Germany - Waidhaus...

Putting off reaching Prague another night, Chris and I pulled up Google maps and picked a cool sounding city near the border of the Czech Republic. We settled on Waidhaus and stayed at a little place called Hotel Beihler (it was the boast of a bowling alley that swayed us). Turned out to be a wonderful stopover as the clerk was also the chef. He recommended some wonderful traditional Bavarian bier and food...

Apparently this is what Beef Stroganoff is suppose to be...there is no dark gravy or sour cream or noodles. Rather it's with a veggie sauce with all sorts of spices and croquette potatoes. It was delightful.

What London was for me...

Chris and I were both very excited to get to London, but for very different reasons. For him it was for the site seeing. For me, it was the lounging, relaxing, and the food. They say that English food is the worst in the world, but I don't agree. I think it's Irish. All the things I learned to love about Irish food was in England and then some. Our first stop upon arrival was at Toby's Carvery for lunch...5 pounds each for all your can eat three meat carvery buffet!

AMAZING!

We were so excited for food we recognized. African food was delicious, but too much of a good thing can get tiresome. Let's dissect what is so amazing about this lunch;

1) Glasses of ICE cold tap water with lemon. That's right...this water is not bottled, not treated with iodine tablets and does not require filtering before you drink it...it simply runs like liquid gold from the faucet into your glass and flows freely and amweba free past your lips! AAAAAAAHHHHH!,

2)Gravy...gravy like a delicious velvet blanket over everything. Let's focus on the awesomeness of the delicate Yorkshire pudding for a moment. Now I will never understand why the English use the word pudding to describe everything they are too lazy to come up with a proper name for, but I'll go with it for now since Yorkshire Pudding is so amazing. Gravy with peas and corn (absent from the plate unfortunately) is also a fav of mine. Reminds me of Thanksgiving...

3) Speaking of T-day; Turkey, stuffing balls, cranberry sauce! Delish!

4) Speaking of meat; turkey, ham and roast beef!

5) Veg; potatoes (of course), roasted swede, carrots, peas and cabbage!

Now they they said it was all you can eat, but Chris and my stomach shrank so much in Africa that this amount of food about burst us right open. So though I longed for more Yorkshire pudding and glorious gravy, I had to just say no!

I didn't venture from the hotel much the whole time we were in London. When I did it was for the food! At the King and Castle Pub I had some lunch, but was intrigued at how many more types of sauce and color for sauce packets there were in England than in Ireland. From left to right, top to bottom: Horseradish sauce, English mustard, French mustard (I don't know why they left out German mustard since it's the far superior one), Mint sauce, Salad cream (excuse me sir, your hogging all the delicious salad cream), Malt Vinegar (put that one in for you Kate), brown sauce (hatche P), ketchup (not pictured)...

Tanzania - Arumeru River Lodge...

Chris had the amazing foresight to book a nice, relaxing lodge for a recoup day after all was said and done for the Mt. and Safari before heading back for our Eurotrip. So we stayed at Arumeru River Lodge...most important part, it has a pool!

These are dik-diks! They are the smallest of the gazelle/antelope family. We first saw them during a torrential rain storm our first night there. They were standing like statues under a bush and we thought they were oddly placed lawn ornaments. Nope, they are tiny little speed demons!

These flowers smelled so good!

Avocado tree on the way to our room. It was really hard to resist the urge to pick them and eat them to our heart's content!

I was blown away how large and healthy the aloe plants were...

A river runs through it...

Pool time!

Tanzania is a high-risk malaria country (but mostly on the coast, as we got bit more in South Africa than our whole time in Tanzania), so we had some serious mosquito netting around our bed! We are happy to report that we are finally done with our course of Malarone, malaria meds!

Tanzania - On the way to Ngoragora Nat'l Park...

On our way to Ngoragora Nat'l park we went through many little towns were there were hundreds of under ripe bananas being transported on the ladies heads to be sold at market...which was simply the side of the road, where ever shade was to be found.

a banana tree forest in town...

cattle being herded through town...

Chris and I were disappointed we weren't on this safari...

land rover convention...

snacks that will never be as good as Old Dutch Dill Pickle chips...

Masaai warriors...that tried charging us 20,000Ts after they volunteered for this photo!

A Masaai Village where tourists stop and for a "small fee" watch them perform tribal dances and take them on tours of their village. The distribute their earnings amongst all the tribes in Ngoragora...we did not partake in this.

And now to the part I love so much!

These two twiga were sweet on each other!

camels...

Little baby zebra are so beautiful...

For some reason this reminds me of Pawl...

Tanzania - In Ngoragora Crater...

When I got this view of Ngoragora Crater I couldn't wait till we were able to see all the animals living in such close proximity with each other. Sanga was pointing out lone bull elephants from here...I could barely make them out as black specs from this vantage point.

Sanga getting the jeep ready. We were the first ones to touch the Crater floor!

Chris is so excited...and he just can't hide it!

Pink flamingos in Africa...

There's that lone bull Sanga pointed out!

A little water won't stand in our way! Not when a land rover is involved! Drove right through it!

We came upon some lioness with two cubs (1 Simba, 1 Nala)

Mama!

Can you feel the love tonight...

Laughing Hyena...

running away with his dinner...

This was something straight out of National Geographic. This mama Wildabeast literally just gave birth to this little calf and before she could pass the amniotic sac...

this hungry jackal was on the prowl...it took three full grown wildabeast (including mama) to protect the little calf, but they were successful!

what are you looking at?