Guy Fawkes Night - Part II

We were lucky enough to be in London for not one but two Guy Fawkes nights. As we said in 2007, its pretty crazy. They outdo themselves with fireworks and a massive bonfire that they throw likenesses of Guy Fawkes onto. An interesting tradition to say the least but who are we to throw stones? They also serve mulled wine so we were having a good time. We got extra tickets and had our friends Duff and Larissa, and Larissa's sister, over to view the action.



Here's a video that doesn't quite do the fireworks justice but still gives you a general idea. Imagine firework fragments falling on your head while watching - it was a very confined space!

Paris

Hello again! It's been a (very) long time since our last post but better late than never. We were just thinking how great this blog is to help us remember all the places we go and fun times we've had. So, with that said, time to catch up.

We went to Paris for a quick weekend trip via the Eurostar in October of 2008. I was pretty excited about taking the fast train and also the remodeled St. Pancras station. As you can see it looks pretty cool. Check out the video too - the train went ridiculously fast!



We only had a few days in Paris and so we had to make it count. We went on a Mike's Bike's tour which was an awesome way to see the city. The pace was nice and slow with a beer in the middle which was great on a warm day!



We also met our friends Aaron and Sara (with son Andrew) and managed to go out for a nice dinner with or other friends Erika and Rob. French food (and wine) definitely lives up to the hype.



Casie had fun with the camera and took some good shots:

Vienna

After Melk it was on to Vienna for the final leg of our Oktoberfest trip. As you can see we'd fully recovered from Munich and were ready to have tasty beers again...



We spent most of our time in Vienna doing walks suggested by the guidebook that Casie had checked out of the library. It was a great way to see the city. There is no shortage of fantastic architecture and sculpture and it is all easily reached via foot (and sometimes using the subway). We had some fun with some of the sculptures as you can see below.



On our last day Vienna decided to give us a sunny day in the park, just as the trees were turning. We had a lot of fun just walking around and seeing everyone who got out to enjoy the day. If you ever visit Vienna and it is a nice day be sure to check this park out - I believe it is called Prater park.

Edinburgh - out of order!

Please excuse the confusion... In our rush to catch up on posts we forgot about Edinburgh (pronounced Edin-brah), which we visited after Linlithgow. We were very keen to get away from London on that particular weekend because it was during the Notting Hill Carnival. Although we had fun last year, we'd also had enough of the loud whistles out our back window so thought getting out of town would be a great idea.

Once a year Edinburgh hosts an Arts Festival which includes art galleries, plays, music as well as a "Fringe" festival which is mostly stand-up comics and funny plays. We sampled a little bit of both and had a great time. In the same day we saw "Tony Blair the Musical" and our first opera. We also saw a violin performance about the last days of the Titanic and a sculpture that was a house made out of books. Edinburgh itself was great fun - it is a beautiful city with an amazing castle sitting on top of a rocky bluff. If it wasn't for the weather we'd have liked it even more...

Melk, Austria

After 3 days of Oktoberfest, we decided it would be best to detox in a town called Melk, about an hour and a half northwest of Vienna. Melk is a small historic town that sits right on the Danube River. It has a huge monastery that sits up on a bluff - see the picture below. We had a lot of fun walking around the city and relaxing. The highlight of our stay, though, was a bike ride we took along the Danube through vineyards and apple orchards.

We were a little over-ambitious on the ride (43 miles total! on heavy rental bikes!) so sadly we weren't very good at walking the next day. But the fields, meadows and small towns we passed through on the ride definitely made it worth it. We also managed to stop halfway through for some good sausages and local wine, and had a big dinner when we finally returned to Melk. Austrian food has never tasted so good! P.S. - Please check out how ridiculous we look in the last picture. Yes, those really are gardening gloves on our hands - it was the best we could find!

Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest...where to begin. We had so much fun, we are already talking about going back in a few years (if you're interested, let me know, because the more the merrier). We met up with some friends from London to help the Germans rein in their 175th Oktoberfest. We were there for the first weekend of the 16 day celebration, which began with a huge parade that saw tons of barrels of beer being carted in by extravagantly decorated Clydesdale's for each of the major brewers in Munich. There were also other "floats", including this random one of mini London buses.



We kicked off the weekend in the real Hofbrauhaus. Rumor has it that HB can accomodate up to 5,000 people sitting at their picnic tables and drinking their steins at once, and was nearly full when we arrived on Saturday afternoon.


For dinner, we made our way to the Oktoberfest site, and squeezed into one of the little tents. The food was fantastic, but the singing and dancing on the tables was hands-down the best part.




We had lunch at Schneider's one day...also fantastic!


Then came the day where we had a reservation in the Hofbrauhaus tent from 11:30-4, which came with 2 litres of beer and a half chicken each. We arrived at 10:45 for a prompt start to the day. We drank....

and drank...

and drank...

and drank some more.






and without stopping for too long in the middle, made our way over to the Lowenbrau tent for the evening festivities, which would not have been half as fun if we had not found these 4 German-only speaking Germans that were willing to share their table with our crazy bunch. They were fantastic, and I'm pretty sure somehow related to me, because there was an instant connection when they found out that my last name was Schneider...frau Schneider...cheers!