Little sister

Well you would never guess from the way Celia eats that she only weights about 42KG! Here is her initiation to German cuisine at Lake Titisee in the Black Forest. We are not sure where the anger in this shot comes from, but that sausage is in BIG trouble!

Maybe she should buy a smaller one?

Actually, the bear is approximately the size of her luggage!

Here we all are! Just back from hiking. The scenery was great!

The Black Forest is lightly populated and has miles of trails that are very well marked.

By Josh

Hot, Cold, Hot, Cold...changed in seconds

Crisp air, brisk wind (felt warm to hot in an instant...then cold to freeze in the next few seconds), pricey (about 3X the continent)... that's Oslo Norway... but not all...there are ocean views, tons of art statues, and friendly English speaking Norwegian. Oslo is a surprising artistic city but doesn't have much of old town flavor like other cities we visited. A couple places that we loved the most this trip were the home museum of Edvard Munch (famous paintings such as Scream and Sick Child) and the Vigelandsparken (Vigeland Park).
The park displays sculpture works by Gustav Vigeland whose form extra-
ordinary tableaux of fighting, play, and love. It's quite the opposite of Munch's paintings which were about sickness, jealousy, and death. We took a lot of pictures in the Vigeland Park...you can click on 'our photo to share' link to view them. They were incredible.

We also visited Nobel Peace Prize Center, Akershus Slott (castel), Vegeland Museum, and Oslo city hall where the Nobel Peace Prize is presented.

Great Seafood too!!!!!!!!!

Our Favorite City - Vienna continues...

They charged $$$ for visiting "Library"... we were like WHAT! LIBRARY? Then the ticket person offered us to take a peak from the library entry. As soon as we saw it, we were like...yeah we HAD to see this. Flash photography was not allowed so the picture is not very clear but you can get a feel of how beautiful it is. The showpiece of the Austrian National Library (1722-35) or Hall of Honor. The library turned out to be one of our favorite things in Vienna.

Stephansdom (Stephansplatz) - beautiful and interesting church where contained an impressive collection of works of art and buried many important bishops. We took a tour down to catacombs to see where they kept the jars of organs, coffins of bodies, and some public grave yards with exposed bodies. We could actually see piles of bones (not kidding.) Pretty creepy~


Schönburnn Palace and Gardens
We love the garden and zoo (just me) more than inside of the palace. Panda and koala bear are so cute...












We had some more chocolate desserts at the end of our second day...AND the next morning to finish the wonderful, beautiful and "sweet" Vienna trip.

Have I said enough beautiful yet? We love Vienna.

Beauty of Paris and Order of Germany - Vienna

The intimate hotel located in the center of Vienna was specially advertised as gay friendly on the website. We choose it because of its location and price. We laughed even more when we saw the "Male ONLY Sauna" sign right in front of check-in counter. I was joking about been discriminated as a female afterwards.

Chocolate croissant, tiramisu, and a coffee... guess which meal of the day I was having .... Breakfast! I was not the only person who had desserts for breakfast. Everyone in the coffee shop was. How lovely to start your day with chocolate and cakes! I love it!!

Vienna has the beauty of Paris and the order of Germany, Josh said. Everywhere we looked, we could not help saying "it's so beautiful." As we turned around and looked behind us, we would again said "oh...it's so beautiful...and that...oh...is so beautiful..." We must have said it at least a hundred times. What would be a better idea than spending an evening enjoying food, drinks, and operas at the Film Festival on the Rathausplatz. There were so many people and even when it rained people just put on their rain gear and continued watching the opera. We enjoyed the opera very much although we had no ideas what it was about...besides the obvious... a lot of twists in the plots.

We are in Paris!!

Château de Versailles -- after we arrived and checked into our hotel, we decided to pay a visit since we both never visited the famous Versailles. The line was so long that we waited for almost two hours to get into the palace. It was worth the wait. The palace is beautiful, luxurious, and massive. We took many pictures inside and outside of the palace. If you are interested in finding out more about the palace and what the life was like being a royalty, see http://www.daysofroyalty.com/ It's very interesting.

Picture speaks for itself...

Josh is dancing...

As you can see, we were just excited to be in Paris like two kids. (and Josh is still dancing with such a big smile...)

Both of us have been to Paris before and were glad to visit Paris TOGETHER. We spent the second day in the city strolling around, taking goofy pictures, and soaking up the atmospheres of beautiful and romantic Paris.

Karlsruhe

Another town another 'Schloss' -- The Baroque residence of the Dukes of Baden. We got there in the early morning and spent some time wondering around town and shopping (as you can see in the pictures...it's not just for me...I know what you are thinking...) Later that afternoon, we went to Josh's friend's house for BBQ. Mathias and Dani have two daughters 3 and 5. They are very cute and love Josh very much. Josh was chasing them around the house and making them laughs. Sometimes, Josh didn't even do anything, they still giggle just by staring at him. It was funny to watch them.

Karlsruhe reminds me of Boise -- quite, peaceful, not a lot of people, house with a yard (Mathias and Dani have a nice house with a inclusive yard.)

Kitchen/Hometown Flavor

As some of you may wonder where and what I go/do during the day or when Josh is at work or laying on the ONLY couch working and watching CNN. Well.... here it is -- Kitchen.

I often spend more than 5 hours for preparing, cooking, and cleaning.) Our menu is interesting and has lots of varieties. Since I have tons of time, I often look up recipes online and experiment with some Taiwanese dishes I miss. Like this dish 蘿蔔絲餅 "Tunip Slice Cake"(I am not sure if the English translation is correct but that's how Google translated it.) It was a big success. We ate them all! My cooking has been adding a lot of difficulty to our plan of losing weight. Both of us can not resist the food and cooking is what I do and love these days. If you had asked me two years ago -- what do I see myself doing in two years.... I did not see cooking to be one of them.

Chef Ally