Hope Hertz Doesn't Read This! (Germany's Romantic Road)

The Plan: Rent a car, and drive from Krakow, Poland to Bamberg, Germany spending five days making our way up the Romantic Road. It was a good plan. In theory it should have worked.

The Execution: After discovering that there would be a SUBSTANTIAL fee for renting a car in Poland and dropping it off in Germany, Bob came up with the next most logical plan. He'd take a bus to the airport in Krakow, fly to Cologne, sit in the airport for four hours, fly back across Germany to Dresden, rent the car there, drive five Sshhhh. That's her behind me.hours back to Poland, get a good night's sleep and hit the road the next day. Sure!

So on a beautiful, sunny Thursday in the last week of August we packed the car to the brim, and headed out of Krakow (stopping oh so briefly on our way out of town to snap a pic at our favorite curmudgeony meat counter and then get chased out of the store by the security guard). Farewell Poland -- Hello Romantic Road!

An hour out of Krakow, Owen threw up in

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Lemon Cake and That Damn Gummy Bear Song

One of the fantastic things about Slow Travel is that we get to live a (semi-normal) life in whatever city we're calling home at the moment. Brenna mentioned, in a recent post, how our current Krakow apartment has started to feel like home. What our family does at home is cook, and this morning Eleanor and I finally got around to baking the lemon cake mix in our cupboard. We bought it several days ago and then realized we didn't have a pan. Brenna brought one back from the mall yesterday. I had to work for a while on translating the directions on the cake package, even though it included pictures of the important bits -- a mixer... three eggs... Nevertheless, I'm pretty proud of my effort. I have found that online Polish to English translators are spotty at best, and I also had to use an online virtual Polish keyboard, since my keyboard doesn't have

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Video Blog: Killer Bat Attack

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I'm a Professional Sound Man, Don't Try This at Home

Wielickza Salt Mine photo from Kopalnia.pl websiteYesterday we went to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. It's astonishing. We walked down 400 wooden steps just to start the tour of this vast underground mine that began operating 700 years ago, and 400 more steps during the tour. The whole thing is a little like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in a salt mine -- an awesome combination of history and camp. Maybe the cast-offs from Madame Tussauds or Macy's discarded mannequins were given

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Flickr Pix Galore

It's late and I really wanted to post something today, but instead of trying to think through my sleepy haze, I'm just gonna cheat a little bit and direct you to our Flickr page. We've got some new photos from Budapest, Vienna and Krakow. Here's one to make the blog a little prettier...Parliament Building, Budapest, Hungary -- It's just as amazing inside!