Greetings from Munich and Neuschwanstein Castle!

After leaving Berlin we traversed Germany to reach Neuschwanstein Castle near the Switzerland border. It was fun driving the autobahn on the way there! We had brief stopover in Munich on our way for dinner and snuck in a couple of pictures (albeit it was a bit rainy!)

Neuschwanstein Castle is located in the Bavaria region of Germany. Many think this castle was the inspiration for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. We found a new hotel that just opened in February that was located at the base of the castle. You could look up at the castle while eating breakfast!

We toured the inside of the castle then were able to walk to a bridge overlooking it. Thankfully, it wasn’t raining and the morning clouds started to break! Here are a few pictures:

This is a short post for us, but look for another post soon from the Swiss Alps!

Emily breaking the land speed record on the Auto Bahn – only around 100mph, but the g forces kept me from taking the picture when she was driving faster

We celebrated our arrival to Berlin by stopping at a German pastry shop (called Mr. Minch) that we found on a list of top 100 bakeries in the world. The chef has worked in Chicago so we of course felt a personal connection to him. 🙂

Our hotel is actually in the former East Berlin (Mitte) so it is fascinating to see the development that is occurring. I remember watching the fall of the Berlin Wall on TV (I was a news junkie even as a kid!). After we checked in, we rode the U Bahn (Subway) to the Charlottenburg area (part of former West Berlin). While there we went to the Ka-Da-Wee department store, which feels a bit like Harrods. This was a fruitful shopping trip as we found our second clothes line so we can air dry more clothes now. We are sure that most Berliners go shopping for clothes lines here! 🙂

While in the Charlottenburg area we also visited the Kaiser Wilhelm Church. The Church was mostly destroyed during WWII but now stands as a memorial of remembrance. The Church is currently undergoing massive reinforcement so we couldn’t see the outside, but we did go into the new Church next door.

Several of my German co-workers kept telling me to have flammkuchen when I was in Germany. It is funny that this keeps coming up as it is actually a French type of pizza (tarte flambee), but it is served all over Germany. We found a local place with flammkuchen that was quite good! The pizza is a very thin crust without tomato sauce. We tried typical varieties with leek, cheese, and prosciutto.

The second day we visited historical sites around Berlin. We started by visiting Tränenpalast – The Palace of Tears at Friedrichstraße station. The station gained its name as it is where East and West friends/families had some ability to shortly meet but led to horribly tearful goodbyes when they had to separate again.

The museum was thought provoking and moving. It went through the entire timeline of the Berlin Wall and the separation of families and friends that occurred for almost 30 years. It is so hard to believe that the wall was still standing during our lifetime and that .

When we got near the site, we asked a local (in very broken German) if he spoke English and if this was indeed the museum’s location. He started started crying and said he’d always speak English for an American. He thanked our country for standing for principles that freed Germany and eventually reunited Berlin. Wow, this made us feel so grateful for what we have.

The next stop was Checkpoint Charlie which was one of the most famous border crossings between East and West Berlin. The area is commercialized now (some company has “American Troops” with whom you can take your picture …), but it was interesting to see. We then went on to the Topography of Terror Museum a former SS headquarters and the border of the Berlin Wall.

The Museum was very well done and fully explained the events leading up to Hitler’s reign and the atrocities that occurred from 1933 onward. We took the opportunity to go on a guided tour which was quite informative.

Our final stop was the Reichstag, Germany’s Parliament building. I found out that you can get free guided tours in English if you reserve several weeks in advance. The entire operation was quite impressive. We checked in and then had to provide confirmation that we were expected visitors. We then went to a second stand where we had to show our passports. Next, we went through airport style security. Finally, we were walked to the actual Parliament building by a guard where they again checked our identity! Wow!

Today the building has been completely restored. During the restoration graffiti was found on the walls belonging to Soviet soldiers that liberated Germany so it was preserved as part of the city’s history.

There was also an interesting art exhibit showing bricks for each democratically elected parliament member. You’ll notice, however, that there is a black box in one photo which signifies the horrific Nazi reign. The tour completed by visiting the dome on top of the capital which has a great overlook of Berlin (although it was raining!)

We stopped by to have coffee with Angela at her office

Impressive – even the do not enter ropes have the country’s colors!

On the walk back to the hotel we walked past the Brandenburg Gate which was neat to see as well!

Our next stop is the Neuschwanstein-Hohenschwangau Castle.

PS from Emily: Ryan must look like a technical expert in all countries. Maybe it’s because he gets out an iPad with a hard drive, a USB hub, and a cell phone everywhere! 😉 We’re sitting here at a cafe and a lady from Greece out of the blue asks in broken English (first in Greek… then English) why her phone isn’t working. I’m thinking… how on earth is he going to know?! Sure enough, he was able to help them! She wasn’t dialing with the correct country code prefixes.

In Prague he became the technical expert for two people who couldn’t get into their gmail account at the hotel. It’s quite funny… he must just look like he knows what he is doing! I’ve been so thankful for his technical workarounds as it’s been taking herculian efforts (and lots and lots and lots of workarounds!) to get our pictures backed up and loaded using our iPad!

Greetings from Vienna!

After a short drive in from Salzburg, we spent a day exploring Vienna.

As you may have noticed by now, we like restaurants! Since Vienna is known for its cafes, we picked out a few local favorites to try. For lunch, I had an excellent pancake with plum sauce as my entree that is a local Austrian specialty. Only after the waiter acted like I was strange did we realize it is typically served as a dessert! Whoops! It was about the same sweetness as any pancake with fruit topping in the US so I think that I must really like things sweet! For our actual dessert, we enjoyed a raspberry torte which was great!

Nearby the cafe, we went through the Schonbrunn Gardens, which is a huge park area and palace. The grounds revere beautiful, and it looked like locals loved to walk, run, and relax there.

We then headed into the heart of downtown via subway. Having used subways and trains in multiple international cities, I can say that Vienna has to be one of the most visitor friendly systems around! We’ll tell you more about this in a separate post, but this was an instance where having a chip credit card with a PIN number (takes a lot and lot of work to get this in the US!) was critical for buying a ticket. For those traveling internationally, look for an upcoming blog posts on some tips/tricks that we’re putting together.

Once downtown, we first headed for the Musical Instruments Museum (Kunsthistorisches Museum: Collection of Historic Musical Instruments). I was able to see several trumpet collections such as some of the original herald and keyed trumpets.

I didn’t know that my Dad’s metronome had made it into the museum!

Kellogg Friends – Remember the Steinway case?

We finished off the day by hitting a local market (more fresh peaches :)), walking through the Imperical Palace, and then hitting up two local cafes. We particularly enjoyed Cafe Sperl, the oldest cafe in Vienna. For dessert, we enjoyed a plum tart and mocha expressos at Cafe Aida, another local spot.

We have noticed that Austrians seem to love to stop for a pastry and cafes. We see many more people just getting this versus having a full meal at a restaurant. Sometimes in the US restaurants are annoyed when you just get coffee and dessert so it’s been really interesting to see!

Guten Tag from Salzburg!

It was a great time to be in Salzburg as it is the middle of the world-famous Salzburg Music Festival.

Our first stop in Salzburg was the Mirabelle Palace and Gardens. At the palace we were able to see the concert hall where Mozart frequently played.

Outside in the meticulously manicured gardens, we saw several places shown in the Sound of Music. The gnome shown here was patted by the children and the horse statue is shown during the scene as well.

The Sound of Music is certainly still engrained in this city. In fact, the hotel where we stayed had the DVD on constant loop!

After grabbing a Sacher Torte and expresso (well known dessert, but I didn’t love it since it wasn’t overly sweet or moist!), we enjoyed a walk through the beautiful old town on our way to the music festival.

Since I play trumpet and was in the Ohio State Marching Band, I enjoy classical music (particularly if it has lots of brass :)). I have have always wanted to go to the Salzburg Music Festival which is held for 6 weeks each summer and features concerts with some of the top symphonies and conductors. I was excited we could design our trip to be in Salzburg during the festival and found tickets were very, very popular! We bought tickets over 4 months out when the tickets went on sale, and the concert sold out almost instantly!

We are used to classical concerts in the US in which we are way below the average attendee’s age and many people dress fairly informally. This was definitely not the case for Salzburg Music Festival! Nearly all the men were in suits and women wore either formal gowns or formal historical dresses (we were so surprised to see that historical dresses (think Sound of Music dresses) are actually still worn!). Needless to say, we definitely felt underdressed in business casual!

The concert hall was packed, and many of the people there were in their 20’s and 30’s. We had even opted for the less prestigious concert featuring Mahler 4 versus the premiere concert Meistersinger (I wasn’t sure if Emily last through the 5.5 hour Meistersinger concert so i went on my own in Chicago :)).

We grabbed more dessert and coffees after the concert but noticed a big change from Italy and Spain. We nearly closed out the cafe at about 11:30 PM – this would have been very early in Italy or especially Spain!

On our next day in Salzburg we headed out of the city to a little town called Hallstatt which is nestled between a beautiful lake and mountains. We had planned to spend the day hiking but it was a rainout. However, we still got to see the view (albeit a bit rainy) and had a pretty lunch overlooking the water before heading back to Salzburg.

We enjoyed some traditional (and delicious) apple strudel before going to another concert – this time at a church featuring 5 organs playing concurrently which only takes place one time per year.

Our night finished with an exciting trip to a laundromat! The cool part was that the same machine both washed and dried. While this resulted in us accidentally drying a couple of items that were not supposed to go in the dryer (whoops!), it was a neat idea!

Greetings from Tuscany!

Based on some great recommendations from a co-worker (thank you so much for all the fantastic advise and recos, Marco C!!), we took a beautiful route through Tuscany on our way to Venice.

One of the towns we we stopped was Siena, a beautiful walled city. We spent the afternoon wandering the narrow streets and saw the main plaza where a horse race occurs. While a horse race wasn’t happening while we were there, it was incredible to think about horses and thousands of people fitting into this plaza! There were even bleachers set up in front of restaurants for people to watch the races.

We also spent some time relaxing (as well as fun things like updating our budget, catching up on email, etc ;)) in a cafe over expresso and gelato. 🙂

For dinner that evening, we headed off to a restaurant that overlooked the vineyards and hills north of Siena in Tuscany/Toscana. We arrived in time to see the landscape in the sun and then watched sunset over dinner. We enjoyed a fantastic dinner of seafood, pasta, and truffles. It was a very fun evening!

Now we’re off to Venice. Ciao!

Sorry – we hit save on the wrong post – this is the one we meant to send today 🙂

Hello from Rome!

We kicked off our time in this ancient city with a visit to the Vatican. We did a lot of advance research to find out the best way to visit and decided on a pre-scheduled tour booked directly through the Vatican. We were glad to have a reservation as the line was wrapped around the building by 9 am when we arrived!

Our guide was great, and we got to see the Vatican Museum, St. Peter’s Bascilica, St. Peter’s Square, and the Sistine Chapel. Although the tour was almost 4 hours, we got to see so much and our guide was so good that the time flew by. We were both very surprised at how busy the Vatican was! Our guide said that it would be hard to even find him, and he wasn’t joking! It was jam-packed in all the major areas so we actually had ear pieces to be able to hear our guide as we moved through as we would have never been able it stay together or hear him without it!

Seeing Michelangelo’s work in person was incredible! We both were struck by the contrast between Michelangelo’s pieces and the paintings completed in the Vatican just 10 years prior to his commission.

St Peter’s Basilica was also incredible! While it is one of the largest basilicas in the world, it doesn’t feel much larger than other basilicas. This is because statues were made 4x normal human sizing, and letters were amplified even more. This skews your perspective and makes it seem smaller than it actually is. It was such a neat experience to visit this holy site!

Balcony where the Pope addresses crowds

Next up, we hiked across town to the ancient sites of Rome – the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and the Pantheon. It was again 99 degrees so we definitely worked up a sweat! Before arriving, we stopped quickly for some pastries (which negated the benefit of our walk I’m sure!). We had found this pastry shop on a top rated list, and it was delicious! We enjoyed petit fours and profiteroles.

We had also booked a tour of the Colosseum and were again glad to have a reservation as it saved us a very, very long line. The tour allowed us to go the ground level, underground area, and top level which are not open if you have a general admission ticket. We really enjoyed it! If you’re headed to Rome, we definitely recommend booking in advance!

Our visit to the ancient Roman ruins was capped off with visits to Palatine Hill and the Pantheon. Palatine Hill is the center hill of Rome’s 7 hills and contains many ancient Roman ruins, including the Roman Forum. The Pantheon, which was originally built as a temple to gods and is now part of the Catholic Church, is one of the best preserved Roman ruins. It is absolutely amazing to look at ruins over 2,000 years old!

We finished off our time in Rome with a walk past Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps at night before grabbing gelato for dessert. This was a great end to our time in Rome!

Ciao for now!

After spending about a week in Spain, we headed for the French Riviera and Monaco!

Our first stop was to Cassis, a small seaside village outside of Marseille, France. The area is know for Les Calanques which are deep rocky inlets of white stone that create coves and ocean cliffs. The water here is very blue as this region is around what is know as the Cote de Azul (translates as blue waters).

The combination of white rock, ocean, and beaches was incredibly beautiful! We took a boat from Cassis to see the first 8 of a chain of calanques and had a wonderful afternoon.

The locals seemed to enjoy the beaches and finding their own outcroppings of rock for enjoying the sun. We also saw lots of people cliff jumping into the water – neat!

We grabbed some delicious sorbet and then headed off for a scenic overlook drive above Cassis. The views from this drive were incredible! Here are just a few of the views we saw:

Several people have asked what type of car we have so here’s a shot of it – it’s a Citroen C4. It’s working out very well!

We did have some excitement before dinner in Marseille! We always check maps/GPS to ensure that the local roads allow traffic, are two-way, etc. The road for the restaurant passed all of our tests. Well, when we drove to the restaurant we got in some trouble… The road was two way, but it was only as wide as one car!!! So, once we got to the restaurant and found no spots we had to do a six-point turn (Emily took the honors) while against a 15 foot drop off into the bay. After we made it out of that jam we went to a bigger street with parking. We found a spot, but the spot was actually painted on the sidewalk – yes, you have to ram your car up over the curb and park 1/2 on the sidewalk and 1/2 on the road. By the time we got to dinner we were about done for the day!

Here is a picture of our “two-way” road! Emily got to turn the car around in the narrow bend without going into the water. 🙂

Once the car was parked it was time to have the world renown Bouillabaisse. Bouillabaisse is a soup made of tomato broth with multiple types of fish in it. Marseille has an active port so the Bouillabaisse here is made up of fish literally caught that morning so it’s absolutely fresh. In fact, the specific fish included in soup varies each day based on what was caught that morning. When we ordered, the staff brought out the fish that would be used to make our exact soup (Emily always loves seeing the full raw fish before cooking ;))! It was delicious!

Next up is Nice and Monaco! Au revoir!

After leaving Granada, we made our way to Barcelona which is about a 7 hour drive. We broke up the drive with a fun stop in a sea town called Peniscola, Spain. It was a neat area with a walled city on a bluff overlooking a peninsula with beaches on both sides. We had a fantastic lunch of seafood paella and calamari. Delicious!

We arrived in Barcelona in time to have a tapas dinner, walk the main shopping street/district (Passeig de Gracia which was near where we stayed), and then head to the main music hall. We had stayed away from flamenco shows in the other Spanish towns because we had found that there was a professional troupe and band that was performing for three weekends in Barcelona – which happened to occur while we were here. This also gave us a chance to see Palau de la Musica Catalana (Music Hall), famed for its skylight which can light the theater fully with natural sunlight. It was a fun evening!

We kicked off our next day in Barcelona by visiting the Basilica De La Sagrada Família. This church is beautiful but probably looks like no other church you’ve seen before. The architect of the basilica, Antoni Gaudí, had a very unique style that was at the forefront of modern 20th century architecture. This style results in bright colors, curved lines, and modern representations of Bibilical scenes. He was also fantastic at managing the use of light in his windows and design. We saw this firsthand as we visited on a sunny morning and saw the beautifulo reflection of the sun through the windows. I really enjoyed this non-traditional church!

One other very interesting fact about this basilica is that it isn’t finished! Gaudí took over construction in 1883, and it’s been under construction ever since! The good news is that it’s set to be finished officially by 2026 – 100 years after Gaudí died.

We spent the afternoon looking at several of Gaudí’s works which are located throughout Barclona and are a Unesco World Heritage site (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/320).

We also walked through La Rambla (busy street of stores, cafes), walked through the historic Gothic Quarter (narrow streets, historic buildings), and sat at a cafe overlooking the Mediterrean Sea. In fact, I am typing this blog while looking out over water – absolutely beautiful and relaxing!

Working on this blog post!

We capped off our time in Barcelona with traditional Catalonian dinner. Next up is Cote de Azul!

Greetings from Toledo!

After leaving Madrid, we had a short drive of less than 1 hour to Toledo, Spain. As a native of Northwest Ohio (about 1 hour from Toledo, Ohio), I remember watching a “sister city” feature on the local Toledo TV station in which a few people from Toledo, Ohio, went to Spain so it was neat to see the city in person. In fact, we noticed “Calle de Toledo Ohio” (Toledo Ohio Street) about 1 block from our hotel. Additionally, one of the shop employees that had to look at my driver’s license for a purchase asked if I lived near Toledo, Ohio.

After seeing the city, however, I see very few similarities between the two cities other than the name. 🙂

Our first stop was to see the Cathedral of Toledo which has a very interesting history. The first church on the site of the present day cathedral was founded in the 1st century by Christians and then changed to a mosque during the Moor occupation. This original building was destroyed and then the current cathedral was built over a 200 year period. There are multiple architectural styles and cultural influences in the cathedral. Toledo was one of the only Spanish cities where Christians, Moors, and Jews lived (more or less) peacefully together. The separate quarters of the city are still visible today.

We spent the rest of the day wandering the narrow, crooked streets. We visited the city gate, more churches, and the El Greco museum. El Greco painted several major Spanish masterpieces. The museum provided a look at both original El Greco paintings and provided an idea of how a Spanish home would have looked in Toledo.

Famous El Greco Painting of Jesus Christ

El Greco Painting of the overlook of Toledo – looks similar to some of our pictures!

On our walk around the city, we had Toledo’s signature dessert – marzipan which is made primarily of almond paste and sugar. While we often see marzipan as a filling to chocolates in the US, it is eaten on its own either plain or with filling in Toledo.

We also went outside the walls of the fortified portion of the city to see an incredible view back over the city. We had a wonderful dinner at 10 PM (and people were still coming into the restaurant to be seated as we finished dinner!) which again included gazpacho, hake fish (very common), and ham-based dishes. It was very good!

Emily found a very interesting place to stay located on a pedestrian-only walkway right in the middle of Toledo. It was actually a hotel consisting of small apartments in a historic building that has recently been completely restored into a modern, new space. It was great being so close to everything so we could easily swing by for some air conditioning after a very hot afternoon.

It only got to 99 degrees

Views of the city at night

We’ve also enjoyed lots of local produce for breakfast and lunch. Peaches are in season, and there are oranges from Valencia which are very sweet. It was an interesting experience shopping in the market in Madrid (we didn’t exactly understand you had to weigh your fruit and add a tag to it before waiting in a line of about 20 people deep… now we know! ;)).

Adios for now!

After leaving Paris we headed west to see the Normandy and Brittany Region (two days) and then Bordeaux (one day).

Omaha Beach/Utah Beach/American D-Day Cemetery:

We took a guided tour of Omaha Beach and the American D-Day cemetery. It was incredible to see the height of the cliffs that the Allied forces had to scale… particularly given the troops had just been awake all night, were seasick from rough seas, had 80 pounds of wet equipment on their backs, had wet ropes which prevented them from using their planned climbing equipment, and were being pummeled by German mortar from above. It certainly made us feel so incredibly thankful for our military forces. We had wonderful weather which made the cemetery and overlooks quite striking. After our tour ended, Emily and I toured Utah Beach ourselves at sunset (which is at 10 PM local time! Despite being south of England, this region is 1 hour ahead which means the sun goes down quite late here).

Normandy/Brittany:

On our second day in the region we toured several locations – each unique and interesting!

Mont Saint Michel
This is a fortified island in the Atlantic on the border of Normandy/Brittany. It was a monastery from around 700 – 1800 and a pilgrimage site for centuries. The site was so interesting given the density of the city compared to the countryside of the main land. Historically the site could only be accessed during low tide, but a permanent road has now been built.

St. Malo
This is a fully functioning walled off city also in the Atlantic. Due to its strategic port location, the city was mostly destroyed during WWII as the German forces took over France. It took over 30 years, but the city has been fully rebuilt and now contains many restaurants and stores.

Dinan
This is a Brittany town that survived WWII and contains historic wooden homes. While we were there, we stopped at a Creperie and also had gelato! A local bike race was occurring (complete with announcers and crowds) while we were in town which was very interesting to see!

Cort d’Rose
We headed even further west to see the red limestone and sunsets of this region. We got to the town just in time for sunset which was beautiful! There were trails all around the water so Emily had a blast running trails while watching the sunset.

Bordeaux

Driving from Brittany to Bordeaux took about 6 hours so most of our time was spent in the car. We have several books on our iPad that we want to read so we turned on the iPad’s Accessibility Feature so the iPad can read books to us through the car stereo system. The drive was beautiful as we passed by fields of sunflowers and vineyards.

One interesting thing that we have seen is that people seem to transport just about any trailer/camper with tiny cars. It’s the start of vacation time in France (which lasts 3-4 weeks in France) so we’ve seen lots and lots of families traveling to the beach.

While in Bordeaux we had a fantastic dinner at Le Bistro de Gabriel which overlooked the main square, fountain, and river. The restaurant gave us the best table in the restaurant overlooking all of this which was fantastic!

After dinner we took some pictures of the reflecting pool and then went on a city tour of Bordeaux. The tour was only supposed to be 1 hour, but somehow ended up being 1:45. It was a very good tour in both French and some English so we were able to figure out what we were seeing. 🙂 After the tour we took advantage of the fact that our hotel actually had a washer and dryer! We already have done laundry in the sink 2x, so we were happy to use a washing machine/dryer although they charged us $25 USD for the privilege. 😦

London definitely didn’t live up to its cool, rainy reputation. London was going through one of its hottest streaks of the last few years while we were there. I was surprised at how many places didn’t have any air conditioning at all (I, Ryan, am new to Europe travel). One of the big concerts we attended was in an unairconditioned concert hall that was 95F+ inside! We definitely appreciated sun over rain, but the experience made us appreciate our AC at home! 🙂

Emily had spent time in London in college, but this was my first time in the city. I was excited to catch up on seeing the main sites. In case you are interested, here are some of the highlights (we promise not to bore you with every trip detail!):

Westminster Abbey: After our flight landed, we headed straight to the Sunday morning church service at Westminster Abbey (the travel pros say to hit the ground running, right?). The service was very interesting as was seeing the abbey itself and the famous black and white tile floor we’ve seen so many times in royal events.

Harrods: We explored Harrods department store which sells everything from dogs to food to clothes to musical instruments! We were most interested in the food hall. Of particular interest and fun is that the pastry counter puts lots of their amazing desserts on Buy One, Get One Free in the last hour before closing 🙂 We enjoyed finding a fun spot to eat these delicious pastries in Kensington Garden.

The Proms: For eight weeks during the summer, the BBC sponsors a daily concert in Royal Albert Hall that is very popular. We went to a great concert by the US National Youth Orchestra with guest soloist Josh Bell. I can only give the concert an A- though given the extent that I sweated during the concert! 🙂

Changing of the Guard & Tower of London: Having been in Ohio State’s Marching Band, I found the ceremony quite interesting and was surprised to hear the Royal Band playing pop songs! We rounded out our classic tour of London with a tour of the Tower of London and enjoyed looking at the Crown Jewels.

Les Miserables: Somehow we had managed to never see this popular musical (or the movie… I guess that’s what 3 years of grad school does!) so what better place to see it than the West End!?

English Tea: One must have a tea while in England, right? We had tea at the Orangerie at Kensington Palace. There were lots of media types hanging out hoping to see the Royal Family arrive home. In fact, William and Kate arrived the evening that we had visited.

The Royal Baby: We made an impromptu post given that people might find it interesting! It was quite a mob of people, but it was definitely an interesting local experience to see.

It was a quick tour of London, but we enjoyed it! We are now off to France to begin the main portion of our Europe trip.

We were really excited that William and Kate were able to follow our detailed itinerary to have the baby while we were in London for only three days.

After we heard of the birth, we stopped by around 11pm to see the announcing letter which is displayed on an easel at the main Buckingham Palace gate for the public to see. We waited in line (or a friendly mob?) during one of the hottest nights in London of the last six years and grabbed a few shots for those interested!

It was quite the party at Buckingham Palace!

We had to wade through this group to get the 2nd picture!