Vienna Christmas Markets
Lu & I have an obsession for European Christmas markets, and I visited the markets in Prague, Budapest, and Bratislava, but we had heard that it was even better in Vienna. Hence, an impromptu Friday night bus ride to Vienna! We just stayed in Vienna for the one night, visited our favorite wine bar & went out in the city. On Saturday, we spent the majority of our day wandering around the Christmas markets, buying crafts, drinking hot wine...the usual! Everything is closed on Sundays in Vienna so there really wasn't any point of sticking around longer that that so we headed back to Bratislava Saturday night. Seriously though, the Christmas markets are incredible over here, definitely need to bring this to the U.S.!
Hot wine at the Christmas Markets (we got to keep the mugs!)
One of the craft booths
Christmas Markets at nighttime
Jackson Hole, WY
I ended up being home for about a month over Christmas break since I needed to stay for FDP Global Conference in Austin in mid-January. It was great being home for awhile, and I got to meet with a lot of people at work, find an apartment for when I move back, and hang out with friends & family.
A few days after I got back my family traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a ski vacation. Jackson Hole is a place that my family goes to usually multiple times a year, I think we're all in love with the city. It's beautiful there & the skiing is incredible. Not to mention, we've gotten comfortable in the city & have found some great restaurants & shops we like to revisit. Emily & I aren't quite as hardcore about skiing as my dad & brother so we skied half days mostly & spent the afternoons relaxing and going into town with my mom. Of course, the best part about ski days is getting back to the hotel, opening some wine & getting in the hot tub. There's something pretty amazing about sitting in the hot tub with mountains surrounding you!
Emily & I on the slopes
Most of the family back at the hotel
On top of the mountain
Christmas in Austin
After Jackson Hole, my family traveled back to Austin for Christmas. We did the normal trip to church on Christmas Eve & spent the whole day at home on Christmas day. Michael spent Christmas with my family this year, so that was really great getting to spend time together over the holiday.
The family (even Blue!) before church on Christmas Eve
Michael & I dressed up for church! (Notice the pearl necklace? That was my Christmas present this year :) he did a very good job)
UT Bowl Game
This year University of Texas was playing Oregon State at the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, Texas. Since the bowl game was so close & since I'm dating a UT alum, I figured we should try to make it to the game. My dad ended up finding tickets so my dad, mom, Emily, Michael & I went to San Antonio for the game on December 30th. The game ended up being really close/exciting all the way until the end of the 4th quarter. It was really fun being around all the passionate fans, and I've missed watching American football being over in Europe, so I had a great time! We had really good seats too so we got to be close to all the action and UT won, so everyone was in a great mood after the game!
Michael & by Bevo down on the field
The family before the game
Interlaken, Switzerland
I got back to Europe on January 19th and Lu & I booked a last minute trip to Switzerland for the following weekend. We flew into Zurich on Friday, January 25th & took about a 2 hour train to Interlaken. Interlaken was probably the most beautiful city I've ever been in. The mountains were just incredible & all the landscape was so pretty, I felt like I'd fallen into a photograph! We, embarrassingly enough, first found out about Interlaken from The Bachelor since that was one of the destinations they traveled to, so that's been on our to-do list for awhile. Friday night we got into Interlaken late, so we just had time to find a restaurant near our hotel that was still serving Switzerland's famous cheese fondue. I didn't know that Switzerland was known for their cheese fondue, but it was pretty amazing & we ended up eating it every single day we were there..whoops! Also Switzerland is of course famous for their chocolate, I'm addicted to dark chocolate so let's just say this wasn't the most diet friendly weekend :).
On Saturday during the day we walked around Interlaken just exploring all of the city & shops. Saturday night we had planned an "adventure excursion" which we thought would be a lot more relaxed than it was! We booked a nighttime sledding trip down the alps, followed by cheese fondue & wine. Lu & I thought we'd just be going down a little hill...well we were definitely wrong. We ended up being driven to the top of one of the ski runs where there's a sledding trail that runs along it. The sled ride was an hour long so it took us that long to get down to our meeting spot. Also, it was nighttime so there were no lights except for the moon, and there were definitely no barriers to keep you from flying off the edge of the trail/mountain, so that was a little frightening. Somehow, Lu & I ended up making it down safely (we stayed toward the back of the pack with the slower sledders) and went with our group to a cafe in the mountains for our cheese fondue & wine. We met a lot of great people on the same excursion as us that night. Sad thing was, we were the oldest people in our group somehow. Everyone else was students from Penn State studying abroad, so a lot of Americans in the group!
On Sunday, Lu & I took the train up to Grindelwald, which is where everyone goes to ski. We walked around the town, stopping at some cafes & stops along the way. They had a big display of ice sculptures set up that was really cool as well. Our flight wasn't until late on Sunday, so we had a lot of time on Sunday to wander around and explore. All in all, I loved Interlaken. I highly recommend it if you can ever make it out there!
View of the mountains
Lu & I
Ice Sculptures!
Romania
This past weekend, Lu & I traveled pretty much all over Romania. Lu had found an ice hotel located in Romania awhile ago & has been dying to go stay there for a night. She put together our whole weekend with this tour group called "Untraveled Paths", which worked out really well because we had one tour guide/driver for the whole weekend who knew the area really well. We flew into Sibiu, Romania on Thursday night & stayed at this apartment owned by a restaurant in the town. The apartment ended up being really nice, despite the less than pleasant road it was on! Thursday we found somewhere to grab some dinner/walked around the city center, before heading back to our apartment for the night.
On Friday, we both worked from the cafe I mentioned earlier for the morning before our tour guide came to pick us up from our apartment. He drove us to the chairlift to start our journey to the ice hotel, it took about 15 minutes to get up to the top of the mountain. It was pretty incredible on the top of the mountain, they had a chalet, which was the only warm building up there with a cafe and hotel rooms where all of the guides & staff stay, the ice hotel which had about 10 different rooms, the dining room & bar, 2 igloos with additional rooms & an actual ice church which holds services on Sundays!
When we got there, Lu & I got to look at all the rooms & pick which one we wanted to stay in. We chose the "Mirror Room" because we thought it had the prettiest lights :) We checked out the ice church & the igloos as well. We met a really nice British couple who were staying in one of the igloos for the night and ended up eating with them at our Ice Dinner. It was a 4 course dinner served on trays of ice, on an ice table, with ice chairs, so that was definitely a once in a lifetime experience! Afterward, we stayed at the ice bar and tried to warm up a little with some hot wine. I really enjoyed the whole experience up until the sleeping part..we slept on beds made of ice, and did have really warm sleeping bags, but I still only ended up sleeping about 30 mins the whole night, so I wasn't too sad to leave the next day! We took the cable car down in the morning and traveled to Bran's Castle with our tour guide (also known as Dracula's castle), which is in the Transylvania area & also stopped at this really cute town for lunch.
Our tour guide then drove us about 2 hours to Bucharest, the capital of Romania where we stayed for Saturday night. We had reservations at the Radisson Blu hotel in Bucharest which is a super nice hotel. Let's just say that was more my style than the ice hotel! Saturday night we walked around downtown Bucharest, had a great dinner, and went to a wine bar for a little bit. On Sunday we walked around the city some more, grabbed some lunch & headed to the airport for our flight back to Vienna.
All in all, Romania was a really interesting place to visit. There were stray dogs everywhere which was kind of sad, and lots of people who just walk along the streets trying to hitchhike. Also, especially around our hotel in Bucharest, there are lots of little kids who beg outside & kind of grab on to you to give them money, so I can't say I'll miss that. I am really glad we visited though & had a really good time. The real unfortunate part is that I seem to have gotten food poisoning while I was over there since I've been home sick from work the past couple of days! Hoping I'll feel better soon & looking forward to seeing two of my friends from Texas (Anne & Angi) in Venice this weekend!
Sibiu, Romania
The Ice Church
Ice Beds
Our Ice Dinner
Ice Hotel Dining Room
