The "Vacation Is Over" Blues

We had such a wonderful vacation. We spent 8 days in southern Germany & Austria - Bavaria country. We stayed in a lovely town called Garmisch and rented a car for daily excursions around the region. I HIGHLY recommend a visit to Bavaria!! Here is a photo of the views around our hotel.

And another view. The mountains were snowy, but we had minimal snow on the ground for our visit.

Here are the kids our first morning at the hotel.

Here is Waverly on our balcony. She loved it out there. You can see a glimpse of the Alps behind her.

Neuschwanstein near Fussen - Ludwig II built this castle and Walt Disney was inspired by in to create Cinderella's castle at Disneyland. We took a horse drawn carriage up for our tour.

Oliver spent a lot of time in the backpack as we traipsed across the region. He loved it, but boy does he get heavy!! (I know, I carried him up 300 stairs and then back down again.....of course Matt carried a sleeping Waverly up and down those same stairs, so I guess I don't have a lot to complain about).

Here are Waverly and I enjoying a pretzel after our horse carriage ride.

Here is Matt walking around with Oliver.

This is the kids & I at a beautiful church in Nurnberg. We ate at a restaurant started in the 1300s - great food served on tin plates.

Waverly really fell in love with horses on this trip. They were everywhere and she would scream "Horsey - NEIGH!!!" every time she saw one. Very cute!

Here is Matt with the kids (Oliver is slumped over sleeping) in the quaint town of Garmisch.

Here is another view from our balcony - a snow storm was coming in.

Here is Waverly enjoying the balcony and her new scarf.

Here is Waverly and I in Bad Tolz - a beautiful town with a beautiful Christmas market.

Here is the Rathaus in Munich- every hour there is a miniature tournament below the clock. We spent most of our time walking the city and enjoying their huge Christmas markets and visited the toy museum.

Here we are in Salzburg Austria - our favorite stop along our travels. This is the birthplace of Mozart. It is such a fairytale city along the river, with an amazing old town. We took a horse carriage ride around the town, walked the old lanes, enjoyed a wonderful Christmas market where I bought some cool wooden toys for Oliver.

Here is Waverly and Matt in our carriage. You can see other horses passing and Waverly's eyes are looking at them rather than the camera.

Here are Matt and Oliver at the market in Salzburg.

While driving back to the hotel from Salzburg, we passed this sign for "Wendling". That is my family's name and we are from southern Germany. We stopped along the side of the road to snap this quick photo. I regret not finding that town...next time.

Here are Matt and Oliver riding one of the many carousels we took the kids on during our journeys. He LOVED it!

Here are the kids in front of one of the trees at our hotel. They were both SO good on our trip. We couldn't have asked for better behaved kids. They were real troopers. We had a fabulous vacation. This has been a tough year for our family, so we were excited to take a week to get away and enjoy ourselves. Not one time did we think about doctors or therapists or anything else to stress us out. It was perfect.