Paris

JP and I went to France for Christmas and New Years. First we spent Christmas at his grandparents' lovely home, then took the train to Paris to ring in the new 2005 year.

Dinner with the family and grandparents on the mother's side at the grandparents' house in Lutterbach, which is on the border of France and German on the French side. They speak a German dialect that's mixed with French due to the French/German border being moved back and forth several times in history.



Then we ate this special holiday marzipan pie called Galette, to celebrate the 3 kings that brought gifts to baby Jesus, normally celebrated on January 6th. When you buy them at the store, they come with a paper crown which I'm wearing here. Suits me better than those Burger King crowns, don't ch'ya think?





Here's the famous but under renovation Arc de Triomphe. Around it is a big driving circle where crazy French drivers test their driving skills and prove that traffic circles aren't always efficient. And I quote, it's "vehicular roulette with more balls than numbers" and yes, it looked like it too. It was CRAZY I tell'ya. The circle has no lanes painted but is about 5 cars wide and has 12 streets radiating out with no traffic lights with no traffic coordination whatsoever. In the picture, it doesn't look like there were many cars, but there were, and I was expecting an accident to happen at any time.



One of the most famous streets coming out of the driving circle is Champs-Élysées, a name brand shopper or a window shopper's paradise, where the famous names become bigger than life.





How much junk can a woman hold in these Louis Vuittons??







There's nothing like fake snow on trees out on the streets of Paris...







Standing outside in the Louvre Gardens. Unfortunately, we didn't go inside the museum because the lines were so long!!! We apparently went during one of Paris' peak seasons (week of New Years).





See the men in the khaki trenchcoats? Their job is to harass you into coming into their restaurant. I'm not sure how effective their approach is since they're more annoying than anything else. We chose chose a restaurant that didn't have anyone standing outside and I tried escargo for the first and last time! No, it didn't taste bad, but the thought of eating snails is bad enough. If you want to know, it's chewy, like eating those little squids.





There's a square where portrait artists hang out and wait for tourists to come by. This one is not that bad!







We took a cruise on the Seine river and got to see all the beautifully ornamented bridges up close.



I love visiting churches in Europe and I can't seem to get enough of them. And I love the beautiful stain glass windows.




Happy 2005! (although it's almost 2006 as I finally put up this post!)

First day of snow in Raubling

It actually started while I was in Paris.

Carnival / Fasching

It's like Halloween except instead of kids in costumes going door to door in the rain to get candy, kids and adults in costumes stand in the freezing, winter cold on the side of the road waiting for candy to get tossed to them from the parade. The biggest Carnival, or "Fasching" in German, event is in Mainz, which is where Marie and I were. There are other cities that have the celebration too, but Mainz is known to have the biggest one.

If you don't have a costume, then the next best thing is to wear a funny hat or wig. See the rastafarian by the pandas?

Here's a game for you. It's kind of like where's waldo except you have to find certain hats from the pictures below:
Santa, jailberg, soccor ball, viking

This costume was a little freaky looking.


Marie and I were party poopers and didn't do either but we still got plenty of candy!


There's all sorts of floats in the parade. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of political ones.


These characters are called Mainzelmännchen which are the mascots of Fasching.


This mouse man was funny. He must have grown up in the area because he was dancing to the parade music the whole time we were there.


Can you say, "packed like sardines"?


As the parade comes by, you're supposed to shout out, "hela!" and wave at the parade people while they do likewise. Marie (on the left with the red jacket) was into it, since she's gone a few times.

Marcus, her husband, grew up in the area and so grew up with Fasching. Apparently, it's not just a parade. It's another holiday (where only that German state gets a day off) to celebrate life and drink a lot of beer.

One of the floats had "The Macarena" song playing, so this playgirl bunny danced along.


Some funny colored marching band.

The music was great from every float/band.

Don't these look like big bobble-heads?


The parade lasted for like 5 hours! If you ever visit, make sure you're securely bundled and bring a lot of hot chocolate!

Budapest, Hungary

March 12-13

There's a travel agency in Germany called L'Tur that specializes in last minute vacation packages and JP & I had found a terrific deal on a hotel & air trip to Budapest. Most trips on L'Tur are on pre-selected hotel dates and set airplane takeoff times and this particular one was perfect: the plane left Munich on Friday evening and returned on Sunday evening, so no need to take any vacation days and was only 160€ pp. that included a nice 3* hotel.

Our first morning walking down the street, everything looks pretty average European. Small cars and buildings that needed to be cleaned. (Notice the "black" buildings to the right of me in the pic.)


And then suddenly.....a building with bright green roof tiles! Ahh, this must be Hungarian.


This mailbox looks just like the ones in Germany, except Germany's are yellow.


This was a cool sight, looking down the road to a bridge, but unfortunately the buildings were so darn dirty! Do you see a pattern?


This is at Hösök tere, translated to Hero's Square. The statues behind us are leaders of old Hungarian tribes.


More cool statues at Hero's Square.


A replica of the castle in Transylvania, home of Count Dracula. (mwah ah ah ah ah)


It was freezing cold outside, but who can resist the hot springs of Budapest. This is one of the city's more popular, bigger and fancy bath houses.

People believe that the natural minerals in the water can have healing powers.

"Don't cry for me Argentiiiina...." This is the opera house were Evita's song was filmed.


This Jewish Synagogue in Budapest is Europe's largest, & the world's 2nd largest.


The Parliament building.

This is one of the coolest ones I've seen.

Here's a church with the fancy Hungarian roof tiles. I like the statue on the right because of the sculpture's great detailed work, especially the saddle decor hanging on the sides of the horse (or whatever that thing is called).


We bought the "Budapest Card" which gives you unlimited riding privileges on the subway system, free entrance to certain attractions, and a discount to many more attractions. One of the free places was the zoo, so we went there and saw many interesting animals...

What is this???

Remember that game, Hungry Hungry Hippo? It was quite amusing to watch these hippos just open their mouth, waiting for a person to throw anything edible in there.


More city touring. Although we couldn't go inside this church, the outside was cool enough to get a picture.


This was in front of a church cave overlooking one of the many bridges in Budapest. Clicking on the thumbnail will give you the pic large enough to cover your desktop as wallpaper.


Did you know Budapest is actually two cities? On one side of the river is the city of Buda and on the other side is Pest. The cave church is in Buda, so the picture is looking towards Pest. Pest is flat and has the main city life with all the hotels, apartments, government buildings, etc. Buda is directly on the other side of the river which is mostly hills and contains more of the natural attractions of Budapest, although there are plenty of buildings such as museums and residental housing.

And yes, a church housed by a cave! This is the "lobby" area and between the white columns is the door to the sanctuary. I couldn't go in because there was a service going on.


This is looking at the cave from a distance. You can see the statue on the left that was in the previous picture and the opening of the cave is in the middle.


I'm not sure what this building was but it looked really cool and you can see it had the colored roof tiles too. Our walking tour guide told us the colored roof tiles are a Hungarian specialty.


If you visit a city in Europe, I highly recommend going on a walking tour. This was my third one and I always enjoy them because they show you the highlights of the city and tell you about the history and culture of the people. They give me a better feel and insight of the place I'm visiting. It sure beats just walking up to a landmark, saying, "oohh pretty" and then walking on. The guides are also usually natives to the country or city or have lived there for quite some time. After the tour ends, you can get good recommendations from them of where to eat, other points of interest, nightlife, directions to the train station, etc. I would also recommend a walking tour over a bus tour. From my experience, bus guides feel so impersonal and their information seems to lack depth.

Hope you enjoyed your little tour of Budapest :).