Camping in Italy with a bunch of kids

Night one was in Germany looking for a hotel in Munich after 1AM. The cost for a stripped down room was $101Euro or about $165 USD. So after this experience we decided that we needed to find cheaper options. Especially since we only slept there for 4.5 hours. (We were lucky enough to get the room without a shared shower and toilette..and breakfast was included and fantastic. Very German, with meats, cheeses, breads, and cold musli!...okay, so I am not really a fan of musli, but Jared seemed to like it.)

After a very short sleep, we drove into down town Munich and signed up for a white water rafting tour down the River Isar. (So, we signed up and then realized we needed to find some place to park our car....after driving around for an hour, only to realize that parking is nil is Munich, it is totally a biking city....we finally found "paid" parking for 22 E. for the day!) We met up with our American tour guide, Mike, and a really nice Phillipino girl from the Netherlands named Abigail. After meeting at the train stations, we headed to Bad Tolz. The train ride was beautiful and reminded Jared of the scenery from Band of Brothers. Once we arrive in Bad Tolz, we tried to get on the bus only to find out that the tickets we were given were the wrong ones and we needed to walk, quickly, through the city, over a bridge, along the river to the meeting place for the rafting tour. Our group had three rafts, with half of our boat speaking German and the other half speaking English...(lucky for us, our boat was the sober one of the three). The family speaking German was actually from Switzerland on holiday. The English speaking included us, Abigail, and a couple from New York. Our tour guide spoke reasonably good Enlish, enough to say "left, right, and paddle hard."

We were taken up the river, by bus, and then proceeded down the river....I was suppose to yell something that sounded very similar to "Asalan" when we were going to be hit by a tree......but, I couldn't remember the word so it was pretty much pointless. What she was supposed to yell was Austalarm. Translated "Tree alarm". Instead when we got close to overhanging branches she started laughing hysterically and couldnt yell anything in either language. Bear with us if we bore you with some of the details. This is effectively our journal of the entire trip so hopefully you will read on without falling asleep. The rafting trip was great for two main reasons, the scenery was spectacular and the river Isar is one of the most beautiful rivers I have ever seen. What Jared really enjoyed as far as scenery, was the naked women with very large boobies, as well as very large everything else....and the nake men, legs spread eagle and all! Wow! What a sight.... : - £ If she would have let me finish I was going to say that Actually the river was the most beautiful I have ever seen and the "other scenery" was quite spectacular as well. LEt me explain what I have learned about Germans. The less confident one should be about his/her body the more confident they are. Teh attractive people all had their clothes on. However the men who chose to wear clothes on the river shore were mostly in speedos and there is something inherently wrong about that. Unless you are going fot a swimming medal in the olympics you should never wear a speedo. Can I hear an AMEN?

After the rafting trip we experienced a small town in Germany. It was Sunday and several people were wering their traditional clothing including men in Lederhosen and women in their Tracht Dirndl. We also stopped for some traditional Italina Gelato in Bad Tolz. Regardless of what country you might find yourself in, Gelato is always a good idea.

Once we made it back to Munich, we decided to have our first German restaurant meal. This was intimidating. How do you order food you have never eaten in a language you can't speak? We GPSed our first choice, and walked up to the door to look at the menu. Nothing in English and not even as much as a kraut or a bratwurst listed. Oh and the prices.....ughh. SO, we found a place called weinerwurld. Can you belive it? Weiner world! We had to find this place. We drove right to a place at the address where weinerwurld was supposed to be, and found instead a little bar and grill that was a wursthaus. I know what that means. So we went there.

We were alone in the place, it was very authentic feeling, and kind of in the outskirts of town. The guy at the bar spoke very limited English. He did have one copy of his menu in English though. YEAH. We ordered and wow. Wait I understated that WOW. Amazing, authentic German cuisine. Kim loved hers and I loved mine, and we had some extra tasy cheese and bread as an appetizer. If I had our notes here I would tell you what we got. Oh well, I will post that later. Our food was absolutely the best. I had some kind of egg noodle with a turkey and mushroom sauces...it was so, so tasty. Jared enjoyed something with pickles, and potatoes, and roast....it was also very tasty. We even tried pronouncing the names of our food, I was not successful, but, I have a hard time pronouncing anyword that is more than 10 letters!

After eating, we decided to make our way towards Venice. We planned to drive for an hour or so and stop someplace to sleep.....

We are going to post this blog, and continue on another blog.