join the johnson journey: October 2015

heads up: this post is extremely late :)

A few weeks ago I headed to Lübeck which is a city about an hour outside of Hamburg towards the North Sea. It's such a cute, quaint town full of gems. I went with a few of the girls I've met in Hamburg and it was really fun! We walked around for a bit and checked out some of the sights. First stop was the old town city entrance. Then we climbed to the top of one of the churches to get a view of the entire city. It was gorgeous! Afterwards, we stumbled upon a potato festival! Everything that was there was made of potatoes... I mean all the food etc. It was hilarious! These small potato cakes were phenomenal... basically hashbrowns on crack ! I unfortunately did not capture any pictures of the next stop but we checked out a marzipan store. Lübeck is the capitol of marzipan. I do not like this little creation but Nick does. What about all of you?? I personally think it's gross! We then wrapped up our tour of Lübeck with checking out another church and walking back towards the train station to catch the next train to the beach! Check out all my pictures below from the first part of our day.

the leaves changing

old city entrance

view from the top of Lübeck

yummy potato cakes

pretty yellow building in Lübeck

After we finished checking out Lübeck we headed to the beach that is another 30 minutes NE of the town. The little town we checked out was Travemünde. It's a small cute beach town, much like you'd see in the States. We happened to go on the National Kite Festival day. There were all different types of kites and it was gorgeous pictures [see below!]. The beach in general was pretty as well and it's the first real beach I've seen since moving over here. All in all, it was a fantastic day checking out this gorgeous country that I've been living in almost FIVE months now. I cannot believe how the time has flown by and it's been such a pleasure living here.

Erin, myself, Claire-Ann & Chloe hanging out in Travemünde

that beach!

kite central

On Friday, Nick and I headed down to Dresden via train. We got there around 8:30pm and headed to check into the hotel. We stayed at the Hilton & it was really nice! We got an awesome deal a few weeks ago so it was very cheap for us. I would absolutely suggest this hotel - it has a ton of restaurants close to it and a great lounge area. After we checked in, we went to a traditional German restaurant called Kutscherschänke then walked around for a bit. We stopped by Procession of Princes which is a massive porcelain tile piece of art in old city Dresden. Each prince has something unique about them that describes the type of person they were or something significant about their time of rule. There was a gorgeous pond in the park that showed a beautiful reflection of an older building there. Being the budding iPhone photographer I am... I had to stop and take a few pictures. Nick ended up going back up to the hotel to grab his camera so he could capture the moment as well. [just to clarify Nick saw the reflection and I give him full credit!]

possession of princes!

beautiful pond reflection

On Saturday, Nick woke up early to take his lovely pictures then we had an amazing all-you-can-eat brunch at our hotel. We then spent the next few hours walking around and checking out the sights before our walking tour. We went by the Catholic church and popped our head in for a quick look. I feel like churches never disappoint in Europe. I'm always blown away by the amount of detail that is put into them. Then we walked over to the Zwinger. It is quite gorgeous and the inside grounds are huge. It's a palace that was built in the 1700's and it is right in the middle of old town Dresden. It once hosted a ladies' jousting event so it was quite controversial during its time! After we walked around for a bit, we headed back to the cathedral to meet up for our walking tour. The walking tour we took was Dresden Walks and our guide was great. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone! We got to see a ton of sights and our guide was extremely informative on not only Dresden history, but Saxony in general. After the tour, we grabbed a quick lunch then went into the other main Dresden church called Frauenkirche. We rounded out our day by heading back to the Zwinger and going to the museums inside. This includes an art museum called Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister which hosts the famous "Sistine Madonna" painting by Raphael. On Saturday night we went to see Arabella [a famous opera] in German...talk about a major brain workout. It was 3.5 hours straight of German! When we bought the tickets we had been told that the sub-titles would be in English... but they were not, haha. But it was quite gorgeous and the singers sang beautifully. I'm so glad we were able to take this opportunity and watch this beautiful piece of art.

oldest bridge in Saxony

breathe-taking leaves

the grounds of zwinger

the opera house!

cute corridor in dresden

fountain in the zwinger

minutes before Arabella started!

On Sunday, we woke up bright and early to head about an hour outside of Dresden to do some hiking. Our first stop was Krippen where we climbed up to see Schrammstein. We had to take a ferry for a whopping 30 seconds across the river as there are no bridges! Absolutely gorgeous views. The leaves are changing colors here into vibrant yellows, red, and oranges. Most of the hike was stairs and ladders and it was pretty intense for a Sunday morning but everything was worth it once we made it to the top! Even the path going there was gorgeous with all the green trees in the forest. After we completed this hike, we headed back to the train station and down a few more stops. Our next hiking spot was Bastei, a gorgeous stone bridge up in the mountains. With all the foliage we captured some breathe-taking pictures. After a long day, we headed back via train to Dresden then back to Hamburg. We had the craziest train ride back! On our train from Dresden to Berlin all the lights went out in our cabin and we were asked to move to another cabin which took about 45 minutes to figure out. It was plain dumb! Luckily we still made our train from Berlin back to Hamburg. After getting back in after midnight, we have been pretty exhausted the last few days.