Our One Year Anniversary

Look at what a year of marriage has done to us:

                                                  We've gone absolutely BONKERS!

We feel insane because our brains have merged together, and we've found ourselves thinking/saying the same thing at the same time...on far too many occasions. It's freaky. 

Suppose that is what they call "best friendship".

    For our anniversary weekend, we wanted to spend it somewhere peaceful. Throughout our first year of marriage-hood, we've traveled to 17 different cities...all of which were lovely, yet all of which were busy, crowded, and loud.  So we chose the quaint small town of Triberg, (population 5,000) in the heart of the Black Forest, about 2 hours away from Stuttgart. 

      We stayed in a guesthouse, which is owned by a restaurant in town (one of about 3 major restaurants that I saw..). The restaurant is family run, and made Greg and I feel very welcomed and special. Each morning they had a place set for us, before the restaurant even opened. The patriarch of this family run business, made sure to check in with us each time we were in for a meal.  He was very sweet, and amused that my last name is "Wagner". (Legally, I am still Wagner. I seriously have no immediate plans to go through the paper work hassle to change my name on all official documents. And when in Germany...it only makes sense to be Wagner. Maybe Greg should change his name...just for the next two years. We can take turns..for two years we are Wagner, then two years we are Hargraves, then two years Wagner, two Hargraves, two Wagner, etc. until we die.)

     

   Triberg/The Black Forest is known for several things. The four that we experienced on our anniversary were:

1. Black Forest Cake:

     We found a cafe which uses the original recipe, which was created by a man named Josef Keller in the 1800s. And apparently, Josef was a cake-loving alcoholic. Wish you could have seen my face when I took my first bite. This is one, big, rum and cherry liquor filled cake. It literally felt like I was taking a straight shot. I'm not being overdramatic. Now, this is because my first bite came from the cream in the middle. That's where the alcohol must've been infused into. So after the initial shock, and once I aquatinted myself with the layout of the cake, I was able to eat and enjoy the parts I knew had little alcohol, and give the "shots in the form of cake" parts to Greg. He loved the whole cake. Every part. Greg did not discriminate.

2. The actual Black Forest:

We took a beautiful hike through the forest..and got to see the highest waterfall in Germany!

 Here is the bottom of the waterfall. As we hiked up further, we saw more and more of it!

3. Wood-Carving:

    So with all this timber around, the Black Forest folk aren't just going to sit and watch it! They use it! We toured The Black Forest Museum, and had the pleasure of viewing many beautiful rooms, and carvings:

                                                               It's Greg and me. ^

That's us doing the Samba that we learned on the cruise. 

  Now, this thing totally intrigued me. It is a self-playing orchestra, worth over 5 million dollars. Now it is run by electricity pumping air, but originally it was run by a crank. It plays to the equivalent of a 50 person orchestra! If you paid 5 euro, you could listen to it play. Some other chump did that, and man does this thing make it's presence known! I heard it start while I was in the other side of the museum...and like a bug to a light bulb...I was there in a flash! The photo is probably blurry because the orchestrion vibrated so much....totally not a reflection of my Android phone photo taking skills. In the "olden" days (before radio), orchestrions were used in fancy restaurants and such, to serve as musical entertainment to guests. Then the radio came along....so guess what happened to all of the classy, beautiful, orchestrions of the world?

4. Cuckoo Clocks:

THIS ^ is the place where we will one day buy our very own cuckoo clock. Once we entered, we were whisked away by a very overzealous little woman, and given the scoop on cuckoo clocks. She educated us on how to tell if a cuckoo clock is an original hand-carved, or if it is an over-priced, factory made FAKE.  This woman is part of the family line who makes/has made these cuckoo clocks. All I'm going to say...is every single cuckoo clock I've seen at the PX on the military base here..is a complete fake, and TOTALLY overpriced. I gather that many cuckoo's I've seen around this country, have been factory-made fakes. Which is why, I will come back to this little family owned shop when I feel like dropping a  handful of money for my real-deal, hand-carved cuckoo clock. :)

       So then we toured the LARGEST cuckoo clock in the WORLD. (This is up there with the worlds largest ball of yarn, or the worlds smelliest wheel of cheese..)

We were able to take a tour of the inside, to check out the inner workings. After all, it's what's in the inside that counts. Without all these mechanics, the thing wouldn't be able to run!

                                          There's Greggington, checking out how it all works.

   After we toured around and saw what Triberg had to offer, we cleaned up nicely to have a celebratory dinner date. We cracked open a bottle of champagne, gifted to us last year as a wedding present from my dear friend, Abe.

 See those stuffed marmots in the background? Well the restaurant owner, (remember I talked about him before...well his name is actually Josef) Josef hunted those. In fact, most of the animals on the walls he hunted in Germany, Virginia, Africa, and he said he wants to go to Canada next.

     We chose the cozy, little, back-woodsy restaurant to enjoy our very German, very filing, very delicious, 1st anniversary meal. I had bacon soup followed by a venison dish, and Greg had a lentil/sausage soup, followed by all kinds of other meat, that he couldn't even finish. We both described the food as: tasting the way this place looks.

After dinner we went back to our hotel/guesthouse, ate some more Black Forest cake for dessert, and played cards. 

We've got this old married couple thing down pat. 

I can say that now. 

-Gina

                                                     This is how we felt after dinner.

Mediterranean Cruise

April 5-12

Cruise = Most relaxing way to see six cities in one week.

Now, what I am saying here is:  If I had to pick...out of all the ways to see six cities in one week...which is the most relaxing, it would be a cruise. We just parked our belongings in our cabin, and were someplace new each morning! No hassle! No trains! No "dragging luggage all over the place"!

Though it was indeed a cruise (a vacation most of us correlate with relaxing, entertainment, eating, sleeping, beaching, eating, lounging, and eating), I was, actually, downright worn out by 10pm each night.

This is practically the only picture I took ON the ship.  This was moments after we boarded, while we waited for the arrival of our cruising buddies, Jamie and Ross!

 Most photos were taken during our day excursions. 

.....Though thinking back, I TOTALLY should've taken photos from the onboard Samba class that Greg and I took.  You can imagine with my expressiveness and ungraceful clumsiness just how this looked.  ;)

     We cruised with Costa Cruises, an Italian cruise line.  To be honest, before the trip, I had read some really bad reviews. There were complaints about announcements being made in five languages, small food portions, and poor service.  Well, I am here to tell you NOT to trust every review. Sometimes you must make your own opinions because:

 1) the five languages were not bothersome to me. I found myself trying to see how much of the German and Russian announcements I could understand. 

2) We didn't eat the equivalent to our body weight for every meal...which was completely fine with me.  The portions were perfect! Besides...with hot tubs, swimming pools, and beaches...I did NOT want to bloat myself into oblivion.  Seriously. 

And 3) The staff which I interacted with was very polite and helpful...and entertaining! One of the last nights, the dining staff just busted out in a flash mob dance to a fast-paced version of "Volare". I thought it was electrifying. Maybe I'm just easily entertained, but I don't know who rolled out of the wrong side of what bed and wrote that review. 

    By the way, the cruise took off from Savona, a city in northern Italy.  This was my first time in Italy. Strange how this expressive and loud land of people felt so familiar to me. I really loved it. So many facial expressions I recognized from just about every Christmas with my mom's side... :p

Greg said that people knew we were foreigners in Italy because we were the only ones who turned to look when we heard someone yelling (talking). 

    

    This post will mostly be pictures, by the way. I will share photos from each city, followed by a highlight from each!

1. Rome, Italy and the Vatican

 Seems silly to put a caption under this photo.

He is doing it all wrong.
But check out that boy's backpack ;)

 Pantheon ...

HIGHLIGHT: We got to hear the Pope speak from his window in the Vatican. We were here the day after Easter (Pasqua..in Italian), and he was blessing everyone. 

He lost me after "Buongiorno". 

More from the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica 

You can barely see, but the Pope is in the window above the long red flag.  I got a video, but I can't find the patience to wait for it to upload to my blog. :p

Inside of the Basilica:

 ...several former Popes are laid to rest in St. Peter's Basilica.

2. Palermo, Sicily 

HIGHLIGHT: 

Sailing into the port!

You know, I couldn't choose which one of the millions of photos I took to put here. So I decided it would be best if I just posted them all. 

..yes, all these photos are of the same thing. It was gorgeous, and I loved it, and taking pictures was like giving this scenery a huge hug. 

Justified??

Wait until I show my rolling into Malta pictures. 

     While in Palermo, we went on a catacomb tour. The catacomb was filled with mummified/embalmed important people of Sicily from around the1700/1800s on. We saw intact eyeballs...finger nails, hair (mustaches), some left over skin, etc. But the thing that caught my eye the most, was to see the clothing these people were wearing! They've had the same outfit on all these years that they have been placed into the catacomb. It was interesting to me to see the clothing from those days. It was forbidden to take pictures in the catacombs...so no photos for you. 

       The rest of the day, we toured some King's summer palace (we cannot remember which King..), as well as the Palermo Cathedral. 

First, the summer palace:

 This palace was built in such a way that in the hot summer months, it would feel like it was "air conditioned". Something about the way the windows are, and wind would blow.

Lovely view from the palace.

Palermo Cathedral: 

 ...we snuck away from our tour group to this little alley to get cappuccino.

Leftover Palermo Photos:

3. Mdina, and Valletta, Malta

Hands down, Malta was our favorite place, and Mdina...the favorite city!

First, here are photos as we rolled into the port: 

Just breathtaking. Literally. 

Last time I experienced wind as intense as here...was when I jumped out of an airplane back on 2010. I'm not even being dramatic. It was THAT windy as we drifted to the coast. 

The whole day of touring Malta was great. In fact...Malta may very well have been the highlight of the whole trip. 

Mdina: 

View from Mdina

Valetta:

Malta is famous for its glass. So Greg and I bought a cute little Maltese glass vase, and I bought Maltese glass earrings! (barely seen in picture above).

We also ate the most delicious fruit from some guy selling it in an alley.

...that doesn't sound weird...does it? 

Nah.

4. Palma De Mallorca, Spain:

   I've actually been to Mallorca a couple years ago, but I stayed on the other side of the island! So all of this was still new to me!

The Palma Cathedral 

 The highlight was that Palma was the warmest city that we had visited during the cruise! It was nice to walk around without a jacket. I'd say the temperature throughout the trip (in fahrenheit) was in the 60s. But in Palma...I'd say it reached mid-70s!

5. Barcelona, Spain

 The highlight in Barcelona was checking out the food market. The very BEST part of the food market, was the fresh juice. I've never had juice as good as the juice I had in Barcelona.  Unfortunately, I do not have a photo of said juice...but instead here are a few of some chocolates and fish:

     Our cruise docked in Savona, Italy. We spent an extra night there. Maybe you  have noticed that as the trip went on...I took less pictures. Well, I only have this one from Savona:

Exciting, I know. We spent the afternoon exploring a fortress, and relaxing on the beach in Savona, which had some lovely views. 

  So the next day, we headed to the train, for our 9 hour journey back to Stuttgart, Germany. 

  Going home from a trip is never the most exciting thing. :( 

After our full day of traveling, we finally made it back to our apartment around 10:00 pm, only to find that we did not know where we put our apartment keys! Right there, in front of our door, we had to unpack our bags and search for the key! Eventually, Greg found them. :)

  Shortly after we returned home, Frulingsfest (spring festival) had started! Frulingsfest is basically much like Oktoberfest...only in the Spring. Greg and I threw on our Lederhosen and Drndle get-ups, and joined the fun!

...so coming home from our cruise wasn't all that bad after all!

   Next weekend is our 1st anniversary! Greg and I decided to spend it in the land of cuckoo clocks, cake, and Grimm's fairy tales. We're going to the Black Forest, here in Germany!  Just a short few days after our weekend get-away, we are flying to the States for our friends' wedding, and then some family time! 

-Gina