Thanksgiving Weekend Fun :)

I could not have asked for a better weekend! I was worried at first, being away from home and all, that I would be fighting the homesick bug all day. But with the exception of a few lonely moments, we had quite the celebration!

Wednesday night Hilary got in around 10:30 and we all gave her quite the welcome. Three screaming girls running at the sight of taxi lights? It had been over a month since I had seen her but it had felt like much longer. Ahhh!! We took her out to O’Malley’s for a drink and came back relatively early because we knew traveling sucks the life out of you.

Thanksgiving morning I woke up to the smell of food—turkey, spices, apples, & cinnamon. It was such a comforting feeling. The only downside was that we had two classes in the morning—literature and our EU seminar, but Jim let us out early J By noon we were embracing all that is Thanksgiving and being lazy in our room, painting our nails and gossiping until our feast set for 2:30pm.

Eva worked all week to make us (50 people total) the feast we DEVOURED. Turkey, cornbread stuffing, cranberry, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas, and salad with homemade dressings (they don’t really have salad dressing over here, fyi) Hil and I sat with LJ and her family, so much fun! They left for Innsbruck for the weekend and I know they had a blast! Anyways, the meal was sooooo good, thinking back on it still makes me full. We had apple pie for dessert and by 4:30-5ish everyone was rolling out of there…

After our delicious meal we bundled up and took Hilary down to the Christmas market that Salzburg is famous for. I have plans to blog a whole entry on this place (pictures included) so I won’t go into too much detail but it is one of the most special places I’ve ever been. Hilary got a few presents, we both tried some Gluvine (and she got some of the Gluvine teabags for her Senora) and we wandered around, mainly in hopes to walk off our food coma.

That night we went out with the entire group, showed our guests other fun Salzburg bars and introduced them to Kaserkriner (cheese filled sausage that you get from this white van down by the river… sounds sketchy but delicious/deadly.)

Friday we were rallying to get up and catch our train to Munich BUT we ran into a few roadblocks, aka we were all not doing too hot, so we botched the trip altogether and Hilary got a day more of Salzburg than she anticipated.

Friday and Saturday were honestly two of the most relaxing, fun couple of days I’ve had in a while. Abbie and I took Hilary everywhere—ate at cute cafes, went shopping on the Getreidegasse, walked up to the fortress, drank hot spiced cider, bought Mozart chocolate balls, walked near the river and over the lit up pedestrian bridges, and loved every minute.

It was so nice to have Hilary here for the whole weekend. I got to smother her, had some much needed alone time, and all in all got a nice break from the craze of constantly traveling.

We only have two more weekends left here; next weekend we are headed to Amsterdam and the following one, skiing in Switzerland. After that I pack up my last three and a half months here and head to Paris, where I will see Aidan for a few days and meet up with the family. From there our Christmas adventure will begin—my first cruise! to exotic countries I am ecstatic to visit. On Friday it was three weeks until I see them—so now it’s officially 19 days. Our reunion= very overdue :)