It's Gotta Be A Good Life!

We rented a little motor boat in Hallstatt. It had two speeds, slow and slower, but it was so much fun! We went across the lake to get a closer look at the little castle. It was originally built by a sword maker and now privately owned by a architect and is undergoing renovations.

Sun Shade!

My feet and a castle. No biggie. 

The boat had a radio that we listened to. The first song that came on was, "It's gotta be a good life." We couldn't have planned it better!!

After the boat we walked up to the catholic church to see the cemetery. Most certainly that prettiest cemetery I have ever been to. The grave sites were beautiful. Every grave had a little flower on top of it. We went in this little house full of painted skulls. This is how they used to bury their dead because they didn't have enough room. About 10 years after the person was originally buried they would dig it up, preserve and bleach the skull, and then paint it. Each painted had special meaning. It was very interesting. The last skull placed in the hut was in 1995. It was a woman who requested she be put there.

Hallstatt Cemetery 

We got more delicious ice cream and sat in the center of the town to eat it. We watched a dad teach his son how to lick the ice cream so it didn't melt all over his hand. The little boy lost interest pretty quick because there was a fountain. :-)  I don't blame him. Fountains are cool.

Yummy!

Random lady that was watching everyone...and talking to herself. 

 We took the ferry back to Obertraun and walked to are bags to the train station. We took the train from Obertraun to Vienna. We noticed when were riding all these trains that there are a lot of young kids, like junior high age, riding without any adults. We were curious about this.  We really wanted to know where they were all going but we never figured it out. C'est la vie.  La vie.  ;-)

Sun shade! :-) 

Getting off the Ferry. Auf Wiedersehen Hallstatt and Obertraun. We love you!!

 Once we got into Vienna we were able to find our hostel without too much difficulty. We stayed at a place called "The Happy Hostel". We nicknamed it the "Unhappy Hostel". The lady who checked us in wasn't very nice and she spoke hardly any English. The room was our least favorite. Once we dropped off our stuff we were starving. We stopped at a pizza/Chinese food place. Yes, it was both. :-) I did not feel brave so I just got cheese pizza. Bethany got pizza with corn on it. We had seen this a lot of places so we had to try it. It tasted weird. Liz got pizza that she thought was sausage, but it wasn't sausage. It was tuna fish and onions. GROSS! I didn't even taste it because it sounded too disgusting. 
After we finished our not so good dinner it started raining so we stopped in this Italian Gelato place to wait out the rain. So glad we did! It was delicious!

What Heaven Looks Like

We spent day 4 in Hallstatt. I don't remember being in Heaven....but I'm pretty sure this is what it looked like.  :-)

The Meinenger Hostel in Salzburg was not our favorite but it certainly won the award for best shower! Our shower in Hallstatt was the most difficult. The shower curtain didn't reach around the whole shower so everything outside it got very wet! But, everything in Hallstatt and Obertraun was so beautiful it more than made up for the shower! Everyone in Austria has beautiful flowers and gardens. All the houses have flower boxes outside their windows. I love it!!

We ate breakfast at the hotel and did a little bit of laundry in the sink . We found out it was a bank holiday this day and there was not a ferry running from Obertraun to Hallstatt. So we walked from Obertraun to the Hallstatt train stop which is where you catch the ferry. The walk takes about 30 min but it is so beautiful! We were going to rent bikes and ride around the lake but then we decided not to. It ended up being better in the long run that we didn't rent bikes. It would have been hard to keep track of them while we did everything else. 

Walking to the ferry

Walking to the ferry

Once we were in Hallstatt we walked down the main street and went into a ton of little shops. While we were walking around all of the sudden this parade came toward us. They had a band and they were all dressed in traditional clothes. They were celebrating the holiday which we were told was a "party for Jesus". We later found out it was a celebration for the institution of the sacrament in the catholic church. Some of the statues in the town were also decorated with flowers and ribbons for the celebration. It was so fun to be there for this!

Hallstatt is an old Salt Mining town. Part of the mine is still a working mine but the other part they have open for tours. We took the funicular up to the top of the mountain and then hiked a little ways to the house where the tour starts. The view of the town and lake from up here was breathtaking! It cost a total of 24 euros for the ride up, the tour, and the ride down. Money well spent! The tour was awesome! We had to wear special outfits over our clothes to keep the salt from getting on our clothes. Miners have been mining here since prehistoric times. I think they said about 36 miners still work there. There are 2 slides in the mine that we got to slide down. The miners used these to get to the different levels of the mine. Before we went on the tour a friend from home had told us the slide wasn't all that impressive. After the first slide we agreed with her. It was fun but nothing spectacular. Then we found out there was a second slide and it was awesome! Liz and I went together on the second slide. It's like Disneyland. The take your picture and clock your speed as you go down! Liz and I slid down at 30.3 km/hr. I think we got the fastest in the group! Well, expect our tour guide. She slid down at 36 km/hr. 

Wax miner that scared Liz!

We got some delicious ice cream when we went back into town. So yummy! We also got a sandwich at this little shop on the street. I think it is middle eastern or Greek. The guy running the shop asked us where we were from. We said the U.S. and he asked us if we liked Obama. We said, "ehh." Then he asked us if we liked George Bush and we said the same thing. He laughed and said, "American polictics are crazy!" It was pretty funny. :)

That evening we took the Ferry back to the Hallstatt train station and walked to Obertraun. We saw some cool Austrian slugs. I named one of them Fredrick. Because of the Sound of Music of course. We had dinner at the hotel. We were very lucky with most of the food on our trip being fabulous. We were less impressed with this food but it was ok. After the dinner we went out to the dock and put our feet in the water. The water was freezing!! We found out later that the water comes from glaciers in the Alps. No wonder it's so cold! But is was still so fun! 

Castle :)

On the ferry back to Obertraun

Obertraun

Swans!!

This slide looked like so much fun! Too bad the water was so cold!

There was a playground by the lake. It had a zip line and a merry go round! You can never find those things in American playgrounds because people are too sue happy! We decided Austrian children are much happier than American children because of this. 

Blurry picture of Katie on the zip line

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These are a few of my favorite things...

Wednesday morning we were in Salzburg and we went on the official Sound of Music Tour! I have wanted to do this for so many years! I finally did it! I seriously was so happy to be on the tour I felt like was going to explode with excitement! During the tour I couldn't stop thinking how I want to bring my mom here so bad. She would love it! During the tour our guide was telling us all kinds of things to see in Salzburg. We only had 1 day to spend there but you could certainly stay longer. There is a lot to see.

A street in Salzburg

So, about the tour. They picked is up at our hostel which was awesome! During the tour we saw the theater where we saw the play last night. The cute family with the 3 little girls we saw at the play is also on our tour. We later found out that they are from California but live in Germany. Their girls love all things Sound of Music. They were adorable. We saw where Mozart was born and where he lived. We saw the Abby where Maria was a novice nun. We saw the house they used to film the back yard scenes.  The house now belongs to Harvard. We saw the gazebo from the song "16 going on 17". We saw Mozart's foot bridge which was also used in the film. We drove out to the country side to see the church where they filmed the wedding. The actual wedding took place in the Abby where Maria trained to be a nun. The bus ride to that town was amazing. The scenery was just breathtaking and the houses were so cute! I couldn't stop thinking how bad I want my mom to see this. The town the church is in is called Mondsee. It is so cute and the church was beautiful. We also got some delicious apple strudel with vanilla ice cream. These are a few of my favorite things! Sing the song. You know you want to. :-) We saw a lot of other neat places on the tour, including the gardens where "Do Re Mi" was filmed. We also learned Hollywood lied...about many things. Big shocker I know! ;-) One the many things that is not accurate in the movie is that the von Trapp family did not "climb every mountain". They took a train. And if they would have climbed the mountain they did in the film they would have ended up in "Eagles Nest" which was one of Hitlers retreats. Nice surprise huh?! ;-)

This is where the scene was filmed with the von Trapp children hanging from the trees. 

Gazebo from "16 going on 17"

Driving to Mondsee

Driving to Mondsee

Church where Maria and Captain von Trapp's wedding was filmed.

Apple Strudel!! Yummy!!

Cute house in Mondsee

Gardens where "Do Re Mi" was filmed

Once we were done in Salzburg we took a train to Hallstatt. There was this man on our train that kept walking in and out of our train car. I am pretty sure he was Einstein reincarnated. He looked just like him! I wish I could have gotten a picture. Oh well. C'est La Vie. ... La Vie.

The train station for Hallstatt is this tiny little thing. We got off and showed the ferry man the address of our hotel. He said we needed to walk 30 minutes to get there. So that's what we did! We can now say we truly back packed through Europe and we didn't mind at all because it was beautiful! We stayed in this cute little town called Obertraun. Once we found our hotel we quickly learned that everything in the town closes down early. There was only one place that was open past 8 pm. We were there for at least 2 hours and tons of people kept coming in.  Katie, Liz, Bethany and I all want to move there and open a restaurant that stays open past 8. We are pretty positive it would be successful. Our hotel was called "Seehotel Haltersee". It was so cute! The view outside our room was incredible and the people there we so nice and helpful. We had called the hotel earlier that day to let them know we would be late. When we got there they had our keys on the front desk with our names. Anyone could have taken them . We immediately loved this place. No pick pockets or anyone to take advantage of us! ;-)  We learned that when you eat at a restaurant in Austria, or anywhere in Europe really, it is not a fast thing. You better not be in a hurry because they expect you to stay for awhile. And when you don't want any beer or coffee they get really confused.

Walking to Obertraun

By the time we got to bed we were exhausted and we all slept fabulously! 

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music!

When is the best time to see Prague you ask? At 545 in the morning of course! Tuesday morning we got up bright and early to catch our train from Prague to Salzburg. We were amazed when we walked outside our hostel. The sun was up and no one else was outside! Well, no one else besides a few runners. Everything looked so beautiful and peaceful. We could have had the entire Charles bridge to ourselves!

There is no way I could have gotten this picture the day before. Well, I could have, there just would have been a million people in it. 

I was personally very proud of the 4 of us. Why you ask? Because, we were able to get underground subway tickets, get to the underground subway, make it to the train station, get train tickets, get breakfast, and find the correct train platform all without getting lost!! We were so relieved! We had to switch trains in Linz and again we found it without getting lost. Hooray!! The scenery on the train ride was absolutely beautiful! 

When we got to Salzburg the train station had a tourist office that knew right were our hostel was and gave us directions to get there. They also gave us a map! It's very exciting to be given a map when you are in a foreign country. We were so grateful! 

Our hostel was called "The Meinenger". We were not as pleased with the service of this hostel but it was clean and the bathroom most certainly gets the "best shower award". Good showers can be very hard to come by in Europe. 

We ate at a cute Austrian restaurant and again had amazing food. I got the turkey schnitzel with potatoes and salad. It was really good but not at all what I was expecting. I must be a naive American but my whole life I thought schnitzel was sausage, probably because of the restaurant "Wiener Schnitzel". A hot dog in Austria is called a Frankfurter and Schnitzel is actually breaded and fried meat (it looks a lot like southern fried chicken). We learned how to ask "is the water free" in German but soon found out that NO water is free in Austria. 

After dinner we went to see "The Sound of Music" at the Salzburg Marionette Theater. It was fabulous! If you ever make it to Salzburg I highly suggest seeing this! Many thanks to our friend Jessi who suggested it. 

We weren't allowed to take photos during the performance but somebody did. I however stole this from Bethany's blog who I assume got it from the internet, I guess. 

After the theater we stopped in a restaurant for dessert. Once in the restaurant we realized it was Greek. But, it was yummy! Our waiter was pretty cute and Katie, Liz, and Bethany kept teasing me about him. They asked me if I had an exit plan to which Bethany replied, "just walk out the door marked exit". We laughed so hard! 

Welcome to Prague! And a very long post...

So I don't know if you heard but at the beginning of this month I went on the most fabulous vacation! I was actually nervous to get too excited about it before I went because I was afraid I would jinx it and something would happen and I wouldn't be able to go. But, I went! And now I am back.

My friends Liz and Katie are spending the summer in the Czech Republic this summer. Liz, Katie, Bethany, and I decided to go over early, before Liz and Katie started at the school, and traveled around Austria and the Czech Republic. It was incredible!! I actually didn't know Bethany or Katie before the trip but we are all great friends now!

We had many adventures! Mostly great adventures, and some not so great. It would take way too long to tell you all about it at once but I will tell you a little bit at a time.

Meet by fabulous traveling companions!

Katie: "She who is full of random information" or "Our travel guide" Katie is the best free tour guide ever! She gives us most useful information such as, "This building you see on your right was built...before the 1800's." and "This is where the priest charges his I-Pod."
Liz: "Sleepy" I think Liz took more naps than any of us...at least that is what the pictures will show. ;-)

left to right: Katie, Liz

Me: YAY!

Bethany: "Hiccup a lot" Actually, I won't tell the real nickname we had for her because after we said it we realized it sounded inappropriate, even though we didn't mean it to be. We are funny. ;-) 

 The random chick who's chest is in this photo did not travel with us...just in case you were wondering.

Me, Bethany

Day 1 - Prague
We flew from Phoenix to JFK - New York and then from JFK to Prague. We were stuck on the runway for 2 pulse hours at JFK. Let's just say my opinion of JFK is not that great after this trip and I most certainly filled out the questionnaire Delta sent about our flight. We sat in the plane forever before they even told us what was going on. "It looks like it will be about 20 more minutes." Then 45 minutes later the pilot comes back on and tells us there is only 1 runway open right now, but it will probably only be 15-20 more minutes. Much longer than 15-20 minutes later we finally took off. The man sitting next to Katie has this mo hawk dread lock hairdo thing. A mow-hawk in front and dreads in back. HOT! Just kidding!!! He seemed nice at first but sometime during the flight he spilled his beer on the floor and didn't tell Katie. Katie had brought her DLSR camera with her and the beer soaked through her bag. The mo hawk dread lock man is now on our black list! Thankfully Katie's camera could still take pictures but the screen to preview the pictures doesn't work anymore. I felt so bad for Katie.

After a much longer flight than it was supposed to be we finally got in to Prague. We were trying to get bus tickets and we totally got scammed by a stupid airport worker, who looked official, but gave us bogus bus tickets! Anger! That started of the trip in a grand way. For the rest of the trip anytime we saw anyone is those type of clothes we would say, "don't trust them!"

Of course the one and only time I have EVER had my ticket checked on any bus, subway, or tram, is the one time the ticket was bad. I'm not sure what to call the guy who checks the tickets, he is not a police man...I don't know what to call him. I know he checked us because we were happy, and looked liked tourists. But he took mercy on us for the same reason and only fined us half the amount he normally would have. At least that is what he said...who really knows.
So then I read the directions to our hostel wrong and we took the metro way farther than we were supposed to and had to turn around and go back. It was at this point that I asked my travel companions if we could all please say a prayer together as soon as we got to the hostel. Because, let's be honest at this point I was worried that the whole trip was going to be as bad as this day and I totally wanted to cry.

Once we got to our hostel we said a prayer together and everything went much better. The people running the hostel were SO NICE! "Ok, we have 4 nice girls. :)"  They even had free bottled water in the lobby! This is most exciting! The Charles Bridge Economic Hostel is the bomb!
We were able to find a place to eat. I'm positive it was over priced but none of us cared because it was so good!! We got 3 dishes and shared them between the 4 of us. Duck with an amazing sauce on top of sauerkraut and dumplings. This was the first time I have ever like sauerkraut. Roast chicken with what I think was polenta, maybe, and veggies. The last dish was beef in a yummy sauce with dumplings. All the food was incredible!!

After dinner we went on a FREE tour of the city with one of the hostel employees. Her name is Monica and she is awesome. She told us were everything was that we wanted to see and pointed out stuff we didn't even know we wanted to see. She took us to the John Lennon wall and the bridge with the locks. Both of which we wanted to see but weren't sure we would be able to find. She told us where to get souvenirs that weren't from China, funny Czech traditions, how much to tip at restaurants in the Czech, and not to trust any taxi drivers (all very valuable information).

We wrote our names on the wall!

John Lennon wall

The lock bridge

After the tour we got some delicious pastries and ate them while we stood on the Charles Bridge. A fabulous ending to a day that surely did not start out well. Prayer works! From this point on we made sure we said a prayer together before we went out for the day. The few days we forgot to say a prayer in the morning things would start to go bad, we would all say a prayer, and everything would go much better.

More to come...because I know you care so deeply. ;-)

I count. That's what I do!

Patient Screech: 18! 19! 20!...1000! 1005! 1006!
Nurse Patience: How did you count from 20 to 1000 so fast?
Patient Screech: Because I count. That's what I do. 1000, 1005, 1006.

Today

#1: Today my patient chewed through his IV tubing.
#2: Today as another one of my patients was waking up from anesthesia he said,"even Kristen has turned against me!"
#3: Today the upside of getting off work at 9:30 pm is that the traffic is amazing!