The Amazing Internet!

I love learning new things, especially when they're free and on the internet. Tonight I downloaded Picasa 3 from Google, and created these two collage pictures. I've noticed several other people with collage photos and always wondered how they did it, now I know, it's all in the program!

With a few simple clicks I created these two collage photos just to play around. What do you think?!?

Daisy

Owning Daisy has finally paid off!

Tim entered Daisy in a photo contest through his work and she won! She won first place in the most amusing photo category for the picture of her relaxing in Jim and Robyn's pool. I think the $100 that she won will just about cover the amount we spent on her the first week we owned her, guess we'll just have to be happy with the other non-monetary things she gives us everyday!
When Daisy was asked what she'd be spending her prize money on, she replied, "A spa/ de-shedding treatment so I'll be nice and soft for all the rides I'll be giving over the holidays."

Daisy makes a great pillow!

Here is the winning picture! Congrats Daisy!

Happy Halloween!

Tim and I carved pumpkins to help get us in the Halloween spirit. Here are the finished products, can you guess who carved each pumpkin??

I can't remember the last time I'd carved a pumpkin, so I'm pretty proud of the outcome. This year I stuck with a pretty simple design, hopefully now that I know the basics of pumpkin carving I can branch out more.

My Inspiration

I've recently found this great website, www.sparkpeople.com. It has a wealth of information regarding eathing right, fitness, and inspiration and my favorite part is it's totally free! You can log-on and track how many minutes you've exercised, what you've eaten for the day, and get inspiration quotes to keep you motivated. It also allows you to set goals and then gives you information about your current "streak" towards your goal. One of mine was "eat atleast 1 piece of fresh produce"and my current "streak" is six days. Considering I've only been a member of Spark People for 7 days now, I'm pretty impressed with my current streak. Another one of my goals is 7 soda free days, my longest streak on that goal was 1 day, so I guess I'll keep working on that.

Tonight I explored more of the inspirational quotes and felt inspired enough to post one. Hopefully I'll post more to keep us all inspired! I'm sure you've heard this first quote, but it is something good to remember and never hurts to see it again.
Enjoy!

Summer Projects

With summer quickly coming to an end, I've been spending the last few days trying to finish up my summer to do list. One of the things on my to do list was scrapbooking. I've had the same scrapbook since we got married 3 years ago and I just keep filing pictures away thinking "Someday I'll get to these". My someday finally came and I started our scrapbook. My original plan was to have my scrapbook up to date by the time we left for vacation so I could do our vacation pages when we got home, I didn't make my deadline, but I was able to finish up a few pages this week. I still need to do pages for our ski trip and then I'll be ready to start pages for our Germany trip.

This is my scrapbooking area. I usually try to scrapbook when Tim is gone, this is why.

This is one of my recently completed pages on our trip to Washington, D.C. It's only 2 years late. Here is another one of my recently completed pages from our trip to California.

(Sorry for the glare, I forgot to take the pictures out of the plastic covering.)

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Since a majority of our traveling was done on public transportation, this is my ode to our modes of transportation throughout the trip.

This was the plane for our 7 hour flight from Philadelphia to Frankfurt. On our way to Germany all of our flights were on time, the way home was another story. It took us 3 flights to get home and each flight was delayed, however we were lucky enough to make all of our connections and were only delayed getting home by 30 minutes.

Since we did not rent a car, a majority of our traveling was done on Europe's train system. Their rail system is amazing, always on time and takes you just about anywhere you want to go. One of the things that saved us (both money and sanity) were our rail passes we purchased ahead of time. The rail passes allowed us to hop on almost any train without having to worry about purchasing a ticket, this was a nice feature because if we happened to take the wrong train (which we did only once) we didn't have to buy another ticket to get back. The particular passes we purchased allowed us 10 days of Germany and Austria train traveling and 4 days of Switzerland travel. Our Swiss rail passes also gave us discounts to certain museums. If you are ever thinking about traveling to Europe, be sure to look into the rail pass option, we highly recommend it!
This picture show the different types of trains. The trains on the left are the regional trains that stop in about every city. The train on the right is the ICE or Inter-City Express, they travel at speeds of almost 250 km/h and stop only at major cities.

Almost every city has a train station, the top picture is Frankfurt's main train station, which was fairly large. Most large train stations have eating places and a few even have malls and/or grocery stores.

This is an example of a smaller train station. In small towns, trains only stopped once or twice an hour. This is a picture of the hiking trails in the Swiss Alps, I included it because after train traveling the second main source of traveling was our two feet. We did ALOT of walking! Most of the time the walking was enjoyable and allowed us to get a better idea of the culture and lifestyle, for information on the rest of the time see the Day 3 post.

Day 18- Berlin, Germany

Day 18- July 10th
For the final day of our trip, we finished exploring Berlin and prepared to head home.

Jody at the Berlin Wall

Another picture of Berlin's Parliament building- the Reichstag
Berlin's TV tower

Near our hotel was the Fassbender & Rausch chocolate shop. Fassbender & Rausch claims to be Europe's largest chocolate shop and had these chocolate statues in their windows. This was also the only place we bought souveniors. YUM!

Day 17-Berlin, Germany

Day 17- July 9th
Today we headed from Dresden to Berlin with a stop in Gorlitz along the way. While in Gorlitz we were able to cross a bridge and venture into Poland. We didn't spend much time in Poland, just long enough to say we were there. After the long train ride from Gorlitz to Berlin we were able to see a few Berlin sights. I had no idea Berlin was a city with so much history, it was amazing!

Clocktower in Gorlitz

This clock tower's two faces show the month, day and time. A street in Poland
The Polish town we walked around inBerlin's Famous Brandenberg Gate
Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
This memorial contains 2, 711 gravestone like pillars made of hollow concrete. Underneath the memorial is a museum that traces the stories of individual families and lists the 200 different places of genocide. Quite an experience!Berlin's parliament building the Reichstag

That night we also walked to Checkpoint CharlieSign at Checkpoint CharlieCheckpoint at Checkpoint Charlie
Snackpoint Charlie
If all the history at Checkpoint Charlie made you hungry, you could stop at Snackpoint Charlie.

Day 16- Nurnberg & Dresden, Germany

Day 16- July 8th

Today we headed from Munich to Dresden with a stop in Nurnberg along the way to see the Nazi Documentation Center. The museum is housed in a small wing on Hitler's unfinished Congress Hall, which is the largest surviving example of Nazi architecture. The museum did an amazing job of showcasing the history of the Nazi party and the incredible plans Hitler had. We were also able to see Zeppelin Field, which is where Hitler held many famous Nazi rallies with up to 250,000 people at a time.View of Congress Hall from the outside
This building was built to house up to 50,000 Nazi party leaders.

Zeppelin FieldAnother view of Zeppelin Field
Imagine Hitler standing on the platform, speaking to 500,000 Nazi supporters.

After visiting Nurberg, we headed to our hotel in Dresden. Dresden was one of the hardest hit areas during WWII. On the night of February 13, 1945, 75% of the historical center was destroyed, thus everything we saw had been rebuilt. Jody in front of Dresden's Zwinger

Parade of Nobels Mural
This mural is made up of 24,000 porcelain tile. The mural is longer than a football field and showcases 700 years of Saxon royalty.

Day 15- Munich, Germany

Day 15- July 7th

Today was a relaxing day, we slept in and then went to explore more of Munich. We went to visit the glockenspiel to watch it perform and explored more of Munich's English Garden and downtown square.These are the twin onion domes of the 500 year old Frauenkirche, which are a symbol of the city of Munich.

I can't remember which church in Munich this stained glass is from, but it is just one example of the beautiful churches we have seen.
This was our lunch at the beer garden located in Munich's English Garden
Pretzels of this size are a staple of the Germany lifestyle, and taste excellent.
(We also had currywurst, which got cut out of the picture)
We decided you can't come to a German beer garden and not enjoy a beer.

Day 14- Munich, Germany

Day 14- July 6th

Today we took the train from Vienna to Munich, Germany. Once we arrived in Munich we checked into our hotel and went to explore Munich. Our hotel is located near the English Gardens in Munich. The English Gardens are considered Munich's "Central Park", which are over 3 miles long, and home to nude sunbathers, surfers, and a beer garden.The view of Munich from our hotel

The river that flows through the English Garden creates an perpetual wave that is popular with surfers.

This glockenspiel, which is over 100 years old, is located in Munich's MarienplatzThis is the view of Marienplatz in Munich

Day 13- Mauthausen Concentration Camp

Day 13- July 5th

Today we headed to Mauthausen Concentration Camp. The concentration camp is located in Mauthausen, a small town along the Danube river. From the train station at Mauthausen we hiked the 6 km to reach the concentration camp. At the camp we were able to see the barracks, crematory, and gas chamber. Quite a sobering experience.View of Mauthausen Concentration camp from the road

Entrance to the camp


Gas chamber in the basement of the camp
View of the inside of the barracks.
Often at least 2 prisoners shared one bed

Crematory inside the camp