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Category: Travels

Traveling Through Austria

Karee RussellLeave a comment

Vignette

We’ve been to Austria a few times and on one of our first trips we ended up getting a €250 euro fine. When traveling outside of Germany several other countries require vignettes. A vignette is a sticker you pay for before crossing the border to place on your windshield. They have several different types: 7 days, 30 days, and yearly vignettes.

We never saw signs to purchase this vignette back in 2013. This time, in 2021, we purchased the vignette beforehand with ADAC (kind of like AAA in the US).

Where to visit

Kehlsteinhaus (Hitler’s Eagles Nest)

In 2013, we went to the Eagles Nest (Kehlsteinhaus), one of Hitler’s hideouts. It’s a historic landmark now and was absolutely interesting to see. It was built in 1937 and you are able to view the underground tunnels and rooms. We were able to see all around when on top of the mountain. We did not spend much time at the location but to be able to view the history was amazing and we highly suggest going there.

Innsbruck

We went to Innsbruck in September 2021. We visited the downtown area and walked the streets. Because of COVID, we did not do much else. However, we still had a good time and enjoyed ourselves.

Places to stay

Edelweiss

Edelweiss is where we stayed the time we went to Eagles Nest. Edelwiess is nesstled in the Garmisch area. The scenery is gorgeous. I’ll cover this hotel more in another post.

Hotel Mondschein

The hotel was easy to find… parking was not. We ended up in their parking garage but barely made it before it was full. The hotel room was HUGE. We ended up in a two-bedroom two-bath suite and it was very spacious. Breakfast was a usual European breakfast with teas, coffee, meats, and cheeses. We only stayed one night. The customer service was great.

Overall Austria is a great country to visit and we do highly suggest scoping out your route before driving. Enjoy!

The Best of Prague, Czech Republic

Karee RussellLeave a comment

Had the best time on a three-day adventure to Prague, Czech Republic. Most of the time we spent at the Aquapalace. It’s a hotel within an inside/outside pool park.

The pool area had many slides, a lazy river that went around the whole park & tons of awesome areas for the kids. The hotel was nice and the staff very welcoming!

We spent only a few hours in Prague (Praha) and it was nice! the Prague castle was amazing. It was too crowded so we weren’t able to go inside but just the surrounding areas were very pleasant.

Bucket List Attractions in St. Petersburg, Russia

Karee Russell7 Comments

Cruise into St. Petersburg, Russia with Royal Caribbean part 1

On our Northern European Cruise with Royal Caribbean we stopped at St. Petersburg, Russia.

It’s not often I visit locations and don’t find them fascinating. St. Petersburg, Russia is a unique modern city rich with history. We were only there for a day as our cruises left 12 hours later. The time we spent in Russia we learned a lot about the culture and history.

The State Hermitage Museum

We spent a good few hours walking around The State Hermitage Museum. The museum is one of the busiest and full of tourists which can drive you crazy. The museum is a large complex of six buildings, of those six only five are open to tourists. Don’t let the size fool you. You can spend days here and still not see everything.

As the second-largest art museum in the world, the museum houses several art collections from Catherine the Great whom purchased the impressive collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. Many of the art pieces still remain in great condition to this day.

The building occupies 233,345 sq. meters in total area. With over 1,014,806 works of art, 1,125,975 numismatic objects, 214,771 other items such as; Egyptian antiques, classical antiques (the Room of Great Vases), Italian renaissance, 808,695 Archaeological artifacts, and 14,016 arms and armory.

Like I said before you can spend days here and still not see everything.

We spent about 2-3 hours roaming the museum and learning much about each different unique piece within the walls of The State Hermitage.

If you want to visit the State Hermitage, I highly recommend you plan on spending a few days roaming the museum. However, if you were like us and could only stay for a little I would suggest finding what part of the museum you’d like to visit first and go from there. It’s full of amazing pieces of art and priceless artifacts, you will never want to leave… unless you’re being pushed around because of the many other tourists then you’ll want to walk through at a fast pace.

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