BEER FEST(S)

I know. It's been a shameful while. I've heard pleas from many to update my blog (and to be honest, I'm honored you haven't given up on me yet...or perhaps by now you have!) As one friend stated it best, she's had a baby and come back from maternity leave in the time it's taken me to update my blog.

I'll start my updates with some more of my 2011 travels. My main highlight for this post is all of my autumn trips that revolved around the universal language of beer. That's right, we're covering Oktoberfest and Belgium in this recap post. Crazy times.

Oktoberfest

Why order pints, when you can have STEINS?!

30 of my expat friends and I ventured to the land of lederhosen,



bratwurst, pretzels,



castles, and fairy tales for the adult fairy tale that is Oktoberfest.



The city of Munich swirls, quite literally, in it.



And this festival does not discriminate almost any age.



Our party was set up in the Hofbrau Haus "tent," which was more like a massive building.



The table reservations run in 4 hour shifts and you are alloted 2 steins and a meal of rotisserie chicken and potato salad for about 35 euro. We had the morning session, so the tent was just filling in at the beginning of our reservation.



By the end of the 4 hours, it was madness....a sea of drunk people! We lost many in our party on our way out of the tent that night.



Things got a bit crazy within my party as well. I'll let the pictures tell the stories.







We also tried to do some sight seeing. I wanted to see the beautiful Neuschwanstein Castle, it's always been a dream of mine. We ventured over for the 2 hour train ride from Munich to see the castle, but unfortunately it was freezing and raining, so it was pretty hard to enjoy the view! My hands literally felt like icicles and many were being blown by the heavy winds on the treacherous viewing bridge.








Belgium: Bruges and Ghent

We had been planning a nice relaxing trip to Bruges and Ghent for months, and I was pretty excited to visit these historic and beautiful cities as well as drink fine Belgium beer as Michael has converted me to a believer in only Belgium beer now. Unfortunately I had caught a hard core cold and by the first day of our trip I was running a fever the whole day and was too out of it to enjoy most of the time in Bruges, including what was going to be a satisfying sip of our favourite beer, Leffe.







In Bruges we did a boat tour and walked up the steps of the famous bell tower dating from the 1200s I believe. There were lots of bell towers to climb up in these quaint Belgium towns!







The town square

Although Bruges is the more "sexy" Belgium location, especially because of the movie In Bruges, I really preferred Ghent. Ghent had a much richer history and more to do. We stayed at a really nice Marriott for free courtesy of work and the Marriott's doorsteps had this spectacular view, which was also the central part of the town. I was actually extremely excited about this hotel ever since I saw it on the internet, and it did not disappoint!



Doorstep of the Marriott Ghent.

Our first night in Ghent we had a surprisingly delicious dinner of couscous. We were given these massive plates full of couscous and lamb with some kind of broth to poor over all of it. This was our view from dinner, which is just to the corner of the Marriott.



Ghent even had an ancient castle and another bell tower!



Castle in Ghent.

Overall, both beer fests were a success! Cheers! ;)

Under Construction

Wow all sorts of wrong going on with my blog today! Will fix this before the next post! I will also have to talk about the differences between English and American weddings...I got a bit carried away!

A proper English weekend, wedding and all!

This weekend Michael and I went to a proper English wedding in Beaulieu. It was a really beautiful wedding with lots of pretty hats and the backdrop of the beautiful English countryside. Michael was an usher in the wedding (groomsman) so he was decked out with a "morning suit" and top hat. I prepared myself by getting a fascinator.

The car the bride and groom arrived in.

In our fancy dress.

The bride and groom with their parents. Look at the hats!

The entire wedding party.

Looking dashing in his top hat.

Wedding guests with their fancy fascinators.

The marquee (tent) where the reception was.

Overall a good night!

This weekend I also got my patio furniture, where I am really enjoying in the 60 degree weather in August. I made full use of the patio furniture eating every meal.

I have also reluctantly succumbed to the traditional English breakfast. I made my first proper English breakfast this weekend and enjoyed it outside on the patio.

English breakfast involves a fried egg, tomato, mushrooms (seriously, I don't get it either!), fried bread, sausage, and English bacon (which is more like American ham).

I also have a cute cat that has been visiting me! It's very curious and always comes up to my door!



Also, apologies for the photos being cut off on my last couple of posts....I am working on fixing this! Until then, cheers!

Monday, August 15, 2011

Beat the Heat

This has been a cold summer. For much of July it rained cold rain and on top of that I haven't seen a day's worth of sunlight in weeks...and I certainly haven't tanned....in a year or so! So naturally, I thought it would make sense to venture even further north, to ICELAND!

Yes, we went to the land of Vikings,

Glaciers,

Cool money,

And strange meats.

Oh, and the Blue Lagoon of course.

The Blue Lagoon is actually amazing. It's a large natural hot springs. I couldn't get over how blue the water was.

The Blue Lagoon was definitely relaxing, however, it really only takes 2-3 hours to enjoy it in it's entirety. Had we known this, we would have rearranged our excursions because we had way too much free time in the city of Reykjavik (population of 110k).

We ended up having lots of time to explore the nightlife that Reykjavik had to offer. On our bar hopping excursion, we some how ended up in a gay bar.

This was one clue that gave it away.

We also found a really great Mexican restaurant where we had nachos and fajitas. It was actually a lot closer to TexMex than anything I had experienced in London!

Look at this attitude.

Much happier looking after a nice meal of Mexican!

Icelandic culture is definitely edgy and modern.

The big excursion that we did during our trip was called the Golden Circle where it took you around some of the most popular Iceland sights.

Here is a massive waterfall (Gulfoss waterfall).

Pretty scary getting up close!

Same with the famous Geysir.

Pretty crazy!

And the divide between the Americas and EuroAsia.

Overall the trip was quite relaxing, and we had tons of free time. We had plenty of time to practice our photography skills (fried ice cream above).

We also have proof that the sun does set in Iceland in the summer. Reykjavik does not get the extreme 24 hours of daylight and darkness in summer and winter that some of the more northern parts of Iceland get. We witnessed beautiful sunsets at around 11pm. However, it never gets completely dark during the night. Even at 3 or 4am the sky was still a dark blue colour, and the sun did rise quite early.

We ended the trip enjoying a nice massive breakfast at a nearby cafe. Where this odd looking creature overlooked us!

I would definitely recommend Iceland for once in your lifetime. Just be sure to plan your excursions right and remember that you don't need too much time in Reykjavik! One of my biggest regrets of the trip is not seeing the glacier lagoon, but unfortunately that was a 14 hour excursion. It looks amazing though! To save time you can easily do the Blue Lagoon on the way to the airport and there are plenty of packages that let you do it.

Coming up, I'll update you on my lovely English weekend complete with a proper English wedding!

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