Well we have made it back from our most amazing Germany trip. I can't even explain how much I loved every little thing about our trip. Germany is so amazing and I am in love with it. We were so upset when it was time to come home, but I guess all amazing vacations must come to an end. I even tried to lose our passports a couple of times just to insure that we could stay longer :) I am so sad to be home and I already miss that place terribly. I think I was meant to live there, or so I keep telling Brandon. Sure I don't know the language and don't have any idea how to get places and could get lost every 10 seconds, but I was so meant to be there. I think anyways. I'm glad that Brandon has been able to keep up with his German and was able to translate and talk to people just fine with no problems. I've spent a good few hours trying to get all my posts just right, so just to warn you there is like 4 new posts after this, so keep scrolling!!!! I decided that would be best than to make it into one massive post. We took tons of pictures and created many wonderful memories that we'll cherish for a long time. I count the days when we can go back again...probably not for a long long time though. But I can wait. I don't know if this will post in order, but enjoy!!!!!
Friday, December 4, 2009
Frankfurt
We spent the remainder of our days in Frankfurt. This was the last area that Brandon served in. And I think it's the biggest city that he served in as well. I loved that we went at this time of year because they had their huge Christmas Markets going on!! This is something they do in quite a few of the city's and they line the streets with booths and food and christmas decor and everything else you can imagine. I was in Christmas heaven that is for sure. We spent most of the nights exploring around there and buying all sorts of fun trinkets. Brandon even had me trying lot's of German food and I even ordered something all by myself! I was so proud of myself. I have a huge desire to learn German now. There was something very invigorating about listening to Brandon speak German to everyone and knowing what they were saying to us. I keep telling him to just talk to me in German now. haha. So hot. Anyways. I didn't get very many pictures of the market, mainly cause we went there at night and so my pictures didn't really turn out. I did get some during the day though.
We went to some old Castle ruins during one of the days and I was loving every minute of this. Our first stop was at this really old castle that was literally in ruins. I was so excited to get in there and go exploring through it but sadly during November they only have it open on Saturday's and Sunday's. LAME! I tried to break in but Brandon had to pull me off the wall and assure me that it probably wasn't the best idea. I hate it when he's right.
We then went to the Heidelberg Castle, which is a huge castle that was built on the side of a mountain that overlooks the whole city. Gorgeous view. If I were to build a castle, I would've picked that spot. This was in better shape than the other one that we were at but it was equally if not cooler than the other. The size of this thing was mind blowing. It had huge courtyards and towers and secret passageways everywhere! They had them all blocked off for some unknown reason, gosh, you'd think they'd keep them open for crazy tourists like me who want to explore them. I told Brandon that I wanted to buy the castle and restore it and live there, but I don't think he was quite so found of the idea. Whatever, I don't need his help, I'll just do it myself. Better start saving up. haha 
This is a picture of what the castle originally looked like. Quite a difference!
We both liked this guy cause it looks like he is holding the Holy Hand Grenade (any monty python fans out there?)
And last but not least, when we got our rental car it was brand new!! It only had 24 kilometers on it! Man, when we were done with that thing this is how many kilometers it ended with....
...I'd say that's a trip well done!!!!!!!!
Paris
We then headed over into France to visit Paris! I must say though, Paris isn't as amazing as I thought it was going to be. I think we may have just hit it wrong though cause we were there during the weekend and so it was insanely busy and it was cold the whole time and rainy so we didn't have to best experience there, but it was still fun. We went to Disneyland the first day that we were there and it was quite an adventure to experience a whole different Disneyland. It was way different than the one in Anaheim and it was so weird to not know where I was going. The park was PACKED. Which surprised us cause we thought for sure it wouldn't be busy cause it was so cold and wet, but we were wrong. We spent a good amount of time there but around 6 we decided to head out cause it was starting to down pour and got very very cold so we decided to leave while we were still having fun. Instead of staying and being miserable. We were only about 20 minutes away from our hotel but lucky for us (ha) we got caught in horrible traffic and it ended up taking us a little over 2 hours to get back. We were not very happy campers to say the least. We didn't tour a whole lot there due to not having a ton of time and we decided we really wanted to go back to Germany cause France was weird. So we went and saw the Eiffel Tower and drove around and saw a few sights and then headed back.
We didn't get a whole lot of shots of the tower due to the weather. It was pretty rainy that morning and so we just got a few shots and packed our camera away so it wouldn't get ruined. The had this pretty park that was surrounding the tower that was really neat to walk through and take some pictures of.
Bonn & Cologne
After a few days in Berlin we hit the car once again and traveled to another area where Brandon served his mission. I fell in love with Bonn the minute we walked out of our hotel. Everything about it was amazing and beautiful. Our hotel was right next to this awesome river that we got to walk along and enjoy the sunrise. 
See what I mean? Beautiful.
We walked thru town a bit and we did a few things there. They have a really cool museum of Germany's history that we spent quite a while in. It had a lot of neat things from World War II and just a bunch of stuff about their culture. We also spent lot's of time riding back and forth on the same wrong subway trying to find the Haribo Candy Factory. But once we finally found it it was so worth it. I've never quite enjoyed candy as much as I have in Germany. Sooo good. I wanted to buy the whole store. Bonn has a lot of really cool buildings and sites. Can't explain how awesome everything was so here are some pictures!
Next we caught a train to Cologne which was about 30 minutes away from Bonn. I loved loved this city too! Even though we only went and saw one thing there, the city was still crazy! It was soooo big and there were people everywhere! Right as we walked out of the train station, this was the first thing you see staring you right in the face:
This my friends, is the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my entire life: the Cologne Cathedral!!! This was seriously beyond massive. I really don't think I've ever seen anything so big in my life. We went inside and it was so gorgeous. But the best part of it all was when we got to climb up the 532 stairs to the very top! Now these weren't regular ole stairs, they were spiral stairs all the way up in this small pillar where you could very easily have a panic attack if you are claustrophobic. Brandon is such a stud cause he hiked all the way to the top with about 20 pounds (no joke) of candy in his backpack that we had bought earlier that day. What a hottie. We made it to the top and it was well worth it. We had an amazing view of the city and it was awesome!
Someone was so nice to have spray painted our initials on one of the stairs for us (I swear it wasn't us)
This was a shot we took looking straight up the cathedral. We still weren't at the very tip top but they didn't let us go that high. Jerks. hahaha
Berlin
We flew into Frankfurt about 6:00 AM and after getting our car and getting everything organized we explored Frankfurt for a little bit just to kill some time. We walked to the main city and Brandon showed me around his mission area. It was so surreal being there and seeing all the places that he'd been to and where he lived.
We were also able to go visit the temple there too and it was sooo awesome!!! It was actually a nice feeling of being around something that was actually familiar to me. I think I was having quite the culture shock the first few hours we were there.
We then headed the 5 hours to Berlin. Little did we know that after so many hours of flying and having no idea how long we'd been awake, this car trip ended up being kinda crazy! We'd been driving for about an hour when both Brandon and I realized we could not keep our eyes open from being so tired. And being in the middle of Germany we didn't have many options and we just happen to come upon a truck parking area off the side of the road so we hurried and got off and slept for about an hour or so on the side of the German freeway. After that cat nap we were set to go! The cool thing about Germany is they have unrestricted speeds on their freeways, so yes my friends, we could go as fast as we wanted! Which is nice cause that saves you quite a bit of time :) We made it to our hotel, went to bed, and woke up the next day bright and early ready to start our exploring! Berlin has one of the largest zoo's and so we decided to check that out and it was pretty awesome. They had pretty much every animal you could think of and it was kind of intimidating actually cause it's not like American zoo's where all the animals are caged off and safely away from you. Here all they had was this little moat that was separating you from the animals and I bet if they really wanted to, they could jump it.
This dolphin statue made me oh so happy.
This little bird guy was so funny. He followed us around and he would stop and lift of one of his legs and so I'd lift up my leg too and then he'd put it down and lift his other leg and waited for me to do the same. We did that for a few minutes.
This was a really cool cathedral that had been bombed during the war and was still standing. If you look closely you can see the top is gone. They had so many awesome historic buildings everywhere. I couldn't get enough.
Enjoying a German treat standing infront of the same Cathedral. Seriously, I still can't even believe I was there. Everything was so amazing.
Then we went to some historic sites like Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall (well what's left of it) and a few other places. Berlin was really awesome and really huge!! We could have spent our whole trip there and still probably not seen everything we wanted.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Pictures
Brandon and I finally got some new pictures taken of us and it only took us 2 years to get new ones..haha. My talented friend Lindsay took these fabulous pictures of us and I am so stoked about them. There were so many awesome ones I just couldn't decide so I picked like a million to post. Thanks a ton again Lindsay! You're awesome!
Monday, November 2, 2009
*Happy Halloween*
This year for Halloween was pretty uneventful. Brandon had a computer programming competition up north the day of Halloween so he was gone pretty much all day. Yeah, kinda sad. I may or may not have been a little upset with him about that one :) Since he was gonna be gone we carved pumpkins a little early this year and had fun doing that. Here is the result of the finished products! Not too shabby if I do say so myself. Note: Of course Brandon carves Mario for his pumpkin. It was between that or a pattern he found of computer code, and I put my foot down about that one. So Mario it was! Which is ok, cause let's admit, Mario freakin rocks. I tried to find a Princess Peach one but was not successful, so I found another pattern that was just too happy of a face to pass up. Happy Halloween!!
