German Fun with the Kruse's: Part 1

Our great friends from Indy, Jason and Lydia, recently came over for an epic two week European vacation.  We pretty much hit it all, from the Alps to big cities, a serene lake and everything in between.  The first few days of their time here we spent showing them quintessential Germany, so this post is just about that.  I couldn't fit all of the awesomeness into only one post!

Jason and Lydia arrived in Stuttgart in the early afternoon, and we didn't waste any time!  We dropped off their luggage at home, gave Lydia a caffeine boost and headed out.  We headed 20 minutes south to our favorite local town, Tübingen. We love to take our guests there on their first day because it really makes you feel like you're in Germany!  We had a great lunch and great beer at the Neckarmüller Brewery. Sadly, we couldn't get Jason to try a delicious German pretzel, no matter how hard we tried!

 After wandering around Tübingen for a bit, on our way home we stopped at the tiny and quaint monastery town of Bebenhausen for a look around.  We never get tired of seeing these places!  We headed home after that for a great dinner of shredded pork tacos.  (Very non-German, but I've got to get my Mexican fix somehow!  The German Mexican restaurants just don't quite cut it!)

The next day was full of amazing sites!  We headed to the Black Forest for the day.  On our way, we stopped to tour the impressive Hohenzollern Castle.  Seeing the castle spires on top of the hill in the distance as you drive to the castle is always such an incredible site.  The views from the top are just as wonderful.  We walked the castle grounds, took a tour of the gorgeous castle (in German) and then continued on to the Black Forest.

Our first stop in the Black Forest was Triberg to see Germany's most beautiful waterfall.  (When you think of the Black Forest, think cuckoo clocks and gnomes.) We ate a tasty lunch by a cute little pond to fuel up before our hike to the waterfall.  After having so much rain in Germany, the waterfall was extremely impressive!  At the base of the hike, they sell peanuts to feed the little red squirrels.  I told everyone that in the three times I had been to the waterfall, I had never seen a squirrel there, so don't bother with the peanuts.  Well, of course I had to be proved wrong this time.  We saw two cute little pointy eared squirrels on our hike!  I have seen only a handful of squirrels since we've been here, so it was a big deal!

We drove a ways south down the incredibly scenic Schwarzwaldhochstrasse (Black Forest High Road).  The scenery is breathtaking with the dense and dark forested hills along with the bright spring green rolling hills and fields.  We were heading to an awesome pool to relax for the rest of the evening.  We spent most of our time in the tropical Palm Oasis mini-resort, where there's a swim up bar and a revolving door in the pool to get to the outside section.  So cool!  During the last 20 minutes before the pool closed, we checked out the water slides.  There was absolutely nobody else in there, so we did as many slides as possible in the short amount of time.  It was so much fun, we were just like giggling little kids!  We took the autobahn to get home, which Lydia was very excited about!  It was great driving late at night with no traffic!

For our third Germany day we decided to see a major German city, Munich!  It's pretty much the stereotype that everyone thinks of when they think of a German city.  Munich is a two and a half hour drive from our house.  We got there just in time for lunch in a beautiful shaded beer garden next to the awesome Viktualienmarkt where Lydia and I stocked up on some unique spices.

We hit the main city sites and then headed my favorite part of the city, the Englischer Gardens.  It's actually a park rather than a garden. It's at least as big, if not bigger than Central Park!  We enjoyed watching all of the people out sunbathing, playing and enjoying the beautiful sunny day.  We even watched some surfers on the river!   We made our way to the Chinese Pagoda to relax like the locals in the beer garden.

The Marienplatz

One thing all four of us have in common, is that we love to watch the ducks and geese!  Lydia had saved some bread to feed the ducks.  They ate right out of our hands!  So cute!  Duck feeding became a common theme throughout the rest of their time here.  :-)  Before heading home, we ate a delicious, traditional dinner at the Augustiner-Bräu, Munich's oldest brewery, established in 1328.

The next day I dropped Jason and Lydia off at the airport for their four day excursion to London, where it sounds like they had an amazing time and walked their feet off, like we usually do!  While they were in London, Kyle and I welcomed an American family to Stuttgart.  The Anderson's just moved here, so we spent a few days with them and their incredibly adorable kids to help out with their transition to Germany.

Jason and Lydia came back to Stuttgart after their London trip, and our fun continued in Italy and France, with quick stops in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.  Stay tuned for part two of our European fun with the Kruse's!

Under the Tuscan Sun Part 2

After spending part one of our Tuscany trip in Florence, part two of our trip was relaxing in the beautiful Tuscan countryside!  First, we had to get out of the city, which was no easy feat!  Kyle said that driving there was worse than driving in London on the wrong side of the road!  First you have tons of narrow, medieval one way streets, crazy drivers, scooters whipping in and out of traffic, pedestrians, bikers, confusing signs, confusing GPS…Kyle needed some R and R after that! 

We were staying in a villa in the Chianti region, just a bit south of Florence.  We couldn’t check in until 2, so we went to the small town of Greve in Chianti for lunch first.  It was a gorgeous, sunny Saturday morning.  The flower market was set up in the town square, which was so picturesque.  We had a great lunch of pasta and local Chianti on a terrace overlooking the town square. 

On a hill just outside of Greve is a little jewel of a town called Montefioralle.  It’s a little fortified village on a hill less than a kilometer away, but it felt like we were worlds away from the bustling market in Greve.  We only saw a few other people while we were wandering through the tiny little streets.  Everywhere we looked was a postcard view. 

Our villa was not far from Greve, called Villa Il Leccio.  It was absolutely fabulous!  The Villa has been in their family for nine generations.  It's located on a vineyard where they make their own wine and olive oil.  The shared spaces of the villa are like stepping back in time with stone walls covered in frescoes, huge old fireplaces, and antique furniture.  The lush gardens around the property overlook the rolling hills dotted with vineyards.  Every morning they had a beautiful spread of homemade baked goods, cheese, jam, yogurt, and coffee.  I highly recommend this place and would go back in a heartbeat!

Mmmmm, breakfast!

We spent that afternoon and evening enjoying the sun in the garden with a bottle of their white wine.  That evening we walked to the tiny nearby town for dinner.  Dinner was so good!  We had antipasti of proscuitto and crostini with pâté.  We also shared tortellini with mushrooms and braised beef.    I absolutely love Tuscan food.  It’s fresh, simply prepared, rustic, unpretentious and so delicious!

We had some wine tasting planned for our second day in Tuscany.  The weather was a bit gloomy, but it really wasn’t too bad.  A lot of the wineries in Tuscany have historic “castles” up on top of hills that are also hotels.  A lot of the wineries have their tasting rooms separate from the castle, but you can tour or walk around the grounds of the castle.  We visited two wineries like this.  The first we visited was CastelloVicchiomaggio and the second was Verrazzano.  Being in the Chianti region, both of them had some really wonderful Chianti, as well as some of their own red blends known as Super Tuscans.  It’s a good thing we had our car so that we could do some purchasing! 

We stopped in the small hill town of Panzano for lunch.  We ate more wonderful food for lunch.  We had fried polenta with ragu as our antipasti.  Kyle had ricotta and zucchini risotto for his main dish, and I had pasta with cinghiale sauce.  Cinghiale, or wild boar, is a Tuscan specialty.  It’s really good and has a lot of flavor.  It kind of reminds me of beefy pork, if that makes any sense!

Great little find for lunch!

The family at our villa makes dinner a couple nights a week for their guests.  We took them up on that offer, and I’m so glad that we did!  You know that Kyle and I love food and trying the regional dishes from all of the places we visit.  We both agreed that this was probably the best dinner we’ve ever had.  We don’t say that lightly!  Everything about it was amazing!  We were seated in a private room that was an old kitchen.  We had a bottle of the house made red wine.  Kyle took I-Phone pics of all of the food, so see the captions for what we ate!  I think my quote of the night was, “It’s as if I’ve never tasted pork before!”  The villa sold a recipe book of their family favorites, so I’ll get to try my hand at it and see if I can remake some of the magic!  We were so stuffed at the end, but it was so worth it!

Goat cheese baked in tomatoes and white wine

Penne with ragu

Grilled pork chop with  greens and balsamic dressing

Chicken braised in Chianti, artichokes, and roasted potatoes

Panna cotta with strawberries and fruit compote

Limoncello and espresso

Our last day in Tuscany was our Tuscan town tour day.  We first headed to the walled medieval hill town of San Gimignano, which I fell in love with when I was there in college.  The town dates back to the Etruscan times in the third century BC, but the town that you can see today is mostly very well preserved medieval architecture.  The town has an amazing skyline of towers, which were people’s homes.  We enjoyed strolling the streets, enjoying the atmosphere and the views.  They’re also known for a white wine called Vernaccia from an ancient variety of grape, so of course we had to add some of that to our collection!

Our next stop was another medieval walled hill town called Monteriggioni.  This town is entirely surrounded by a wall with evenly spaced towers.  It’s much smaller, and not as well known as San Gimignano.  We walked around the little town, in disbelief that people actually live there.  What a picture perfect little town!

Our final stop of our Tuscan town tour was Siena.  It is a pretty good size town.  We found a parking spot easily enough, but right as we pulled in it started to pour.  We waited it out in the car for about 15 minutes and then made our way to the city center when it lightened up.  We first saw the Basilica of San Domenico, which houses the relics of St. Catherine, a saint from Siena that is one of two patron saints from Italy, along with St. Francis.  She lived during the 1300s.  We stayed in the basilica for a little while, waiting for the second round of heavy rain to pass.  We then headed through the narrow medieval streets, had a nice lunch, and went to see the impressive Siena Cathedral, which was built between 1215 and 1263.  The interior of the Cathedral is really impressive and unique. 

Probably the most well known site in Siena is the Piazza del Campo.  It’s the historic center of Siena, and it’s said to be one of the most impressive medieval town squares in Europe.  It’s a huge shell shape and the ground is laid with brick, making it very different from any that we’ve seen. 

We didn’t stay long in Siena because of the weather, but we still made time to get gelato before heading out.  That evening we had a wonderful last dinner in Tuscany in the town near our villa.  We had prosciutto, crostini with pâté, ravioli, roast chicken with white beans, and biscotti with desert wine.  A very nice finish to our trip!

We had a long drive back the next day, made even longer by hitting Zurich at rush hour.  Even after visiting someplace as beautiful as Tuscany, we were still impressed by the beauty of spring in Germany as we drove back.  I can’t imagine that grass could be any greener!

Life in Tuscany is definitely la dolce vita.  I am hoping that we’ll be able to make it back at least a time or two.  I think it has to be number one or two on my list of favorite places.  What a blessing to be able to experience such wonderful places!

Ciao!