Hello several days later.  We have been in patchy internet areas for a while so have been neglecting the blog.  We are actually sitting in Paris at the moment (foot resting after a lot of walking earlier in the day) but this blog will be dedicated to our day in Florence and our time in Austria for my brother's wedding.

We had only one night in Florence and spent the day walking.  A lot.  We had checked out of the hotel and stowed the bags at the train station and set off.  We visited the Santa Maria Nouvella cathedral and then went on to the Duomo basillica.  The Duomo was pretty spectacular.  It was built on the site of a church from 500 AD and we were able to get down into the area underneath where the original foundations were.  The new(er) church is huge and very ornate.

There were a lot of stalls lining the streets with a lot of leather being sold.  Seems to be Florence's thing.  After exploring this area and seeing a million belts, wallets and jackets, we headed off to a Davinci exhibit.  It was full of models of his inventions and was very interesting. 

By this point we were pretty tired and had nowhere to be until 10:45pm when our train left.  We floundered around for a while and then managed to find a beautiful square where a 5 piece music group was playing traditional italian songs and stretched our pasta dinner to 2 hours (thanks mostly to the worst waiter in the world who we appreciate for forgetting to come back to us all the time ;)

The train from Florence to Munich was an adventure.  We had a 3 bed compartment that was the size of a shoebox with a triple bunk.  I thought it was rather fun, like camp.  Richard and Karen were not quite as enthused as me but we were all thankful to be able to rest and even shower on the moving train (a bit hard).

We arrived in Munich early in the morning and wandered around for a little while before catching a train to Dachau.  This is the site of the first of the Nazi concentration camps and the model for all the others.  It was very sobering. There was a museum and some of the bulidings that housed the prisoners and worst of all, I thought, the crematorium.  The gates with the "work brings freedom" phrase engraved was chilling.  It was strange to be at the site of such horror, yet the grounds were so nicely kept and it was a beatuiful day.  As my cousin Karen said, life has to go on.

With that experience behind us, we looked forward to a happy weekend spent with my family in Austria.  We were picked up by our parents in Munich and drove over the border to the site of the wedding.  There are several small villages situated around a lake and we had some apartments in a chalet.  It was great to spend some time with the family, playing games and chatting.  On Friday us youngins' went up the cable car and enjoyed some drinks and food with my brother and his friends.  The view was amazing and the clouds kept rising to completely cover us.

Saturday was the big day.  It all went great, with a beatiful bride and a rather handsome groom (once about 5 ladies had attacked him with lint brushes after he showed up in a suit with cat hair on it!).  The ceremony was lovely and translated from German to English and Chinese.  Afterwards we went to the hotel and had black forest cake.  We all agreed that having the cake ceremony early was a great idea!

After a break for the photos to happen, we headed back to the hotel for a wonderful evening of eating, speeches and dancing.  Good times had by all :-)

On Sunday we had a family trip to one of king Ludwigs castles that is the inspiration for the Disney Castle.  It was really cool way up on the hilltop and the tour throughout was worth it.  The castle was only lived in for less than a year before the king was declared insane by some secret government committee and died "mysteriously" soon after, along with his male lover.

One more fantastic meal out at a german restaurant and some good times with the family and we were off to Paris the next morning. Paris so far has been great but I will save that for a future post.

I will try and get some photos up later, but for now I'm off to cruise the river through Paris :-)  This is the life!