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A Week in Little Lenggries

When deciding what to do after our Italian tour, we remembered that our friend from Colorado moved to Lenggries, Germany (about an hour south of Munich) with his family. They generously offered their home to us, so we decided to have ourselves a small town, German experience. Here’s a glimpse of our week there!
Day 1 – German Sport Class. On average, 12 kiddos and their parents attend what we think of as PE on steroids, once a week. After a casual warm-up of running sprints, we played a very interesting form of dodgeball mixed with basketball. You try to throw a stability ball into a box to score a point while the other team tries to throw medicine balls at the stability ball to keep it from getting in the box. Now, one might think this sounds fun, but Lindsay’s eyes were wide the whole time waiting for an injury – her background is in recreation and this is nothing like the games that are allowed in the US. It was organized chaos at it’s finest.
Day 2 – We took a walk around the town. Our friend pointed out some great shops, bakeries, and restaurants and even taught us how to order a few things in German since no one really speaks English in Lenggries. From there, we headed to the kids school where we helped teach English. We told the story of the Christmas tree and had the students answer questions in English. When the kids got home from school, they proceeded to make us puzzles out of paper and they put on a play for us as well! So fun!
Day 3 – We drove up to the Bad Tölz Christmas market, a German tradition! We loved seeing a smaller, less touristy version of the Christmas markets. So charming and fun!
Day 4 – Our friends left Germany to go back to Colorado for Christmas. We borrowed their bikes and rode around town until we found a snow covered bike path the on Isar river. Not easy to maneuver without snow tires. We made the best of it and found a beautiful spot by the river and set up our Madera hammock for some R&R.
Day 5 – We spent Christmas day inside cooking, relaxing, and working. In the evening, Lenggries had a fire pit and Glühwein for the town, so we decided to check it out. It’s not a German Christmas without the Glühwein!
Day 6 – We took the train up to Munich for the day to explore. We found the big Munich Christmas market, which is definitely a site to see! After the market, we hopped over to the ice skating rink and had a delicious bratwurst and bier! After that, the rain came, so we decided to see the new Star Wars movie at Mathäser, which luckily had the English version! *Note – the Munich train station has inexpensive luggage lockers, so you don’t have to lug bags around in between trains.
*A final note – the train to Lenggries from Munich splits into two separate trains. Make sure you get on the right one, otherwise you’ll be headed to several other small towns that don’t speak English. If you speak German, you’ll be fine. We, however, do not speak German, so this gave us slight anxiety on our way. Thankfully, we picked the right train car!
Germany is magical this time of year and full of yummy food! We hope you get to visit one day! We can’t wait to go back and see more! Prost!
Enjoy the ride,
Justin and Lindsay
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beyondBeanie

AWESOME NEWS!

We have teamed up with beyondBeanie – a social fashion brand that combines fashion with solidarity to help change lives. Every time you purchase an item from us, you are empowering an artisan and helping a child in need.

You are also supporting the work of a talented artisan in Bolivia who proudly hand-signs her creation and whom you can meet and greet through our website or even in person if you ever travel to Bolivia.

At the present time, beyondBeanie is collaborating with 23 artisans from El Alto, La Paz and Cochabamba, who have the privilege of working from home which allows them to earn a living without having to disattend their children and families.

CLICK HERE to start shopping and helping out kiddos in need!

Enjoy the Ride,

Justin and Lindsay

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3 Days in Venice

Venice, or Venezia, is one of the most unique and charming places we visited in Italy. We also think we got lucky going in the winter when it’s not tourist season. Here is our 3 day itinerary for this floating city!

Day 1

First off, our hotel was incredible. Hotel Casa Nicolò Priuli is a 4-star place that we got 60% off thanks to our travel membership. We actually saved more than we paid for the entire stay.

Do yourself a favor and take a boat tour with Alilaguna to Murano, Burano, and Torcello. Murano is famous for glass – and we aren’t talking windows or mirrors. We are talking true art masterpieces.  We were able to witness an expert glass blower make a beautiful blue and silver horse. Truly a mesmerizing art. Burano is famous for lace and these amazing, colorful houses. Perfect spot to take photos for the Gram. Torcello is a tiny island with old ruins, quaint little shops, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get to hear the church choir singing.

Day 2

We roamed through the alley ways until we found Piazza San Marco or St. Mark’s Square. You’ll find one of Italy’s most beautiful churches (it’s on most top lists) and a hell of a lot of pigeons. Justin loved playing with them, Lindsay was not impressed.

From the Square, we wandered over to Dal Maro. This is literally the best pasta, aside from the homemade meal we had in Imperia with Lindsay’s family. Dal Maro is literally just a kitchen and a counter top, where maybe 10 people can stand inside. The line in usually down the block, which is how you know you’re in the right place. All the pasta comes in Chinese take out boxes. It’s so fresh, so delicious, and so necessary when in Venice.

Obviously, the major thing people do is take a gondola ride. While we find the attraction overpriced (about $80 per person), it’s a Venice staple. And if you get a good guide, you might learn some things about the city as well. We learned that Venice has 118 islands, 400 bridges, and 150 canals and our guide floated us past Marco Polo and Casanova’s houses. If you’re on the trip with a significant other, it’s good luck to smooch under any of the bridges.

We love live music, so we were delighted when we found Bàcaro jazz bar that has a killer happy hour from 4-6pm. BOGO on drinks! The Venice jazz club was also an amazing find. As if we didn’t have enough pasta this day, 30 Euros each gets you a pasta dinner, bottle of wine, and live jazz music. Totally worth it, if you can find it. The club isn’t well marked and we walked past it about 3 times before realizing it!

Day 3

We visited the Da Vinci Museum for only about $9 US. This interactive museum houses several of Da Vinci’s creations that you can physically play with. We tried our hand at building a bridge using one of his architectural techniques with much success!

From there, we set out to find the famous giant hands sculpture called “Support”, created by artist Lorenzo Quinn. The human hands appear to prop up a historic hotel from falling into the water, symbolizing the threat that climate change has on history, but also the power that mankind has to stop it.

Someone we met the first day on our day trip, told us about a FREE rooftop terrace to view the sunset. Fondaco dei Tedeschi was built in 1228 and combined the functions of a palace, warehouse, market and restricted living quarters. It’s one of Venice’s most recognizable buildings, right next to the famous Rialto Bridge, which is also a must see and great for the Gram. The rooftop of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi offers 360 degree views of Venice, with the most spectacular sunsets reflecting off the water.

Venice is beautiful and we recommend visiting at least once, just don’t forget the wine!

Enjoy the Ride,

Justin and Lindsay

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P.P.S. Our thoughts go out to Venice, as they are currently inundated with flood waters.

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An Icelandic Saga

Iceland is like something out of a dream. You have to see it for yourself, but we will try our best to describe it and give you some tips along the way. Also, the language is difficult if you aren’t familiar, so please forgive if something is spelled wrong.

Note: the people are very friendly and helpful so if you need anything don’t hesitate to ask.

Our first night was spent walking the streets of Reykjavík. A small (Iceland’s total population is only about 330,000), yet bustling downtown lends itself to shopping, delicious food (unless it’s fermented shark – give it a go, but we aren’t making promises), and a magical atmosphere especially when it’s snowing. You can even send a letter to Santa!

While we are proponents of exploring on your own, Iceland is a great place to hop on a guided tour. All of the tours we took were convenient, educational, and super fun. We met some great new friends too – shout out NYC and Liverpool!

Our first day we toured the south part of the island with #GreyLineIceland. They took us to visit Skógafoss and Seljalandsfoss waterfalls which we can’t begin to tell you the magnitude of. The black lava sand beach of Reynisfjara hardly looks real until you pick up the sand. This one was a major #bucketlist stop for us. We attempted to walk up to a glacier, but we almost got blown off of the mountain. Weather out of control!

On the way back from our day trip the bus driver informed us there was a good chance to see the Northern Lights so we were able to hop on another #GreyLineIceland bus to head out into the darkness. Our guide was absolutely amazing and hilarious having us do a Northern Lights dance on the way to the national park where we stopped to wait. We waited about 1 1/2 hours for the sky to open up in another #bucketlist moment. Green bands started dancing across the sky like nothing you can even describe and everyone was running and cheering with delight! More photos to come in the photo journal tab.img_1536

The second day we hopped on a small bus with Nice Tours to hit up the Golden Circle. Walking through the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates at the Thingvellir National Park was nothing short of awesome – one foot in North America one in Europe. Gulfoss waterfall is incredible with multiple levels and plummets off into the depths of the earth through a 32 meter crevice. Walking around the top of the 6,000 year old Kerid volcanic crater is surreal and is a once in a lifetime experience. Strokkur Geyser erupts every 5-10 minutes and if you’re lucky there will be Vikings to sing thanks to the earth. An extra stop at Faxi waterfall  and feeding Icelandic horses on the side of the road was a really nice treat. Thanks to our guide for these extras.

We finished our day at the Blue Lagoon – a must if you are in Iceland. It’s definitely a tourist mecca, but well worth it. Something about drinking a cold Icelandic beer in a natural hot spring brings so much joy. We suggest going in the middle of the day on a weekday to avoid massive crowds and better photo ops.

Only disappointment was not getting to go whale watching due to weather. Iceland reports the weather more than the news because it changes in a moments notice. Next time for sure!

Let us know if you want help booking a trip! We booked everything through our exclusive travel search engine and got great hotel and tour discounts – check out the Book Travel tab ⬆️!

Enjoy the ride,

Justin and Lindsay

P.S. Stay up to date on our travels by subscribing to our blog! Enter your email at the bottom of the page ⬇️!