Family Vacation: Part II

For the second day of our trip we headed towards the tiny town of Mittenwald, but not without a stop in Munich for a couple of hours. We arrived with no idea of what we were going to do, so my mom pipped up and decided that we should go to see the Olympic site. So off we headed only with a map, from the early 90's that didn't even have the new autobahns on it!! We'd been reading this map the whole trip which was a big change from the past couple of trips that we'd been on with trusty Tom Tom with us. Thankfully there was signs leading us toward Olympic park and we made it there without getting lost! The park itself was beautiful. They tried to get all the buildings in one area with the Olympic village close by. The buildings themselves were beautiful and very different architecturally, especially for being constructed in the late 60's. With this Olympic park it is the 6th one that I have been to including some of the new facilities that have been put up in Vancouver! The Swimming Hall on the Right and Olympic Hall in the distance

The old Stadium where Bayern Munich used to play and some of the games from World Cup 2006 were played here

The Olympic Berg was built on the rubble from the building that were destroyed in World War II. It has the most beautiful views of the city and of the entire Olympic Park.

A very foggy view of Munich!

So after our tour of the Olympic Park we hopped into the car to drive south to Mittenwald but first we had to get some food. My uncle being the expert traveler that he is said we'll just pick and exit and we'll find an amazing little restaurant......sure enough we did. The food was fantastic, the setting was amazing, the beer was good and he was an award winning chef. We couldn't have stumbled on a better place! So after our tummies were full we headed off to Mittenwald to see the Chyzowski's. I was so excited to see them again, and I think Lucia was excited to see me to because she ran down the hallway and jumped on me giving me a huge hug! She is so adorable! They also have 2 sons, Benedict is 2 months old and Christopher is 6 1/2. We just hung out chatting the next morning as Ron used to live across the alley from my mom and uncle back when he was younger in Edmonton. It was nice for everyone to catch up and chat.....plus I got to walk Christopher to school in the morning, he was very pleased with that.

After our morning in Mittenwald we departed to Basel to visit a friend of my uncles. What should have taken us about 4 hours to drive took 5.5 hours because the weather was awful and it was snowing for the first half of the drive. We finally arrived in Basel and Bettina had prepared a light meal for us and there was lots of wine! The food was great and the company was fantastic.....I could tell my Uncle was very glad that we had made it there. The next day would be the last of our little trip and we decided on Freiburg as the final destination because it was close for me to take the train to practice and close for my mom and uncle to head back to Frankfurt. We got to Freiburg, walked around the Christmas Market and lunch and just like that it was time for my mom and uncle to leave to go back to Canada. I was very sad to see them go but so happy that they came!! So after 3 days of travelling, over 1000 km of driving and many failed German lessons I hoped on a train back to Villingen for practice. I couldn't have had asked for a better surprise visit from them and I had a blast travelling with them!