travel – Page 13 – ToadMama.com

September 24, 2016September 24, 2016

Easily Distracted

Did I ever tell you I have ADD? Well, I do. And that means I tend to be distracted easily.

Case in point, this morning. It’s Saturday, so I figured I’d start looking through the vacation pics.

I’m not sure yet how I’ll share them. By how, I mean chronologically, like, “on this day we did this…” or by categories, like maybe “painted houses.”

One of the highlights of the trip for me was visiting Oberammergau. It’s a small town in Bavaria, in Southern Germany, I’d first passed through on our very first trip to the region in 2010. We were on a motorcycle tour, spending nights in nearby Austria and days visiting various sights and enjoying local motorcycle roads.

Since we were with a group, I couldn’t stop. but I’d really, REALLY wanted to stop. It was the first time I’d seen houses like this…

Bavarian-style house adorned with flowers and paintings.

How cool is that?

According to this website about the town:

Luftl (Luftmalerei) fresco paintings are the characteristic decorations on houses in Alpine regions. They date back to the 18th century when wealthy merchants, farmers and craftsmen showed their wealth and status with colorful frescoes on the façade of their houses. The paintings often incorporated existing architectural structures, such as windows or doors, or took the form of medallions or scenes from the Bible, fairy tales or folk festivals.

Here’s another example…

Religious scene and painted window trim.

As this blog post about a neighboring town says,

The Bavarians have a long history of decorating the exteriors of their houses and businesses with both religious and historic paintings. …buildings…have unique murals on the outside walls of the buildings. Some depict an event or animals and other paintings make the buildings look like they have things (windows, statues, etc.) that really are not there.

I’d wanted BADLY to stop for a closer look, but couldn’t leave or delay my group, so on we went to a fantastic day of motorcycle riding and castle tours. But I never forgot.

That’s how we ended up in Oberammergau about two-thirds of the way through our trip. And why thoughts of places like Prague, Vienna, and Salzburg didn’t stir my anticipation nearly as much as Oberammergau.

We were only there briefly, but, don’t worry, I have more pics to share.

From there, we headed west and slightly north toward Schaffhausen, Switzerland, where we’d be meeting our friend, Tammi, in a day or so. Since we had time, we decided to visit a couple of King Ludwig’s castles in the area. Linderhof was first, then Neuschwanstein.

Hubby and I had seen both during that first trip to Austria. But Annelies and Yves hadn’t.

As it turns out, we took the exact same road from Linderhof to Neuschwanstein. And it wasn’t long before we started seeing this…

Yep, motorcycles. Zipping past us in our big-by-European-standards SUV.

It’s a good thing Annelies was driving. She’s much more conservative than me on roads like that.

It was a good road.

There was a pretty lake, too.

The coolest Deer Warning sign I have ever seen.

The deer are saying something like, “You’d think they would slow down now.” You know, since they’re showing their big, glowing, devilish and/or alien-like eyes!

This time, I was able to stop for a pic. 🙂

That drive brought back lots of good memories. It made we want to ride, too.

In fact, seeing these pics remind me just how much it made me want to ride.

And that is exactly why this post is ending here.

September 22, 2016September 22, 2016

Overload

Hi, my name is Kathy. I am a photoaholic. Or something like that.

Before leaving Belgium, Annelies and I swapped picture files. All of the photos the two of us took during our time together are on a thumb drive/memory stick. I figured I’d go through them, but wanted to first upload the pics I took in Iceland (Annelies and Yves didn’t join us in Iceland).

That’s when I discovered that, in all, I’d taken just over 2,850 pics with my camera. In 19 days. That doesn’t include the 943 images I captured on my phone.

In all, Annelies only took 908 pics. That includes camera and phone pics. Slacker.

But then, she doesn’t have a selfie stick like the cool one Hubby bought for me just before the trip.

Mike, Annelies, Me, Tammi, and Yves at Rhine Falls

You have to look closely to see Yves. He’s in the background, basically standing on my head.

Some folks probably think I spent all of my time behind a camera. I didn’t. I’m just a visual person. When something catches my eye, for whatever reason, I tend to snap a quick photo. I’m a sucker for stuff like fun window displays, cool reflections, interesting and/or different signs, etc. I’ve gotten good at capturing images on the fly and/or on the sly, too, you know, discretely and/or while in motion.

Like this hole-in-the-floor shot I captured on the way to the WC (short for water closet aka toilet) at the Zipfer Bierhaus in Salzburg. According to their website, it was built in 1300. They’re big on authenticity (not kitsch) and preserving history.

I was really hoping their site would explain the skeleton-at-the-bottom-of-the-well thing.

Oh, and some of those 943 phone pics were captured in bursts or multiple frames of special group selfies. Some were screen captures of important stuff like hotel addresses and/or confirmation numbers. Some were just silly things I saw, or cool motorcycles, funny signs, crazy-looking people, etc. Or beer we wanted to remember. We drank a lot of different beers.

Others were views I enjoyed, but was so relaxed I didn’t fell like digging out the “real” camera. There are also quite a few phone pics that started out as camera pics, but that I added to the phone for ease of sharing.

Oh, and we can’t forget all of the pics I captured to help tell a story, like this one of Mike and me.

Me and Hubby Mike at the Hallstatt Salt Mine

See that big-ass hill behind us? We had to walk UP that hill to go down into a salt mine. That hill was so steep — did I mention the dirt-and-gravel path — that is was very hard to maintain our footing while walking back down the hill. Really.

Anyway, to make a long post short… I have a LOT of pictures to sort through!

September 21, 2016September 21, 2016

We Are Back!

2016_europe_road_trip_route — 2016 European Road Trip

Howdy.

Sorry for yet another long absence. Hubby and I just got back from an epic road trip. Well, air and road. We went through Iceland, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Czechia, Austria, and Switzerland, and actually spent time in all of them, except Holland, which we just drove through.

Our friends Annelies and Yves were with us for all but the Iceland portion. We shared lots of laughs, drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of amazing food, and even managed to see some cool stuff, too.

I meant to update the blog at least a few times while away. Honest. But the phone app I have wouldn’t cooperate and time was so limited at the end of our very long days that I couldn’t muster the mental energy to figure out how to post using Hubby’s Mac tablet.

Anyway, we are home. And I have tons of pics to share. I managed to post a few to FB and shared quite a few Instagram photos of oddities and such.

If you’d like to see the route map, click here. I have lots of cool pics and fun stories to share. 🙂

August 26, 2016August 23, 2016

A Few Fun Pics from Washington State

Since I use this blog sort of as a photo diary and personal reference tool, I wanted to post a few more fun pics captured while visiting Washington earlier this year.

One of two cool cows at Haggen’s grocery story in Auburn, WA.

There’s no shortage of coffee/espresso stands in the Pacific NW.

August 23, 2016

Backtracking, B&B Style

I’m behind again. I have given up trying to understand or explain why I haven’t been writing blog posts, so I figured I would just state the obvious and move on.

Back in April while Hubby and I were visiting Amy and family in Washington, we FINALLY got the chance to meet up with fellow moto bloggers Brandy (Trobairitz) and Brad (Troubadour). We’d been close a couple of times. I was thrilled that we finally got to meet. (I wrote about that meet-up elsewhere in a more-timely fashion.)

They live in Oregon, so Brandy chose a spot — Centralia, Washington — about halfway between their house and Amy’s neighborhood for us to have lunch.

They’re both just as nice in person as I knew they’d be. One day, hopefully, we will meet again and maybe ride together.

Hubby and I arrived a few minutes early so we poked around town a bit. Then, after a lovely lunch, the four of us strolled around town for a little while. Hubby and I were still in charge of the grand kids, so, sadly, we didn’t have an indefinite amount of time to linger.

We had a lovely lunch with B&B. Really. I’m sure the four of us could have some fun adventures together.

Maybe one day…

I think B&B were a bit unsettled when, as we were preparing to leave, I hurried back from the bathroom to get my camera.

It’s never a good feeling when someone is taking pictures in a bathroom. But the sink area was unlike anything I had ever seen.

Unusual Sink in the Women’s Bathroom at the Restaurant

If Hubby weren’t a plumbing guy, I may not have been so compelled to capture that photo. But he is a plumbing guy, so I HAD to.

June 2, 2016June 2, 2016

Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park

Hi there! In case you haven’t visited in a while, this post is basically the second half of the pics I captured during a recent visit (April 20, 2016) to Victoria, BC, Canada. You’ll have to be sure to see the first installment if you haven’t already. There were so many pretty park pics to share, I decided they deserved a post of their own.

Anyhoo… I really didn’t have much of a plan beyond meeting up with Dar in the late afternoon. I knew Victoria was pretty, based on my previous, very quick visit and posts I’d vaguely remembered seeing on Dar’s blog and Brandy’s blog. I was excited to just have a few hours to myself to just roam, sightsee, and do whatever I felt like doing, or NOT doing as the case may be. I grabbed a Victoria map on the ferry and, upon seeing that Beacon Hill Park looked to be relatively close to the harbor, I decided to go there. (Here’s a link if you want to learn more about the 200-acre park.)

Remember, you can click on any image to see a larger version.

Since Richard asked, I had to check and see how far I actually walked that day. It appears to have been roughly six miles (9.5 km) give or take. I criss-crossed the park a lot, so it’s hard to tell for sure. I was walking slowly and stopping a lot for pics and also just to enjoy some peaceful spots in the shade.

It was a beautiful, sunny, warm Spring day. There were lots and lots of flowers in bloom. And a bunch of other interesting stuff to see. I could have gone to a museum and/or shopping, but it was such a pretty day and it was just so darn gorgeous that I sort of just ambled around the city all day.

Here are some of the many images I captured.

I didn’t enter the park through the main entrance pictured in that first shot. I’d just walked in the general direction of the park and entered on the first convenient path that I saw. And I didn’t have a map of the park, so I don’t remember what the various areas were called. Sorry. I was just ambling about.

8_IMG_0144 — The biggest non-wild rhododendron I’ve ever seen.

Same bush, different side. The bench helps give a sense of scale.

I may or may not have squealed aloud when I rounded a corner on a wooded path and saw this…

I LOVE The Moss Lady.

20_IMG_0261 — There were pretty colors everywhere.

I am a visual, nature-loving person, so I was completely and utterly in my element.

14_IMG_0212 (2) — Such a peaceful place.

The view would be all green and serene, maybe with a pond or two. And ducks. Loads of ducks, geese and such. Then I’d round a corner and, BOOM, more color.

Not that I am complaining. Trust me, I was absolutely delighted.

Some of my pics are a bit washed out because the sun was so bright, which is a shame. But I think you get the idea just how lovely a place it was.

Winding path lined with many varieties of tulips, daffodils, and similar flowers.

This one was in the shade, so you can see it’s form better.

Do the colors on this one make you swoon? I gasped aloud when I saw the thing in person.

One of the many spots I chose to just sit for a spell.

I was so overwhelmed by all the loveliness that I actually forgot ScooterBob was with me. DOH! I can be such a dunce sometimes. All oohing and aahing about the stunning natural beauty around me instead of snapping opportunistic photos of my little globe-trotting wooden friend.

17_IMG_0252 (2) — ScooterBob at the wildflower meadow.

I never did get an image of that meadow good enough to do it justice. It was a veritable sea of purple before me. There was just too much sun at that time of day.

Look closely and you’ll see a snow-capped mountain framed by those trees.

18_IMG_0254 (2) — Tiny pond with bust of Queen Victoria (I think).

19_IMG_0260 — Peacock (they are noisy suckers)

21_IMG_0264 (2) — Yet another pretty pond. And ScooterBob.

This is my favorite duck capture of the day.

Finally, my favorite nature scene of the day. A bunch of turtles on a floating log.

I actually stood there watching for a while. And laughing. While I have seen my share of turtles on logs, I’d never actually seen turtles on a floating log. It’s different, trust me. You’ll have to watch at least the first 45 seconds of the video I included below to see why.

That was my day at Beacon Hill Park. Yes, I’d go again in a heartbeat. Even if I had just one more day to spend in Victoria. Of course, I’d ask Dar to meet me there with a picnic meal, and perhaps an alcoholic beverage or two. 🙂