Karlovy Vary by way of Lyon, Zurich, Munich, and Nuremberg

July 6 -

Abi and I hopped on the early train towards Lyon from Barcelona and arrived around 6 pm.  It was rainy and when we finally found our hotel over the beautiful river - we were hungry, wet, and tired - We picked up a pizza to go and snuggled under the covers eating pizza and icecream while watching the cartoon, Rio, in French.

July 7 -

We left Lyon, with a promise to come back, and headed towards Zurich.  This was by far and wide the most beautiful train ride we have been on.  Switzerland is beautiful and delicious.  We arrived in Zurich, again raining, and rode our bikes around looking for the hotel.  Locked up our bikes, put our backpacks in the room and walked around and found dinner and beer.

Zwei bier bitte!

We went to an Italian restaurant and we ordered one of the best caprices salads we have had throughout the trip (Abi and I both love tomatoes, mozzarella and basil) and I had the best pasta I have ever tasted.

 After some research on google,  I found Pappardelle is the name of the pasta I had.  A wide thick fettuccine like noodle, so perfectly sized to twirl one noodle around your fork with a perfect sized clean bite, with Alfredo sauce. The best I have ever had.

For dessert of course we ordered Swiss chocolate fondant my new absolute favorite dessert.  

I cannot wait to recreate it when I get home.  Maybe my Aunt Margaret and I can make it together, she is the only person I know who feels the same way about chocolate as I do...  deeply, deeply in love.  She makes a chocolate lava cake in the crockpot that I have yet to have the honor of tasting but dream of sometimes.. right before I left for Europe we made a greek quinoa salad for dinner and she made pineapple upside-down cake in the crockpot.  Slow cooking a cake in the crockpot makes it so moist I could die.  When I get back home I will make the chocolate lava cake with her in tribute to this chocolate fondant - and tell you all about it.

July 8 -

Next to Munchin - Again, when we arrived it was raining, raining hard - we finally arrived at the hotel dried off and went downstairs for some food and good german beer and to watch the world cup semi final game between Germany and brazil.  So exciting!! 7 - 1 the Germans kicked ass!!!

The next day we met up with my friend Cara, whom I met last summer in Thailand at an elephant conservation center.  

She lives in Munich and speaks perfect English with almost no accent - It is amazing!  We went to lunch, had traditional Baverian food - I had a schnitzel.

Abi had this pork and potato dumpling:

For dessert we had:

She recommended we try a beer and lemonade mix, called Radler or Shandy.  

Googleing it, this is a photo that came up - some of you back home might enjoy this...

I found the photo on the page  HERE.

Where I also read it's origins date back to early 1900's Bavaria...

Cara showed us all around old Munich, markets, famous chocolate shops, etc.

Saw this in a few of the meat shops.

July 9 -

Next stop, Nuremberg, my grandma Margo grew up there.  We unfortunately did not have much time to look around so I will most defiantly be returning to Nuremberg to see more of her history and this historic city.

July 10 - 

Arrived in Karlovy Vary to meet up again with Hannah.

Again, please vote for me in the Big Blog Exchange - If you didn't see the other hundred links to the Spicy Wanderer profile on my blog - here is another one CLICK HERE!!

(Video coming tomorrow)

Paige