Home at Last!

It was not our intention at all to skip blogging about the end of our travels. Sorry for the delay.

After a couple more days in the Stuttgart area, we headed out of town on our way to Munich, where Jochen, Susanne, Jeremy and I planned to meet up with some friends from our time in New Zealand - a little Kiwi reunion! We stopped at Lake Constance for the night to enjoy beers and dinner with Jochen's cousin. The lake touches Switzerland and is close to Austria, so we were able to add two more countries to our list of "Places We Have Been".

Susanne and I enjoyed wine schorles (wine and sparkling water) and the boys enjoyed beers while we ate our fair share of sausages, pretzels and other delicious food. We took a gondola to the highest point in Germany, Zugspitze which is 2962 meters high. It was cold up top, but the views were great for a few minutes, before the clouds rolled in. We also stopped to see Neuschwanstein, the castle that Cinderella's castle is modeled after. Once in Munich we met up with Mascha, Jeroen, Stuart, Sander, and Mirjam for more food and lots of visits to the famous beer gardens.

We flew back to Boston on Sunday the 17th, gathered our overstuffed bags and headed through customs. We saw Jeremy's mom waiting for us with a huge welcome home sign. What we didn't notice immediately was that we had 15 other friends and family members waiting for us cheering and waving flags. It was a great, unexpected welcome home! We were whisked off to a local bar for some more drinks to wrap up our amazing adventure.

It really is great to be home. We had an awesome time traveling and hope we get to explore some more of the world someday soon. For now though, it's back to the real world!