Posting a brief trip recap after getting back from our Europe trip. We ended up doing the five cities I listed in my first post. A few comments about each city:
Munich I had been there before, but the mrs. had not. We met up with a friend (also an Ag) who just moved to London, and it was his first trip to continental Europe, so that was pretty cool. Highlights in Munich included a Mike's bike tour, visiting Dachau, Olympic Park area, Englischer Gardens, Marienplatz area, St. Peter's Church, Deutsches museum, Hofbrauhaus, Augustiner beer garden. I love Bavarian cuisine (at least for a few days). Had lots of sausage, goulash, duck, currywurst, dumplings, potatoes, sauerkraut. Beer included Augustiner (my favorite), Hofbrau, Paulaner, Hacker Pschorr. The weather was amazing for sitting in the beer gardens, which was probably my favorite thing we did in the city.
Salzburg the weather was not as nice here, cold and rainy most of the day/night. Obviously it's much smaller than Munich, so we were still able to see everything we wanted to, just didn't get as great views as we were hoping. We went up to the top of Mt. Untersberg, which I'm sure had a great view of the city, but we were in the clouds/fog. I am definitely going to try to come back because there looks to be a ton of hiking on the mountain and will go south to see Berchtesgaden. The Hohensalzburg Fortress was really cool, just a bummer it was raining while we were there. The crypt under the Dom was huge and really neat too. Had mostly the same sort of food, including a Bosna from a street vendor which was amazing. Schloss Hellbrunn and the Mozart stuff was average, in my opinion.
Vienna my least favorite stop out of our cities. Vienna was fun walking around the old town area, but I just didn't like it as much as the other cities. We went to the Schonbrunn Palace (extremely crowded with Viking Cruise tourists) and zoo, which is the oldest in the world. The Naschmarkt was pretty cool and we bought a few snacks there. We tried to do one of the ring road trolly car tours, but we didn't feel like waiting after the one we tried to get on was full. So we did our own tour on the street trams and saw most of the other government buildings and old residences/palaces in the city. We went up the top of the Danube Tower, which was not worth the time and effort to get over there to do it. The food was mostly the same, but we had some schnitzel and sachertorte.
Bratislava we rode the Twin City Liner down the Danube to Bratislava. Much smaller town than Vienna, but bigger than Salzburg. Walked around the Old Town area for most of that afternoon and evening. Was nice to just hang out outside of the restaurants and people watch. Slovakian womenwow. Lookers everywhere. I was very impressedand got busted several times by my wife. Had some Klubovna beer and some delicious gnocchi. The next day we tried to go up the UFO tower on the Most SNP bridge, but it was closed for a private event. We did the castle tour before leaving to go to Budapest.
Budapest we stayed on the Pest side, which they say everyone who lives in Pest wants to move to Buda. Did another bike tour, a walking tour up in the Buda castle, went to the house of terror museum, went to the top of St. Stephen's church, had some drinks at a few ruin pubs, visited the Szechenyi thermal baths (very interesting experience), and spectated the Budapest half marathon that was going on. Was hoping to escape the summer heat a bit, but it was really hot there, nearly 90 degrees.
All in all, it was a fun trip, albeit tiring. We did a lot of research into each city's public transportation, and felt we were pretty efficient in utilizing them. The train rides to each city weren't very long, but we didn't relax much in each city. I also was very much looking forward to eating fruits and vegetables when I got back. Only had a few occurances where the language barrier was an issue. Most people spoke English well enough to communicate.
TL/DR:
Slovakian women are hot.