A little bit of everything: our honeymoon - Germany

we decided to go for our Honeymoon in March 2012 because both our birthdays are in March but due to work and tickets, we were only able to go after G's bday and i spent my birthday in beautiful Venice. More on that later.

i have more than 700 pictures from this trip alone so this will have to be in parts. not that I'm complaining, I'm more glad than anything to be able to put this down in record.

it is one of the best trip really and maybe it is because it has been awhile since I've been away for more than a week, most of it, i think is because i get to spend 2 weeks with my favorite person in the world.

G put in lots of efforts into the research of the trip, only to ensure that we will have a good time, good hotels to stay in, places to go to and i cannot be more grateful or feel more loved.

unlike many travelers, long flights really gets to me and i often find myself sleeping away the first day or 2 at the foreign lands and never once did he complain. in fact, he always ensures that the hotels which we stay are good ones so that i get to have a good sleep.

everytime i think about this, it just makes me wanna spend my whole life travelling with him cos i get to stay in posh places. hahaha. kidding :)

we went for the night flight, hoping to get some sleep on the plane but really, i should have known myself better... i suck at midnight flights, i seldom get any sleep so i should really stop doing that.... go for the morning flight instead so that i can use the time to catch some good movies.

to me, sitting down and watching a movie for the entire 2 hours is one of the best things in life and i greatly recommend getting your own noise-cancelling headset to use on the plane because it blocks out everything that you don't want to hear and brings you right into the world of the show you are watching.

Both of us at the gate, me in my trusty UGG which i bring along whenever i'm off to somewhere cold. its wool which is on the interior of the boots keeps me very very comfortable during those horribly cold nights.

13 hours later, we arrived in Frankfurt where we checked into the hotel and then immediately went out for a little stroll before coming back barely 3 hours later to crash and sleep until 2am in the morning. #jetlaggetsmeeverytime.

just about 5 mins walk from the hotel is the main shopping belt of frankfurt and i was thinking that it was a saturday food fare and you can see that there was a huge food fare right behind me.

they were selling sausages, pork knuckles and beer but we had none of those because both of us are not fans of pork knuckles and sausages and also because i had no idea that the entire fair would not be there again the day after =(

i was freezing there and can't stand in one same spot for too long but G had to point and point and point before he takes any picture.

to him, he would rather wait for the person in the background to move away before he takes the picture. that was me giving up. hahaha.

The next day, we woke up bright and early , (me since 2am since i could not sleep) and took a drive to wuzberg and then, Rothenburg.

Us passing by the train station in order to get to Hertz for our rented car.

Driving on the autobahns which is just like our expressways in Singapore can be very exciting.

there are no general speed limits on most parts of the road so when we were going at 160km/hr, it was very common for us to overtaken by a car who would whizz pass us at something like 200km/hr. I'm not sure G took that quite well but really, 160km/hr? are you kidding me???? this speed is just too much for me to handle okaaay.

there were also a lot of luxury cars in Frankfurt and Munich. it was almost the case of every car that we saw being either a mercedes or a BMW. Again, my husband is very observant about things like that while i was very busy looking out for where i can find my Giorgio Armani foundation.

we drove for around 2 hours to get to the Medieval town in Rothenburg but we did stop by wuzburg where we visited the Wuzburg Residence.

The Würzburg Residence (German: Würzburger Residenz) is a palace in Würzburg, southern Germany. Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt and Maximilian von Welsch, representants of the Austrian/South German Baroque were involved in the construction, as well as Robert de Cotte and Germain Boffrand, who were followers of the French Style. Balthasar Neumann, architect of the court of the Bishop of Würzburg, was the principal architect of the Residenz, which was commissioned by the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn and his brother Friedrich Carl von Schönborn in 1720, and completed in 1744. The Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, assisted by his son, Domenico, painted frescoes in the building.

Interiors include the grand staircase, the chapel, and the grand salon. The building was dubbed the "nicest parsonage in Europe" by Napoleon. It was heavily damaged during World War II, and restoration has been in progress since 1945.

No pictures was allowed within the property but here is a picture of the garden with its very cute cone shaped trees.

The place reminds me a lot of Versailles in France. the way the interior was decorated and the way the garden was designed.

Later, we made our way to Rothenburg solely for its well-preserved medieval old town.

the buildings and the streets there looked straight out of storybooks and i could not have been more excited! Only thing is that it was really , really cold, somewhere around 0 to 3 degrees celsius and that was too much for me but the place was charming!

look at this picture.

my husband......... well............. we had a good laugh at this picture cos ... who can see me????

hahahahhaa, but it serves the point well if the buildings behind is what we are really interested in.

even though most shops were closed due to it being a sunday, we still had fun looking through the glass windows and this was one shop which i wished was open.

look at those teddy bears!!!! ( yes i was freezing )

we had another day in Frankfurt before we make our way to Munich and we decided to just explore frankfurt itself a little though it is not exactly a tourist place.

we went to the Cathedral of St Bartholomew which is the largest church in Frankfurt.

this church was destroyed by a fire and in its place now is actually one which has been rebuilt to look like the old one.

The square near the church. Again, i love how these buildings look like they are out from magazines. a city girl like me finds them all so charming and perfect for pictures.

we hung out for a while in this open air cafe where we had shrimps cocktails and a sandwich.

in Singapore, i am always running indoors, running away from the sun.

in Germany, i could not wait for the warmth of the sun because it was always freezing so it felt great to be out in the open, with cool wind in my hair and the sun still warming me up.

and when in Germany, always try out the German Beer!!!

G is not into beer so i tried it on my own.

it is slightly more bitter than carlsberg and heineken......... it reminds me a little of tiger beer!

the next day, we drove to Munich which is about 3 hours away but before that, we went for macdonalds breakfast!

i love how nutella is available everywhere from Macdonalds to the hotel breakfast buffet.

i put it on all my bread and croissants and there i have it, the perfect breakfast for a chocoholic :)

the drive was loooooong..... so i busied myself with some pictures.

checked into the hotel and then drove for another 30 minutes to the memorial site for the concentration camp.

this was where the first Nazi concentration camp used to be, the Dachau concentration camp, where 32000 prisoners were found when the camp was liberated by the US armies in 1945.

On March 22, 1933, a few weeks after Adolf Hitler had been appointed Reich Chancellor, a concentration camp for political prisoners was set up in Dachau. This camp served as a model for all later concentration camps and as a "school of violence" for the SS men under whose command it stood. In the twelve years of its existence over 200.000 persons from all over Europe were imprisoned here and in the numerous subsidary camps. 41.500 were murdered. On April 29 1945, American troops liberated the survivors.

The gate to the site

Behind G, you would see the international monument of the site.

the sculpture resembles skeletons with their heads hanging sharply :(

visiting the site leaves a very bad taste in my mouth as i am totally the kind of person who skips the sad parts in movies and i will totally fast forward those sections just not to see them so looking at the pictures, posters and reading those personal accounts of the prisoners made me so sad.

it made me wonder how, on earth, can people be so cruel? I'm sure we are not made that way??

G, on the other hand, is a lot stronger than me.

hopefully none of us will have to go through all those horrors again and yes, world peace pls????? :)

leaving those sad past behind, i am moving on to my happiest moment in Germany and that have to be the visit to Neuschwanstein Castle which is built in the middle of the mountain!

on our way there, we took the romantic road which is a route designed to pass by many of the most beautiful places in Germany and we stopped by a couple of times just to take pictures of the beautiful snow capped alps!

one of the stops along the romantic road, a small stream where water were green and blue!

the sun was totally shining in my face thus my inability to open my eyes, not sure why i forgot to put on my sunglass, must have been too excited about the scenery!

And then, the alps!

a while later, we reached the foot of the mountain and first of all, take a break, have a hot soup!

we decided to take the horse ride up to the castle in order to experience the entire fairytale package and it was the best decision!

Nina and Norma turned out to be donkeys instead but it did not alter my experience in anyway.

it was great fun going up the castle like that though i felt a little bad cos G kept telling me that the way to tell if the donkeys were tired is to look at whether their heads were drooping and omg, both Ninas' and Normas' head were droopy like nobody's business! :(

a little something about the castle ;

The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and as a homage to Richard Wagner. Contrary to common belief, Ludwig paid for the palace out of his personal fortune and extensive borrowing, not with Bavarian public funds (see below).

The palace was intended as a personal refuge for the reclusive king, but it was opened to the paying public immediately after his death in 1886.^[1] Since then over 60 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle.^[2] More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with up to 6,000 per day in the summer.^[3] The palace has appeared prominently in several movies and was the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle^[4] and later, similar structures.

ok, this castle has to be the most beautiful one which i've ever seen! no pictures were allowed inside the castle but it was amazing!

there were lots of images, sculptures of swans inside the castle because Ludwig, the king who built the castle adores swans. and even in the 19th century, he already had electricity , water which goes all the way up to that kind of altitude. and he had a phone too and he used that to call his mum.

well.... i don't suppose anyone else had a phone for him to call them anyway.

we also viewed the kitchen which was almost never used since the king was only there for such a short time. the pots and pans were all in bronze, very stylish for someone his time. i love everything about the castle really.

the exterior of the castle, which G found a little fake. part of it was undergoing reconstruction.

Does the gate reminds you of super mario?

Look at the view! isn't it amazing?? the air was great up there and the view was magnificent. King Ludwig was one person who knew how to enjoy for sure but he died after staying there for only 27 days and immediately after that, the castle was opened for the public to view.

i have to mention that there were just so many spiral staircases in the castle and walking down them made me a little dizzy. i thought about why he did not have escalators instead....