European Vacation, Part 1

We just got back last night from our two week European vacation (Chris likes to say that we were “traveling abroad”). We had originally wanted to go for our first anniversary trip in the fall but with the house work we just didn’t have time to plan.

This was Chris’ first time off the continent (and only my second time) so we wanted to be able to experience several different places. We went to Germany (Munich), Austria (Salzburg, Hallstatt, Innsbruck), and Slovenia (Bled, Julian Alps, Ljubljana). We have so much we want to share about our trip that we’re going to write several posts – one for each location we visited.

One of the hardest parts about taking a trip this long is the packing. We followed the advice of Rick Steves and packed only one carry-on and one backpack per person. I have packed much more that this for a weekend trip.


For anyone that has traveled to Europe, you know that the first travel day is always the hardest. We got a really good fare by flying out of Philadelphia (over $1000 cheaper) so we had a lot of travel to complete before even boarding the plane. We took the local bus from our neighborhood to the mall, transferred to another bus to the Amtrak station, took an Amtrak train to downtown Philly, and then took a local train to the airport. We got to the airport with about 2 ½ hours before the flight so we had plenty of time to relax.

After we finally boarded the plane, we taxied out to the tarmac to wait in the very long line of planes waiting to take off. After an hour, the captain got on the intercom to tell us that someone had illegally smuggled on an animal and we had to go back to the gate. In the end, it all turned out to be a big misunderstanding but it still delayed the flight by two hours.

The flight itself was uneventful. It was a red-eye but we were only able to sleep for a couple hours. When we arrived in Munich, we had to catch another train to Salzburg before our vacation could officially start.

Tomorrow Salzburg…