Showing posts with label germany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label germany. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Babymoon Adventures

As I shared in a couple of my (pre-scheduled) posts last week, I was out of town. Not just anywhere out of town, but Dan and I traveled to Europe for a little Babymoon!

Really, we needed to hit a couple more stops from our honeymoon journey last summer that was cut short due to a family emergency... so when Dan had a two week break from his graduate school classes, we decided, "why not?"

We followed Space A Terminal Facebook pages. Actually, we stalked them. And it worked! We were able to fly to and from Europe for exactly $46 total... but more to come on that in another post later this month.

*Note: that amount does not reflect what we paid once we were in Europe to travel between the three countries we visited.


That right there? That's a C-17... which was our very first ride. We flew from Wright-Patterson AFB (where Dan is stationed) to Naval Station Norfolk on a C-17, and it was pretty cool! There was only one other couple on the flight, and we had ALL that space to roam around in.

The flight we were planning on taking out of Norfolk to Spain was delayed 24 hours, and we didn't want to wait... so we rented a car and drove four hours to Baltimore because they had a Space A flight going out that night to Germany... which actually ended up being a better starting location than Spain, so it was a win/win.

From Ramstein Air Base, Germany, we took a train to Baden-Baden, Germany, where we flew to London Stansted airport and stayed with our British friends for a few days. We explored the city and even went to Cambridge, where we went punting and had afternoon tea. It was a blast!

From London, we flew to Warsaw, Poland (because it was cheapest) and then took a train from Warsaw to Krakow that evening since Krakow is actually the city we wanted to spend time in. I have dreamed of visiting Krakow since I was in 7th grade and first became interested in learning about the atrocity known as the Holocaust. It was a goal of mine to go to Auschwitz, and when we didn't make it there last summer, my heart was broken. Not anymore! We went, and it was everything I expected it to be and more.

From Krakow, we flew to Frankfurt and took a train back to Ramstein Air Base, where we were able to get on a C-5 to return to the USA. We made it to Dover Air Force Base and took a cab to Philadelphia, where we were able to redeem airline points for a flight back to Dayton!

If you ave Space A privileges (military) and haven't used it yet, you should! It's an amazing benefit we have, but like I mentioned, I plan on writing a comprehensive guide to Space A travel later... so be on the lookout for that!

I will follow up with separate posts for London, Cambridge, Krakow, and Auschwitz later this month because we took way too many pictures to display here alone.

Have you ever been to England?
What's your favorite thing there?
Have you visited Poland? 


    

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Honeymoon Series: Munich, Germany

Over the summer, my husband and I went on our honeymoon shortly after our wedding. We visited many cool places, and you can read about all of that in this post. I'm going to be chronicling each stop on our amazing trip. Today's post will feature our favorite photos from our ninth (and final) stop: Munich, Germany.

(I will update the links below once all posts have been written and published.)

STOP 1 | STOP 2 | STOP 3 | STOP 4 | STOP 5 | STOP 6 | STOP 7 | STOP 8 | STOP 9

Ah, Germany. This was probably my least favorite place and one of Dan's most favorite. It's funny how that works. I still had fun in Munich, but the nearly constant rain put a damper on things. I think Dan enjoyed it so much because he studied German for a fews years, and his dad spent part of his childhood there, so he had heard stories about it his entire life.

We stayed in the Munich area. On the first night, we ended up at a university's cookout somehow, and that ended up being pretty interesting. We also ventured to the world famous Hofbrauhaus for dinner, which was quite the experience! I can't believe how crowded, busy, and loud it was in there - but the food was pretty good! I recently found out that there is one in Columbus, OH, so I'm excited to take Dan to that since he loved it so much!

We were also able to tour the BMW plant (which is HUGE), check out the Olympic Park, watch the show at the Glockenspiel, walk around the Nymphenburg Palace, and see several old churches. Overall, Munich was really cool - the weather just slowed us down for sure. We spent one day inside at a science museum to avoid the rain, which is something we both enjoy.

We did get the call to head back to the USA during this stop on our trip - Dan's mom wasn't doing well, and we needed to make it back to her. We booked a next day flight, took a train from Munich to Frankfurt, and flew through Alaska to Portland, where we were able to see her before she passed away. It was a difficult, emotional time for Dan, but we are glad we made it back in time!














Even though our honeymoon didn't end on the best note, we had an amazing time. All of the cities and countries we were able to see were gorgeous, and we had the best month together exploring new places. We hope to make it back to Europe in 2015 to continue our honeymoon while Dan is on break in between one of his graduate school quarters. We didn't make it to Prague, Warsaw, Krakow, or London, and we hope to hit a couple of those this year on Honeymoon V 2.0 - can't wait! 
  • Have you been to Munich?
  • What is your favorite city to visit in Europe?

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Our Honeymoon Destinations {An Overview}

Wow - thank you all for the love on my big wedding highlight post from last week that includes some of our favorite professional photos and our video highlight reel! I really enjoyed reading your sweet comments (and replied to everyone who has the reply option - some of you are still no reply bloggers!)

Today's post is all about where we went for our honeymoon! I'm going to make a separate post for each of the nine places we visited, so this is just a general overview.

We were able to visit some AMAZING cities. Shown below are our favorite photos from each destination. This is just a small taste of what we saw, and it was SO difficult to choose just one photo from each place.

We really enjoyed Rome, Italy; Venice, Italy; Dubrovnik, Croatia; Athens, Greece; Kusadasi, Turkey; Split, Croatia; Paris, France; Normandy, France; and Munich, Germany!

OH! And did I mention that I didn't know we were going to Venice, Dubrovnik, Athens, Kusadasi, or Split until we arrived suddenly in Venice after we left Rome?! My sweet husband had planned a SURPRISE MEDITERRANEAN CRUISE for us! He booked it 18 months before we went on it, and he kept it a surprise all that time! I am so impressed, and we had a BLAST on the Norwegian Jade!


Since we had to wait so long to get married (because of the US Air Force Academy rules that no cadet can have dependents), we had a SUPER long time to save up for our honeymoon... which isn't such a bad thing! We were able to enjoy a full month in Europe, and even that got cut short! We were supposed to be there for six weeks, but due to a family emergency, we had to return after four weeks... but that just means we have to go back to see Prague, Czech Republic; Warsaw, Poland; Krakow, Poland; and London, England, right? I'm down for Honeymoon Part II! ;)