International Travel Archives - Page 13 of 19

Sep 16 2014

How to Plan Travel for Summer 2015 – Part 1

I try to avoid Asia in the summer - this picture doesn't indicate how ridiculously hot Hong Kong is — I try to avoid Asia in the summer – this picture doesn’t indicate how ridiculously hot Hong Kong is

It’s the time of the year to start planning our summer travels. Actually, you could say it’s even a little late for that, depending on your definition of summer. We usually travel in July so we’re a bit behind. Remember, most airlines open their schedules up 330 days in advance, so I can book travel up through August 11th right now on most programs. This post will outline my thought process for booking travel and hopefully give you some ideas for how you want to use your hard earned miles next summer! If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you’re likely not ready to book yet…get crackin!

Question 0: Cash or Miles?

If the answer to Question 0 is cash, you can pretty much skip the rest of this post. Right now is NOT the best time to buy cash tickets – prices will definitely drop some time in the next eleven months. If you don’t have enough miles to book that summer trip right now, you can build up those balances – chances are more than decent that space will open up closer in.

Question 1: When can you travel?

I find for most people this is the biggest determinant. Summer is usually a little better because people are more free to leave on Tuesdays and random things like that. Obviously, the more flexible you can be the better. Since award space is a function of airlines trying to fill every last seat, you’ll see the most availability on low travel days – Tuesdays and Saturdays for example.

The weather's a lot cooler in Peru — The weather’s a lot cooler in Peru

If you don’t have the flexibility and need to leave on weekends, it’s imperative that you make decisions sooner rather than later (or wait until the last minute next year, but then this article isn’t for you). Airlines are releasing less and less award space 330 days out, so you should try to be ready to go once your desired dates hit the 330 mark.

For us, we’re pretty flexible, if we can find anything for a 2 week trip in July we should be good to go. It’s Question 2 that is a bigger source of stress for us.

Question 2: How many in your party?

Oh, to return to the days when we were only looking for two seats. Little M will be two next year so she’ll no longer be flying on our laps in first. The added mileage cost plus the relative difficulty of finding three seats in first means we’ll probably be flying business next year – that’s if we’re lucky. It isn’t too hard to find 3 coach seats this far out, but a lot of airlines will only release two business class seats.

Another option we (and your family) could consider is splitting up the family by cabin. For example, a family of four could snag two seats in business and two in coach relatively easily and just switch off on the outbound and return (or however they like). Or if you’re particularly brave, one in business and three in coach. Of course that depends on the age of the children.

A third option for families with older children is splitting up the itinerary altogether – parent + child 1 on Flight 1 and parent + child 2 on Flight 2. I don’t really prefer this option because it’s a lot of moving parts (and we’re not there yet size/age wise), but it definitely makes finding award space a lot easier!

Question 3: What programs do you have miles in?

Obviously this question is going to go a long way to dictate where you will be going. If you have a ton of SPG points, the world is pretty much your oyster since you can transfer to programs in every major alliance. If you are rich in Ultimate Rewards, you are likely flying Southwest or United, etc. etc.

If you have a ton of miles in a specific program, then you’re locked into booking flights with that airline and its partners. Hopefully you have a large portfolio with decent balances spread across different programs, this will maximize the options available to you.

Lufthansa first class is probably too expensive these days - too bad — Lufthansa first class is probably too expensive these days – too bad

In our case, we have a ton of AA/US miles and a bunch of Membership Rewards and Delta Skymiles, so we are pretty limited. All our other balances are in recovery – we are slowly working to build them back to levels where we can use them to book for everyone. I find that it goes in cycles – you burn all your points in one program and then rely on other programs while you slowly rebuild your balance in the first. It’s like leaving a field fallow for a year so you can grow better crops the next year…or something.

Question 4: Where do you want to go – domestic or international?

In my thinking, where to go is the fourth thing I ask myself. The benefit of miles is you can get places in comfort while saving a lot of money – the drawback is if you’re dead set on a certain location you might find yourself out of luck. Miles are best used when you are flexible.

I always start by considering whether I want the family to go domestic or international. This is a question I am personally struggling with right now. In a lot of ways, going domestic is easier – shorter flights, less miles, etc., but going international is what I love to do. Depending on your answer to this question, you’ll start zeroing in more on what miles you should be using.

If you want to go domestic, the best value can be found in distance based sweet spots. KennyBSAT has an amazing primer (with routes) on these sweet spots, so check them out and see if you fall into any of them. If I can’t find a distance based sweet spot, I personally would rather pay cash and fly coach and save my miles for an international trip in a premium cabin.

The reason why I’m struggling this year is because the cost of international travel (in business) is a lot more now that we have to pay for our daughter – and who knows what she’ll be like as a 2.5 year old. I’m still leaning international though…

Question 5: What continent/state do you want to visit?

Once you’ve decided international or domestic, you kind of need to zero in on a certain region. With domestic it’s a little easier, you can just start your search by looking for award space on sweet spot routes from your hometown.

You don't get castles like this in the States — You don’t get castles like this in the States

For international, the continents you can travel to are going to be limited by your miles balances and the cost of travel. Since we have so many US/AA miles, our family can technically travel to any continent next year. Still, if we go abroad, we’ll probably stick to Europe due to the shorter flights (and the extreme heat in Asia). We’re not going to take Little M on a safari while she’s still prey sized and we’d want to do that if we went to Africa so we eliminated that.

Question 6: Where’s the availability?

Searching for availability is a post in and of itself, so I’ll hit on that next time. In the meanwhile, you might get lucky with the AA space KennyBSAT pointed out last week – I know I have a flight on hold!

Final Thoughts

If you want to travel on miles, start booking now! Hopefully seeing my thought process helps you crystallize yours – burn those miles and enjoy!

Aug 22 2014

Bavarian Summer: A Seat, a Bed, and a Toddler – and The End!

The Lufthansa 747-400 features a full bed in first class

Ahhh…the best part of writing trip reports is the last entry. Originally we were scheduled to take a similar flight to our outbound so I wasn’t going to write about it. However, we ended up taking Lufthansa’s 747-400 first class product – aka a seat AND a bed. I figured anyone who was thinking of taking an infant or toddler in LH F might want to see how that impacted things. So let’s finish this!

A view I don't get very often — A view I don’t get very often

After our time in the First Class Terminal, we were driven in a minivan to our plane. People get driven in all sorts of cool cars from the FCT to their plane – Porsches, Benzes, and GRAND CARAVANS. I found it pretty amusing, hopefully the dude who shared the car with us did too (he was really nice). We were dropped off at the bottom of the plane which was pretty cool – 747s are big mamma jammas.

This could be a long flight... — This could be a long flight…

I think Jess’ exclamation, “We’re flying upstairs!?” summed it up. While being in the nose of the plane would have been cool, it was pretty neat to walk up the stairs to the first class cabin in the “hump” of the plane – I’m not sure I’ve ever been up there myself. The first class cabin consists of four rows of two seats each, we chose the last two seats in an effort to minimize bothering others. The cabin ended up being full due to some weather issues in Frankfurt the day before, so I was a bit nervous as we got ready to take off.

For once M was cool with taking off with me instead of mom

It turns out it was silly for me to be nervous, for a couple of reasons. First of all – the cabin had SO much stuff for Little M to play with that she just had a great time for the majority of the flight. Opening drawers, closing drawers, putting stickers on the armrests, putting headphones on, putting headphones on me, and best of all – playing on the separate bed.

Nothing like a pretzel and some first class butter

Having a separate bed with a lap/infant is pretty clutch. What that meant was she could lay out all her toys on the bed and just PLAY. Yes, she’d run back and forth between Jess and my seat, but for the most part she didn’t have to be sitting on us, climbing on us, or any of that.

When she fell asleep, we just lay her down there and could still sit next to her and keep an eye out. The seat itself doesn’t recline to fully flat so parent and child can’t both sleep fully flat at once, but it was a daytime flight anyway. The biggest issue was that there was way too much for her to play with – she was completely overstimulated throughout the whole flight. That meant it was pretty tough to get her down for a nap.

Being able to sit on the bed together opens up a lot of options in terms of space for the toddler

Eventually, after Jess tried in vain for over an hour to get her to sleep, I just took M into the lavatory until she passed out. There was about 5 minutes of intense crying there, but thankfully all the other passengers in the first class cabin were awake (and the noise cancelling headphones + bathroom door did a lot, Jess said M was tough to hear with all of those barriers).

We once again survived the first class flight by dividing and conquering. Jess would watch M while I ate, then we’d switch, and the same if anyone wanted to watch a movie. We both managed to get through one movie on the seven hour flight, haha. We also used up almost every single “present” we had wrapped in “the bag” – the nice thing about the return journey is you don’t have to save any of your tricks!

Nothing like a little overstimulation on a 7 hour flight

All in all, I’d say having a seat and a bed is pretty awesome – especially if you have a lap child in tow. I realize that this isn’t something that people have the chance to do often, but if you are considering Lufthansa First Class with a lap infant, I definitely think the 747-400 product is better than the other new first class products. You just can’t beat that kind of space.

Final Thoughts

We had an amazing trip to Germany and Austria this summer. We climbed mountains, sang the Sound of Music, and ate some amazing food. In terms of summer trips, this one ranks high up on the list. If you’re thinking of visiting Germany, I say do it. For some reason it doesn’t get the press of Italy or France, but it’s a lovely country and we had an amazing time. Thanks for following along! Until the next trip…

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Other Posts in this Series

Introduction

Final Preparations for the Little One

Lufthansa First Class with a Toddler

Slow Days with a Sick Toddler

Sightseeing in and around Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Observations After a Week in Germany

Climbing to AlpspiX and Neuschwanstein Castle

Zugspitze and Mittenwald

Sound of Music Bike Tour in Salzburg

Lazy Sunday in Salzburg – not

Rainy Days in Berchtesgaden

Visiting Museums and Biking in Vienna

Food in Germany and Austria

Rating the Toddler Friendliness of Our Hotels

Lufthansa First Class Terminal – Good for Toddlers?

Aug 15 2014

Bavarian Summer: Rating the Toddler Friendliness of Our Hotels

I wasn’t planning on reviewing the hotels we stayed in on our trip, but I got to thinking I would have loved to see a parent’s view on the toddler friendliness of these hotels before we got here. So instead of a “review”, I just wanted to give a few thoughts on how each of the hotels we stayed at were equipped to deal with toddlers. As always, bear in mind we were in a unique situation having only one child and grandparents in a nearby room.

Crowne Plaza Salzburg

I booked two rooms at this hotel for 30,000 IHG points per night – the going rate was about 190 Euros/night so it was a pretty good deal. In terms of location, the Crowne Plaza worked out well for us. It was far enough away from downtown that we didn’t have to deal with parking issues (the garage was less than 20 Euros/day), and the hotel was right Mirabelle Gardens which was great for walks.

The scenic walk along the river to Old Town

The 15 minute walk to downtown might be a deterrent for some, and it definitely prevented us from just hopping out of the hotel to eat in the city. There are a lot of food options just one street over though that we found to be perfectly decent. Personally I didn’t mind the location because the walk to town was a scenic stroll along the river.

I’d say my biggest concern about the Crowne Plaza was the temperature of the fridge, it was only slightly cooler than the room, so we were a little worried about the milk. We had them clear out the minibar so that we could keep our food and baby supplies in there. The crib was older but seemed safe and it was on wheels which made it really useful to move around the room. Little M was also given her own blanket and towel which was cute.

There was enough space to picnic in the room

Bathtime was a cinch due to the bathtub and removable showerhead. If you’re fine with walking, Salzburg is a great city for kids and the Crowne Plaza will suit you just fine. It should be noted they are still finishing up some renovations – so some sections looked much more updated than others.

Intercontinental Berchtesgaden

To sum it up in a sentence, the Intercontinental Berchtesgaden was the hotel that worked the hardest to accommodate our toddler but was also the hotel where M was the most out of place, so to speak. It cost us 35,000 IHG points per night. We’ll start with the negative.

Bad weather made Berchtesgaden tough to entertain Little M

Like I wrote before, we were hit by a spat of terrible weather in Berchtesgaden. That really hurt because we weren’t able to walk any hiking trails with M – a real shame because the Intercontinental has a free BOB Revolution that you can borrow for free! There was a playground but it was kind of on the bottom of a hill with no stairs so M had to be carried down there – kind of weird.

Taking shelter in the playground structure

But what the weather really meant was that we were confined to the inside of the hotel the whole time – and the Intercontinental was a quiet, peaceful place so we kind of didn’t want her running around screaming. The only restaurant in the hotel is also pretty fancy. To their credit, they had a kids menu and crayons and things like that, but it just wasn’t the ideal environment to be eating dinner with a toddler (especially because we had to eat inside). In terms of location, it’s a 15-20 minute drive down or up the mountain to get to any civilization, which is definitely much less convenient than being able to walk into town.

"Why couldn't the weather have been like this for longer than two hours!?" — “Why couldn’t the weather have been like this for longer than two hours!?”

Now, to the good stuff. I was really impressed with the amenities the Intercontinental Berchtesgaden provided M with. First, she was given her own bath soap and lotion. Next, she was given a nice pack and play, Euro style, complete with a blanket and pillow. But perhaps the cutest amenity I have seen ever were the little bathrobe and little slippers! We didn’t keep the bathrobe (not sure if that was even an option) but we did take the slippers home!

Still a little too big... — Still a little too big…

Probably the best activity at the hotel for a toddler is the pool. There are two pools, an indoor and an outdoor pool. The outdoor pool is actually warmer, think they have the heat up more on that one. Anyway, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves – the outdoor pool is pretty nice.

Anyway, I give the Intercontinental Berchestgaden credit for trying to cater to families with young children. I think if the weather had been better our experience might have been different, but you definitely don’t want to be marooned there with a toddler in bad weather. Though I guess when would you want that situation ever?

Hilton Vienna Plaza

In terms of location, the Hilton Vienna Plaza is on the outskirts of town (on the ring), but still just a fifteen minute walk to where all the action is. It’s in a nice, quiet location that’s busier during the week since it’s more towards the business-y area (as far as I could tell).

The hotel is still under renovation so there are only two floors of rooms open. Our room was spacious and gave M enough room to run around. Probably the best part was having executive lounge access as a HHonors Gold member – there were snacks at happy hour which were useful for tiding M and ourselves over before dinner. There was no bathtub so that made things tough – if your child can’t take showers yet that’s something to bear in mind.

If you give your kids candy, the executive lounge is pretty useful

Other than that, I don’t think there’s anything too special to write about the Hilton Vienna Plaza toddler wise – it was perfectly passable though not spectacular. Hilton definitely had the most attentive staff – the staff at the executive lounge knew me by name (from e-mail correspondence before we arrived) and was the most friendly and welcoming.

Final Thoughts

I realize this isn’t the most thrilling post, but hopefully it’s been useful to anyone who will be traveling to Vienna, Salzburg, or Berchtesgaden with young children. We had a blast and so did Little M!

Other Posts in this Series

Introduction

Final Preparations for the Little One

Lufthansa First Class with a Toddler

Slow Days with a Sick Toddler

Sightseeing in and around Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Observations After a Week in Germany

Climbing to AlpspiX and Neuschwanstein Castle

Zugspitze and Mittenwald

Sound of Music Bike Tour in Salzburg

Lazy Sunday in Salzburg – not

Rainy Days in Berchtesgaden

Visiting Museums and Biking in Vienna

Food in Germany and Austria

Rating the Toddler Friendliness of Our Hotels

Lufthansa First Class Terminal – Good for Toddlers?

Aug 10 2014

Searching and Booking Garuda Airlines Award Flights within Asia

Garuda joining Skyteam means more options

Garuda Airlines recently joined Skyteam and thus is now a new travel partner for big mileage programs like Delta and Air France. I wasn’t planning on doing too much research on the matter but then realized it would be useful for clients trying to get around Asia. It just so happened that I was working with someone trying to go to Bali – we ended up booking Cathay First to Hong Kong, then Garuda from Hong Kong to Bali to Tokyo, and then United returning from Tokyo. Here’s what I found out about Garuda.

Searching for Award Space

You can’t use delta.com to search for Garuda award space (and why would you want to), so the best thing to do is to search Air France/KLM’s Flying Blue website. If you don’t have an account you can sign up for Air France here or for KLM here; they’re essentially the same program.

Nothing too earth shattering about Flying Blue's award search — Nothing too earth shattering about Flying Blue’s award search

After that searching for award space is pretty straightforward, just navigate to “Book an Award Ticket” or “Book a Flight with Miles” (it depends what portion of the website you’re at but you can find it!). Then it’s just a matter of searching each segment as a one way and knowing where Garuda flies to/from. Remember, Wikipedia is your best source for the latter information.

One of Garuda’s hubs is Denpassar in Bali (DPS). Looking at Wikipedia, they fly direct to DPS from both Hong Kong and Tokyo, exactly what we were looking for. To search for the award space, I did two simple one way searches using the Flying Blue website. Flying Blue creates a nice calendar of all the award space available.

Since Garuda is a partner airline, if it’s bookable on Flying Blue (and thus on the calendar) then it’s bookable with Delta (or any other Skyteam partner). There was tons of business class award space for two (but not economy strangely enough) on both HKG-DPS and DPS-NRT throughout the entire month of August. Remember, once you find flights you want the best practice is to write the flight number, time, and date down. Arm yourself with that information before you book.

Deciding whether to use Delta or Air France

My client had the luxury of having a very diverse portfolio of points and miles. He had enough miles in Delta to cover the trip and enough Membership Rewards points to transfer to Air France. Since Delta allows open jaws, HKG-DPS-NRT is a legal routing. I called Delta and the itinerary priced out to 50,000 miles and about $45 in taxes and fees per person (and remember, no one way awards until 2015). Meanwhile, Air France wanted to charge 75,000 miles and ~$220 in taxes and fees per person. Both prices were for the same business class seats. This is the very definition of a “no brainer”, and a reminder that having a diversified points portfolio opens up these kinds of opportunities.

These business class seats look pretty nice but aren't on all of Garuda's flights — These business class seats look pretty nice but aren’t on all of Garuda’s flights

Booking the Garuda Award

If you want to use Air France/KLM’s Flying Blue, you should just be able to book the award online, although it’s worth noting I received errors every time I tried to do this. My hypothesis is because I didn’t have enough miles in the account but I’m not sure. You could always call, but that’ll add to your fees.

With Delta, you must call to book this award since the space is not searchable or bookable online. I asked the agent to waive the phone fee due to that very fact and was successful. You can call Delta’s main number at 1-800-323-2323. Wow for the first time I just realized how easy that is to memorize! I digress…

Final Thoughts

Garuda Indonesia is a useful addition to Skyteam since it now allows you to book intra-Asia flights. Search for award space on Air France but try to book through Delta to avoid high taxes and surcharges. Of course if you are connecting them to an award from North America you can use Garuda to get you where you want to go (Skyteam now has another option to Bali that has tons of award space). Those Skymiles you have lying around just found another use!

Aug 07 2014

Bavarian Summer: Food in Germany and Austria

It has now come time for me to write the “food post.” I was considering not writing one, but some loyal readers (read: 2) requested it and who am I to turn them down!? Here are some of the types of foods we ate – and I’ve made note to highlight some of our most memorable culinary experiences as well.

Pretzels, Beer, and Wine

Let’s start out with some of the lighter stuff. Germany is home to many, many pretzels. You can find them on every street corner, every pub, even in some restaurants. I would not say that the pretzels are amazing – but they are solid and I averaged one per day during our time in Germany (they weren’t as readily available in Austria).

Obviously Germany is pretty famous for their beer. While we weren’t visiting during Oktoberfest or anything like that, beer was everywhere and was a staple of almost every meal. Unfortunately, I don’t know too much about beer, my buddy over at A Pint Half Full would be able to do a much better analysis of what I drank. I stuck mostly to the hefeweizens or “weissbiers” – wheat based stuff.

I also bought a few bottles of monk beer – I guess back in the day there was a lot of monastery brewing. I wasn’t too impressed with those.

Besides pretzels there are lots of other baked goods to be had

In Austria we had a lot more wine than beer. Austria is a major produce of Gruner Veltliner, a type of white grape – we drank that almost exclusively. It’s nothing super complicated or refined, but a great wine to drink with a meal. I wish I could describe it but I’m not wired like that – but from Wikipedia: “Master of Wine Jancis Robinson notes that Grüner Veltliner is usually produced dry with spicy, peppery notes. It is often full-bodied and with age can take on aromas and flavors similar to white Burgundies.” So there you have it!

Main Courses

There were some pretty staple dishes that we had over and over again, so I just thought I’d talk about them here.

I, um, ate a significant number of these

Sausages and Wursts

These are ubiquitous. M loved them after we peeled off the skin so we ate some type of sausage almost every single day. There are small wursts, thick wursts, wursts filled with cheese, spicy ones – if you can think of it – it probably exists. In Germany the bratwursts were often served with a dollop of mustard on the side and french fries, so you know I liked it. My recommendation – if you eat meat just try them all until you get sick of them – and just don’t think too much about how the sausage is made.

Kasekrainer, Vienna's version of a cheese dog — Kasekrainer, Vienna’s version of a cheese dog

A special shout out to the Kasekrainer, a special type of sausage cooked with cubes of cheese inside of it. So it’s like a cheese dog, except the cheese is INSIDE. Crazy.

Hearty Food

A lot of Bavarian food consisted of hearty meats – stewed beef, roasted duck, etc. It was like people just hunted wild animals and cooked them for dinner. Well, it felt like that it least. A lot of the dishes came with thick brown gravies and large potato balls. I thought I’d like the potato balls more but they were a bit too sticky and chewy for my liking.

Roast duck with the standard potato dumplings

Another big thing in Bavaria is the Schweinshaxe, or pork knuckle. This thing looks crazy and generally comes with a gigantic knife stabbed into it. I’m not sure if we ordered it at the wrong places, but I found that it generally looked better than it tastes (often too salty and I am an American when it comes to how salty I like my food). The fried skin was also too tough for my liking (I’m more used to fried duck or pork skin). Still, I think if you’re in Bavaria you have to try this.

The pork knuckle is not for the faint of heart

Vegetables, as always in Europe, seemed a bit hard to come by – though the salads in Germany and Austria seemed more like “American” salads. It feels like whenever we order salad in Italy we get like pasta salad with only a tiny bit of vegetables or something. We finally started ordering roasted vegetables with like every meal because we were getting sick of potato based starches.

Bavaria also featured a lot of great soups – mainly beef broths and consommes with large dumplings inside of them. In Austria, a lot of these times these soups would come with “pancakes”, strips of egg that are kind of like thick crepes. Apparently back in the day they’d take leftover dessert crepes and throw them in the soup the next day. Here’s a recipe if you’re interested – that stuff was GOOD.

Schnitzel

Schnitzels deserve their own category – as I understand it, schnitzel basically means any meat that you pound thin and deep fry. Again, if you’re not vegetarian – how could you go wrong with this? There were tons of versions of this.

Wienerschnitzel, the classic, is veal that has been pounded thin and deep fried. I find that it tastes tougher than veal normally does, which makes me question why they even need to use veal in the first place (I generally don’t eat veal).

Deep fried meat and potatoes - Bavaria in a picture — Deep fried meat and potatoes – Bavaria in a picture

Schweineschnitzel is pork – think chicken fried chicken but with pork instead. I generally preferred that.

The best wienerschnitzel we had was in Vienna in a place called Plachutta’s. In fact, that was one of the best meals we had period along with Gastof zum Neuhaus in Berchtesgaden.

You can get this stuff anywhere and everywhere

Tafelspitz

The most unique thing we had to eat was Tafelspitz which is considered to be the national dish of Austria which we also had Plachutta’s. It was a pretty cool production and worth going into detail.

Tafelspitz is essentially boiled beef – but it’s boiled for a long time along with the bone marrow. The soup absorbs a lot of the flavors. You start your meal by drinking the soup. You can ask for a bowl with nothing in it, with pancake, or with Austrian dumplings.

The beef is presented on your plate after you finish the soup

After you finish drinking the soup, you put the bowl aside indicating to your server that you are ready for the next course. They then come and take the meat and bone marrow out of the bowl and plate it for you so that you can eat it. There are plenty of vegetables in the broth as well.

An up close look at the potatoes, my favorite part (are you surprised?)

Overall, Tafelspitz is a huge meal and we all pitched in to help Jess finish it. It looked amazing though and I wish we had gotten to order it more than once on our trip. I only seem to recall seeing it on the menu in Vienna, though.

Dessert

Vienna is pretty serious about their coffee

Obviously, we ate a lot of gelato. I was surprised out how good the gelato was out there, there are a lot of stalls run by Italian immigrants and their stuff is legit. I’ve already shown tons of gelato pictures throughout the rest of this trip report so I’ll hold off on too many here.

Jess - "Best strudel ever" — Jess – “Best strudel ever”

Jess is the dessert expert, and she was constantly saying that she hadn’t realized how seriously Germans and Austrians take their desserts. We had a ton of cake and apple strudel in Bavaria – though we did not once have a Black Forest cake. Guess we’ll have to hit up western Germany for that someday. Vienna took desserts to the next level – it almost felt like Paris with the number of cafes lining the streets serving dessert.

Iced Chocolate at Cafe Tomaselli (where Mozart supposedly bought chocolate)

Of particular note was Cafe Tomaselli in Salzburg and Demel in Vienna. We had some great ice cream at the former and an amazing chocolate torte at the latter.

Ritter Sport — 59 cents for each Ritter. Still can’t get over it!

Finally, you can’t leave Germany without having some chocolate. From the Lufthansa first class cabin to the supermarket, chocolate is everywhere. We bought 12+ Ritter Sports. That’s probably all I should say about that.

Vienna Film Festival

My favorite eating experience was at Vienna’s Film Festival. Apparently they just set up a giant screen in front of the Rathaus (city hall) where people can watch movies at night for like a month in the summer. Around it is what I would describe as a giant outdoor food court. It’s like you’re at the mall, but outside. Restaurants from all over Vienna set up booths – there’s a ton of variety and even a Magnum Ice Cream store! What!?

The atmosphere around the film festival is live

There were a ton of people there every night – tourists, locals, everybody basically. The food was great, the atmosphere was great, it just was pretty difficult to find a seat. You can however move to the benches in the nearby park. There are people coming around to grab your plates when you are done and things like that so you don’t even need to bus your own trays. If you are good at babysitting tables and don’t mind people hovering around you, I highly recommend checking out the Film Festival if you’re in Vienna in the summer. Even if you don’t like that – go anyway – there’s always takeout.

No idea what kind of fish these were but they were great

Final Thoughts

To be honest, I wasn’t really all that excited about the food options in Germany. I much prefer Italian pasta and pizza, or so I thought (that stuff is readily available all over Bavaria if you’re interested). I was actually impressed with what Germany had to offer food wise – there were some unique dishes that I really enjoyed eating. I wouldn’t say it’s a culinary wonderland or anything, but if you like hearty, wholesome food – Germany and Austria have your number.