Journey Home

So after Greece we caught a flight to Germany with a week left in our trip. We began our journey home in Augsburg, Germany and over the week would make our way to Amsterdam. We chose Augsburg to visit our friend Joni one last time.

 We spent one night in Augsburg, visited the Christmas market and grabbed breakfast with Joni before heading out to Heidelberg that evening.

 In Heidelberg, we visited Joni's sister, Katharina who is now studying at university here. Pictured above, we visited the Heidelberg castle as we did in September but this time we were able to see the world's largest keg which is housed inside the castle. Katharina is in between Lexi and I and our friend Nick is on the far left. Nick is an Aussie who was staying in our hostel and joined us on our walk up to the castle.

Nick, Lexi and I enjoying some good ol' fashion Gluhwein (hot sweet red wine) at the Heidelberg Christmas market.

 Lexi, Katharina and I on a morning walk through the old town of Heidelberg after a light dusting of snow.

As in Augsburg, Lexi and I visited for one night in Heidelberg then after our walk around Heidelberg in the morning we boarded the train and headed to Brussels for one night.

Pictured above are the beautiful Christmas markets in Brussels, Belgium. Out of the 3 Christmas markets that we visited over the week I would have to say that the markets in Augsburg were my favorite because of the extent, quality and price of everything offered. It also didn't hurt that it was lightly snowing as we walked through the stands which definitely adding to the Christmas atmosphere making me even more excited for the holidays. 

After one night in Brussels we headed to Amsterdam. My longtime friend Anna has been working as a nanny just outside of the city for the last seven months. It just happened to work out that Anna's birthday was the previous week. So we all got a hostel together and went out on the town to celebrate her birthday. We arrived in Amsterdam Friday night and our flight home was scheduled for Sunday morning.

Pictured above are all of us getting dinner and some drinks. We picked up a random friend, Hadi who decided to join the birthday celebration with us. Lexi and I ordered all you can eat ribs at this place named the Pancake corner, despite the name this place serve some of the best ribs that I have ever tasted. 

We had quite the night exploring areas of Amsterdam and even made it to the red light district...now that was an experience.

The next day we headed out to tour the city. We took our BF photo with Anna at the I AMsterdam sign. We then went and toured the Anne Frank house. Unfortunately you cannot take any photos but this place was very moving, it even had the original bookcase that hid the passage way up to where the families were hiding.

And for our last evening in Europe we finished off the day by going to see the final Breaking Dawn movie, which have surprisingly gotten a bit better in quality. Over the course of this trip we managed to watch all five movies, not for quality necessarily but convenience. The first Twilight book release was in 2005 and this has been a long standing escapade...so it was quite nice finishing this series on the evening we also finish our 3 month adventure in Europe.

The next morning we woke up early, headed to the airport and hopped onto the 10.5 hour direct flight to Seattle.

Woot woot we made it back!!!

Thanks for sharing this experience with us, now onto the real world...

ugg and a job...