Come With Me to Austria - Day 1, Part 1

You know, after no sleep for 27 hours and being together for many of those hours we start feeling a little bit goofy.

I mean, can you really blame us? We flew from Salt Lake City to Dallas, Dallas to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to Frankfurt, Germany and lastly from Frankfurt, Germany to Vienna, Austria.

...

It was a long day, but oh, so worth it!

I've NEVER flown out of the country before so this was quite an experience.

I even got all excited about being on a larger plane than I have ever been on, so, of course, we took a picture of us:

When we finally arrived to our actual destination I was just so excited!

Oh, ya, and just before our flight to Vienna I had my first ever opportunity to go through Customs and actually for my first ever stamp in my Pass Port book. I kept thinking of that line at the end of "While You Were Sleeping" when Sandra Bullocks' character talks about how wonderful it is to finally have her passport.

I've got a stamp in my passport!

I'm so cool!

Hee!

When we did finally land in Austria, Achim was at the gates just waiting for us to come out. When he saw us we all teared up a bit because we were so happy too see each other! Big hugs were shared and smiles grinned.

He even had German flags for each of us and a yellow tulip for me.

From the Airport it took about an hour to get to Achim's place.

Achim and Marc in the front seat.

Once we hit the village where Achim and Maria live I was in awe and in amazement. The streets were all made of cobblestone and were only one lane wide but was a two-way street with cars parallel parked. It was so quaint and nostalgic to see. In fact, Achim was getting quite a chuckle out of my excitement and sheer amazement with everything I saw. Heck, we even drove by the house where Beethoven lived... What?  We were amongst some VERY old buildings and amazing architecture and it just added to the quaintness of the tiny cobblestone streets.

When we made it back to Achim's apartment we met his girlfriend, Maria.

I can see why he loves her. She is very sweet and, as we came to find out, a great cook!

When we arrived, Maria and Achim figured we would want to sleep. We opted not to as we thought it might  mess with our sleep schedule/jet lag stuff.

So off we went behind their place by car up to an old castle overlooking Vienna. We had a lot of fun up there and got some fun shots.

After the castle walk we went down to a church house just down the hill. You can see the steeple of the larger building in the picture above.

My artsy photography quirk became quite the companion as I walked the olden streets of Vienna, I loved all the different kinds of doors that were artistic or different in any way so that I could remember all the nuances of Austria and Germany.

Just enjoying the view

After seeing the points of interest we decided that Maria, Marc and I would walk home while Achim attended to a business call.

I was a beautiful walk through these small homes on acres and acres of vineyards.

And this miniature car just gave me a good chuckle, but from the pictures you can't tell how small it is. We had Maria take a picture of us standing next to it so they could get a good laugh at how small it really was! Hee hee!

That's all I have time to tell tonight.

Maybe I'll even be more awake tomorrow and I can write a "real" post for the next part...