Bulgaria- who knew?!

Just a few days after we landed in Bucharest, we were on the road again.  This time we were taking a road trip to Bulgaria.  Michael had some business meetings in Sofia and so his crew tagged along with him!  I absolutely LOVE driving (Well- riding since I don't drive here! yikes!) through the Romania countryside.  It is so beautiful and full of lots of amazing fields.  This trip was the sunflower fields! They are just so incredible!  (And of course, H-Man would be asleep anytime we were at a good field to stop for a picture so these have to do...)

Life is good when you get balloons with lunch! (The balloons also made the rest of the drive a lot more tolerable!)

And then we were crossing the border! 

By the time we got to Belogradchik Fortress, we were ready to stretch our legs a bit! 

We had fun exploring! What a structure! And what a view!

The next morning, we attended the most amazing branch in Sofia!  The people were SO welcoming and working hard to fulfill their callings.  It was so wonderful to be a part of their congregation!

Michael liked that Bulgaria uses a similar alphabet to the Russian one so he could read the words and signs for the most part.

After church, we drove up into the mountains, took a ski lift up even higher and then hiked up Rila Mountain to enjoy the amazing splendor of the Seven Rila Lakes.  It was an amazing trail- a little longer than we were planning on- but truly unbelievable!

He's super buff and carries all our stuff. ;)

The little house in the picture is the ski lodge at the top of the ski lift- it gives a good idea how high up we climbed and then circled around to the trail you can see leading to the lodge.

Quite the day!  It was also pretty exhausting.  While Michael had to go to work the next day, the rest of us were like this a lot....

I was grateful for the rest because I came down with something that night and did not feel well the next couple of days.  Being sick is no fun but the timing wasn't too bad.  That day, Laila went on a date with her dad for lunch.  Despite her facial expression, she loved it. 

The night before we left Sophia, we enjoyed a nice walk in the park by our hotel.  We had some great conversations about what we thought Bulgaria was going to be like and how incredible it really was.  It was a fun adventure!

Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany Finale

We quickly found out why Switzerland is so green since the next day it rained pretty much the whole day!  It was a little harder to be a tourist after the gorgeous weather we had had the day before!  However, we tried our best and our kids were troopers too.  Saturday, we drove to the small country of Liechtenstein for a little exploring and lunch.  It was fun to add one more country to our list and see this quaint corner of Europe.  Despite the rain, the kids loved wandering the streets with us and we had a nice visit.

The castle where the king of Liechtenstein lives.

Liechtenstein lunch...

Now THAT'S a pepper shaker!

After Liechtenstein, we drove to a little town called Rapperswil in Switzerland.  It was a cute town with gorgeous window boxes, pretty churches, and then there was running in the rain!  haha!

Our last night in Zurich was serendipitously the festival of Zurich Days!  All of downtown was out- despite the rain- the streets were festive and fun.  We enjoyed seeing cultural dances, yummy pretzel stands, and a giant slip n slide.  If it hadn't been so wet and cold already, we would have definitely tried that! It was a fun evening!

The next morning we attended a great ward in Zurich.  The wonderful woman behind us let Harrison play with some of her son's cars.  I swear it was the most peaceful Sacrament meeting we have had in awhile.  

We love Sundays!

From church, we made our way back toward Germany where we would be heading back to Romania the next day.  We made a stop at Rhinefalls and the Black Forest on our way to Frankfurt.  They were super incredible stops.  

In the Black Forest, we did a short hike to Triberg Waterfalls.  We just could not get over how green and dense everything was.  So magical.  We also loved trying to find as many red squirrels that we could so we could feed them some peanuts.  Some were eaten by the squirrels, some were left on the trail for the squirrels to find later, and some were eaten by the little girl holding the peanut bag. ;)

Despite a rocky start, some rainy middle days, and a very frustrating hotel room situation for our last night, this trip was LEGENDARY!  We flew back to Bucharest on the 4th of July.  Even though we were in Germany flying to Romania, we still felt proud to represent our Stars and Stripes!

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