beautiful town. We only spent one night and one day there, but it's on our list to visit again. It was one of the more affordable places we stayed, and is picture-perfect. Belgium in general (Brussels aside) is gorgeous. If I were a cow, I'd want to live in Belgium. The landscape is comprised of rolling, lush green countryside, clean neighborhoods, organized gardens. The food was really good, too. The people were more reserved than in the Netherlands (then again, most people are!), but were generally courteous and polite. I had been to Brussels before and didn't like it much the first time nor this time. We stayed in another beautiful town, Bastionne, which has a lot of history and very good food. We also went through Luxembourg and part of France.
- Back to Germany, through the Black Forest (ahhhhh....!!!!) and stayed on the Bodensee lake. It was here that we decided that we are planning another vacation to spend entirely in Germany, and will bring our bikes and travel for 2 weeks solely via bicycle. They have bike paths EVERYWHERE - you could easily not need a car unless you had to travel far distances in short periods of time. Staying on the Bodensee was by far one of our favorite places. I had been there before, in winter, and now I can say that it is truly perfect any time of year. We then went to Austria and spent some time outside of Innsbruck and Salzburg. My H specifically wanted to go to Salzburg to watch an international bike race, and I have to say that it was a blast! A truly European cultural event - kind of like going to the Tour de France, but without the media hype and landscape. The race lasted about 5 hours, so after walking part of the course for 3 hours, we stopped in a tavern to have a beer and something to eat, and it was packed with old Italian men who had made the trip up to Salzburg just for the race. Watching them was better than watching the race itself! We followed them for a while, and ended up at the finish line in the "Italian" cheering section, which was great because the cyclist who won is Italian (Bettini). The crowd went crazy when he crossed the line - I got some really good pictures of the fanfare.

Third week:
- Verona - would have been a beautiful city if my H hadn't freaked out while looking for a hotel. The hostel there is in the most ideal location - at the top of a hill overlooking the city, and is in a 500 year old church.
- Milan - I've been to Milan a few times before, but this is the first time I was there with locals and consequently the first time I really liked it. My brother-in-law and his wife are terrific hosts, and we spent two nights with them and had a ball.
- Cinque Terre - I almost hesitate to say anything about this out of fear that more tourists will start going there. Cinque Terre is magnificent. I'll leave it at that. The wedding was beautiful, in a church built in 1318, right on the coast. We took a boat to get there, and the reception was on an island, also accessible only via boat. Italian weddings are something really... I don't know... magical. The reception was an 8-course menu comprised entirely of seafood. Yum!!!!!!

This is getting long so I'll post it now. It is 1:30am and I made the mistake of taking a nap this evening, so now it'll take me longer to recover from jetlag. I will go through my photos and see what I can post for you all.

Hope everything was ok here and thanks for your greetings and PMs!!!