More Old Fingers

Today we drove to Florence!!! The last time I was in Europe, we stayed a few nights in the town. Today, it was just a day trip. The main reason we went was no, not for the David, not for the sculptures, not for the famous paintings, but for Galileo Galilea's middle and index finger, along with his thumb and his tooth. The last time we were here we did some of the famous stuff, but why not go see one of the most famous scientist in the world's finger? The science museum here is way smaller than the one in Munich, but I thought it was better in quality. Most of the stuff had to deal with that Galileo discovered and his field of work. There are many other instruments there too with different fields of work involved. Also all the items are better displayed and the place is a bit more modern than the museum in Munich.

We did have a lot of time left in Florence, but the David (the famous sculpture) was a little to far from where we were. So instead I visited the Uffizi for the second time in my life. Here they have some pretty famous works and pieces. Including the birth of Venus and paintings by Da Vinci, Rafeal, Donatello, and other famous people. It's a must stop in Florence the first trip and not bad for the second.

I really don't like truffles at all. They're supposed to be fancy and delicious, but on this trip I've just decided I hate them. The only reason I ate my truffle cream pizza today was because I was hungry. Although the pistachio ice cream was great in Florence too. It had real pistachios in it. The Siena one might have been better though.

A little shorter blog today because I'm getting ready for the pre-finale tomorrow and the finale blog post on the 18th hope you can read both!

Super Sienna

Our day started off when the rental car company guy came and picked us up. He drove us to Siena where our new and improved rental car would be. Luckily we wanted to go to Sienna anyways and now we didn't have to drive there! We parked outside of AC Siena's stadium. The stadium is very open compared to the Allianz Arena, Emirates Stadium, and Wembley. It's not very big and it has a track around the pitch, which keeps the fans farther away from the action. Although it's old, it still looks pretty nice and looks like it could hold at least 30,000. AC Siena was relegated this season though, and they'll play in Italy's 2nd division next year. This worked out for me later though, because the team store's jerseys were 50% off. Making an €80 purchase change to a €40 purchase. 

Sienna is actually a pretty big town. Very big compared to Volterra where we were yesterday. There are even more attractions here and many more places to shop. First we stopped at one of the more plainer churches in the town. Here we saw a 600 year old head and thumb. Yes a real thumb and a real human head. These 2 artifacts belonged to Saint Catherine. By belonged I mean on her body. Both the thumb and the head were expertly preserved and you could see the skin perfectly. These 2 items have been 2 of my favorites in Italy. 

Next we started our long walk towards the Duomo, passing many shops and food stops along the way. This town is Volterra on steroids. By the way: pistachio ice cream is amazing. The best ice cream I've  had in Europe so far. After walking for a while we reached the awesome dome churchy thing. The inside is filled to the top with detail. Sculptures and paintings from famous people like Donatello and Bernini line the walls and pop out at you. My favorite feature was the Pope heads stretching the length of the church building. The heads are expertly carved models of the real popes heads. All stare down at you from the top of the building. It's super cool. I would say that for a church, which churches are usually boring for me, that this was pretty good and probably a must stop. I liked it because it was more of a museum than a boring church.

Lastly we spent our time in what is supposedly the nicest plaza in Italy. There are a lot to choose from though. I'm not sure if I could tell whether it was the best or not, but it was full of space and different restaurants lined the square.

We exited the city and in our new Mercedes, and drove back towards our agritourismo! 

Today was another good day on my trip. Read till the last post!

Favorite Journey Special!!!

Thank you for sticking with me through out the journey through Europe. This will probably be the final post of "Food and Football: a europe journey". It's been a good 24 days or some amount like that. To wrap it all up like a giant Christmas present I'll rank my favorite legs of the trip. These include: London, Cotswold, Munich, Füssen/German Countryside, Switzerland, and Tuscany.

#6: My least favorite place to go on the trip was SWITZERLAND. You may remember my blog, "Wifi Woes" about why I did not like Switzerland. It was just straight up bad and mostly boring. An ultra lesser Germany is a good description. PROS: Good Chocolate, We stayed at a friends house with great food and a nice room CONS: almost everything else

#5: Although the COTSWOLDS comes in at 5, it was a major step up from Switzerland. The countryside is different from the mountainous regions of Germany and Switzerland. It compares closer with Italy. The hills are smaller though, and streams flow more often. There was nothing really that bad there, just nothing really that spectacular. Our little village where we stayed, Bourton-On-The-Water was very nice and the bed and breakfast, Manor Close, was awesome. The long walks in the countryside get boring after a while. Even though the towns are better than the Swiss towns, Füssen & Co. beat them tremendously. Strattford-Upon-Avon was a semi-big town close by and it was entertaining. PROS: Sheep every where, nice people, good change of pace after visiting London, nice tea, short drives to a few bigger towns,and a few other things CONS: walks get boring, just a tiny bit more to do in the towns would be nice, food needs to improve a lot (but it's English, what do you expect?), towns look mostly the same, and a few others. 

#4: Third and fourth were hard to decide, but FÜSSEN/GERMAN COUNTRYSIDE fills the 4th place spot. The country side was really entertaining the first day because  it had more landforms than the countryside of England. The towns here were not super boring, but they were not the same level as Italy. The food was pretty good. There are a few things to do here. The 2 castles are pretty awesome and probably the main attractions here! This place was very close to taking 3rd, but didn't quite make it. It happens to be my moms favorite leg. PROS: pretty nice scenery even for me, just big enough towns to not get to bored, good food, castles are awesome CONS: even though towns are ok they're not great, food will get boring, not a countryside person

#3 The food and semi-big countryside towns prepel TUSCANY(PART OF ITALY) into 3rd. This place was way better than I expected it to be! Even though you are in the countryside, you still get to see big towns like Siena and Florence. The smaller towns like Volterra are still very nice too. After all these positive comments you might say, well why isn't this place first? Well then the regular countryside factors come into play. The long drives can get boring. Eventually you could run out of things to do, but we didn't. After visiting the big towns, what is left to do? Maybe it's also the fact that although nothing was bad here, nothing was at a level set above Munich or London. Like that extra bit of work put into a school project. Tuscany would still get an A but not extra credit for being just great! PROS: lots to do for country side, great food CONS: nothing extraordinary 

#2: The Allianz Arena and shopping brings MUNCHEN(MUNICH) into a very close runner up to the best part of my European journey. FC Bayern Munich, the most popular team of Munich and my 2nd fav. team, play at the fantastic modern stadium, Allianz Arena. We spent a whole day of our Munich stop there!!! The tour was super duper cool and the stadium was just awesome. Of course the biggest event at the stadium is when we got to see the retiring manager put the 3 trophies in the display case and then I got his autograph and picture. Later we even got to watch a reserve 1860 Munich team play. Even though its the 3rd lowest team in the city of Munich, it was still cool to see a game at the wonderful stadium. The shopping in Munich exceeded expectations by a lot. You would think that most of my shopping would have been done in London, but Munich was lined with shops. It was really awesome looking at all the places to buy. Most were expensive but you could find some pretty good deals. The concentration camp 40 minutes outside of the city was a good stop too. There are other famous buildings and museums in Munich that we did not even get to visit. That just shows the amount of stuff to do there!! PROS: lots of stuff to do, greet shopping, very safe place in terms of robbery, nice people, good food, many others CONS: science museum sucked 

#1: The big #1 one goes to LONDON. I've always wanted to go to London and hoped it would not dissapoint. Boy it sure didn't! There are endless things to do in the gigantic city. Museums, buildings, shops, sites, restaraunts, soccer stadiums, and many other attractions. The soccer or football is what made London really good, along with the amount of historical things to look at. Also attractions like the Lodon Eye add to the pile! I'm a museum,city, and soccer kind of guy. I wish we would have had more time in London because at some places we had to rush just a tiny bit and many soccer stadiums were left untouched. But no matter, London was 100% amazing and fun. I recommend it to anyone going to Europe. Artifacts pile high in museums. The tea is wonderful and also the coffee. LONDON IS AWESOME!

It seems that in the end, the big cities beat out the country side by quite a lot. At the beginning of our European Journey, I expected that to be the case though. It has been an awesome 3 weeks here in Europe and it was actually my 2nd time back! I thank my many readers and especially the ones who have tried to read every blog post. Don't forget to start reading my other blog about soccer(football), "Just Plain Football" @ justplainfootball.blogspot.com 

It's been a great Journey throughout Europe. What will become of this blog? I don't know. Maybe nothing or maybe something amazing. But once again thanks for taking this journey with me, hope you enjoyed it. Signing out from Food and Football: a europe journey....

Food Special!!!

For my 2nd to last post, I will count down my favorite food of the journey. I'll split it up into 4 different sections: Germany, England, Switzerland, and Italy. The food was good through out the trip, but of course some countries excelled more than others. I've been mostly happy with the meals and snacks here in Europe, almost all of the meals have been good, with a few lacking really good quality. 

#4: ENGLAND. The food in England starts off good, but you can get tired of it very quickly. The tourists all want the meat pies, fish and chips, and other English treats. In London these are very easy to get. The only problem is, after the first day, they all start tasting the same and well, it just gets bad. Espicially food in the Cotswolds. Although we actually had one of our best meals im Stow, most of the food there was bland too. Spices and seasoning are hard to find. English Tea and Deserts were very good though. Espicially the macaroons and scones. Also I am just reviewing English food, not food as a whole in England. There are great Italian, Indian, and other culture food restaurants there. PROS:Great at 1st, lots of places to get that "real English food", lots of Indian places with actual flavor, and tea and snacks are very good. CONS:The food gets very very bland after a while, it mostly repeats its self, and no color in dishes

#3: SWITZERLAND. Switzerland was a little different. It was because we didn't eat "Swiss" food. Instead my moms friend cooked for us. Different types of food with some Swiss ingredients. It could be said that Switzerland would be unrankable because we didn't have the nations food. Oh well. First of all, maybe because I hated Switzerland, it put a dampening on the food. PROS: Friend had excellent cooking, great chocolate CONS: didn't get to try real Swiss food, hated Switzerland 

#2: GERMANY. The food we consumed in Germany was the kind of food you think a tourist would eat and sometimes even the locals. You know, the schnitzel,the sausage, the sour kraut, and so on. It might have helped that we just came from England and needed some real flavor. We ate mostly German "authentic" food through out Munich and Füssen, I never really got tired of it. I'm sure that after a while I would have. The sausages are so much better in Germany then they are in the USA! But the best meal was at a place where you probably think the food would suck. The Houfbrohause (I'm pretty sure I just got that totally wrong). Being a big tourist attraction the food is expected to be bad. But no!!!! This was not the case. The venison I had there was super delicious and the sauce was fantastic. The pork knuckle was one of the biggest surprises on the whole trip. Crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. I may like German food more than anyone else, but you should give it a try! Of course in Germany beer is great. Now I never tried any, but mom and dad said it was great! I advise you not to get the Currywurst. A sausage with curry powder and ketchup smothering the meat. The amount of ketchup is just way to sweet. I think they should use just curry powder. PROS: Lots of meat, pretty good flavor, gives you lots of fries American style, and for you older people good beer CONS: Currywurst sucks, bread and pretzels not my favorite, probably would get tired of the food like England, might not have as many ethnic choices as England did

#1: ITALY!!!!! The food in Italy was amazing. Pasta's, meats, sea food, pizzas, and so on. The options here were by far the most amount. I mean London probably had a lot too but not in terms of English food and same in Munich. For just culture-like food, Italy was the best. Every meal we have had has had pretty high quality. Most places here all the food is made from scratch and the ingredients are fresh! That's very different from America where most things are mostly premade. Of course I still like food in America though. Here the pasta is expertly cooked. The meat almost all tastes good and there's a wide variety including boar and hare! The desserts here rival those of England. I still think England may edge out in the end though. There are tons of different flavors in the dishes here, which was a great improvement from Germany and England. If you get tired of regular meat, you have seafood or vegetables. Italians eat many courses throughout a meal. Appetizers, first course, second course, and maybe even more eventually getting to desert. So you can tell food is a big part of the culture, leading to more options. PROS: mostly fresh ingredients all locally grown, many flavors, many options overall, and a few things I mentioned above CONS: things can get a bit too fishy for me, I hate truffles

Thanks for reading this special edition! In just a few hours I will post the final blog post of "Food and Football: a europe journey". I hope you come back and read!

Our Car Leaves When It Wants

Today was my first full day in the Italian countryside. The breakfast was amazing and tasty. Probably my favorite bed and breakfast type breakfast so far, with the Munich one very close. Tuscany is supposed to be the most "relaxing" part of the vacation so we woke with out a plan this morning. In the end, we ended up driving to the nearby city of Volterra. It's a really old town. With stuff from 2,000 years ago. 

Although its an old town, there's actually stuff to do there!!! The towns in Switzerland had nothing to do except stand there and take billions of pictures, then you were done. Füssen and the German countryside  was fun and all, but after a while the towns got kind of boring (better than Cotswold and Swiss. though). Here in Volterra you could eat good food, there were plenty of historical sites, and there were many shops that were actually nice. The coffee  ice cream was intensely delicious. The flavor was fancy. The cookies and pizza we had for lunch were at the same standards. The old buildings and Roman Theater were very cool to look at. There are also 2,000 year old eroded head sculptures. We didn't get to see them, but people recommend you to!

Our rental car from Hertz was having problems. An Italian message came up on the screen that was translated to "Repair Transmission Immediatly". So our Ford Fiesta (what a horrible car) was carted off the field with a broken leg. Tomorrow morning someone will pick us up and drive us to Sienna to get another car!

Dinner was great as well. It was at our "hotel's" restaurant. 

Thanks for reading today!! Come back tomorrow and read till the last post!

Wifi Woes

My last day in Füssen was a mountainous day. We went to the highest point in Germany, which was not even the highest point within 5 km or so (other mountains over the Austrian  border). Anyway, the view that could have been spectacular was fogged out by the clouds. The trip up the mountain was still a fun journey, and the top wasn't all blurred. I also got to use a luge/sled thing down a hill. Most people prefer skiing or something fancy like that, a 200 meter sled ride for me, was very good. The snow was surprising to see,in the 

The next leg of our journey took us to Steinhousen, Switzerland. Switzerland was no where near my favorite place on the trip........AT ALL!!!! The scenery was boring and dragged on forever and ever. The scenery was like a lesser Germany. Especially the colors, they just seemed so bland. Like when you get a blonde dish at a restaurant, its just there and tasteless. No orange, red, green, purple, blue, or anything. Plus Switzerland was just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. But hey, they have nice cows and goats. If you like chocolate, Switzerland's the place to get the quality stuff.

In Switzerland I could not get wifi. Starbucks was the only place to get wifi for free. For us, it was not easy to get to Starbucks at all. And the time we did spend at Starbucks, I had not written a blog post yet, and my time was very, very ,very short.

We have  arrived in Italy for the last part of my European journey. We have wifi (YAY!!!!)!!! Last time in Italy we did the more touristy city stuff. Like Rome and Florence. This time we're doing the more countryside-ish stuff. Tuscany I believe it is called. A more relaxing take for the ending days of vacation. Tonight, our dinner was one of the best meals we've had the whole time. The Italian cuisine was delicious. Mario Balletelli might even take a break from throwing darts at kids for this meal. Although my ravioli with salmon was very fishy, I suspect that's how it was supposed to be. It seemed like very high quality food and my dad who likes fishy things, said it was. Mom's gnocchi was excellent and I liked my dads noodles with boar/hare the best. This meal and my venison in Munich have probably been my 2 favorite meals. 

I hope to produce many entertaining blog posts on my last few days. Sorry for the absence of posts and wifi. I hope you stay with me on my journey in Europe till the very end! 

ÜÖÄ<----- I have a German KeyBoard

Friday morning included my last hours in the third destination of our trip, Munich. Before catching our train to Füssen, we searched quickly for a Bayern Munich jersey with a players name on the back. We could not locate one and I left Munchen jersey-less. Luckily I had bought some other fun things there, so I didn't feel upset. I was pretty sure after the first few stops that we were on the wrong train. The conductor had not said express train to Fuessen (what we could make out in German) in a long time. All the people who looked like tourists had gotten off the train well before then, and waited on another platform. But finally, for the last stop the conductor actually spoke in English. I have no idea why he waited that long but oh well. His reassuring words (even though I hoped we were on the wrong train) were "ladies and Gentleman last stop is Füssen. 

The first day in the small city was pretty good. I like this place way better than our other country side stop, Bourton-On-The-Water. I like it better for many reasons. One is, it is way, way bigger of a city. Two is, the country side here has things in it. Like landforms and what not. I mean all England's country side was hills, flowers, hills, flowers, and about nothing. Here there are mountains with snow, lakes, waterfalls, trees that look cool, and we even saw some alpacas. I mean who doesn't love alpacas? 

Today we visited 2 castles. Hohenschwangau (h) and Neuschwanstein (n). I know, easy names pronounce. h is the more boring castle, but of course you still need to go! Castles can't just be super duper boring. It's the childhood home of King Ludwig and his brother Otto. It's not as extravagant as the castle Ludwig was responsible for (n). Ludwig was a king who just threw money everywhere for pretty useless items. Like even more than your average king. He loved castles and when he built them, he did not hold back........ AT ALL. Just an example: His bed in his room is hand carved by expert carvers. It took them 4 years to carve it. The top of the bed has major, major detail. The way it looks is super amazing and that's just the top of his bed.... 4 YEARS! Anyway, it's a interesting story. Maybe as one of my last blog posts on this blog I'll do a special when I get home on King Ludwig and his castles! 

Thanks for reading!

NEIN Salzburg for Me!

I never wanted to go to Salzburg in the 1st place. I mean yeah, they got the sound of music tour and everything, but really?? Munich is to big of a city to only have a few days in. Luckily for me, the massive rain in the Bavarian region and Austria  before we got here, had caused delays on the ole railway. We would have missed our sound of music tour if we took the journey to Salzburg ,therefore we stayed another night in Munich!!! That was the best news I had received all day yesterday!!!

My extra day in Munich included a stop at the Science/Technology/Everything Museum. It is huge and has info on every technology stretching from Astronomy to Topography. Although the museum was not great, I still liked it a lot. There is such a huge selection of items and artifacts, if you like it you could be occupied for hours and hours. 

After the museum and a short stop at the Munich Central Station to map out our plan to catch the train tomorrow, we went shopping!! At the store H & M I got a brand new fancy shmancy out fit. A pink suit-like jacket (place correct term there), black slim jeans, and a black button up long sleeve shirt. The young people these days might say "dude lookin pretty fresh". Other than that my shopping day was pretty much over. We looked at other shops, but that was the main cheese. After we dropped our clothes off at the laundry place and overpaid for them to be washed, we headed off for what was probably our last German-like meal in the city of Munich. We went to a place called Haufbrau Hause. It's a big place with a band and lots and lots of people drinking beer. It had a pretty nice atmosphere and my dish was spectacular. The venison with cranberries on the side tasted wonderful and even though Bavarian Style,it was a total different spin on the food we had been getting. I loved it and it was one of the best meals in Germany so far!!!

Come back and read!! Wifi is always a question when changing towns, so you might get another blog soon, or it could be a very long time!! Just make sure to check!!

Carbonated Apple Juice

The day started off a little later than yesterday and was a more relaxed morning. We took the ole S2 to Dachau to look at the concentration camp memorial and site were the real Holocaust events took place.

The ride to the Dachau station was actually one of the best parts of the morning. We met some fellow 'mericans (insert Merica scream here) and talked to them. This guy from Texas happened to be a huge soccer fan, which was cool to see another person from the states that was a soccer fan. And his favorite team happened to be Arsenal!!!! So it was good we loved the same team. He lives in Houston so he is a Dynamo fan also. He knows a couple of their players, but he used to be friends with somebody that now plays on Stoke!!! That's right everybody BREK SHEA!!!! But after a while the conversation changed so I got bored and the train was hot, luckily the train ride ended.

Having already been to the Holocaust museum in Washington DC, I kind of already  new what was in store. It's no where  near the happiest place to be in Munich, but it is pretty educational and if you haven't been to the Museum in DC or any other camp, this is probably a must stop in Munich if you've already done the things you wanted to do. I think if you've visited the museum in DC, you don't have to come here, but other people said that since this is the real place, you must come here even if you've traveled to the museum in DC. Anyways we got an audio guide and toured some of the main parts of the camp. We spent most of our time in the museum of the camp. It can get a bit wordy, but some of the facts are worth the reading. Dachau was one of the first concentration camps and maybe even THE 1st. I know many of the camps created after were modeled after this one. Anyways after a while the info seemed to be repeating, but the feel of the real structure and seeing the architecture  makes you feel closer than the DC museum. 

While waiting for the train back to the city center, we got some apple juice out of a machine. It was fizzy and had bubbles in it, like a soda!!!! It was amazing. I've seen carbonated water and some other carbonated things, but this was amazing, haha. 

Later tonight we walked to the English Gardens or whatever they're called. We saw the Munich suffers that surf by the bridge on the fast-paced water. We walked past the naked people on the meadow. I thought that was really weird. Then our final stop was at the beer garden thingy where we had a giant pretzel and some fizzy water.

Tomorrow, off to Salzburg.

Munchen Magic

Today was one of the best days on my vacation so far!! It was a total Allianz Arena day and we even got to see a surprise league 4 match! At the beginning of the day I expected a tour of Bayern Munich's Stadium and that would be the end. But out jumped 2 pretty awesome opportunities to snatch. 

As we took the U6 train towards some German named place, I was filled with anticipation to see one of the coolest stadiums in the world. The Allianz Arena is a fairly new stadium that is home to FC Bayern Munchen (Munich). 1860 Munich also plays there, but has to rent the place for about €10 Million a year. You can read about the stadium in my soccer blog, the article is "Three Great Stadiums". Anyways from afar you could see the ballon covered outside of the stadium. Yes, 0.2 mm wide balloons make up the outside of the stadium. The tour was great and we learned some interesting things about Bayern and 1860. Some things were better than the Arsenal Emirates Stadium Tour, while others were not. Our tour guide told us that the retiring manager of Bayern, Jupp Heynckes, was going to install the 3 trophies Munich had one this year into the Bayern Munich Museum. He told us it was a once in a life time opportunity and it paid off big time. All the camera crues were there filming the event and tons of people swarmed around the coach. But when he exited the display, I was the first to jump out and ask one of the most famous coaches in the world for his autograph!! He gave it to me!!!! Then later on he posed for a picture!!! We owed a gigantic thank you to our tour guide Andy for providing us with the info that lead to this wonderful event! 

1860's B team, who plays in the German 4th division had a game at the Allianz Arena that night to see if they could get to the 3rd division. They tied and it must of been the 2nd leg or something because the other team celebrated big time! Anyways, the Stadium was lit up a dazzling blue! 

It was a great 2nd day in Munich! Hopefully the 3rd will be just as good!

Sausage

Well the English countryside looks very boring after about 1-2 days, so when we started the car and went back to London I was relived. Although, the day before we left,  we did go to the bigger city of Strattford-Upon-Avon (hope that's the right spelling). Also we then went to the way bigger city of Coventry and looked at the outside of Coventry City FC's stadium. In London we just had a few hours and visited the British Museum. It had tons of amazing artifacts from all over the world. My personal favorite was probably the Easter Island head. This morning at 3:45 we woke up and took the bus to Heathrow Airport. The flight to Munich or Munchen was a short 1 hour 20 minute flight. We took the train to the City Center and the weather was so cold all the Wiener schnitzel would freeze outside if you didn't eat it fast enough. Well maybe not that cold, but it was still way colder than any of England was. Anyways after we settled in to our hotel we traveled to a place that served the kind of German food you would expect in Germany. Like sausages and what not. I kinda had what you might call the sampler. It had pork roast, pork knuckle, and sausage, along with a cheesy dumpling. It was a great first meal in Germany and to me tasted way better than that bland English stuff. Today we took the attractions easy and focused on shopping. The Adidas store was pretty cool, but I will have to say the Nike Town in London was better. Later tonight we took a freezing walk down to another German restaurant which did not have the same quality but was still good. Overall a chilly, but good day in Munich. Glad to be out of the county side. 

Come back and check for my blog everyday. No promises I'll write it but ill try. Also after my vacation I'll switch back to Just Plain Football (Soccer). My blog about that wonderful sport!