We Are Princesses of the World!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO OUR MOTHERS!! We are thinking of you and appreciating so much your love and support over the years. Thank you.

The weather has warmed up and we've had sun and heat. It has been beautiful and was perfect for our short side trip to Salzburg. What an enchanting city. It's surrounded by the Alps and is centered around a fortress built on a hill. Visually, it is striking. We stayed in a family-owned hotel conveniently located between the city centre and the train station. We spent our first afternoon wandering around the old town (but not climbing up to the fortress). We poked into shops, a cemetery, an exhibition on the making of the Sound of Music, a beautiful garden and finished off our day in the biergarten of a local brewery. It was massive and we can't even begin to imagine the amount of beer that must be consumed there. In these beer gardens, we are ordering our beers in the 1 L size! So, when we say we had one beer you know what we mean..... The second day, we took a lift up the Mönchsberg which is the hill the fortress, the Festung Hohensalzburg, is built on. The top of the hill affords a view of the Alps and the city on all sides. It was glorious and quiet up there. We are really impressed by the large green spaces both here and in Munich.Then, we treated ourselves to a full afternoon in the Alps. We bussed 45 mins out of the city and took a cable car up the Untersberg, a height of 1853 m. The view was absolutely stunning! We wandered around the peak of the mountain and then sat (with a beer, of course!) soaking up the sun and the splendour of our surroundings. We almost didn't want to come down but we had a train to Munich to catch.

Yesterday, we walked along the banks of the Isar, the river that runs through Munich. We started near the zoo and walked maybe 4 K into the centre of town. We certainly witnessed a slice of Bavarian life! Since the weather was so fabulous and it was a weekend, the citizens of Munich were out in full force. The river was lined with families, young people and old couples who were picnicing, swimming in the shallow river, BBQing, and sunbathing. Many people sunbathe in the nude. It's not sexual at all. It's just the way it is and it's fascinating because it's so different from the stuffy Canadians! We ended up back in the centre of the old town at an outdoor market and then Marienplatz. The whole area was teeming with tourists and 20 somethings enjoying the biergartens which were doing a booming business. When a couple get married here, they have a stag and bachelorette party where they may have to dress up and do crazy things like sell condoms in the square. We witnessed several groups of young people doing this. Returned to Steffi's for a farewell BBQ. The one younger neighbour couple joined us as well as Steffi's dad and his wife. Enjoyed a fire in the firepit and fell happily into bed after midnight.

This morning, we bid a fond farewell to Steffi as she left on a 2 wk business trip to Italy. We plan on spending the afternoon downtown at the Pinakotek, one of the most important art galleries in the world. We then see Ines one final time for dinner and tomorrow we leave for Berlin.

So, the pictures we're posting are of: nudist sunbathers; young guys in the biergarten getting drunk and dressed up like red-headed hula girls (stag party?); the city of Salzburg looking up to the fortress from a garden; and a hazy view from the top of the Alps. I haven't edited that last picture to sharpen up the image but at least you'll get an idea of how breathtaking it was!

Hi to you all (family, friends and workmates). We arrive home Friday dinner time. We will no longer have access to our own computer but will probably blog one final time in Berlin from an Internet Cafe.

Daniel, have a fabulous final week on your tour. Crossing that finish line will be an experience in itself. Well done!!

love,

Rhonda and Laura