Wiesbaden Wine Fest 2006

In early to mid-August, Wiesbaden holds for 10 days a wine festival. The first weekend we were in Amsterdam and unfortunately the weather was poor early in the week. So finally on Thursday night, Dan and I headed to town to check out the scene thinking we would eat dinner and have a glass or two of wine. Instead, we started to call all of our friends and it turned into a crazy, wild night (see the crew early in the night). In about 5 hours we think we went through 13 bottles of wine and didn't hit bed until almost 3:00 am. Little tough the next day for us who had to work, especially for two of us who had a 9:00 am staff meeting...

Friday night we all headed out to dinner and only a few brave ones went back to the Fest. Saturday night we were back in full force and included some new members this year - Tony, Jenny, Sarah, Dave, and baby Lex were new to the mix since they weren't around last August.

This is a fabulous festival and is a great time to hang in Wiesbaden! Unfortunately only some of the pics would post (I am still learning!) and some of the best that finally posted were of Susanna and Scott's son Lex...

I am off to Munich tomorrow to meet up with hubby, Mauck, and Chambers for Oktoberfest!! I am so excited to have a four day long weekend and know that we are going to have a blast! Friday Tony and Jenny and some of the friends / family meet us up, too. It sounds like the boys are enjoying Europe Trip 2 - Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Munich. Just got off the phone with the boys in Berlin and they are in the mix...

Lex after a hard night at Winefest

Lex and the pretzel - good for teething :)

The crew - Kelli, Dan, Jenny, Tony, Kitty, Susanna, Lex, and Scott

Market Square

Tony, Kelli, & Jenny

Church in the Market Square

Beautiful day (didn't have too many in August!)

Winefest in the evening

Kelli & Lex

Last supper

Dan and Kelli enjoying Lago di Como

Sparkles in the water

Kelli about to go down 100 steps

Dan about to climb up 100 steps

Welcome to Bellagio!

Approaching Bellagio

Cute little island

Our dream home...

Bellissima!

Kelli and Lago di Como

Pool side in Moltrasio

Parma, Lake Como, and George Clooney

After leaving Florence, we headed north and stopped for lunch in Parma, yes, the home of Parmesan cheese. Lunch was fantastic and of course we picked up some fresh cheese that we are still munching on...

We hit fabulous Lago di Como (testing my Italian!) and our mouths dropped. Our pictures are beautiful but don't give it justice. We stayed in Moltrasio, a small town with a fabulous hotel with all the amenities you could need, plus a pool on the lake! Both days we laid out all day and had a wonderful dinner looking over the lake. The second day we took a boat around the lake to find George Clooney's house and see some of the other cities. For those who don't know, George is one of my five (think of the Friend's episode) and I was on the hunt. Unfortunately he was in Venice but we did find his home - actually he has two and a beach and was only 5 km away from our hotel! We also found our dream villa if we ever hit the lotto....

We then went to the REAL Bellagio which is funny after being to the one in Vegas. The developers in Vegas did a good job but they cannot replicate the weather nor gelato (amazing ice cream in both Portofino and Bellagio).

This is hard to say but Dan and I loved Lake Como so much that it MAY be more of a paradise for us then Maui. We have to go back to Maui now and test it....we will be back to Lake Como one more time before we leave - only 7 hours from home!

All and all this vacation was needed - we relaxed, ate amazing food, drank lots of red wine, got great tans, and felt recharged. It was hard to say good-bye but we had good reason to head back. That night we had a going away party for our friends Scott, Susanna, and Lex who were returning to the US.

Take a look at the pics from Como. Will add the Wiesbaden Winefest (10 day winefest every August) and the going away party later this week...

Perfect

Nice was VERY much needed by both of us.

Just to sit on the beach and listen to waves, read a book and do nothing felt pretty damn good. The food was fantastic, our hotel was great and the people were actually very.....well....um...."Nice".(sorry)

We spent our days on the beach or by the pool and the evening walking through the old part of the city which was very cool. Lots of narrow cobbled streets and tons of outdoor restaurants and bars.

We took the train to Monte Carlo for one night. Our primary mission was to gamble at the most famous casino on the planet and pretend to be high rollers for one night. Mission accomplished. Kelli actually won a little bit of cash and I promptly gave it back (and a little more). While I was playing blackjack, a group of men sat down at the table next to mine and after noticing that quite a few of the casino employees were gathering around the table, I glanced over and realized that it was a VERY famous soccer player (Ronaldo) and a few of his teammates from Real Madrid. David Beckham was not one of them. Probably doesn't mean much if you're a non soccer loving American but since the World Cup, I shocked myself by actually being able to recognize him.

We had our French Riviera experience and then moved along the Italian Riviera through Genoa and stopped in Portofino. Absolutely stunning place and some of the most beautiful scenery we have ever seen. We made a brief stop in Pisa on the way to Florence and Tuscany to take a look at the leaning tower. Note to Italian travelers: Do NOT stay in Pisa, drive there like we did or take a bus from Florence. Pisa is kind of like one of those "World's largest thermometer" places along the western roads in the US where you stop, look at it, and move on.

Florence on the other hand has perfect. It is the Italy that you think Italy should be. Perfect food, beautiful buildings, great museums and wonderful people. It is definitely in our top 5 favorite European cities now and we really need to get back as we were only there for about 36 hours. We saw the "David" and paintings and sculptures by people that most people know as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Can you name them?). We saw the graves of Galileo, Michaelangelo and Machiavelli. And Kelli got in some top notch shopping time.

I could write and write about how beautiful Florence and Tuscany were. We thought it was the best of Italy. But then we drove to Como......

Kelli looking VERY Mediterranean

Amazing

Nice

The beach in Nice

I want to go back

Kelli in the Nice Train Station on the way to Monte Carlo

The Harbor in Monte Carlo

The cars were stretched all around the front

Lookin studly

A night in Monte Carlo

The harbor in Portofino

Good Work Kelli

Pisa

Florence

The Duomo

Kelli after shopping at the Gucci flagship store

THe Arno River

The Uffizi Museum in Flroence

Lucerne and the Alps

Part one in a series....

We shoved off on a Friday and got to Lucerne, Switzerland at about 5. Had a little time to look around at the shops but we were knocked out by how beautiful the scenery was. Lucerne is the first point at which you start to REALLY see mountains as you drive south from Germany. It sits on a large lake and is very quaint with a good sized old town that has many squares and alleys.

The Reuss river that runs out of the lake splits Lucerne in two and there are a few bridges crossing between. The most famous of which is the Kapellbruecke (Pics below). It was built in 1333 originally although what is there now is a product of a restoration that occurred after the bridge was nearly destroyed by fire in 1993.

The "Dying Lion" is carved in sandstone out of the side of a nearby hill. We just sat there and looked at it for a bit of time as it is very moving. It's a monument to commemorate the Swiss that died in the French Revolution in 1792.. Mark Twain called it "the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world."

We didn't give Lucerne enough time on this trip and will return in the future as we had to move on the next morning and drive to Nice. We decided to take the scenic route since our Navigation warned us of impending traffic at the "quick" crossing.

We are glad that it did.

We ended up crossing over a bit west of the main Alps crossing at teh Gotthard Tunnel. We were over near the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc (the highest mountain in Europe for you geography majors). It was beautiful. Different than crossing the Rockies as I've done with my family a few times. There seemed to be more dams and streams, even at 10,000 feet. The air got really thin at the top and Kelli and I were both pretty lightheaded. The lightheadedness probably made seeing some glaciers even that much more cool however.

Our Hannibal-esqe crossing took about 6 hours as we stopped quite a bit for pics and took our time with the drive. Not that we had much of a choice at times. We definitely did not take the roads most travelled. At least two times we had to question whether or not we had made the right turn.

We descended into the area of Italy between Milan and Torino (Turin, depending on where you're from), and headed south to the Sea near Genoa. We drove west along the Italian Riviera for about 2 hours getting to Nice. It reminded me a lot of the drive along the Pacific Coast Highway in California, only the Italians blasted tunnels through every jutting mountain instead of riding the contours like the PCH. It was gorgeous nonetheless. After a slight traffic jam at the French border, we zipped through Monaco and on to Nice. Total trip time from Lucerne to Nice, 7.5 hours.

Part two later today as I was lazy over the weekend. Kelli and I enjoyed our last summer weeeknd in Wiesbaden. Friday we were out with some friends and Saturday we headed to Frankfurt to catch a movie (Miami Vice - pretty good) and dinner. Sunday was a perfect day so we walked into the city and also rented a boat in the park behind the house. It was a good "calm before the storm" for me.

Up near the pass

Cool Glacier

Driving through the Alps

Lake Lucerne

Kelli on the bridge

Lucerne at Night

Nice Shoes

Lucerne at Sunset

The Dying Lion in Lucerne

Joe Dumars

In a rare event, Joe Dumars talked about himself upon being elected to the NBA hall of fame. In true Joe fashion, he stayed humble while still making a point that many of us already believe. I thought this was classic.

How do I want to be remembered?
Well, I'm not dead.
But a few words: professionalism, character, dignity and winner, because I've been fortunate enough to win a lot in this league, to win everything you can possibly win.
All those things would be how I view what I've been able to accomplish.
But start with character and dignity because that's who I've been, and that's who I'll continue to be.
I'm not about to become some character. I'm just not.
I can't do that.

Best Ever

Don't really know where to start. So I guess I will start with one of Kelli's highlights from the trip. At left is George Clooney's Villa. It's the white one in the very middle. Unfortunately, I must say, it is actually MASSIVE. Pretty cool to see the place where scenes from Ocean's Twelve were filmed.

I owe this trip a massive write-up since we believe this may have been the best trip that we've ever been on. I think I have to break it up into pieces. So today is the teaser. Up next is Lucerne, Switzerland and the Alps. After that (in order) Nice/Monte Carlo/French Riviera then Italian Riviera/Portofino/Florence and finally Parma/Lake Como.

From International Soccer stars to all four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this trip had it all!

Have a great weekend. This is my last in Wiesbaden for a while as John Mauck and Brian Chambers come into town next week and we begin our defacement of the beautiful cities of Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin and then (a repeat performance, and why the hell not!) Oktoberfest in Munich.

Let the games begin.........