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Most likely I'll post some pics as part of whatever update I give, and given that there is no way all three of my daughters will think that they look good in the same photo at the same time, pics will likely be pulled and right there is your incentive to check back every day to see how things actually went before something gets taken down.This section will contain the running commentary from the trip, in regards to the most recent country we have been in. But once I'm able to start the next country, I'll put the historical posts in the "Old Updates - XYZ" tab above. This all assumes I (or one of my kids) will be able to figure out how to make this website work.

If you want to read about the first 28 days and our time in Italy, then click here.

If you want to read about our time in Turkiye, then click here.

If you want to read about our safari in Kenya, then click here.

If you want to read about our beach vacation in Tanzania, then click here.

If you want to read about our amusement park/desert experience in the U.A.E, then click here.

If you want to read about our desert/beach experience in Oman, then click here.

If you want to read about our jungle ruins experience in Cambodia, then click here.

If you want to read about our elephant/beach experience in Thailand, then click here.

If you want to read about our beach/city experience in Australia, then click here.

If you want to read about our adventure/beach experience in New Zealand, then click here.

If you want to read about our under water adventure in the Maldives, then click here.

If you want to read about our Taj Mahal adventure in India, then click here.

If you want to read about our Disney adventure in Hong Kong, then click here.

If you want to read about our Disney adventure in China, then click here.

If you want to read about our Political/girlie adventure in Seoul, then click here.

If you want to read about our Adventure with friends in Japan, then click here.

If you want to read about our Disney Adventure in France, then click here.

If you want to read about our World School Prom Adventure in Hungary, then click here.

The Journey Continues - Austria

To jump directly to one of our days in Austria, click here:

Sorry, no Indiana Jones transition. We took a train to Salzberg and a car to Felben.

Day 245

My concerns about getting out of the house by 10am proved prescient. No one had enough sleep the night before, so everyone was cranky. The Airbnb place wanted a picture of the keys in the lockbox at 10am to prove we were out, and it looked like the cleaning person showed up and was waiting for us to leave. We got out of the house at 10:07, which was good for us, but Megan had been increasingly frustrated with the state we leave the Airbnbs in when we leave, and how our kids feel like its fine to leave it a mess. So she always follows around and cleans after them - this time she charged them all $5 to do that because of the mess.

We had our train tickets, but weren’t really sure how they worked, since we weren’t sure where the seat numbers were on the receipt. It also said we had to print them out, which we couldn’t do, so when we got to the train station, Megan and I went to the information desk. It was a bit crowded and you had to get a ticket, and they would call your number to talk to them. The good news about the 10am checkout was that we were at the train station over an hour before we had to leave. Eventually our number was called and we talked to the man, who then moved us over to a woman.

A person who showed us how the line worked, looked at our tickets and showed us where our seats were, but there was only 5 seat assignments. It seemed like since Liam was 5, they just defaulted into him sitting on someone’s lap, which was a non-started for a 5 hour train ride. We explained the situation to the woman and she had us buy another seat assignment on the train (which was only a few dollars), and there were two available seats in our car, but not next to us, but it was the best we could do.

The train started at our station, so it pulled up at 11 and we boarded it at 11:05, so it was nice and leisurely boarding experience, even with all of our bags. Liam lost a piece to a McDonalds Minecraft toy, and I went searching for it all over the train station, but when I got back on the train, Liam found it under a seat.

The train ride was largely uneventful. We got food on the train that was fine and read, wrote blogs and watched shows. There was plenty of room for bags, so getting on and off wasn’t really a problem. We got off the train and into the taxi that we had arranged through the hotel. As we looked out the windows on the way to the hotel, the view was beautiful - mountains, trees, rivers - very much like the Sound of Music scenery that we had some here to see.

At one point, we got pulled over by some police, who apparently were running border control as they asked for our passports and looked in the car to match the names and faces. It was a little bit surprising as we didn’t think that we were passing a border from Salzburg to Felben, but I guess maybe we were crossing Germany at some point. An hour and half hours later we were at the hotel.

We checked into the hotel and had dinner. After dinner, Megan, Liam and I had a tour of the hotel while the girls went to the room. There were 10 different play areas in the hotel with all sorts of cool things - one had a bounce house and giant slide. Another had a farm motif with a slide and all sorts of legos and farm animal toys. Another had an air hockey table and a separate room with airguns that shot nerf balls across the room at each other.

The Austrians have advanced air hockey technology.

But the best part was the outdoor playground. It had all sorts of slides and climbing areas. It also had a street system and you could borrow bikes and other pedal powered contraptions to go around the little streets.

Day 246

Today was Mothers’ Day, so we slept in until breakfast was about to close and then ate. After that, Megan and Keira watched Grey’s Anatomy for about 6 hours, while Liam and I played board games, went to the bounce room, the air gun room and then the playground. I tried to teach Liam to ride a bike with poor results. But he had a great time in the sand pit and the water area. I enjoyed the play area a lot because the view was spectacular - so green, with white peaked mountain tops. It almost looked fake.

The outside play area was cool, but the view was amazing.

After we got a snack, we went back outside and he played on the zip line for a while. This place was heaven on earth for Liam - the one problem was that although there were a lot of kids around, we were informed at check in that we were the only English speaking family in the resort at this time.

We got back to the room around 5pm, but Megan had gone with Elenna to the wellness area, with a sauna and some other relaxation areas. She came back at 6 and then we all went to dinner. After dinner, we gave her her presents and then we watched the Sound of Music, since we (except Lily) were going to go on the Sound of Music tour in a couple of day. I’ve seen the moview a few times, and I distinctly remember it being ok, but way too long. It was still too long, but it was better than I had remembered it. The one piece of the movie that stood out was the ending - where the von Trapp family has to walk over the Alps to escape the Nazis. But from what we could tell, now that we had gone from Salzburg, deeper into Austria, is that if you are going over teh Alps in Salzburg, you were likely going INTO Germany, not away from it, and if you were, in fact going away from Germany, it was quite a distance to go. We looked it up and apparently the movie took some liberties with the real life story and they didn’t actually cross the Alps on foot.

The next day we got up “early” (8:40) because we had told Liam that there was a dance party with the Kinder Hotel cow mascot that he seemed interested in. Although the movie was good, it was long, and Liam was up until around 11pm, so we had that age old debate - wake him up to do the thing he wanted to do and risk him being tired and cranky all day, or let him sleep and likely be well rested, but then risk having him upset for missing the party? We opted to get him up.

Liam was not in a good mood that morning or during breakfast. After breakfast we went to the dance party and Liam complained that the song they were singing was in German. After the party, we had signed up for a family walk in the mountains, and since we didn’t have a car, the guides were able to bring us in their van. It was just me, Megan and Liam, and Liam was still not in a good mood.

His poor mood continued as we started off on our walk, and Liam complained it was stupid and boring. It was also cold and windy, which didn’t help matters, and the guides spoke in German, which frustrated Liam more. But then the guides pulled out a little cardboard square with some tape on it, and told everyone to find some flowers, grass, moss, etc and put it onto the cardboard and make a design. Liam immediately started searching around for things and didn’t complain for the next 40 minutes about the hike.

The view on the walk was amazing as we were in the Alps. One of the guides talked to us a bit in English, so we got a sense of what we were walking past, including some blueberry bushes that unfortunately weren’t quite ripe yet.

We ate lunch when we got back and Megan took Liam around to the play areas while I helped Elenna study for her math placement exam at MKA. Its a bit difficult to write sample math problems, and twice I had to ask Lily to explain some math concepts to me so I could write a sufficient example. And I am good at math (or so I thought).

We went to dinner, and Liam wanted to do the dance party at the kids club after dinner, so he rushed through the meal and I took him there halfway through dinner. Megan and I picked him up after dinner and then we went for a Pokemon hunt. Liam found out that Megan had downloaded the game on her phone, but hadn’t really played so he was excited to have her play on her account. However, he wanted to keep showing her how to do things, so he kept taking the phone from her and playing the game for her. I told him that he shoudl play on my phone and let Megan play on her phone, and then Megan agreed that she wasn’t playing much, and I started to wonder if she was about to get as addicted to Pokemon as I was. It was bedtime by the time we got home, so we went to sleep.

Day 247

The next day we went on the Sound of Music tour. Liam has been against tours in all forms, and had been having such a good time at the kids club in the hotel, that we gave him the option of staying in the kids club all day (Lily was home, but doing work) or coming on the tour. He gladly chose staying at the kids club.

The tour started in Salzburg, which was 110 minutes away, and getting a taxi there and back was prohibitively expensive. Luckily, we were already renting a car the next day to visit the library that the library in The Beauty and the Beast was based on, which was 2.5 hours away. So I got that car reservation changed to two days and we drove over. They were able to drop off the car at the hotel (which was good since the rental place was 30 minutes away).

We drove to Salzburg, and once again I was blown away by how pretty it was on the drive. I love the mountains, and the green and the many rivers. It was all so picturesque. We got to the city and parked with a few minutes to spare before boarding the bus.

The bus was painted with bright “Sound of Music Tour” decals, making it quite conspicuous. Keira was a bit embarrassed to be riding it, but Megan and I thought that it was great.

'

I try to be inconspicuous when possible.

Our guide was Australian (not Austrian) and had great energy and clearly loved the movie, which made the tour a lot of fun.

Our tour guide looked an awful lot like Julie Andrews.

We spent a good part of the tour in the bus driving by things (the abbey where Maria was, the von Trap house, etc).

We passed the front of the Van Trap house.

But we did get out and see the back of the von Trap house (apparently, the scenes of the back of the house where filmed in a different location than the front, because there was no lake in the back of the main house.

The back of the Von Trap family was about 15 minutes away from the front.

We also got to see the gazebo where the “16 going on 17” song was filmed. But it was locked because too many people hurt themselves trying to jump from bench to bench recreating the song. This was actually our first stop, and Keira felt ill (so she wasn’t in the picture). But we got her some water and put in electrolytes and by the next stop she was feeling much better.

I feel like I'm 17 going on 18.

We also got to visit the church where Maria and Georg got married at the end (whoops, spoiler alert). We also visited the park where most of the “Do re mi” song was filmed. But for me, one of the highlights was driving past the Redbull headquarters - who knew that the company was started in a small town 20 minutes outside of Salzburg?

Not a bad place to get married, but looked bigger in the movie.

Overall, it was a good tour. They played the music from the movie periodically and encouraged everyone to sing. They had a bunch of behind the scenes stories (they confirmed what Megan figured out the night before - that going over the Alps from Salzburg only would have brought you to Nazi headquarters). But the tour company that did the tour is now a big company, in large part because it was the only taxi service in the area during the filming, so they took the actors around. So afterwards, when people wanted to see where things were filmed, they were the only ones who actually knew where to go, and then they turned it into a tour company. The owner of the company keeps in touch with both the von Trap family and the actors.

We got a couple of pretzels to eat on the way home, since we weren’t going to get home until 8. Lily and Liam waited for us to eat, so we all ate at 8, which made us feel a little bad because the restaurant closed at 8:30, so we were clearly holding up the staff.

Day 248

The next day we went to the Admont Abbey, where the library that the library in Beauty and the Beast was based off of. This was Lily’s idea, and when our kids suggest something, we generally do it, even though in this case, it was a 2.5 hour drive.

That morning, Lily got up at 5am and went to see the sunrise. The rest of us passed and met her at breakfast. I drove the 2.5 hours to the Admont Abbey, and as we were about 5 minutes away, I noted that we didn’t have a place to park. I had asked Lily to find a place to park, and she said that she had read that there was parking next to it, but it wasn’t obvious that it would be there, so we pulled over to search for a place to park. Keira found someone on Instagram who left a pin at a place at the Abbey, and we drove there and it was in fact right next to the Abbey.

We went in and got the audio guide (the kids were fine just going to look at the library, but I argued that it didn’t make any sense to drive 2.5 hours each way just to look at something for 3 minutes). I bought one for Liam, knowing that if I didn’t, he would complain, but if I did, he wouldn’t use it. Liam was complaining loudly about having to go to the library as we were buying tickets, and the woman at the counter gave us a treasure map to follow with a prize at the end. This got Liam excited to go.

We went to the library and it was huge and incredibly ornate. Murals on the walls, frescos on the ceiling, and statues throughout. The girls were done after about 15 minutes, but Megan and I were still listening to the guide. Liam was bored after 4 minutes since most of the treasure hunt was not in the library. So after about 25 minutes, I took him throughout the museum to track things down.

The museum was large and beautiful, one of the largest in the world at the time. But I'm not completely sure it reminded me of Beauty and the Beast.

It was neat to walk through the museum and Liam wouldn’t let us keep going until we found everything. But we also found some things that weren’t in the treasure hunt.

Liam found a table made up of metal scraps that wasn't on the treasure hunt. I got inspired by the art and imitated it.

The treasure hunt ended in the gift shop where the prize was a bookmark, which Liam found to be underwhelming. But it kept him busy and made us (or at least me, Megan and Liam) to explore the whole thing. The girls sat in the lobby when they were done in the library. We then at lunch at the restaurant next door.

Liam was underwhelmed by the prize, but it kept him busy.

The next stop was the town of Hallstatt, which the tour guide the day before said was the inspiration for the town of Arendelle from Frozen. When I looked at it the day before, it seemed to be about 15 minutes out of the way, but it was closer to 40 minutes, a period of time that the kids thought was long, but grudgingly decided to do anyway. As we were driving there, Megan googled it, and found that although some people said it was the basis for Arendelle, the Disney animators said that Arendelle was actually inspired by towns in Norway. But still we pressed on.

The town did look reminiscent of Arendelle, although clearly not exactly like it. But it was a pretty, quaint town and worthy of a visit. Liam said that he was hungry, and on the way in wanted to get some strawberries, but he also wanted to go to the bathroom, so we passed the stall in a rush. But on the way back to the car, we stopped and bought a bunch. They were incredibly fresh and Lily thought that they were the best strawberries she had ever tasted.

The place did look a bit like Arendelle, and we were glad we went.

We got back to the hotel around 7:30, once again pretty late for dinner at this hotel, but at least this time, one other family was there. I arranged massages for Megan and Lily and horseback riding for Elenna the next day. Then, Megan, Liam and I did some Pokemon hunting until Megan’s phone battery died. Then I mailed a bunch of post cards.

Day 249

This was our last day at the Kinder Hotel and by now, Liam had officially named it his second favorite hotel of the trip (behind Thomas land). We ate breakfast and Liam and I went outside to have him practice riding his bike. Before we left for the trip, he had gotten ok at riding a bike with training wheels, and I was hoping he would be able to ride a bike now, but he still struggles to ride a bike with training wheels. But there are 4 year olds riding around the park, so we have some work to do. Meanwhile, Megan, Lily and Elenna were out riding bikes together and seeing nature.

I didn't even mention the pool part.

After that, I dropped him off at kids club, because they were making hay and Liam wanted to do that. I wasn’t sure when the next time we could wash our clothes would be, so I did 3 loads of laundry - with each wash taking 90 minutes, but each drying taking 2 hours. There were so many activitiies to do at the hotel: Elenna had a horse riding lesson, Megan and Lily got massages. Liam did a project where he made a treasure map, and then later in the night, he went on a treasure hunt. We wish that we had booked more time in the hotel.

The next morning we got up for a 5am taxi to the Munich airport (2.5 hours away). We got to the airport and through the security with enough time for Megan, Liam and I to get breakfast before the flight. Megan and I were in business class and I wasn’t going to hand over that seat for the 9 hour flight.

We landed in the US and went through the Global Entry but the kids’ didn’t work, so we had to wait in a line for a while. Then we got our bags and then were waived into a separate entrance, where they went through our bags. They opened all the bags of the people in front of us, and our line was particularly bad because the guy running it was very strict. But luckily he was called away, so Megan, Liam and I got into a line that the three girls had already gone through. So by now, he was aware of how packed to the gills all of our bags were, and he let us through after a modest search. This was probably in part due to the fact that I put a banana in Liam’s backpack for the plane and he never ate it, so we brought it to the attention of the customs agent. Apparently, bringing a banana could be a $500 fine and a cancellation of your Global Entry criteria, but they let us off with a warning.

We got to the hotel and one of our three rooms was ready, so we sat there and watched some Task Masters. One of Lily’s friends arrived and eventually we got the second room ready. Keira, Elenna and Liam ordered from the Tropical Smoothie Cafe.

The Hackneys came over with a bunch fo things that we need to resupply ourselves for the last 6 weeks of the trip (only 6 weeks left!?!). Meanwhile, we gave them about 7 bags of stuff that we had been lugging around the world that we don’t need anymore. On our travels, we had acquired about 3 bags worth of stuff that we carried separately on the planes with us (mementos from Thomasland, Pokemon Cafes, Disney and most recently, some prom dresses), so in addition to those extra bags, all of our bags were bursting at the seams. Despite the sheer amount of stuff that we offloaded to the Hackneys, I have a sinking feeling that our bags will be just as difficult as ever to close.