One month down

Europe for one whole month!  After we got off the boat, we said goodbye to the few other backpackers that we had met minus 2...I think they slept in...

We headed for our room at the Malaga Lodge.  We are using a website called AirBNB to find places to stay.  Most times they are people's houses or apartments that have an extra room to rent.  So, we get to stay in most places for a great rate, because of course, we are on a budget!
We stayed in Malaga for 2 nights then headed to Sevilla, Spain, just northwest of Malaga.  It was okay, the cathedral there was huge and amazing, but come to find out, that is how most of Europe is, old and amazing!  We were not originally planning on going to Granada but so many people recommended it and thank goodness we decided to go because it was beautiful.
We toured the Al Ahambra, their main tourist attraction.  A mosque/fortress, it took us hours to walk.

So we spent 2 nights there in a renovated apartment building that has been standing for 630 years.  The streets were narrow, the parties were late into the night, and the rain wouldn't stop...but super cute apartment!

After Granada we made our way up to Madrid.  Richard and I have decided that when we return to the US we are going to petition to have an underground subway system built...how great to get around such a big city in such little time!   Unfortunatley for us, while we were in Madrid, the Soccer Finals were going on...and Spain won, so to no avail...no sleep for us in Madrid and we weren't even at the party!  We were staying in a concrete apartment on the 5th floor and could still here all of the noise!  So we escaped Madrid for a day trip to Avila.  They call this city the walled city because at one point in time, the whole city was walled in to keep the enemy out.  Of course now they have expanded the city beyond the walls but it was incredible to walk through the streets and see how they lived so long ago.



This is me sitting outside of the city walls, the next 2 pictures are of the cathedral.  The intrance is inside of the wall but they built it into the wall, so the backside is a part of the fortress, incredible.



Valencia, Spain on the east coast came next.  They had a beautiful beach about 10 minutes from the apartment that we stayed at.  Also, the biggest aquarium in Europe is housed there so we had to go.

Fully equipped with walk through shark tunnels.

Yes, it really was that packed but, some people are respectful when they notice a picture being taken :)
A few days in Valencia and then up to Barcelona (not my choice).  The train ride took us up the coast and very pretty to look out at the ocean.  I know what you are thinking...didn't you just get off the ocean?  I don't know what to tell you, I'm a water baby!
I only say that I did not want to go to Barcelona because I heard it is dirty, and smelly, and they pick pocket like a professional buisness.  We had to go though because that is where our overnight train was leaving from...that's right, we booked an overnight train from Barcelona to Milan.





I could make the picture larger but it wouldn't help, the room was small.  What you don't see isn't there.  When the beds are down, there is only walking space and a sink to brush your teeth in.  The bathroom is down the hall.  An experience, but we probably won't do it again!  When we arrived in Milan, Italy at 10am the next morning, we got off the train and hoofed it to the ticket office where we bought the next tickets to Rome...ROME!!!!
This city is a huge part of this trip.  I've wanted to see Vatican City for forever and of course the fountains and the history and the romance.  We booked a tour through the Colosseum and the Roman Forum just so we would know what we were looking at.  So much information!

 This is Trevi Fountain, the one where people throw in coins wishing themselves a return trip to Rome.  The guide book says that 3000 Euro a day get thrown in.  That equals approximately $3,900 US dollars a day that just gets tossed in to a fountain.  Humans.

Of course, I asked my tour guide what happens to all of that coin and she says that the city uses a pool vacuum to suck it up and then they donate it to the Red Cross.  For the goodness of man kind, I'll believe her.
The next day, we took a guided tour through Vatican City, including the Vatican Museums and Saint Peter's Basilica (church).  Wow!  So much history!  Michalangelo was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel here and the painting of Judgement Day.  Incredible work.  I could post the pictures but it wouldn't do them justice.  The next day (Sunday) we decided to go up to the highest point in Rome to look out over the city and to have a picnic.  It just so happened that we timed it just right that the Pope was giving his weekly blessing as we were casually walking through Saint Peter's Square.  That's right again...we saw the Pope!

Highlight!  There were sooooo many people in St. Peter's Square that morning we could barely move!  We had to hang on to each other so we didn't lose the other.  We could have left Rome right then.  But we went up to the park and had our picnic as planned.

We left Rome to go to Pompeii where Mount Vesuvius erupted 2000 years ago covering the town in volcanic ash perfectly preserving it.  Creepy.  I have to add in a romantic-comedy story.  When we left to come on this trip, Richard and I discussed the reasons why I should not wear my wedding ring.  I of course understood the implications and we decided to leave it at home.  So my husband being the sweet, kind man that I married...bought us rings made out rock from the volcano...I told you, romantic!

Pompeii was a quick stop, we then headed back through Napels to get to Venice.  Our bed and breakfast was too cute!  Way more than we expected and such a great time.  Venice is an amazing town.  No cars only water taxi boats.  We didn't ride a gondola because they want $200 per hour to tread the same water that the taxi boats tread.  Ridiculous.  Locals say that no matter what you do, you will get lost when you roam through Venice.  They must have never met anyone like Richard!  We never got lost but we did manage to find a private dock for a picnic.

With Venice done, and all of our Italian dreams come true, we moved on to Austria for the weekend.  Innsbruck is amazing.  I know I have said that about most things that we have seen over here but the scenic train ride from Verona, Italy into Innsbruck was gorgeous!  Coming in to the Swiss Alps with the mountains all around you, I was just in awe.  Even though I had a seat on the train, I wasn't using it.  I was moving all around the car trying to take in every angle.  That scenery might stay with me forever.  We of course visited Colorado and the Rockys before going to Texas but they don't compare to the Alps, sorry Aunt Barbara :)

This was our view walking up to the apartment and it was the same from the back yard patio.  Again, it just doesn't do it justice.

Innsbruck was my favorite.  The city is modern but with old buildings.  They painted them in different pastel colors and the city was so clean.  That of course is not the standard in Europe so we were very happy to spend some time there, even if it was just for 2 nights.  Upon our arrival, our host (he rents his apartment and then stays accross the hall at his other apartment) was showing us a map on how to get around.  He then realized what time it was and decided that we needed to see the city from the mountain top right then.  So, he drove us!  We don't ever expect anything from the people we are renting from so this was a treat.  We jumped in the car and headed to the gondola that would take us to the mountain top, from there, the city of Innsbruck is small and homey.

I said to Richard within the first 3 hours of arriving..."I could live here".  So don't be surprised in the furture if you end up visiting us in Innsbruck, Austria...you won't be disappointed!

So, finally, that brings us to now.  Currently, where I am typing to you right now is in our upstairs, 3rd floor, renovated apartment in a house that was built in 1899 (I'm sure this was the attic at some point) but alas, it is private, all ours until we leave tomorrow to go to Salzburg, Austria.



We are in Switzerland.  Interlaken, Switzerland, the city that is between two lakes (Inter-laken). We arrived Monday, and I think they were enjoying a day off like you all were as well. There were people laying out by the crystal blue lakes, the businesses were closed, and people were walking their dogs and in a jovial mood. Interlaken is the home of the Jungfrau Mountain, the very top of Europe. The point on the mountain top that they have the nerve to charge an arm and a leg to reach. So we just stared at it in all of it's glory from the ground that we could afford. Don't get me wrong, we have stepped over budget many times to make this trip memorable and fun...but to get to the top of a mountain that I can't ski down, no thank you!

So, as a close to this blog, I would like to say congratulations to cousin Danielle on having her 2nd baby boy!  (Send me some pictures already!!)

Leaving Slackerville...

Europe 2012 here we are!!

March 29th was officially my last day of work at my "I'll just go out and pick up a part time dental position until we are ready to go further south in a couple of months" job.  After my last post, (and the reason I have been a slacker) I dropped off my resume at an office and they hired me on the spot.  What was suppose to be a 2 1/2 month position, turned into a 7 month position and arguably, the reason why we get to spend extra time in Europe. 

Soooo, we got on a Royal Caribbean Transatlantic Cruise on April 18th and finally landed in Malaga, Spain today!!  We weren't at sea the whole time, we had ports of call in Labadee, Haiti where I zip lined 500 feet over the ocean for over 2,000 feet.

San Juan, Puerto Rico where we lost a passenger.  Philipsberg, St. Marrten where we snuck liquor back on to the boat because, let's be honest, we were going to be on a boat for 6 days in a row!  And finally, our last port of call, Tenerife, Canary Islands.  This is where we got off of the boat at 7 in the morning and stayed off until the very last minute of the day before we had to get back on the boat!  Wow!  13 nights and 14 days of cruising.  I think it was the best move that we could have made at the time that we booked, especially since it only cost us $400 US per person.

So now that we are here in Spain, we will stay in Malaga tonight and tomorrow night.  Then, we might head East to Grenada, or we might head Northwest to Seville, or we might just head straight to Madrid...so many European choices!

Who's idea was it to head South?

Oh my gosh...it is HOT!!!  If we hadn't just started traveling, I'm sure Richard and I would both agree to stay put in Colorado with the beautiful weather.  But someone (me) decided to take a Housesitting position in Texas.  So be it, south is where we are headed and we are taking our time to get there by deciding to spend a few weeks in New Mexico.  So here we are in the dry desert

If you can take your eyes off the surrounding mountains for one second to notice our house hiding behind the bush on the right, you can get the feel of what our 360 degree view was!  Although it does look and was very dry, fortunately, it rained here everyday around 7 pm putting on an exciting lightning show every time and helping to keep the temps down in the 80's.

We also were very happy with the park that we settled in at as it is run on solar.  Genius!

We were here for 2 weeks and while we relaxed mostly, there were things we wanted see.  We made it to Los Alamos

to visit the museums that house the Fat Boy and the Little Man.

The scooter is doing not so surprisingly well with all of the climate and altitude changes.  As usual...my husband does know what he is talking about when he buys new and helpful "toys"!  We wanted to make it to the volcano but in the pictures that we saw it just looked like a sunken in patch of grass, so we "settled" for this view instead.

On our way back to the RV Park, we came across this rock...

Hey Camel!  I wanted to climb on it but they have it fenced off just for people like me.

We left Santa Fe on August 6th to arrive at our housesitting assignment on the 7th.  We drove straight through to Ingram, Texas to spend the night at Armadillo Junction Rv Park...practically a steal for $15

We tried to sleep in the next morning but we were overly excited about reaching our destination.  Can you imagine...after living in 385 square feet for over 2 years, we were about to move in to a house that has 3 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths, a butlers pantry, a pool house with a swim spa and hot tub, and 34 acres of unaltered Texas Hill Country.  We were in over our heads!!  This is a beautiful home at the top of a hill that our house would not be making the trip up so we parked it in the meadow and give it a friendly wave when we leave to go grocery shopping.

We have truly appreciated all of the opportunities that we have been able to experience over these past 5 months and look forward to spending the next 2 months learning wether or not we miss living in a house or just miss living in "our house"!  

Just one week of living under a roof not made of rubber, we decided to take our house on a road trip to San Antonio.  We found this great park called Carefree Travelers RV Park that was less than 10 minutes away from the Riverwalk.  

They had Palm trees lining their paved streets (it is VERY difficult to find an RV park that is not just another gravel road) and their pool was heated and kept at the perfect temperature that seemed to go well with any flavor of beer!  The public transportation system AKA the bus stop was right across the street from the park so for $1.10 per person...we were free to roam around downtown and catch a ride back sober or not.  Of course after a night of dinner, drinks, and dancing we headed back by midnight and made it home just fine because the bus was empty, we were apparently the only crazies out that night.

We returned to Kerrville only slightly poisoned from the weekend and decided to rest a few days before going to explore.  Our first stop was the infamous Luckenbach, Texas

 We didn't stay to dance but will have some fun pictures when we return from our next visit.  We drove through Fredericksberg on our way home, stopped to have some barbecue but skipped out on the downtown shops because it was stinkin' hot and we were ready to jump into the pool!

Other than just hanging around the house and catching up on Redbox movies (pick up Limitless, Bradly Cooper is smokin' ), we have been pretty quiet for the past week.  That is until last night when my hubby took me out for my pre-birthday dinner to Mamacita's.  Upside down beer with frozen margarita!  Yum!

This was after my day of pampering at Salon De Ricardo where I got my hair colored, my shoulders massaged and my toenails painted... Happy Birthday to me and a big thanks to my honey, Love you Babe!

What are you doing here?!?

It's the funniest thing, being out on the road and meeting up with people from back home.  We left the green hills of South Dakota to head towards Loveland, Colorado.  We found a RV park that was at the base of the Rocky Mountain National Forest.  I do believe that it is my favorite spot that we have been to yet. This was our "backyard"

We would keep our back windows open at night and listen to the river rushing by...awww, peaceful.  We only stayed here a few days, so we had a lot of things to pack into a small amount of time.  The first day, we made the Meep meep do all the hard work.  We took her all the way to the top of the mountain.

Thank goodness we came equipped with sweatshirts!

As Richard played in the snow,

I was busy checking facts about this beautiful place, and of course trying to get close enough to the furry creatures but no such luck...those suckers are quick!

We called it a day at about the time that we could no longer feel our faces and headed back down the mountain.  For those of you who know Richard really well, you know he is not a fan of heights.  So I recommend that anyone going to the top of the Rocky Mountains with him should go in a vehicle with 4 wheels and make sure that he not intrude on the oncoming traffic, or suggest to the park rangers that they install a guardrail!

The next day, we went back into the forest to go on a hike.  This is me at Bear Lake and in hindsight, we should have just hiked around the lake but I had to go up the mountain to the glacier...

That's me up there in the distance.  Rich says he fell behind to take a picture but we know the truth.

So if we had just stayed around Bear Lake, I wouldn't be out of breath right now because what was suppose to be a nice walk turned into a 3 hour hike.  But, we finally made it!

That was great and everything, but now we had to get back down.  Thankfully, Richard is thoughtful enough that he packed a baggie of pretzels, peanut M&M's and a delicious bottle of water when I wasn't looking, so we had some soul food to get down the mountain on.  Upon our much desired return to solid ground, I found this cutie

Not only did he come right up to me, he then SNATCHED the pretzel from my fingers.  Then the little bugger sniffed it, threw it on the ground and had the audacity to come back and ask for something different.  Well, I wasn't going to give him a M&M so he was out of luck with me.

We left Loveland, Colorado after 3 days and headed to Creede, Colorado.  There we stayed at Antler's Lodge and met up with these folks...

I would like to introduce you to Shawn and Jen from our "old neighborhood".  They were having a family get together and we were invited to join.  Good times with friends and great hamburgers is what we like to do, so for 2 days we had a fantastic time hanging out in the mountains.  After Antlers, we drove 22 miles up the road to stay in Southfork, Colorado for the next week.  Peaceful little community full of ice cream socials and domino tournaments.  Out of the blue, a different set of friends called up and said they were on a road trip and were headed our way!!  Lucky us!  A small taste of home in a beautiful mountain setting!  Jeff and Christy stayed with us for 3 days as we explored Pagosa Springs. 

Where, I had to touch the water,

and make Jeff pull over and take in the serene waterfalls

After they left for home, we headed to a reservoir to take in some sun and fresh air.  Although the water was freezing, the beach area was nice to lay out on.

After one week in Southfork, we sadly decided to leave Colorado and head to Santa Fe, New Mexico to study up on our WWII factoids.  Watch out...I'm coming for you Fat Boy!

Buffalo? I don't see no stinkin' buffalo!

Hello South Dakota!  It sure is beautiful now but come November...no thank you ma'am!

We nestled ourselves at the base of the foothills leading into the beautiful Black Hills National Forest.  Centrally located to Custer, Rapid City, Hot Springs, Deadwood, and Lead but hysterically, no where near a grocery store!  We'll take what we can get though, our surroundings were peaceful and our neighbors were nice. We of course wanted to stay away from the touristy attractions but alas, they sucked us in.  We saw Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial (which coincidentally is crazy for several reasons), Needles Highway, Lake Sylvan, and the amazing Custer State Park.  We were under the impression that we would see buffalo on our breathtaking scooter rides through Custer State Park.  There are warning signs everywhere that specifically tell people not to approach these massive creatures because they are consistently unpredictable.  However, we have been to the state park several times and still haven't seen these elusive creatures.  Do buffalo know how to hide?!?  After 3 weeks of living in South Dakota, we sat down to look at the map to see what we were missing.  Needless to say, we found where the buffalo might be hiding, wait for it, Wildlife Loop Road.  The only road in the whole park that we neglected to turn down.  This is what we were missing.

Ha!  Can't fool us buffalo.  This was only 1 out of 3 herds that we saw that afternoon.  Really amazing creatures but they spook really easily.  A little bit down the road, I fed this little guy a carrot.

All in all, a great day for sight seeing and animal spotting.  In addition to the buffalo and donkey, we saw Pronghorn Antelope, deer, prairie dogs, and not that day but eventually, Elk!

During our 4th week in South Dakota, we received a Couch Surfing Request from two British girls that were traveling through Canada and the US.  We were their 14th couch surf since they started their journey 6 months before staying with us.  We accepted their request and they stayed with us for two nights.  I would like to introduce you to Catherine and Karen.

They wanted to see all of the touristy sights as well so here we are at Mount Rushmore, where we took the guided tour with a ranger to learn all of the things that we have forgotten about since school.  The girls were very well informed from all of the google searches they had done before coming to South Dakota, so they knew all of the answers to the Ranger's questions.  Thanks for showing me up girls!
Next, we went to Crazy Horse Memorial.

The memorial has never accepted governmental funds, so they rely on the public to continue blasting away at the mountain.  They do 2 blasts a year, and they do them at night so the can light them up and make a show out of it.  This is what the memorial will look like when it is done.

As I mentioned earlier, Crazy Horse Memorial is indeed crazy due to the fact that they do not even know if this is what Crazy Horse really looked like!!  This is a compilation of the descriptions that were given to the architect.  We will never know if he got it right but it seems to be pretty set in stone.  After the memorial, we headed into Custer for some lunch and a hail storm.  Poor Grey Truck.

Next, we went up the scenic Needles Highway.

Then Sylvan Lake.

After our long day we all were in need of some rest, so we headed home for a cookout.  The next day, the girls went on their way to Yellowstone and we were left behind to start making our way down south.  Next up, Colorado and the majestic Rocky Mountains.