From Europe to Africa in America - A Sisters' Expedition

Flossbolna

I would love to have a meet with you to! You already know that we will be in Berlin, and we are taking a day trip to Nuremburg from Rothenburg ob der Tauber to see the Documentation Center but have no plans after that. PM me if we could work something out. I think this would be so wonderful to meet. :goodvibes

Will send you a PM! I will be back in Nuremberg in September, so I won't be able to meet you here in Berlin, that's why I never suggested a meet so far. But if you are coming to Nuremberg as well, we certainly should work something out! :goodvibes
 
Will send you a PM! I will be back in Nuremberg in September, so I won't be able to meet you here in Berlin, that's why I never suggested a meet so far. But if you are coming to Nuremberg as well, we certainly should work something out! :goodvibes


Please PM me and I will let you know the date we will be there. We were originally going to stay in Nuremberg but my DH wanted to stay in Rothenburg instead. I would change our plans but I already have bought our train tickets to Rothenburg. I hope we can work something out. :goodvibes
 
WOW! 2 meets 2 months in a row! How cool is that??

:banana:
 

Hi Magdalene! I'm just getting all caught up after being away on vacation (not WDW:rolleyes:). I loved your review of the Wild By Design tour - makes me really want to take that. Maybe on our next adults only trip...not that I have one planned yet - but there will be one in my future!

I have to say, I think your photos are a hundred times better than the photopass pics. I wasn't all that jazzed about our photopass pics last year. I'm thinking about forgoing it this time. I saw a snazzy waterproof camera bag at REI last weekend for $15. With that, I could take my point and shoot to the Water parks, which is my main reason for doing photopass. Did you end up feeling the CD was worth it considering the quality of photos overall?
 
Hi Magdalene! I'm just getting all caught up after being away on vacation (not WDW:rolleyes:). I loved your review of the Wild By Design tour - makes me really want to take that. Maybe on our next adults only trip...not that I have one planned yet - but there will be one in my future!

It's a great tour for an adults only trip! I recently read that they will start offering a new tour at AK - a walking tour at the Safari ride. That sounds really interesting as well. :thumbsup2


I have to say, I think your photos are a hundred times better than the photopass pics. I wasn't all that jazzed about our photopass pics last year. I'm thinking about forgoing it this time. I saw a snazzy waterproof camera bag at REI last weekend for $15. With that, I could take my point and shoot to the Water parks, which is my main reason for doing photopass. Did you end up feeling the CD was worth it considering the quality of photos overall?

Thanks! What I like about photopass is that we would get lots of pictures of the two of us together. I know that the photographers also take pictures with your own camera (those are the ones you think are better, aren't they?), but there they just get one shot and I feel better asking them to take a picture of me when I know that I also am planning on getting the product which pays for their job.

I also really like the fun pictures they can take of you (Tinkerbell for example, but there will be others too) and I like that they take pictures of you when you are interacting with characters. These are the reason why I got the CD - and for the borders. It was really a luxury, not something I felt I needed. But I really love some of the "fun" pictures we got. So in the end, I don't think we got good value for our money, but it is a unique souvenir and this trip was in general a bit of a splurging trip.
 
Well I'm caught up again. :rolleyes1
The Wild by Design Tour looks really interesting. I love watching the specials on TV about the parks being designed. If I every get Dh to agree to go back I'll probably have to entice him with tours like this. :rotfl:
 
Yes, I am very excited about it! It has already been great to talk to Liesa on the phone a few times about planning issues for her trip to Nuremberg! It will be wonderful to meet her in person! :banana::banana:

For other readers, in case you are wondering what this is all about: All7ofUs (Liesa) will be travelling to Nuremberg in August and Katharina and I will meet her and her family there. You can read all about the plans on her epic PTR (which is a lot of fun to hang out and don't be scared by the length of it, just jump in!) in these posts: Achtung! Part 1 and Achtung! Part 2

Glad you filled everyone in- some folks might have thought, "What in the World...?!"

If anyone is ever heading to Germany, these ladies can be an enormous and gracious help! I'm sure they'd love to meet you, and love WDW just as much as we all do!!!

And yes, I second that, don't be shy about posting on the "Invasion" thread!! We have an awful lot of fun over there, and always welcome more silliness!! :dance3:
 
Question! I'm in Germany right now and we found a building that we have no idea what is here in Berlin. This is a picture of it:

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Do you lovely ladies know what it is?
 
Question! I'm in Germany right now and we found a building that we have no idea what is here in Berlin. This is a picture of it:

Do you lovely ladies know what it is?

I hope you have a great time in Berlin! :yay:

This is the rest of the "Anhalter Bahnhof" which was one of the railway stations in Berlin, you could take a train to Munich from there. Today there is only an underground S-Bahn station.

More info at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Anhalter_Bahnhof
 
Hello, hello!

I'm back! I commented today on our Cali Grill dinner, so an update should come soon.

Hi little sister! Great to see you posting! :goodvibes Wow, three castles already? But I guess that's what you can see in South Bohemia? ;)

Not much else to see ;)


sounds like a LOVELY time!! Enjoy every minute of your vacation; it sounds like you are truly trying to make it a REAL vacation by not doing any pressing business too. :thumbsup2

4 castles?? Gotta LOVE that!!

It was a wonderful vacation! Do you want so see some pictures?

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Wow! Beautiful pics! Where were you again? I want to go there!
 
Welcome HOME, Katharina!!


Oh. MY!! Those are very, very beautiful!!! I LOVE the last one with the row of buildings with the facades- they look like they have some Dutch influence in the architecture. :confused3 I remember seeing a lot of that in Utrecht.

So glad you had a good time! :thumbsup2
 
All I can say is WOW! Where were you? This makes me so excited for our up and coming trip this September! I love old architechture.
 

When we got to the bus stop at DHS, a bus for the Contemporary was already waiting, so we hopped on and were on our way! Great! I think good and bad bus experiences at WDW often equal each other out, but bad ones just are more memorable...

At the CR we went up to the 4th floor to explore the lobby for a bit since it was still too early for our ADR. The CR is one of the resorts I had considered for this trip and I think since the renovation they did over the past years it has become a great looking hotel again. I remember in 2004 the rooms looked horrible in my opinion and I would have never chosen to stay there. But then on the other hand it still looks a bit like a hotel in any big city could look like. I love the style, but other places at Disney are just more unique to me...


I agree very much with Magdalene’s opinion of the CR. I love the outdated modern style a lot, which makes it in a way unique to other standard hotels, but it is not very Disney to me.


We went out on the observation deck on the 4th floor as well and looked over to the MK. Thinking back, this was actually Katharina's first view of the MK ever!! Unfortunately there were some kitchen smells drifting out on the deck – it smelled like fried fish.


Magdalene assured me that the smell was not from CG, I was a little bit nervous....



It still was only 6:45 pm but we checked in for our 7:15 ADR nevertheless. I thought that we could get a drink before our meal. The check in desk for California Grill is on the 2nd floor (while the restaurant itself is on the 14th floor). After having searched for it with difficulty the years before, I now know where it is! But I still find it a bit tricky to find for guests.

In 2008 my friend and I had the most wonderful server ever at California Grill. His name was Gary and we absolutely loved him. So I was trying to be really courageous and asked whether we could have him as our server. They checked and found out that he wasn't working the night we were eating there. They then asked whether we had any other requests. I was briefly thinking about asking for a window table, but then decided not to. From previous experience I knew that CG was often behind with seating and I did not want for us to have to wait even longer for a window table. So I said that we did not have any other requests. We then got our beeper and I asked how long of a wait we would have and the answer was: there shouldn't be any wait! We were then taken up to the restaurant in the elevator by a CM (they do this in order to have only dining guests going up to the restaurant). Once there I briefly showed Katharina the observation deck up there and while we were enjoying the view, our beeper went off! We were seated about 25 minutes before our ADR time!

When we were shown to our table it turned out that we had gotten a window table. When you arrive at CG on the elevators, you have to turn right to face the windows overlooking Seven Seas Lagoon and the MK. Directly in front of you is the bar area which splits the dining room into two halves: one closer to the MK and one closer to the TTC. We were the first window table next to the bar area in the section closer to the MK. It was a great table! And it was even decorated!!

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Shortly after we were seated, our server appeared and was a bit confused. Our ticket said that we were celebrating a birthday (hence all the attention!) but none of us was wearing a button. We explained that Katharina was the birthday girl. And this was one of the many times she was told that she should wear the button, but she only wanted to wear it on her actual birthday.

But we decided to start the meal in style and ordered a glass of champagne (or more likely, sparkling wine since it was not from France) each:

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Our server went to get the chef for Katharina and it turned out that there weren't many dishes she could eat. That was a bit disappointing. I had thought that especially CG would take into consideration when planning their daily menu what kind of allergies they had prior notice of. Also, I had read so often that chefs would offer to make something special or so. But here it was a bit like well, there isn't much for you. So you have to eat the one dish we have for you.


I think this made me quite anxious for all our planned dinners. I told the chef that I found the pork quite tempting, I remembered Magdalene review, and he just said that the polenta would be with milk and didn’t offer any substitutes. As this was my first experience of talking to a chef about what I could eat, I was shy anyways, but his reactions intimidated me even more.

Nevertheless, the sushi was fine for Katharina, so we ordered some as our appetizer.

But before the sushi arrived, our server brought out the bread which was safe for Katharina!! He even asked again to make sure that butter was ok for her (which it is) and offered to bring some olive oil for her otherwise. I think most of the signature restaurant breads were fine for Katharina, which was really nice because I love the bread at the WDW restaurants!

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The bread was warm and delicious. I love the sourdough they serve here!

We ordered our entrees before we were served the sushi, but I want to keep things in order, so I will tell you about the sushi first. We had decided to go with the Yellowfin Tuna Three Ways which appears to be one of the classics on the CG menu. I had this in 2007 on my first ever visit to CG and loved it!

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In the front on the cucumber slices you can see tuna tartare, then going clockwise is the typical sushi ginger next (which was very good and fresh, not overly sweet), then on the seaweed there are small cubes of tuna marinated in a sauce, then the green stuff is the Wasabi, next there are slices of seared tuna next and then a bowl with a nice dipping sauce. In the middle there is a cube of rice! Katharina's favourite was the tartare and I loved the little cubes.

On to the main course.

I was having a hard time deciding on which entree I wanted. I love the pork loin at CG which I had in 2008 and 2009. It is a wonderful dish if you like pork (which I do) and the polenta is out of this world good! But there was one thing on the menu which intrigued me a lot:

Seared Bison with White Corn and Mushroom "Risotto", Turnips, Chestnuts, and Pinot Noir Juniper Emulsion

Our server explained about the bison which is much leaner than beef. I did look it up just now and I think it is exactly the same as buffallo which you can get at Artist Point. I loved my buffallo steak there in 2008 and I love corn, mushroom and chestnuts. I like red wine and the taste of junipers. So I thought that this really might be a winner. The only thing I knew that I don't like were the turnips. But Katharina encouraged me to get something different and she was also keen on getting my turnips because she loves them. So I decided to order this.

This is what it looked like:

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I have no ides what the yellow leaves were, but the rest can be explained as follows: On top of the meat (which was served medium rare just as I had ordered it and as I like it) are some roasted chestnut crumbs, which added a nice sweet flavour. Under the meat is the risotto. There wasn't any rice involved, instead it was made with the white corn instead of rice. The white corn was more starchy than normal corn and this worked perfectly. The small things that look like potatoes are the turnips. These were sent off to Katharina's plate and then there is the dark red wine sauce, which was slightly sweet, around. It was wonderful! I still could dream about this dish!!

Katharina decided to get the salmon which was served with couscous. I think it was this dish which still can be found on the allears menu: Pan-seared Loch Duart Salmon - with citrus couscous, marcona almonds, sundried tomatoes, citrus nage

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Of course it was served without the dried tomatoes. It was a nice dish, quite sweet but very tasty. The salmon was not as well cooked as we are used to it in Germany and had a well flavoured crust, so this was an interesting new experience!

Wishes was at 8 pm that day – and as you remember we were seated before 7 pm. By the time we had ordered and gotten our sushi Katharina made a comment that it would look like that we would get our entrees during Wishes. And she was right about that. Wishes started and we were served our entrees. So we were sitting at our table enjoying delicious food and saw the fireworks (with the lights dimmed in the restaurant and the music piped in). For some this might sound like a dream come true.

For me it wasn't. But don't worry, it was good as it was. But I will still explain why it wasn't the thing for me because I am sure that if I had told our server early enough that we were planning on seeing Wishes from the outdoor viewing area our entrees would have been served later. So, dear readers, in order for you to make up your mind on what to do in a similar situation here are my reasons:

1) When you see Wishes from the CG, you will notice that there are two different locations that the fireworks are shot off from: directly next to the castle and way behind the castle. In my view between these two there was one of the vertical bars between the glass panes of the windows and that distracted quite a bit

2) Seeing fireworks from inside you get a more detached feeling, you don't hear them as much. I really love fireworks, so I want to be as close as possible. But this is a general CG problem, that's why I think they are neat from there but giving the choice between wishes from CG or from Main Street, I would always choose Main Street.

3) I rather would enjoy the two wonderful things (food and fireworks) separately instead of being distracted from my food by the fireworks and vice versa.

4) While the large table next to us did finally shut up, at first it seemed that they would just keep talking and that would have annoyed me a lot!

5) It was rather awkward to take pictures of the food with the flash. I wasn't feeling too bad about it, but did only take one pic of each dish and just hoped it would look ok. And I think the tables directly next to us had gone out to the observation desk.

In the end it was still a nice experience, and I think Katharina enjoyed it nevertheless.
I did! And I knew that we had planned to see Wishes from Main Street late in the trip anyway.

After our delicious entrees we were in such a good mood that we seriously considered desserts. Our server informed Katharina that the only dessert she could eat was the sorbet of the day which was mango. And since this is her favourite fruit she really wanted to get that. It was served with a candle for her birthday!

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While I found something on the menu which sounded like the most wonderful dish I had had in 2008 and which then had disappeared from the CG menu after it had been one of those that always were on the menu.

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It is the Bananas and Caramel - Crispy baked phyllo squares layered w/banana, caramel, mascarpone mousse, and caramelized banana

The dish I had in 2008 was the Banana and Buttersotch “Buzz”

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Caramelized Banans and Butterscotch Custard Stack with Caramel Sauce, Cocoa Nib and crunchy Plantain

Those two do look similar, don't they? And I was pleased that they tasted similar. I was rather full from my meal already, but I finished the dessert. It was just too wonderful!

Since we also had ordered a glass of wine each with our meal we were now feeling slightly drunk and happily full. But it wasn't time to head home directly yet!

It was Epcot EMH this evening and I had planned on using Epcot as our connection point to get home to AKL from the Contemporary. So we hopped on the monorail from the CR to the TTC and then changed there to the Epcot line. To be honest, I can't see that this is in any way preferable to taking a direct bus, but most people seem to think so. From the Poly, where you can walk to the TTC, taking the monorail to Epcot however is just wonderful!

So we arrived at Epcot in style and Katharina could get her first view of Epcot from the monorail (that was part of the reason for this plan, I think every firsttimer should arrive at Epcot by monorail!). We decided to have a brief look inside the park since it was open anyway. And went directly onto Spaceship Earth. For some reason Katharina's hair wasn't captured correctly as you can see in our little film (which is shown to you at the end and after the ride there are computers where you can go and get the film emailed to yourself. I think that this is a neat little souvenir which is absolutely free!). I put it on photobucket, so you can see how we live the green life!



It looks like we will live deep underground??

We decided not to try out Test Track (I did not want to take any risk of combining alcohol, lots of food and Mission Space!) since it had a 35 minutes wait. So instead we left Epcot (which was incredibly crowded!) and got to the bus stops. AKL has the first bus stop at the Epcot bus station and there was a bus waiting when we arrived. So I started to run ahead and somehow managed to miss the entrance to the bus waiting area for the AKL bus and then ended up between all those bars. While Katharina was smarter than me and even though she was behind me, she then waited for me at the door of the bus laughing about me together with the bus driver...

Back at AKL we immediately went off to bed, we were so tired!!


Next: Chapter 16: A Future Morning
 
Mike is nagging me to get the lights off and get to bed- so I'll have to read this tom. AM!!

Meantime, I'll try to guess what you got! :goodvibes
 
Wow! Beautiful pics! Where were you again? I want to go there!

We spent one week in South Bohemia, that is the south-western part of the Czech Republic. It was a quite rich and well developed country in between the two world wars, but already in the centuries before under Austrian rule. So there are lots of castles and nice little towns. During communist rule from 1948 to 1989 many buildings degenerated, but the revolution came just in time, I guess. The South was never a region for industry, mainly agriculture, fish farming etc., so there aren't as many hideous buildings from the second half of the 20th century as in other parts of the country.

Welcome HOME, Katharina!!


Oh. MY!! Those are very, very beautiful!!! I LOVE the last one with the row of buildings with the facades- they look like they have some Dutch influence in the architecture. :confused3 I remember seeing a lot of that in Utrecht.

So glad you had a good time! :thumbsup2

I think they are baroque. In this area there are even baroque farm houses, some villages are world heritage sites, as well as some of the little towns and castles. The picture you mention is a world heritage site as well.

All I can say is WOW! Where were you? This makes me so excited for our up and coming trip this September! I love old architechture.

Which countries will you visit while in Europe? Most American tourist have only time to visit Prague, but Prague of course is beautiful as well. If you plan to visit the Czech Republic as well and have any questions, just let me know. It's my second home :goodvibes
 
Which countries will you visit while in Europe? Most American tourist have only time to visit Prague, but Prague of course is beautiful as well. If you plan to visit the Czech Republic as well and have any questions, just let me know. It's my second home

We will be in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. Your sister and I are trying to plan a DIS meet in Nuremberg if possible. I am so excited to come and visit Germany this has been a dream trip for us for a long time. It's hard to believe that it is coming so quick! I feel so unprepared and feeling stressed and worried. Just pretrip nerves I guess. My husband and I are celebrating 20 years of marriage. :goodvibes
 
We spent one week in South Bohemia, that is the south-western part of the Czech Republic.

In this area there are even baroque farm houses, some villages are world heritage sites, as well as some of the little towns and castles. The picture you mention is a world heritage site as well.

And I think you might want to mention that the first picture is from a town called Budvar - the German name for it is Budweis, which might be quite familiar to our American readers! ;)
 
Great review of CG! It's really interesting to see what other people order. I would never have considered ordering the Bison. It's not too gamey tasting is it? From your review, I'll have to give it a try.

I completely agree with you about watching Wishes from CG. For one thing, the glare off the glass makes it very difficult to take pictures. If my memory serves me right, they do dim the lights and pipe in the music but most people continue talking. Really ruins the mood :headache: We also didn't have a table right beside the window and our view was obstructed by people's heads and a giant pillar. I'd also skip watching Wishes from Poly beach... even from the balcony of your room. Unless you really want to get away from the crowds. It's just not the same. I would much rather sit on Main Street to watch the fireworks.

If interested, check out my experience at CG in November 2009 HERE and HERE
 












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