Weekend getaway to Strasbourg

Zoli's parents visited us in July. As usually, we celebrated his Mom's birthday together and organized a surprise weekend getaway to the lovely city of Strasbourg for them. In the end, it was a pleasant surprise to all of us finding out that there was an International Food Festival in the old town, with great food & drinks to taste from various countries of Europe. Yameee! We could find here everything from Romanian 'mici' to Hungarian 'kurtoskalacs', Greek salad, Spanish tapas or Belgian beer (for Zoli's Dad). And, on top of everything, we had a delicious fruit-ice cream bowl we could not resist skipping:

From EUROPE - FRANCE -Strasbourg

We spent the rest of the weekend by walking around, climbing the tower of the Cathedral (to avoid ordering our dessert with a guilty conscience) and taking a pleasant boat trip around the old town.

In the evening, we visited the Summer Show, which is a 30-minute-water, light & fireworks show played daily in summer-time.

Visit our entire album on Strasbourg below:

From EUROPE - FRANCE -Strasbourg

Christmas markets 2009

It's that time of the year again ... when Christmas markets open up all over Europe and you can barely walk 5 steps without running into a Gluehwein hut ... and you suddenly find yourself having the urgent need of shopping, eating or drinking something. This is however not the case in Zurich, where the entire Christmas-market, including the Christmas tree decorated by Swarovski crystals is hidden within the main station. Very practical set-up, no snow storm or sudden rain can ruin the 'business' ... but: there is no Christmas spirit either.

So we decided to visit some 'real' Christmas-markets in the last couple of weekends. This year we booked our room in Strasbourg early enough (in August already) as we found out last year that there is no chance finding a room several weeks in advance for any December - weekend within 60 kms radius around the city. No wonder there are so many people visiting Strasbourg this time of the year. It is called "la Capitale de Noël" – the Christmas capital ... the entire old town is one huge Christmas market with hunderds of little shops selling a huge variaty of toys, candles, Christmas-deko, crepes and vin chaud ... and thousands of people wondering around and enjoying the holiday-spirit. The only thing missing from turning the place into a real winter magic was the snow (looks like someone forgot to 'order' it from Santa this year :-))

You can see some of the photos we took in Strasbourg in our album here:

From EUROPE - FRANCE -Strasbourg

Strasbourg was however not the only (and first) Christmas market we visited this year. One week earlier we had a weekend trip to the Netherlands and Germany: first a housewarming party in NL with Krisztina's colleagues, then the Weihnachtsmarkt in Cologne. We had the feeling that german Christmas markets are all about eating an drinking (you can find here tons of tradional food, showing the many different nationalities living in the country) and of course, plenty of Gluehwein. See some of our photos here:

EUROPE - GERMANY - Cologne_by Christmas

Santa also arrived to our home in Zurich, bringing nice presents not only for us, but also for our little friend Gulliver.

From 2009 - Karacsony

Summer 2009

It's been a long time since we didn't post anything to our blog... and that is not because we had a very lousy summer and got bored of staying in our apartment and watching movies, but rather due to the lots of family events, visitors and weekend getaways we had during the last couple of months.

These are just a few of the events which kept us busy during the summer:

* We took a few trips around with Zoli's parents in July ...

From Luzern and surroundings

... and visited together Verdi's "Aida" at the lake stage of Bregenz:

2009 - Aida - Bregenz Seebuhne

* On my Birthday we had a great time riding all the roller coasters in EuropaPark:

EUROPE - GERMANY - Europa Park

* Then we have been invited to our friends' wedding in Cluj, Romania, where we enjoyed the time spent with our families and friends.

* In August, when my parents visited us, we made some short weekend getaways to Strasbourg:

From EUROPE - FRANCE -Strasbourg

and Germany:

From EUROPE - GERMANY - BodenSee

(we took this picture in Meersburg, a really nice, romantic little town on the northern part of the BodenSee)

... meantime some birthday celebrations and grill parties with our families in Cluj and at our place:

From Csaladi Esemenyek- Szuletesnapok

Unfortunately it seems that yesterday was the last real summer day in Zurich, so at least we are not too late with publishing this post ... and we are hoping for many nice, sunny autumn weekends when we can make some wonderful cycling & hiking tours around in Switzerland.