Stop #2 – Krakow, Poland

We flew into Vienna, spent 7 days and rented a car and made our way to Krakow, Poland. The rental car place told us we couldn’t go through Czech and possibly Poland (but they had to confirm). I told them don’t worry about it, we weren’t going there anyways lol. We did. Those types of small things give me pleasure.

The drive took I think about 4-5 hours. Krakow was one of my favourite stops this trip. Not what I expected. Everything was super cheap, people were friendly and it felt less touristy then other stops. I’ll be going back. We checked out the salt mines but not Auschwitz (next time). The vodka was like $1euro a shot for premium stuff. Delicious. of course we got Perogies several times. I am half Polish so on Christmas Eve, we eat Perogies and Cabbage rolls as a tradition.


The Salt Mines


Enjoying a big beer on a patio. Good times


The kids hanging out next to some sites


Kingstons face as I tell him about Ron Bertino’s Space Trip Trade


Looking Cool as Fuck

Jul 29 – Travels

We’re back in Arona, Italy. Where we will spend most of the remaining parts of the road trip. After that we’ll be ending the trip with a Norwegian Fjord cruise and then we’re back in the Cayman Islands.

We’ve put on about 8k km with our Tesla driving all across Europe and we’ve paid zero for gas.  It’s a pretty epic road trip especially in an electric car.  It hasn’t gotten much attention despite Tesla tweeting about the smallest road trips (I think one was someone going from UK to Amsterdam).  Really?  That’s like one leg of 30 on my trip.  I thought it’d have been interesting taking an electric car from Malta all the way up to Sweden.

Here are some pictures of Arona.

 

   

  

  

  

  

Travel Update

Been a while. We were in Copenhagen for 7 days followed by Stockholm for 8. We’re now making our way to Hamburg with a 2 day stop in Roskilde, Denmark. We decided against driving through Norway and opted for a Norwegian Fjord cruise on Holland America to end this whole thing in August. We booked which what we were told was the last room and it was an obstructed ocean view and somehow got lucky with an upgrade opportunity to the Neptune suite (booking cancellation?).  Before that though, we are going to go back to where we started which was the Lake Como/Arona. It’s our favourite region in Europe. We’ll stay there for 9 days and then head up and stay in Strasbourg and then Bruge before going to UK to board our cruise.

The rest of the itinerary looks like this:

Roskilde, Denmark

Hamburg, Germany

Lake Como/Arona, Italy

Strasbourg, France

Bruges, Belgium

All of Norway by cruise

Cayman Islands (Home)

 

 

 

Jul 7 – Travels

We’ve made it to Copenhagen.

Like the city and its vibe quite a bit but its damn expensive. Seriously.

Berlin was a very bizarre city. I really have no idea how to quantify it or my experience there. I really don’t.  We happened to stay in a vegan neighbourhood which was awesome!  That was a total fluke as well. Glad we stayed in that part of town, it happened to be the best part, super artsy, lively and kid friendly. At first it was intimidating, the characters there are bizarre and it looked like we were in gangland with all the spray paint. After a day, you realize it’s harmless. Overall, I can’t see myself ever returning to Berlin. It was not a favorite.

I had the unfortunate experience of watching a man die. It was really messed up. We were walking to our segway tour and a man was on the ground with a worker outfit getting CPR, his legs were twitching and stopped and they seemed to give up on the CPR with shrugs and looks of hopelessness. Very eery. The thing I remember most is all of the bystanders faces. Just blank.  I don’t know what happened but I’d guess maybe electrocution or heart attack.

We toured the Berlin wall, saw the holocaust memorial museum which was the most impactful of its genre. I’ve been to a concentration camp and other sites but this one was next level with its presentations of individual cases/experiences.  Very impactful. Highly recommended everyone sees that some day. What an atrocity.

We drove and ferried from Berlin to Copenhagen and arrived in good time.

More to come

 

 

 

Wurzburg -Trip Report (Ash)

Wurzburg

After leaving Rammingen we had about a 2 hour drive to Wurzburg. We rented a house just on the outskirts of the city, about a 10 minute drive out. The house itself was great, especially for the kids. There was a huge playroom that was filled with cars, lego, colouring books, stuffed animals and a huge car carpet with roads and buildings. The kids were in Heaven! This was definitely one of the nicer airbnb’s that we’ve stayed in.

Driving into Wurzuberg from the house was pretty easy. Once you get into the city, there was plenty of parking lots all around with paid parking. We never had a problem finding a place to park. Wurzberg itself is a beautiful city and the history is also pretty amazing. It was small, easy to navigate and had a great vibe.

In April of 1945, 90% of the city was destroyed in 17 seconds from the Allied bombers. 5000 people were killed and the medieval and historical buildings were completely destroyed. It took the Trümmerfrauen (rubble woman) of Wurzberg 20 years to complete the rebuild of the city. It was done mostly by woman as the majority of men perished in the war. Looking at the city now, you would have no idea the state it was in 70 years ago, it truly is a beautiful city.

The food in Wurzburg was pretty awesome. We were excited to see that one of the top 10 places to eat in the city was a vegetarian restaurant called Veggie Bros. Its basically a glorified falafel restaurant with different kinds of wraps, salads, juices and sauces. They make their own vegan mayo as well, which was absolutely amazing on their french fries. A great find for us as we are all vegetarian.

The main site we had in our sights (no pun intended) as the Residenz. Well, it made the entire trip, it was literally one of the best things we’ve seen.  It is up there with the Segrada, Vatican and St. Johns church in Valletta.  Astounding. Highly recommend as a bucket list “must see”. The next site was the fortress which we decided to visit when we had poor weather.  We checked out the museum and walked around. It was anti-climatic compared to the Residenz, however.

 

 

Jun 29 – Travels

We’ve arrived in Berlin, our first official “big city” stay.  We’ll be here until the 6th  at which point we’ll depart for Copenhagen. A week after that will be Stockholm and a week after that will be Helsinki.

I’ve got a shit-ton of updating to do tomorrow on this blog. I’ve been busy with catch-up of all sorts in business that has put a big limiter on free time outside of the obvious traveling/experiencing.

Pictures from Wurzburg and Nuremberg below:

  

  

Emma lost a tooth in Nuremberg   

Standard pic. Nuremberg  

Beach bar (summer in the city) Nuremberg. Super cool and extensive     

    Just a pic of the three weirdos that I call my family    

The lead weirdo   

Nuremberg nazi rally grounds  

A paddle boat excursion near the rally grounds  

A Wurzburg castle stroll  

A night out in Wurzburg

A night out in Wurzburg #2    

A night out in Wurzburg #3    

Fun in the backyard (Wurzburg)

Jun 24 (last full day near Munich)

Yesterday, Ash and I took the Tesla in for servicing and got a loaner P85+ which was interesting to drive.  The differences?  This one is the + package which includes a different suspension, brakes and 21 inch rims.  It also included some auto pilot functions.  All in all, just a bit different.  We talked to a  few car dealerships in UK already about selling our Tesla in August.  The going price seems decent, we’ll probably put it with one of the dealers and do a cruise to end the trip (a cruise around either the British Isles or Scandinavia) rather than spend it in Airbnbs.  Ideally we can sell the car in August and get one in the US for Cayman.

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After dropping off the car, we then made our way into Munich for a little night out and ended up buying a few apple watches. I’ll probably only wear mine during work outs or market hours as a way to keep track of the market/alerts without having to pull my phone out and/or being distracted at my computer. Will be a bit of a game changer for that.  I’ve got it setup to display the RUT on my watch face 🙂

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After that, we went and found a few beer gardens to enjoy some TapX and also some Augustiner beer (my personal favourite).  You can’t export that beer, it’s got no preservatives and is brewed according to the purity law in Munich. Munich beer is just different. I don’t know how to explain it. The Augustiner beer history dates back to 1328 when the Augustinian brotherhood of monks brewed the beer in the Munich (which means monk by the way and so does Monaco).

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Today, we will go back to pick up the car and I’ll probably get a haircut and stop at a Vegan restaurant we found.  Tomorrow we depart for Wurzburg with a stop in Uln along the way.  We spend four days in Wurzburg then will make our way to Berlin for a week followed by Copenhagen for another week. After that, who knows!

 

 

Germany (Pictures)

Ravensburg (Where they make those puzzles!)IMG_3808

Landsberg am Lech locksIMG_3800

Landsberg Am Lech during a hikeIMG_3781

Andech Monastery beers! Kingston is admiring them.IMG_3790

landsberg Am lech
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U-boat revealed
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Ravensburg poseIMG_3759Munich (Marienplatz) The start of the beer hall Putsch
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U-boat control room
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Landsberg Am Lech guard towerIMG_3770

Landsberg am Lech Umbrella crewIMG_3783

Landsberg Am Lech log pose #1IMG_3777

A beer in TurkheimIMG_3827

Trying on hats in Ravensburg museum
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Marienplatz, Munich
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RavensburgIMG_3823

There we go. Nice HatIMG_3816

Deutches Museum, Munich (Awesome!)IMG_3839

Entering Marienplatz
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Roar
IMG_3867More U-boat cut outs
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Jun 23 – Rammingen (near Munich)

We’ve been in Rammingen for the past 3 days and are staying in a fantastic airbnb that I’d recommend to anyone.  The drive took a bit longer than expected (8 hrs) and probably will be our longest of the trip.  It was relatively uneventful though fun to drive 160+ on the autobahn.  We stopped to charge in Ljubljana, Villach and just outside Munich.

The following day we checked out landberg am Lech and an the Andech monastery for some much looked forward to Monk beer.  The day after that we checked out Ravensburg and visited a museum there and bought some memory match games from the Ravensburger museum store. Ravensburg is a small town in Germany where all those puzzles/games you see at book stores are made (IE Camana Bays). The day after that we went into Munich and visited the Deutches museum which was awesome. They had a u-boat cut in half and that alone made the museum worth while to me. The kids loved it.

Jun 19 – About Koper

Koper is a little town about 25 mins from where we were staying. It was located at the bottom of the mountain that had really windy roads. For the most part we had no problem driving the Tesla up and down these roads. There were a few spots that were really thin and if there was another car coming we’d have to pull to the side but that only happened a few times.

Koper itself was a beautiful little town. We parked our car in the parking lot down by the port and it only cost us a few euro for a couple of hours parking. The port area is where a lot of the restaurants, bars, market and parks were located. They have 3 parks along the waterfront for children and, for the most part, the whole area is closed off to cars so we didn’t have to worry about our kids scootering around.

I was amazed at how clean the city was. There were garbage bins everywhere and I dont remember seeing a single piece of trash on the ground. Walking along the waterfront we came to a beach area. There were quite a few people there with their children just hanging out on the grass, playing in the playground or sandbox and a few brave ones were swimming in the cordoned off swimming area. It was a rocky beach with no sand but that might be normal for this area. Coming from Cayman Islands, this wasn’t really our type of beach 🙂

As always, we looked at Trip Advisor to see where we should eat lunch. There were about 70 restaurants listed in Koper and we were happy to see that two of the top ten places to eat where vegetarian! We headed to a little tiny place called Hisa De Rin. It had 3 (tiny) tables and it was packed. All the tables were taken and there were about 5 people ahead of us in line. The selection of food was quite small but the special of the day, or the Workmens meal as they call it, was Vegan. We ordered the special all around and it was a Vegan Moussaka. It was delicious! The portion size was huge and it only cost 5 euros. We visited that restaurant 2 times during or stay.

The old city part of Koper was quite small with one walkway through it that was lined with little cafes, shops and a few bars. We stopped at one of the cafes for a coffee and were happy that they had Rice milk. We saw that they had quite a few craft beers so we decided that we would head back there at some point for a beer.  Oh yah, for the beer drinkers out there, there is a cool app called Untappd which lets you track your beers, cheers friends, and find the coolest beers in whatever location you’re in.

Koper is quite a small little town but its definitely a nice one and, if driving by it, one should stop to check it out. The people are friendly, the waterfront is beautiful and you can get a great Vegan meal there too!

We rented a place on airbnb and it was located up a smaller mountain in a little town called Kostabona, just outside of Koper. The town only has about 50 homes, one restaurant and two churches. Our navigation stopped working as we went further up the mountain and we did get a little lost. Funny enough, after driving up a really tiny road, we turned around in a driveway and went back down the hill. It turned out, the driveway we turned around in was the place we were staying in.

The views from the house were pretty nice. Being out in the countryside meant there were a lot of bugs. For the most part we weren’t bothered by this but the girls weren’t too happy about the 3 scorpions that we came across. We all survived and all managed to get away, sting free.