The daily swim 100 days in

Gonna try and jump start the blog with a few posts highlighting life in Australia

If only every day was this calm…

First up in the category of “how is the lifestyle different from.. well anywhere we have lived before” is a focus on my daily swimming routine.

Pre Swim routine at Freshwater Rock Pool

The day we landed in Australia our friend Philippe mentioned that his 80 year old Legendary father swims every day in the ocean. That piqued my interest and I was off and running on my own “I too can swim in the ocean every day” commitment.   Unfortunately the initial streak only lasted one day, but was quickly reset with a clarification that I will be ‘swimming in the ocean every day I live in Freshwater”.  I am happy to report that this new, qualified goal has now hit 100 days and is going strong!

Some times you need a buddy on bad weather days

A few highlights and statistics 100 days in:

Longest Swim: 600 meters. Shelley Beach to Fairy Bower and back. I am working my way up to the Manly Beach to Shelley Beach swim that what seems like 1,000 Sydneysiders traverse every Friday and Saturday morning between 6am and 8am.  Amazing fish along this entire swim which is in Cabbage Tree Bay Aquatic Reserve.

Shortest swim: I literally dumped my head under the waves while Freshwater Beach was closed for a rescue. Lucky the girl who was swept off the rocks in a high surf day (giant waves crashing 20 feet in the air) survived, but it was pretty dramatic for a while while the lifesavers closed the beach, zoomed out to the rocks on jetskis, a medical helicopter landed in front of our house, and the life savers did their job. Reminder that the ocean has some serious safety hazards.

8:30PM! Gotta make it quick!

Sharks sighted: 1 Blacktip Reef shark. Generally harmless to humans, less than 1 meter long, but still got the heard going! Sighted March 13 off Freshwater Beach.

Favorite place to swim: Freshwater Beach of course! Nothing beats peeking down at the waves and getting your toes in the water a minute and a half later.  No shoes, no shirt needed!  

Freshie is calling with some good low tide midday, midweek vibes!

OK gotta go, it’s time for a swim!

Holidays Down Under

Hello again!

Quick time traveling post to wrap up the holiday season in Australia!

We typically spend the holidays shuttling between our home in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Lake Tahoe mountains. This year we swapped skiing for surfing and rain for…. well… it still rained, but it was much warmer!

A few highlights from our Holidays in Australia:

Found Santa on the beach

Xmas Jammies appropriate for the weather!

We are suuuuper lucky to have friends living in Sydney who “adopted” us for the Holidays!  Our friends from London invited us to an Christmas Eve-Eve party hosted by one of their friends, to their family Christmas Eve dinner, and Christmas Day celebration. Traveling during the holidays can be tough for the kids but its such a great experience to see another country and cultures’ holiday traditions.  

Surprise festive bus ride back to our house on Christmas Eve

Boxing day for the Sydney to Hobart sailing race, view from North Head

New Years Eve we were back at the Bland’s House to welcome 2024 with a fantastic view of the Harbor over Rose Bay.

Traveling in style to NYE on the Ferry

New Years Eve in Sydney Harbor is absolutely the best fireworks show we have ever seen!

Now back to a whole lot more beach time before the Sydneysiders return to work and life on January 8th! We are excited for the many adventures we have planned for the School Holidays (aka “Summer Break” as we know it back in the states…).

G’Day Mates!

Hello from beautiful Sydney Australia!  We have embarked on another family adventure and moved to Australia for a “Semester Abroad*”

Made it to the Boxing Day Sydney to Hobart sailing race start… but couldn’t get a non silly picture out of this crew after a massive bike ride to the north head in 85 F sunny weather!

Long story short – we moved to Sydney (Manly…well Queenscliff, steps from Freshwater beach to be specific) for the next 7 months.  We are planning to return to the US before school starts back in the US for our kids next fall. A few weeks into our time in Sydney we are LOVING all that comes with an adventure that involves moving to a new country.

We are super excited to dive into local life here, while exploring Sydney and Australia over the coming months.  We got a killer spot on the beach, have been spending a ton of days with some of our best friends from our time in London (Philippe and Linda) and have been pretty successful at aggressively avoiding sunburns.

Surfs up Dudette’s

A few frequently asked questions we got as we were planning the move:

Why Sydney? We have been planning to move to a new country with our kids for the past five plus years, specifically before the oldest gets to middle school age. We were working on Amsterdam, Lyon or Munich then caught up with our Sydney based friends last January. They “showed” us around their new house, the harbor and their sunset views. On our way to dinner that night we turned to each other at the same time and said “lets do Sydney”.  We have been here a few times (including with kids) and once we looked into the move, the big items (school, housing, visa) were not that complicated and while we don’t have a language adventure, we are traveling to places that are new for our family (been to Tasmania anyone??)

What are the kids doing? They start school in Manly at the end of January.  Until then it is a lot of beach time with a few camps (sailing, climbing, Taronga Zoo…) thrown in during their second summer holiday in the last 6 months.

Are you really coming back to California? Yes, we are. I promise!

How did you find your house? Loooots of online searching, emailing rental agents and a “facetime” tour of our spot from Philippe.

Whats the best part? The beach. The beach is the best part.

Do you surf? Well we are learning… more on this later.

Can we really come and stay? There is room at this inn! DM us for more details and dates as they are filling up fast

How is the ice cream? Its amazing. Especially Messina

Do you call a popsicle a popsicle? Nope, they are called Ice Blocks

Will you and the girls come back with Australian Accents?  Dont you hope so?!!

More posts to come soon including: the intricacies of moving to a new country with 3 kids, a quick trip to Adelaide and the Barossa wine region, Beach Life, New Years and the Holidays in Sydney and our upcoming trip to Melbourne to visit more awesome London friends and check out the Australian Open.

But for now we will leave you with the view from our front porch…

*oh you saw the asterisk? Wondering what it could possibly be alluding to? Is it that our time is technically more then “a semester”? Is it that we may stay longer? hmmm well guess you need to follow the blog to sort it out! 

Campervan Travel with a Family of Five

We just returned from an epic Zion->Bryce->Vegas Campervan adventure in a Campervan we rented from Escape Campervans. We drove our car to Las Vegas for pickup and headed to the national parks from there. They have locations all over the US and the overall the experience was great!

This is the second Campervan adventure for us, our first was in New Zeland back in 2011 when there were just two of us, so this trip with three kids along required a slightly bigger vehicle.

We rented the Del Mar model from Escape Campervans and it met all our needs. Mainly, 5 true seats with buckles for safe riding in boosters/carseats and internally connected sleeping areas with enough space.

I can boil my main concerns about this sort of travel into 4 main areas, however, all of which turned out to be unnecessary worry. Hopefully if you are reading this before taking your family on a Campervan adventure in a Del Mar Escape Campervan I can save you some grey hairs. Let me explain!

1. Safety
2. Sleeping arrangements
3. Darkness for sleeping
4. Refrigeration and keeping food like meat and dairy fresh
5. Is there enough space for our gear, and what gear do I need for this adventure!

Safety

Its not common knowledge, but scary truth is that traditional RVs are NOT SAFE for kids to travel in. The front driver cabin seats are totally find and crash tested, but none of the seats in the main area of an RV are tested for crash safety. The “Seatbelts” are not secured with the same rigor as in a standard motor vehicle and don’t even get me started on projectiles… If you want to read further on this, here is a great article that goes into far more detail than I could here. And Escape has a great side-by-side detailing the perks of Van vs RV travel.

Sleeping arrangements

Back to our Escape Campervan setup and experience! The original Ford Transit van is customized from the back doors through to the back of the first row of seats, with the original roof removed and replaced with a powered contraption that raises the roof to create as second sleeping space accessed by a ladder that extends down onto the row of back seats.

I wasn’t sure how five of us would sleep inside the van, but honestly, it worked great and beat all my expectations. We set the three girls up downstairs on the queen bed, but instead of facing them the normal way in the bed, we lined them up across the bed instead of up and down. Does that make sense? So their head was not at the head of the bed, but along the side. This was more than enough space, and there was not a single complaint about enough room. Shocking to me, you should hear them bicker about space when they have to share a queen bed in a hotel room! I think separate sleeping bags vs. shared bedding likely helped. Dennis and I were above in the loft and again, shocked that I didn’t feel crowded because I too like space when I sleep!

Darkness for sleeping

I also worried about the van being too bright to sleep, both at night and when the sun came up early! Thus, I was very pleased to discover the main area of the van had blackout curtains you can pull all the way around that were quite effective and the loft’s material was completely light proof, that is until you choose to let in light by opening the zipper windows which I did each morning as I slowly woke up to the views of orange peaks surrounding us. (I am a very slow riser…mornings are not my favorite.)

Refrigeration and keeping food like meat and and dairy fresh

The back of the van tailgate “kitchen” was similar our New Zealand campervan’s setup, with the improvement of solar powered fridge (and kitchen area light) so we didn’t have to worry about draining the battery. I had been concerned that our fridge would only run when we were plugged in or running the engine, however, it kept things delightfully cold all the time thanks to the solar battery in the back, I had nothing to worry about! It was also plenty big for a weeks worth of sandwich fillings, condiments, a carton of eggs, and meat for 3 full dinners.

Is there enough space for our gear, and what gear do I need for this adventure!

Short answer yes! And there were a few key items that really helped out on this trip, but more on that soon. For now…I need to go join a Zoom for work!

Long Interlude…..

Soooo… its been a while. When we last left off we were enjoying ourselves in Collioure, wishing our two day stay was much longer. It’s like we never left right? Well, sadly we did… in fact, I am writeing this today from an Air BnB in Tel Aviv, off on the latest adventure.

To the gap on what we missed here… After Collioure we made a quick stop in Carcassonne on our way to the Dordogne region of France where we stayed in the gorgeous medieval town of Sarlat, and then finished out the trip in San Sebastian, one of our favorite European Cities.

Then our party of 4 became a party of 5, and we embarked on our (now typical) maternity/paternity leave international trip. This time, the destination was Australia where we visited our Australian friends in Sydney and even got to see our Melbourne friends when they flew up to meet us in Palm Beach. Our crew has multiplied quite a bit since our original trip together!

The original Trip in July 2011 – Sailing together in the Aeolian Islands 🌴 (Pre Blog travels…)

November 2018, we are going to need a bigger sailboat next time

Finally, because that is not enough travel for baby’s first year (ha), we schlepped the crew to Europe again, this time with my brother and his family and our au pair who returned to Germany last august, Ina.

Our itinerary was similar to our 2014 Europe trip with Imy. We began in Colmar, France (new destination for us), then visited Munich (another favorite European destination), the Dolomites, and then ended and flew home via Zurich.

Here are a few favorite pictures from that adventure…

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  Jack’s first swing ever

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  Augustiner Keller

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  Hofbrau

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  Hirsch Garten

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  Fountain fun

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  Munich Zoo

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  Steins are just props…obvi

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  Chairlift in the Dolomites

Colorful Collioure

The next stop on the trip got the “Why the heck didn’t we stay here longer?!?!” award.  After Arles we headed to the coast to spend a few days in Collioure, a lesser known town along the French Mediterranean coast which Rick Steves and crew seem to love (and as you know, we have a thing for things Rick Steves likes)

Our visit to Collioure started stressful, but as soon as we unpacked it started to feel really good…but before we get to the highlights, let’s talk about our arrival so maybe you can do a better job than we did… or we can do a better job next time…or maybe its just part of the travel game and nobody can do a better job even with perfect planning.

Due to poor planning and/or an attempt to allow for two beach days, we arrived in Collioure during the busiest and hottest part of the day, having missed Imogen’s naptime (i.e. cranky toddler), with a car full of luggage and kids who must be pushed or carried, to a town that does not allow cars into the center where our apartment was located. Whoops.

Luckily the “airline losing our stroller debacle” came in handy here because we were at this point traveling with a second stroller and our solution to too many bags and not enough (helpful) hands was to strap the baby into the BECO carrier and load up the two strollers with all the non wheeled baggage and miscellaneous items like wheelbarrows.  We navigated the windy old town lanes with our caravan of gear and people (quite a spectacle I am sure) and found the entrance to our apartment and discovered 1) the big stroller would not fit through the front door and 2) the apartment was on the third floor (with no elevator).  By this point in his tenure as “Dad,” Dennis is well accustomed to becoming the family pack mule (on the job description this falls under “other duties as required”) and carried most of the bags up before we could blink.  He has started to think of bag carrying as his vacation exercise routine.  It certainly helps him rationalize that third scoop of gelato…  Lickity split, the bags and kids were up three stories and Dennis was back to the car with the empty double stroller to move it to the long term parking spot where we could leave it for the duration of the stay.

Meanwhile, upstairs in the apartment we instantly felt better.  The apartment was big, clean, cool, bright (and thankfully dark in the bedrooms).  We settled Imy down for a nap, got some laundry started then took turns staying behind to supervise naps while the others walked around for a bit of exploring.  This is when the “why are we only staying here two nights???” realization hit.  Due to our arrival time and the fact Imy refused to nap in the car, we missed out on our first of two possible Collioure beach days.  Collioure felt so perfect for us.  Totally walkable (now the apartment location was making a lot of sense), beautiful harbor and beaches (5 to choose from?! what!), warm, clear Mediterranean water, delicious restaurants, cute shops, and gorgeous views. I never wanted to leave, but we only had one more day!!!

Although short, we did thoroughly enjoy our (just shy of) 48 hours in Collioure.  Favorite things included:

1) Strolling along the promenade circling the bay

2) visits to the beach side playground (great for adults and kids)

3) Swimming at the beach

4) Morning visits to the bakery downstairs from our apartment

5) Long casual dinners and ice cream outside

5) perfect weather and last but not least… 6) Sunny with a low UV index (we are a fair skinned crew)

Now, all we need to do is figure out how to get back to Collioure because I have some unfinished business…

Very Pleasant in Provence

I have concluded that traveling with a 2 and a half year old is a bi-polar experience.  (As opposed to traveling with the happiest baby in town.)

When we sat down to reflect on our favorite Provence moments as we ate market goodies during our last night in the region, Dennis, Jen and I all discovered that our favorite memories from the trip thus far are all related to moments in time with Imogen.  On the flip side… our darkest moments also typically had something to do with her as well, however, a few days later its nice to realize I can’t remember the specifics of those low points as my brain has conveniently decided those were not worth keeping.  Oh the wonders of the human brain…or maybe its just Mommy brain?

Favorite Memories:

Dennis: Wine tasting, and by wine tasting, he means not wine tasting and instead running around the winery grounds with Imogen, through a grape vine tunnel while eating grapes off the vine, collecting little rocks, running full speed across the grass, and discovering a pond full of giant coy fish (All while an ancient french woman scowled disapprovingly from a window in the house above.)  There were no signs permitting running and laughing about the grounds, but perhaps it was against stern french decorum to have so much fun.

 

Jen: As we piled out of the car at the HARIBO museum parking lot we laughed and rolled our eyes at the people departing the museum with huge armloads of HARIBO plunder from the museum store, thinking who the heck would buy so much candy! Little did we know what would soon happen to us…  The museum itself was very cute, favorite sights in the museum included 1) Imogen: viewing ducks in the stream outside from the elevator 2) Robyn: the room that discussed the history of candy and smelled like Licorice and felt like a visit to Willy Wonka’s factory 3) Jen: watching me try to drive a forklift on the interactive fork lift game (because it was hilarious how terrible I was at it) and watching Imogen stack HARIBO stuffed bears in the stroller basket as I pushed Maeve around the shop and 4) Dennis: putting a coin in the giant candy machine and watching the gears and knobs turn and out come 4 packages of candy.  5) Maeve: Finally meeting life sized Harry the HARIBO bear.

Me: Just being THERE, sitting in a Arles cafe by the old forum square just like in “Cafe Terrace at Night,” starting with an aperitif and staying through dinner, watching dogs, kids, people pass by, the sun slowly dim and the lights come on, giggling and giggling and giggling… And then, to wrap up the evening, taking the scenic route back to the car, running along the river wall with Imogen while the stars and lights twinkled on the water – just like the van Gogh painting Starry Night.  But really, van Gogh painted the scenes we lived and enjoyed.  That yellow cafe was next door to the one we sat in and that is actually a painting of this vary same river at night.  Other than the fact that the river holds motorized water crafts, the women are not quite so modestly dressed, and the addition of electric lights and the Euro as the favored currency, the scenes today hold very much the same feeling you get from the paintings.

Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh – image from Wikipedia

The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum – Vincent van Gogh Image from: wikipedia

Mahoney, Party of 4.

It is time to properly welcome the Maeve, the newest member of our family, to Team Mahoney via our annual trip to Europe!  Our itinerary will take us across Southern France and Basque Country to Provence, Collioure, the Dordogne and San Sebastian over a little longer than 2 weeks.  First things first we had to get there…

Lucky for us we had a short practice flight five days before the long journey to Lyon France (via Houston and Frankfurt) where we picked up our car for a 3 hour drive to Arles, France. Flying as a family of 4 wasn’t so bad on the practice flight!  Imogen is just old enough at 2 and a half to be fully distracted with hand held devices playing Frozen on back to back to back to back repeat, and Maeve is probably the easiest baby we have ever met.

A few bloody mary’s results in a successful practice flight!

Being the experienced family of travelers that we are, we strategically selected our seats, downloaded a ton of kids videos (season two of Super Why was the show of choice for this trip), tested our gate check bags on our new double stroller and prepared our carry on bags the night before (even Imogen has one now).

The biggest challenge we faced was dealing with our travel nemesis, United Airlines. We have had a love/ hate relationship with United for the past 10 plus years, based on the fact that we live near a United Hub airport (San Francisco), have minimal status, get 50k miles every few years when we open up their credit card (and 10k miles when we annually threaten to close it), numerous experiences of the non stop poor travel and un-creative customer support.  This years United issue involved Maeve’s tickets.  A few months after Maeve was born (and 5 months after we booked Imogen, Dennis and Robyn’s travel on miles- 180k in total for three round trip seats SFO-Lyon and Bilbao – SFO), we called and after 45 minutes of on and off hold,  were told Maeve’s fare would be $148.  Not a bad price for a lap child as United requires us to pay taxes and 10% of the adult ticket fare for international travel of a lap child.  Well unfortunately two weeks later we were told “the pricing agent made an error” and the actual fare would be $655 for the lap infant.  Are you kidding me????  That is more than half the price of an actual ticket?!? Lots of (calmly worded) questions, requests to speak with managers, and threats involving the chamber of commerce, and we ended up paying the $655 for Maeve.  Why did this cost so much? Well United’s policy is that since we booked our flights as two one way tickets using miles, they would have to price the lap baby as 10% of a one way fare (which came to $655 of a $2600 and $3900 fare).  Unfortunately there is nothing we could do about this (United did offer to cancel our tickets for free and reimburse my miles, but that doesn’t get us to France!). Things like this also happen to people traveling with lap infants on first class international tickets (10% of the first class fare, which often adds up to $700+ from SFO to London).  The good news is we were able to secure a bassinet seat for Robyn and Maeve on our longest flight.  And after some seat trading, Dennis and Imogen were able to join!

OK enough complaining about United.  Some more highlights of our travels to France:

• The bassinet seat is much better than we expected.  It literally was a full size bassinet and Maeve basically had her own seat (still mad about the $655!).  We were on a fairly new 787 plane, and this was a huge bonus for us! This made the overnight portion of our travels much easier.
• The Frankfurt airport is AWESOME!  We ended up missing our connection to Lyon (because our flight from Houston was delayed 30 minutes due to the fact that United “Did not have all the in flight supplies they needed” for a plane that had been located at our gate for 12 hours!!!).  In the extra time we had we found some super useful and clean $6 showers (no airport lounge required for us!), two awesome in airport playgrounds, and some delicious German beer spots.

Almost missed our flight! Always hard to pul Imogen away from a great playground…

• Imogen ended up with more Lufthansa toys (so far our favorite airline to fly with little kids), and we all made it safely and quickly to France to kick off our trip.  Turns out flying with a 2 year old and a 4 months old wasn’t so difficult for us after all!

Munich!

Authors note: It has been five months since we got back to the US. We were in Munich for October 30-November 2, 2014…these blogs just don’t write themselves! But don’t worry – this one is looong on words to make up for all the missed time. Enjoy – any let us know if you want any Munich travel tips!

We were really looking forward to Munich, one of our all time favorite cities to visit. Munich is the first European City I visited (in 2000 while on a family trip; fantastic introduction to the worlds best beer!), and the raison de’ ente for my original Passport (now on #2 and even the extra pages are filling up!). Munich hosts the world’s best festival, and if we spoke German, Munich was the city we were going to move to in 2009. We have been to Munich each a total of five times, including a few Oktoberfest and non-Oktoberfest visits, and we were looking forward to showing Imogen around!

We decided to stay in the Schluss Nympenburg neighborhood, a few miles North West of the main train station and old town. Hotel Laimerhof, our hotel, is the top rated hotel on Trip Advisor and the price was right at $105 per night! We were looking forward to being in a neighborhood rather than near the train station hotel scene, within walking distance of the Hirchgarden (Munich’s largest beer garden and awesome park) and within a number of public transit links to our favorite bits of the city.

We quickly dumped the car back at the airport then were off to do some early Christmas shopping. Our German neighbors back in California gave us a great list of the top toy shops in Munich, mainly just off Neuhauser Strasse in the old town. First stop: Kids level in the Galeria Kaufhof. We loaded up our basket with sleep sacks (which go up to age 10 size! The Germans have this one right!), wooden toys, awesome games that we’ve never seen in America and even a few German kids books (to help Imogen with her language skills when she comes back for Oktoberfest in 20 years). Next stop: beer o’clock at the Viktualienmarkt beer stand, dinner at der Pschorr, one of the many Munich homes to the best large Munich Brewery – Hacker- Pschorr. After that it was time to take the nightly “lets get Imogen to fall asleep while we enjoy walking around the old town of ____ city, possibly with an adult beverage” walk. Main tourist sites checked off our list, we were ready to explore new things!

Enjoying the Obatzda at Der Pschorr

 

One of the things we really enjoy about visiting Munich is that Munich is much more of an experience City for a tourist, rather than a gotta see all the Museums/ Cathedrals/ Mosques/ etc city. There are some great sites worth seeing once (Residence, Dachau, BMW Museum, Deutsches museum) but there are many more sites worth going to over and over again (Beer gardens in the English Garden, Schlosspark Nymphenburg, the Hirschgarten, Biking around the city, Viktualienmarket, and yes, the Hofbrauhaus)

The next day we decided to earn our food and drinks with a mega bike ride around Munich. In pulling together the map below this ride seems to lose some of the impressive-ness as it was only 16 miles or so, and mostly flat. But then I remember we had a 1 year old strapped to the back of a bike! Also this took wayyyyy longer than the 1 hour 19 minutes Google Maps recommends!

May have also been the stops at the English Garden, the Olympic Park, Schlosspark Nymphenburg (no bike riding allowed in the park apparently! We learned that one the hard way), and the Hirschgarten beergarden (our new favorite in Munch!), but we clocked in at a very reasonable 6 hours and change.

Dup dee doo… nothing to see here… certainly not a sleeping baby under that jacket…

 

Uh Oh! Pacifier must have fallen out!

 

 

Still going at the Hirschgarten!

 

Mega bike ride day happened to be October 31, which all you American readers will also know as Halloween. What you may not have known is that Halloween is actually an ancient German tradition, as back in the pre-Roman days the German children would dress in ….. Juuuust kidding. Halloween is mainly an American tradition to celebrate All Hallows Evening (Yes we dressed up in “fancy dress” while living in London in 2009-2011, but our awesome Homemade Batman and “Robyn” costumes got more weird looks then complements on the London Tube, so while Halloween is spreading around the globe, the US will always be the place to be on 10/31). Ok enough background – back to the story… so I had done some research and found a message board with details of a neighborhood that hosts Trick or Treating in Munich. Yatzee! “Robyn – pack Imogen’s Costume – we are going German Trick or Treating!” Best we could muster up was a fairly basic Duck costume, improved massively with Imogens “Quack – Quack”. Lucky for us the neighborhood was a few Bus stops north from our hotel. Off we were… it was fairly quiet at we got close, but then… wait… is that Michael Jackson’s Thriller??? Yes!!! We had arrived! And arrived we had! Now I cant say every house in the neighborhood was into it, but wow, if Halloween is a concept you have maybe heard about a few times, and some American women* asks you if you want to hand out candy to a few neighborhood kids when the sun goes down, then you may just go all out. Now we’ve got bubbling cauldrons and decorated houses in our California neighborhood, but some of these houses did it right! Imogen cleaned up, and after a handful of houses (a good mix of awkward German – English trick or treating) our bag was getting heavy and our child was getting tired – time to go home!

Quack Quack and Trick or Treat took quite a bit of practice!

We were all scared by the decorations

 

*This neighborhood near Memminger Platz in the North West corner of Munich has been hosting Trick or Treating for the past few years. Apparently an American Mom walks around and hands out flyers to the neighbors in early October explaining the tradition of Halloween and asking if people want to participate. If people respond that they want to participate in Trick of Treating on 10/31 then they are included on a google maps posted to the message board in last October. Sounds like a lot of work – but worth it! Over 50 houses participated in 2014!

Our last full day turned out to be a Saturday Holiday in Bavaria, so good thing we did our shopping earlier! We had blocked this day off to check out the Munich Zoo – recommended to us by our native Munich friends as a great place for Kids. Crowds were a little bit bigger than normal as it was a holiday weekend, but the Munich Zoo did not disappoint. Highlights include the monkeys, petting the goats, and the amazing playground complete with beer garden to please all family members (and yes – this is one of the many reasons why we love Germany!).

Last stop on our trip was one of our favorite beer gardens – the Augustiner Keller, and our new favorite beer garden – the Hirschgarden. Both have great playgrounds, though the Hirschgarden playgrounds are a bit far from the tables, while the Augistiner Keller playgrounds are on the grounds with the traditional picnic tables all around them. Both of these gems serve Augustiner Beer (difficult to find in America, and by far the most popular of the main six Munich breweries: Spaten, Hofbrau, Augistiner, my current favorite: Hacker- Pschorr, Lowenbrau, and Paulaner). These are both off the beaten tourist track, even though Augustiner is only 3 blocks west of the main train station at Arnulfstraße 52 and the Hirschgarden is located at Hirschgarten 1, which is a 5 minutes walk from the Romanplatz tram stop, 15 minutes from the main train station. They each have fantastic settings, and while Hirschgarten wins in the summer with the deer (Hirsch) and setting in a huge open park, Augustiner Keller’s actual Keller (basement) is a fantastic brick beer mecca to visit on poor weather days, or in the winter. When coming from London we used to book our flights early enough to arrive in Munich for last call at the Augustiner Keller, so while the Keller holds a special place in our heart, the Hirschgarten is our new favorite spot!

So… it was the end of November, after day light savings time ended… even so we were able to use the Augustiner Keller playground.

Hirschgarten (also a bit empty this time of year, but it was only 50 degrees out)

 

The next day we were back to the US of A!

Bavaria

Now entering the “we have been here before” stretch of our trip; we were excited to be back in two areas of Europe that are home to some of our favorite memories and experiences.  That does not refer to the Sound of Music sites Salzburg is (in)famous for or visiting the mountain top retreat Hitler build in the 1930’s above Berchtesgaden – we are referring to the Obersalzburg Salt mines and the Stiegl brewery!

For the second time we missed the hours/season to visit Kehlsteinhaus – the mountain hut built for Hilter in the 1930’s.  Apparently we did not miss much other than a killer view (that is usually cloud-ed in), but like a lot of Nazi era sites across Germany and Europe, we, like many American travelers, have trouble explaining why we have an interest in checking out these sites. I do believe you see a higher proportion of Americans at these sites then you do across the cities that host them. I think it has a lot to do with the legacy WW2 holds in our countries recent history, and the actual distance from the US to the European locations WW2 and the various tragedies related to it happened.  Ether way we were bummed that snow at the top of the mountains had closed the road to the Kehlsteinhaus.  We salvaged our afternoon and did make it to the Documentation Center, which was similar to the Nuremburg documentation center in how it presented the facts of the Nazi rise to power in the 20’s and 30’s, and the role that Berchtesgaden played in many of their propaganda campaigns.  We were amazed at the engineering and defense built into this remote mountain fortress system of underground bunkers constructed by the Nazi’s for the final defense .  We also had a nice picnic in the parking lot…

Ok enough history – we are here to hike and drink beer!  Next stop was the scenic trail overlooking Konigssee (and a bonus walk past countless trinket stores).

Berchtesgaden was bigger than we remembered, with a few good restaurants, but shoulder season is quiet in the mountains. Early season snow had closed most of the hiking trails, and it was a bit patchy in terms of what was open and what was not, so we made our way 30 minutes north for a day trip to Salzburg the next day.

Salzburg is another place we have been a few times.  Highlights from our past Salzburg visits include the Augustiner monastery beer garden, Sporer schnaps store (and wine bar!), the hike along the old town ridge to the fortress, and the unique blue/ green color of the river.

Imogen and Dennis 2014

Robyn 2011

We arrived right at lunch time and immediately tired out the little one with a picnic/ playground combo.  Luckily we knew a playground from our Christmas Market playground scouting trip in 2011!

Next up – rent bikes and ride along the river.  Uh oh – its nap time and Imogen cannot keep her head up straight?  Not a problem – we have a handy device for that!

Head stabilizing device

After nap time we made our tri-annual Jones/ Mahoney family pilgrimage to Sporer where 3 generations of Jones/ Mahoney women have samples the specialty spirits (well Imogen didn’t really sample, but you can appreciate the pattern!)

Jean Jones – 2010 visit

Robyn Jones Mahoney and Imogen Mahoney 2014

We finished off with a beer at the Augustiner Monastery to warm up for Munich!

Daddy, what is this delicious elixir?

Prost!

Next day we were off to our final stop!

“Get me out of this car!!!!! I have heard ‘Shake It Off’ one too many times!”-Imogen