Cambodian Ferrari

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The Sagrada Familia from a distance.

A Little History

The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família is better known by its familiar name: the Sagrada Familia.  Construction the on basilica began in 1883.  The principle visionary behind the project was none other that local Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi (25 June 1852–10 June 1926).   Gaudi literally poured his soul into this project.  He labored 40+ years on the structure, which was only a quarter of the way to completion at his untimely demise.  The construction was plagued by work stoppage, lack of funding and a civil war.  The Basilica continues to be a work in progress as the cranes in the photo above reflect.

Gaudi is interred in the crypt of the Sagrada Familia.  His grave stone reads:

Antonius Gaudí Cornet. Reusensis. Annos natus LXXIV, vitae exemplaris vir, eximiusque artifex, mirabilis operis hujus, templi auctor, pie obiit Barcinone die X Junii MCMXXVI, hinc cineres tanti hominis, resurrectionem mortuorum expectant.

The life of an exemplary man, exquisite  designer of this wonderful work, the author, died piously in Barcelona on 10 June 1926, from the ashes of such a man, the resurrection of the dead are waiting.

The Beauty

The capstone of our visit to the wonderful Spanish city of Barcelona was the Sagrada Familia.   Walking into the main nave of the Basilica is a spiritual experience regardless of which direction your faith points you.  The inside of the church is best experienced on one of those days when the Spanish sunshine bathes Barcelona.  It’s light filled nave fills the huge room with warmth and glow.  Towering columns draw the eye skyward.  Beautiful stained glass shower the entire nave with warm light in a myriad of colors.

Towering columns of the interior of the Basilica.

The Beast

With the good there is always the bad.  The exterior of the basilica is nicknamed the bird’s nest.  It is plastered with every biblical illustration imaginable.  Way over done in our uneducated and untrained eyes.  It feels like a project that lacked a good friend to say, “ok…that’s good.  Time to move on.”  Every inch of the exterior is covered, in some areas, there are three and four levels of figurines.  Candidly the longer you look at it, the more you feel it went over the top leaning more kitsch than moderiste.

George Orwell thought it to be one of the dreadful buildings he had ever seen and was said to have “wondered why the Anarchists hadn’t wrecked it in the Civil War”.

Picasso also had some choice words for the design that are not fit for print.

What are your thoughts?  Too much?

Too much?

Opening Hours and Getting There

The basilica is open to the public from 9am till 9pm.  Please visit the basilica’s website to get the latest details on opening hours.

Getting there:

By metro:

L5 and L2 Sagrada Familia

By bus:

19, 33, 34, 43, 44, 50, 51, B20 and B24

The post Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia: The Beauty Lies Within appeared first on 1000 Places to Fight Before you Die.

Traveling is an addiction!  So says our latest featured traveling couple Laura and Lance of http://www.traveladdicts.net.  We totally agree!  This week’s installment of 7 questions with a traveling couple, are two wanderers that have found a way to make couple travel work for them.  What impresses us most about Lance and Laura’s story is that like us, they started wandering a couple locally.  You don’t need to start with some huge international adventure.  Get in a car and go explore together.  Ok…without further ado… lets get to know these two:

Blog:  Travel Addicts

https://twitter.com/TravelerAddicts

https://www.facebook.com/TravelerAddicts

http://pinterest.com/traveleraddicts/

First off, tell us a little about the two of you.  How did you meet?  How long have you been blogging?

Lance and Laura of Travel Addicts.net

In 1999, Laura moved from Texas to New York for college, and Lance moved there from Colorado just after graduating from college.     We met on an October night at a concert in the city and went for ice cream after the show, and that was that.  We were broke, so for several years, all our travel was in the United States—Washington, D.C., Boston, Dallas, Denver, Maine, and San Francisco.  For our wedding, all our guests would have to travel, so we decided to have a destination wedding in the Bahamas.  Since then (2006) we’ve been in full travel mode while working to support our travel habit. We’ve been writing Travel Addicts since 2008.

She Said: My sister. We have a ridiculous amount of fun together. Plus, she’s six years younger and hasn’t had as many opportunities to travel (yet), so it’s really cool to see her experience certain things for the first time. There’s nothing like travel to blow your world right open, and watching that happen for someone else is amazing. Our Egypt trip was a family trip, and for months leading up to it she was trying to prepare herself for the experience. She just kept saying, “You don’t understand—I’m going to Africa.”

He Said:   Laura’s sister.  (But, Anthony Bourdain would be a close second – he’s done amazing things and I appreciate his snarky wit and attitude.)

3) What has been your favorite destination in your wanderings?

He said:  In our experience, there are things we absolutely love about every place we’ve ever been. But, if I had to pick only one place, I’d say Italy.  It is a place I could keep going back to over and over and over again.  It has a rich history, an amazing culinary tradition and some of the best wine on the planet.

She said: Italy is hands down my favorite, but Egypt probably had the biggest impact on me.

4)  Lance, sounds like you parents took you to all 50 states before you graduated high school!  Holy cow!  Is that your inspiration to travel now?  Why is it important that parents travel with their children?

He said:   My parents strongly believed in guiding my education with real-world experiences. For example, when I studied the Civil War, they took me nearly 3,000 miles (by car) to see the battlefields and learn about the war in person.  While I was not home schooled, my most important educational learnings were on those trips. My mother made sure I made it to every state by the time I graduated high school (it happened by 8th grade). Since then, I’ve visited every one of the lower 48 at least twice. Travel is a way for parents to connect with their kids on a whole different level and teach them things that no school could ever provide. Using travel as educational enrichment is something I’m really passionate about.

5)  We understand that you guys visited Turkey.  It is one of our fave destinations.  Tell us, what was your honest impressions?

He said:  I hadn’t really known what to expect with Turkey. It was not our first Islamic country (we’d been UAE, Oman, Morocco and Egypt previously), but it was our most memorable for the beautiful mosques. The natural beauty of Cappadocia was the highlight of the trip. Taking a hot air balloon ride over the region is one of the greatest bucket list achievements. But, on the downside, I nicknamed Turkey as The Land of Bland – the food was good and flavorful, but I like a lot of spice and I found it lacking.

She said: I didn’t really know what to expect either. It’s not like when you say, “I’m going to Paris,” and immediately have visions of the Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Elysees and WINE. But I loved it—the remarkable history of the land and the buildings (particularly in Istanbul), the beautiful tile work, the drama of the antique pool at Pamukkale, the stunning landscape of Cappadocia. There’s so much we didn’t get to see, so I really hope we have the chance to go back.

She said: I really don’t think I can follow that…

1000Fights:  Um…..yuck.

He said:  Laura is a saint.  Our biggest travel disagreements always seem to occur when I’m driving in a foreign country.  There can be times when it is very stressful – you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t speak the language, can’t read the street signs.  The biggest disagreement was in France – we were driving from Dinan to Paris, and stopping in Chartres.  I was pulling out of the parking garage and stalled it on a really steep incline, cars were honking at me, and we didn’t know where we were going.  Our patience was short and we started to get on each other’s nerves.  But we got through it – and every trip since with a smile on our face.

A huge thanks to our friends Laura and Lance!  Give their blog a look-see: http://www.traveladdicts.net/

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I Amsterdam. I am also tired because I just stepped off a 10 hour flight.

Layovers are real time wasters or they can be an opportunity to see a city on a time limit. You choose.

The Fighting Couple likes to purposefully plan layovers to maximize seeing and doing.  Our favorite layover spot is Amsterdam.    Most destinations offer cheap flights to Amsterdam.  Flying in and out of Schiphol International Airport makes it easy to see the sites of one of the world’s most dynamic cities. 1000 Fights has laid Amsterdam two ways: quick and overnight stay.

Quickie: Minimum time 5 hours (1 hour to get too and from destination combined, 3 hour touring, 1 hour to wait at the airport)

Once you fly into Amsterdam, Schiphol has lockers you can store your luggage. So if you are a “carry-on” everything you own traveler, it’s lame to carry everything around town. Store your stuff in a locker and take just the necessities for the day. There are storage lockers throughout Schiphol. It will cost you a minimum of 6 euros for a small locker and up to 11.50 euros for a large locker for 24 hours.

The front of the Anne Frank Musuem and House and the line to get into it.

Next purchase tickets at the train station, Schiphol Plaza, which is in the airport. It’s a 15 minute ride into Amsterdam. Once you get to the city, Amsterdam has a fluid bus system. Pay attention to how long it took you to get there and the train table to get back. While an Amsterdam quickie is exciting, it wouldn’t be fun to miss your flight.

On our first Amsterdam quickie, we had just five hours. We arrived in Amsterdam at 8 a.m. and moved through the airport and train to get to the Anne Frank Museum and House. The Museum is a 20 minute walk from Central Station, but we chose to take a bus to get us closer. We found the Museum just as it opened at 9 a.m. and waited in line to get in. Plan on a line. It’s one of Amsterdam’s most popular museums. We advise getting online tickets in advance. Having read Anne’s diary multiple times, seeing the bookcase covering the stairway and Anne’s room plastered with magazine pictures like it was 70 years ago was gut-wrenching. After walking through the House, the museum concludes with her diary. If you aren’t weeping by the time you leave, you have no heart. For more information on the Museum, see the excellent website: http://www.annefrank.org/en/.

After the Museum, head back to the train station and catch your flight to your next destination. You’ll feel like you’ve seen and done something meaningful other than just biding your time in the airport.

Overnight Stay:

Beautiful inlaid fireplace from the Willet-Holtuysen House.

If you have less than 24 hours to stay in Amsterdam, use your time wisely. Go through the same drill as before, store your luggage, take the train, and get started on seeing the city! 1000Fights likes to find a site that is uniquely interesting to us. In Paris, it’s LaFayette’s grave. In Amsterdam, it’s the Willet-Holthuysen Canal House Museum. Our last name is uncommon so when we see a name similar to it, we jump at the chance to learn more. The Willet-Holthuysen House provides visitors the opportunity to step back in time when elegance and wealth joined to create homes that were more like museums than living quarters.

Abraham Willet and his wife, Louisa Willet-Holthuysen, were collectors of everything fine and fabulous and the home is littered with art, silver, china, and sculpture and smothered in fine silks, marble, and furnishings. The ground behind the house is a mini-Versailles and the home reflects the French aristocratic style. The museum’s website gives visitors a sneak peak of all the beautiful furnishings, but a visit inside is much better than pictures. We liked the museum because it wasn’t crowded and we felt a special connection to the place.

Mike in front of the Willets gardens. Our home garden in Idaho look just like this. Not.

A five minute walk from the Willets-Holthusysen house is the Museum of Bags and Purses. Yes, there is an entire museum dedicated to my first love: handbags. It’s the largest museum in the world of purses. Housed in a 1666 canal house, the museum boasts more than 4,000 items dating back to the Middle Ages. You’ll see the delicate designs made with silk, silver and ivory.

Luci couldn’t be happier to visit the world’s largest collection of handbags!

There are handbags from the 17^th century and as recent as 2007 made by Alexander McQueen, Prada, and my favorite the “Cupcake Bag” featured in Sex and the City Movie designed by Judith Leiber. The museum combines art and fashion. You’ll leave wanting several of the handbags. Save up ladies! Just buy some postcards instead to show your friends.

Finish your layover with a good meal. We highly recommend the Greetje.  You’ll be back eating airport food the next day.  Hey, you may even want to forget the layover and take a Amsterdam city break.

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Day One Morning:  Lay of the Land

Our first recommendation upon arrival is to get a quick feel for the city.  We typically recommend the hop on and hop off buses when we see a city for the first time.  We ran into a problem with this in Vienna.  All of Vienna looks the same.   There is no Eiffel tower, No arc de Triumph to help with memory points.   We found a great solution on our last trip to Vienna:

Instead of the bus, we recommend an Iphone app called Gretl Goes.  Using Gretl’s handy app you can hone in on a quick walking tour that gives you a much deeper intro into what you will be seeing.  Vienna is one of the easiest cities to traverse on foot.  The metro and bus system is really second to none.  Armed with the maps and insights of this handy app, you will become a Vienna pro in no time.

Are you into WWII?  Take her WWII walking tour and hit the high points in roughly 3 hours.   (We are begging Gretl to make a WWI tour!)

If you are a foodie, skip to the gourmet walking tour.  It includes visits to the Kipfelhaus the birthplace of the Croissant, a pop in at the Sacher café and what food tour would be complete without a visit to the Naschmarket.  The foodie tour ends in our fave gelato joint in all of Austria, Zanoni & Zanoni.  Grab some lunch in a café and your gelato and get moving!  We only have two days!

Day One Afternoon: Schonbrunn Palace

Once you have your bearings, lets dive into the must see of Vienna.  Your afternoon will be spent at the imperial summer residence: Schönbrunn Palace.   Schonbrunn ranks right up there with Versailles, Fountianbleau and Dolamache.  It is simply stunning and thus a must see for any visit to Vienna.   The humble abode boasts 1,440 rooms!  You could easily spend two days seeing the mansion and strolling the gardens.  A complete afternoon will offer you the highlights and are a great primer on the Hapsburg Dynasty and a little Austrian history.  We recommend that you take the helpful audio guided tour of inside the palace followed by some wandering in the parks.

Day One Dinner: Griechenbeisl (The Greek Inn)

Dinner for your first night in Vienna will be at an establishment that opened in 1447!  America hadn’t been discovered by the western world yet!  The Griechenbeisl caters to tourist for the most part now, but the food is actually really good.  On the evening we dined there a piano player churned out some great tunes and the wait staff were very attentive.  We highly recommend the filet of beef with green beans.   The prices are affordable and the portions sizable.

Day Two Morning: Ponies

Since you are only in Vienna for short time, we recommend seeing things that are uniquely Viennese.  The Spanish Riding School fits that bill.  Seeing an evening performance is quite expensive for those of us that are “Euro-challenged”.  A much more affordable option is viewing the practice session held in the morning.  It is open to the general public for a reasonable fee, check their website for specifics.  We do recommend that you get there early.  The early birds get the best seats. http://www.srs.at/en/  Hit the gift store on the way out and get your brood some Spanish Riding School swag.

The Imperial Treasury

Just down the road from the stables is the Imperial Treasury.  This impressive collection of state offers the highlights of both the Hapsburg and the Holy Roman Empires.    Highlights of the museum include:  the crown of the Holy Roman Empire,  the Holy Grail (yes, it could be that one), as well as Napoleon II’s crib.  There are also vestments of royalty, gaudy jewel encrusted gloves, and historical arms and armaments.  We would skip visiting the royal apartment tour.  The Schönbrunn Palace tour you took yesterday is better organized and frankly more impressive.  Keep moving!

Day Two Afternoon: Zentralfriedhof

For your last afternoon in Vienna, we recommend that you visit some of Vienna’s best and well know composers and musicians.  No, we are not sending you to a concert.  We are sending you to their final resting place.  This last stop is a bit morbid, but for us it was one of the most interesting stops in Vienna:  the Vienna Central Cemetery.  We did an entire post about our visit there:  Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof: the Intersection of Beauty and Remembrance.  Visiting the central cemetery is a lesson is history as well as a Viennese tradition.

Day Two Dinner: Italian?

This recommendation is going to sound a little strange…but hear us out.  We are going to send you to a Italian Trattoria in Vienna.  The Trattoria Da Angelo is a wonderful little (there are only a handful of tables) place just behind St. Stephens Cathedral.  The fare is southern Italian with really good seafood dishes.  The scampi dish is to die for!    The best part is that it is owned by a great couple!

Enjoy your visit to Vienna!

Sicheres Reisen!

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One of the greatest pieces of advice my beloved grandmother, (who loved to travel by the way), gave to me was to marry a girl that you can sit across the breakfast table with for the rest of your life.   Somehow I followed this wise advice and found just that person.  Travel definitely played a role in why I asked Luci to marry me.  Travel makes you smart, interesting and sexy!  So what makes a traveling girl so great?

Are you a traveling girl….or love one?  Give us a follow on Facebook.

Smart Women Travel

The most dynamic and interesting women I have met in my life have been travelers.  Call me crazy, but travel really makes people interesting.  One great example is the Evelyn Hannon, the Jouneywoman.  If you haven’t checked out her blog, you must.  She continues to criss-cross the globe in search of adventure and fulfillment.  I hope she doesn’t kill me for saying this,  while she is advancing in years, it hasn’t stopped her from her mission to explore and discover.  Now she supports and encourages other women to follow in her footsteps.  What a great example.

Smart women travel.  One attribute that comes shining through with traveling women is their ability to delay gratification.  They are willing to scrimp and save for 6 months to spend two weeks in the Tuscan country side.  Sacrifice is a critical life lesson for relationships.  It is a cold hard fact: the best things in life take time and effort.  As poor newlyweds putting ourselves through college, we had to be creative in our travel destinations.  We both did internships in areas that had interesting places to discover.  Every weekend we would map out where we wanted to explore next ….on one tank of gas.  Traveling women find a way to make it work because discovery is so important to them.

Travelers tend to be readers.  Another appealing aspect of finding yourself a traveling girl is they tend to be well read.  As many of you loyal Fighting Couple readers know, we do extensive trip prep.  This involves reading about interesting angles of our trip.    Yes, my traveling girl reads Frommers and Rick Steves.  But she also reads “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” before we visit Savannah, GA or “1453″ about the fall of Constantinople before visiting Istanbul.  The potent combination of reading and exploring make living exhilarating.

Traveling Girls are Dreamers and Doers

The travel industry has marketing the dream down pat.  You are bombarded by these high gloss destination magazines of white sandy beaches and cool breezes blowing the palm trees.  They offer the eyes of the beholder an escape and a dream.  The thing about traveling women is, they see these dreams…then they make them happen for themselves.   One of the quirky things about Luci is that she wants a destination to look just like the dream.  We have a good laugh occasionally when we both say…this doesn’t look like the brochure.  On the other hand, we have visited places that we will never blog about because they are just that pristine and amazing and we want them to stay that way.  Traveling women make their own dreams come true.  For those of us that are lucky enough to love these women, we are invited along for the ride.

Traveling Women are Selfish?

Traveling women are intriguing to me.  While family is undoubtedly important to these wander lusters, they elect to leave home and family behind occasionally to focus on their own self-improvement.  Many mistakenly view this as selfishness.  Dive a little deeper and you see a person investing in themselves to be a better mother, wife, sister or friend.    How is this selfish?  Reaching out, and understanding the world around you is the exact opposite of self-focus.  Taking the education that travel can dish out: appreciating beauty, understanding diversity, experiencing first hand real poverty, making friends, learning the difference between needs and wants are all lessons learned on the road.  In turn these lessons are taught to our children.  How much more powerful is a lesson on valuing diversity to a child coming from a person that has visited the Soweto or Auschwitz?  Likewise a lesson on poverty having slept in a grass hut in Swaziland?

Travel is Hard

Traveling women know how to do hard things.  I am not naive enough to believe that  intercontinental travel is for everyone.  It is certainly not.   It is exhausting, it can be expensive, and certainly takes a lot time.  Travel at times means learning a new language, culture and adjusting to unfamiliar cuisine.  It means dealing with ambiguous situations.  The dangers of travel are real and common.  One of the dividends of travel is that it makes you stronger and helps you to exercise common sense and problem solving. How are we going to find the right train to Fontainebleau or how am I going to find my wife I left at the Louvre because I was hungry?  As you face a challenge, meet it head on and achieve your intended goal, you become resilient.  Would we have been bitten by leaches staying home and working in our cubicle?  Not likely.  Travel can be fraught with disappointment and difficulty.  At the same time there is something reassuring about getting yourself lost and working your way out of the situation.

Where Do You Find Them?

The travel blogging world is dominated by women!   It really is.  Us guys are way too slow to value the education that can come from leaving the home port and discovering the globe.  Maybe we do travel but, we just don’t write about it.  Traveling women are easy to spot.  They are constantly posting pictures of food and interesting road signs on their social media sites.  Pinterest pages of “traveling girls” are cram packed with green Peruvian jungles, rolling Tuscan vineyards and Irish blessing memes.  Traveling girls have a twinkle in their eye when they talk about the next road trip they are planning.  Guys, go get them!

Candidly, finding a traveling girl has changed my life for the better.  Regardless if we are in remote Africa or taking  holidays to New York  as we explore together, I continue to be impressed with my bride’s passion for the new and unknown.  She chooses the path less traveled, and that has made all the difference for us.

The post Why I Love a Traveling Girl appeared first on 1000 Places to Fight Before you Die.

Lets begin our tour of the Zentralfriedhof!

The Dr. Karl Lueger Gedächtniskirche

The Eye

Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder.  Once you enter the main gate, what a beauty to behold!  The cemetery is in a park like setting with 2.5 square kms of manicured fields of grass, flowers and shrubbery.  To help you find your way around, the entire cemetery is divided up into sectors.  There are helpful free maps of the sectors at the main gate of entry.  Lanes, sections, and paths are marked clearly, so finding the headstone you are seeking is fairly simple.  Paved and gravel lined paths take you to different sectors within the cemetery.  Our visit was in early spring, walks were free of snow.

Our visit to the Zentralfriedhof held a surprising first for us.  At the heart of the cemetery is the Dr. Karl Lueger Church.   This wonderful shrine, built on the eve of WWI in 1910, is designed in the Art Deco style.  Trust us, we have been in a number of churches of all shapes and sizes, but this one is truly unique. We had never stepped foot into an art deco church or cathedral.  As you enter the nave your eyes are drawn up by the stately lines to the dramatic blue cupola.  The woodwork and glass inside the church is truly impressive.  The pews, alter and of course the glass are the result of master craftsmanship.

The Dr. Karl Lueger-Gedächtniskirche Dome

Unique Tombstones

As you stroll through the endless tombstones, you take in the beauty and the art of the stone work.  Each stone is a work of art.  The Viennese take great pride in the construction and adornment of their burial sites.  Some of the elaborate tributes include chubby cherubs,  weeping nymphs, and marble and granite of every flavor.   Noteworthy physicists and chemists have their marquee chemical compound or formulas engraved on their stones!

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Memorial

The Mind

While you are taking in the beauty of the Zentralfriedhof, hone in on some of the names chiseled into the stone.  At every turn in the cemetery, you come face to face with the names of artists, geniuses, villains, and poets.  Visiting the cemetery is a wonderful academic exercise!  At your feet lie some of the greatest minds in history.

Some of the notable permanent residents include:

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), composer

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), composer

Ludwig Boltzmann ( 1844-1906), Physicist. His famous equation on entropy is engraved on his memorial stone.

Richard Réti (1889–1929), chess grandmaster

Franz Schubert (1797–1828), composer

Johann Strauss (1825–1899), composer

Siegfried Marcus (1831–1898), invented the modern automobile

Kurt Waldheim (1918–2007), UN Secretary-General

Mercedes Jellinek (1889-1929), the inspiration for Mercedes Benz

Falco (1957–1998), rock singer

Mozart?-Nope.  There is a monument dedicated to him, but his grave is a bit of a mystery.

Did Mike really dance the Waltz on the ‘Waltz King’ Johann Strauss II’s grave?  YES!

Ludvig Von Beethoven

The Soul

For the Fighting Couple, visiting this sacred spot is incredibly inspirational.  One cannot but question your own existence by visiting places like these.  You see the finite dates on the stones: born on such and such and Died on this date.  There is a finality about reading these stones.  Then you reflect on how much they accomplished during their sojourn on earth. It is so refreshing to connect the generations to see the impact one person had on humanity, both positive and negative.   A visit such as this makes you question your own mission, asking questions: “What have I accomplished?  Why am I here?” While these difficult questions are challenging to answer, the process is inspiring.  You walk out of the cemetery with a renewed sense of purpose and perspective (and a hunger for some Viennese  sachertorte.)

One of the most intriguing things about the layout of the cemetery is that it includes sections dedicated to different religious, political and social groups.  It is a melting pot of human history.  Sections include: Protestant, Orthodox (Russian, Greek, Bulgarian and Coptic), Catholic as well as two Jewish sections.   There is also a sizable Muslim section.  Zentralfriedhof is also home to the first Buddhist cemetery in all of Europe.  Most recently, a section was dedicated to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons.  We were struck by inclusive nature of the cemetery.

How to get there:

With Vienna’s amazingly easy to use public transportation system, getting out to the cemetery is simple.  From the city center take the suburban railway (Vienna S-Bahn) to the Zentralfriedhof stop.  Just outside the main gates there are a number of flower vendors.

Click on map for larger view.

Address:

Gate 2 (Main entrance):  Simmeringer Hauptstraße 234 , 1110 Vienna

*You may drive into the cemetery with your car at a cost of EUR 2.20 (except on 1 November (All Saints Day) when no traffic is permitted).

The dedicated bus line for the cemetery (number 11) runs every half an hour from 9 am to 3:30 pm, and also at 4 pm and 4:30 pm on Saturdays.

Hours:

Click Here

Prices:

Entry to the cemetery is free, but you can rent an audio guide, by providing a valid photo ID and paying a rental fee of EUR 7.00 at the main gate.

Website:

www.friedhoefewien.at

We need to offer a hearty thanks to the Austrian Tourism Board for assisting with our visit.  Their help made the visit possible.  Danke!

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First off, here is how to get on the “boat” to follow the Cruising Couple:

Blog:  ACruisingCouple.com

Facebook: CruisingCouple

twitter: Dan and Casey

1) How many countries visited between the two of you?

We were both really lucky to have a lot of independent travel experiences before we tied the knot. I think the total count is somewhere around 22 countries on six continents (we’re still working on Antarctica) although we only visited about half of those together. We have a lot of travel plans lined up for the end of 2013 and beyond, so we’re excited to be adding to that tally soon! If you are following our blog, you’ll probably notice some dramatic changes in the fall!

2) If you had to travel with someone else besides your travel partner, who would it be?  (this person can be living, historical or mythical?.)

He said: Dumbledore. I mean, do I even need to explain this one? He can teleport in flashes of fire, eliminating any need for public transport. He is an epic dueler, so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting mugged. He can create objects out of thin air, so no need to sleep on the floor in an airport. Plus, a man who represents love and tolerance would probably have some pretty good insights on world travel.

She said: Nellie Bly. Not only did she travel around the world faster than anyone else before, she did it all as a solo-female traveler. When everyone else was telling her she couldn’t do it, Nellie Bly wasted no time in showing them wrong, And then she wrote about it in Around the World in Seventy-Two Days. She’s an inspiration to women, to world travelers, to writers, to anyone going against the status quo.  I can only imagine she’d be a pretty badass travel companion.

3)You guys lived for sometime in Taiwan.  What was the best and worst part of being expats?

He said: One of the best parts about living in Taiwan is that everything is easily accessible and convenient. It’s a country the size of our home state, North Carolina, which means going from one side of the island to the other can easily be done in a day. There’s also the High Speed Rail, which makes travel even faster. We love how every weekend we can get out, explore, and see something entirely new, while still making it to work Monday mornings. The hardest part about being an expat is the communication barrier. It can be quite frustrating when we can’t understand what’s going on or express ourselves the way we would like to. We manage, but after nearly two years of living here our Chinese should definitely be a lot better. Of course, I have only myself to blame, and Taiwanese are extremely accommodating when it comes to speaking English.

She said: They say it’s the people that make a place, and when it comes to Taiwan, I totally agree. Taiwanese are extremely hospitable, friendly, and generous. The locals really want you to feel comfortable in their home country, and will do whatever it takes to achieve that. For example, when you ask for directions, it’s not uncommon for strangers to hop on their scooters and drive you wherever you need to go. During a recent cycling trip, we popped a bike tire in the middle of nowhere. It took twenty people to help us get the predicament sorted out, but every Taiwanese person who saw us made it their personal mission to fix the situation. It really is amazing how genuinely generous people in Taiwan are.  Of course, not everything is a walk in the park. Taiwan isn’t really a country that specializes in cheese and wine, two of my favorite food groups. You can find them, but you’re going to have to pay a small fortune for the good stuff. I try to just tell myself it’s contributing to my diet plan…

4)  If you had to eat one last meal, what/ where would you eat?

He said: Maybe this is a cop out answer, but I’m going to say anything Casey made for dinner. She’s an amazing cook, even with our limited resources in Taiwan. As for where, anywhere with family and friends would be perfect.

 1000Fights: That is a cop out!  But we love it!

She said: Given my lamentations about the lack of cheese and wine in Taiwan, this shouldn’t really come as a surprise. I would definitely want my last meal to be an Italian feast in Tuscany. Last time I was in Italy I literally gained twenty pounds. I just cannot control myself when it comes to pasta and wine and coffee and gelato and risotto. Gosh I think I’m starting to drool just thinking about it.

5) Holy cow! You guys had quite the honeymoon! Do tell!

Our honeymoon is where A Cruising Couple had its humble beginning. We knew we would be moving abroad right after we were married, so we didn’t really need all the traditional ‘stuff’ most newlyweds receive. We also didn’t want to just go to an exotic location for a couple days and that be the end of it.

Instead, we spent 8 weeks traveling across America in our Volvo station wagon, totaling around 9000 miles through 25 states. Our wedding registry included hotels, restaurants, gas cards, and ‘experiences’ to make our honeymoon possible. It was an incredible trip and start to our married life, as well as an amazing way to involve our family and friends in our cross-country adventure. We were fortunate enough to do things like hot air balloon riding in New Mexico, wine tasting in Napa Valley, and hiking in the Grand Canyon, just to name a few. Our honeymoon road trip was also the reason why we started A Cruising Couple, and realized people were actually interested in following along with our travel adventures. Two years later we’re still learning new things about travel blogging everyday, but loving it more and more!

6) If you could solve one problem in the world what would it be?

He said: Lack of Universal clean water is a drastically under reported issue. With human impacts becoming more and more detrimental to our environment, the hunt for clean drinking water will become increasingly difficult. Poor and rural areas are going to feel the greatest effects but there are already some nifty and optimistic sustainable solutions popping up at science fairs around the globe.

She said: Human trafficking. In light of celebrities taking a stance against trafficking as well as Hollywood productions bringing the issue to light, I think most people have much more awareness about the issue today. However, it still blows my mind that human trafficking is the third largest international organized crime; that people are bought and sold, held against their will, and forced to do unperceivable things everyday. Definitely a complex problem worth solving.

7)You knew it was coming….What has been your greatest travel fight/disagreement?

She said: When we first arrived in Taiwan, for some inconceivable reason, Dan thought it was okay to drink water from the sink. We were both pretty experienced world travelers at this point, so I’ll never understand why Dan thought it would be a good idea to drink tap water. We argued about it for a while, until I finally gave in to Dan’s argument. Well, August in Taiwan is ridiculously hot, which meant we were downing that water left and right. I think we probably went through a couple liters before we read somewhere that, of course, you can’t drink unfiltered tap water.  That led to a whole different argument about whether we were going to be spending the rest of the night over a toilet or not. In the end, we decided to just get some rest at our hotel. 16 hours later we woke up, perfectly fine, and a little bit less cranky.

He said: We’re pretty lucky that we get along so well, and most of the time we’re able to talk through disagreements without them leading to fights. Or I just give in to Casey so I don’t have to worry about it ;-p I do like to give Casey a hard time for that popped bicycle tire she mentioned earlier. We were riding along that day, and I specifically told Casey to look out for some broken glass on the road up ahead. She claims she avoided it, but I swear I looked back and saw her run right over it, only to have a popped tire later that day. We’ll probably contest that until the day we die.

1000Fights:  a huge thanks to Dan and Casey for their candor!  What a fun couple!

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Auschwitz Birkenau on a cold winter afternoon

The post Auschwitz Birkenau On a Cold Winter Afternoon appeared first on 1000 Places to Fight Before you Die.

Located in the rural countryside of the Czech Republic is the region called the Moravian Karst.   The word karst is Slavic for caves or holes.   Our destination was indeed a cave, but not just any cave.  We were seeking out the Macocha Abyss.

The Fighting Couple is always on the lookout for those off the beaten path destinations that offer something truly unique.  Sometimes this takes us to a restaurant that is 600 years old, an ancient Roman library, or a back street bakery that makes the best eclairs    We aren’t what you might call adrenaline junkies, but when our research led us to our latest find, we knew we had to check it out.

The Macocha Abyss plunges 450 feet from the thick forest that surrounds it.  The Abyss lives up to its daunting name.  The view from the platform above down into this monster abyss is breathtaking.

How to get there

Getting to the Abyss is half the fun.  Is is located in rural Czech Republic, an hour or so north east outside of Brno.  Just take route 373 north out of town and head toward the little town of Jedovnice.  Turn left once you get to Jedovnice and follow the signs up the hill.

As you arrive in the parking lot of the caves, you have three options for getting down to the entry of the cave.  There is a aerial tram that can take you down the slope.  The tram only works in the high season during the summer.  The other option is a small train shuttle that runs year round.  The last and best option is to take the short hike down the slope.  There are steps and railing that makes the decent moderately easy.  Bring cash(Czech Crowns) because credit cards are not accepted at the cave ticket office at the bottom of the hill.  Take our word for it, it can be a hike back out to hit the ATM.

Enter the Darkness

Once you have your ticket, the tour of the caves is led by a guide speaking your chosen language.   You queue up behind a heavy green door.  The guide pulls it open and you enter single file into a cavernous tunnel carved into the stone.  It is difficult to describe just how dark the caves really are.  At one of the first stops, the guide cuts the lights and you are completely enveloped by darkness.  Fear not, they do turn them back on!  Besides this one stop, the rest of the tour is surprisingly well lit.

The path that you follow is single file and every 20 meters or so the guide stops and uses a torch to point out the different geologic highlights of the cave system.  On the tour you see stalactites, stalagmites, ponds, rivers and other limestone formations.  The guide also points out the significant explorations that have taken place in the caves during the past 125 years since the caves were first discovered.  One other interesting tidbit on the tour, they point out markers for the water level in the cave during years that the cave flooded.

Each of the major formations in the cave have names attached including: angel hair, white roots, the kissing couple, elephant and many more.  There were a number of references to Czech history that we really didn’t get…but you get the picture.  Roughly half way through the walking tour, the cave comes to the Abyss section where you can look up and out of the cave.  A river runs into the cave at this point and makes for some amazing pictures.

Once we were roughly 75% through the adventure  we came to the boats.  This was so cool!  It really made the tour for us.  The group was dived into two, each being assigned a boat with a master boat driver.  Gliding through the caves almost felt like a Disney ride!  Only this was for real.  Each turn in the cave brought a new view of a formation or water fall.  As we came around the last bend and saw daylight, we were a little disappointed as we wished it wouldn’t end!

We must offer this word of warning.  Do mind your head during the boat ride section.  There are a number of low ceilings and passageways that are not very forgiving on your head.  Our guide didn’t ride in the boat with us, so I tend to think the boat driver didn’t speak English.  We would have expected the guide to warn us.  Anyway, we are warning you, mind you noggin!

Visiting the Abyss is a great year round adventure.  As the temperature is constant underground.  We happened to visit during a particularly cold spring, and we shed our coats a few steps into the caves.  It felt great.  During a hot summer, the cave overs a nice respite from the heat as well.

Definitely take in the Abyss the next time you pass through the Czech Republic.  It is truly a grand adventure.  If you need voucher codes or Hotels.com discounts give them a try.

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