Awesome Alps and the Castles

We are delighted to arrive in the tiny town with our Air BnB.  It is nestled in a valley near the famous castles.  After checking and exploring our super cool place, we read in the book that there are some castle ruins a short hike away.  We convince the Dads to go for groceries while the rest of us go exploring.

That is the little village we stayed in, Greg especially loved the church bells that chimed all night...every fifteen minutes, he gave a full on rant about it the first morning!

Kelly and Anya felt like they were in the Sound of Music

Kids at the top of the castle ruins.

Name of the castle ruins in case you want to read about it!

When you send the Dads to shop you never know what you will get...they made a little conversion error when buying the ground beef and ended up with a meat baby instead!

Eric and Myev recreating the photo in the pub at the corner...we tried to watch the Belgium World Cup game there but ended up back at our own place with a great tv!

Watching the game

Enjoying German beer and watching the game

The Belgian flag on the field at the start!

Besides a trip with friends what could make things better when you are 8?  Your own pedal car and a tiny town to tear around in and explore! The owner of the AirBnB had this and let Charlie use it= HEAVEN!

 We got up early and departed for the castles, the ticketing system is a bit tricky to figure out and you have to show up early to claim your reserved tickets.  We had time to kill before our tour, here is Jake and his understudy Charlie!


Hohenschwangau Castle- this was the first one we got to see.  It was fully furnished inside.  No photos from the inside because they don't allow you to take any.  Our tour guide was a little soft spoken..but he was only a warm up for the tour guide in the second castle...Katie really enjoyed him and can do great impersonations, she cracked us up at numerous meals doing her impersonation of our guide!

Waiting to go up and see the castle in the background.

Walking out after our tour

The first castle we tour..this is the one that he lived in while he had the second one built.  

The morning mist was rising off the little lake-gorgeous!

Recreating a Storyland photo from long ago when they had these same hats!  This was in the castle gift shop!

Here is Neuschwanstein we took this from "Mary's Bridge" that overlooks the gorge nearby.

Another view from the bridge, what a beautiful spot!

 Again, no real photos from inside the castle because they weren't allowed, the best was our quirky tour guide and the spot on Katie impersonations that followed!

We got home and had a very late lunch after a failed attempt to eat near Fussen, we even drove into pedestrian only zones and got lots of strange looks.  We walked up to the beer garden that is halfway to the ruins and had a fabulous afternoon enjoying the mountains, the cowbells and the beer!

Charlie feeding the goats at the beer garden.

Beers with the best views and great company!

The largest couch in the world? Greg could not touch...very funny to see how awkward he found it to sit on!

Everyone was pedal biking!

We head to bed excited for our trip to the Zugspite the next day...

Again my friend wrote about this long ago, I'm still catching up...here is her post...

https://fillthewall.wordpress.com/2018/07/15/day-12-castles/

A Fun Night with our South Africa Friends

We couldn't pass through Southern Germany and not see our buddies that we knew from our time in South Africa, they were gracious enough to host both families...so we rolled in with a party of nine and they treated us to a wonderful dinner on their deck and a great walk through the fields at sunset.

Our friend is a pastor and that is his church steeple with the sun setting behind it!

In the morning we all walked to the elementary school to see their youngest daughter play in the end of year soccer tournament, the kids were still in school for 2 weeks!!

Soccer fans

Eliza, the soccer star!

We saw the kid accepting the winning trophy for his team, could have been a Saturday in the US, except everyone was speaking German!

Charlie fondly remembered the playground at the school from our last visit and was thrilled to spend some quality time on it with Jake, Katie, Lila and Eliza, Jake is on the monkey bars in mid swing.

Walking back from school to their house there was a cool view of their old house and the church steeple...theirs is the one with the cool wood framing.

Lila posed for me with her house in the distance!

Just a random house in the town.

They said this was the mayors house, I thought the flowers were gorgeous!

Again Myev beat me to writing about our stop, here is the link to her post...she had a nice picture from the local bakery, we love eating the pretzels when we go!

https://fillthewall.wordpress.com/2018/07/14/day-11-part-1-real-germans/

So nice to see our friends and our US friends loved having the real experience of staying in a small German town with locals!

Heading for the Alps..first stop...Strasbourg France!

We headed South in 2 cars...Strasbourg was our first stop, I was excited to see the famous cathedral lit up at night.  The only trouble was the sunset is so late...we had to go at 10:30 pm to see it lit up...very late for Greg!  Only Kelly was up for it from the kids, the rest stayed back at the hotel.

 They had a cool outdoor screen setup and a movie about the cathedral projected onto it...

 What a beautiful place!

We tried Tarte Flambee for dinner, which we told the kids was like pizza...they were not fans but were hungry by the time we ate...

In the morning we headed for the area called Petite France...

 The houses and little canals were gorgeous.

 I liked seeing this boat coming through the lock...

 We headed back to the cathedral to see the inside...

 Amazing stained glass windows...

 Here is a fascinating video that shows the stained glass windows in the crates in the salt mines being recovered by the Monuments Men...http://art-crime.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-monuments-men-harry-ettlinger.html

A touching tribute to our troops...inside the cathedral near the gift shop.



There is an amazing old clock inside the cathedral, it was currently being restored but it looked like a marvel of its time!

 We were on the hunt for coffee and decided to try this crepe place...we found the meanest lady in all of Strasbourg...who did not want us in her restaurant!  Everyone is laughing as Kelly tries to capture a photo of her for me! 

 Here is the grumpy waitress with her back to us!

 Relaxing in the lawn before we start our drive to the next stop...the Zuern house!

 I snapped this photo of a shop that was decorated for the World Cup...as it turned out they would have much to celebrate!

My friend Myev also kept a blog of our trip...here is a link to her post about this stop....

https://fillthewall.wordpress.com/2018/07/09/day-9-part-2-strasbourg-france/

Stay tuned!!

Battle of the Bodenhofers

We are loving our visitors, first we had Candy & Paul Bodenhofer and now we have Bodenhofer's 2.0...our kids are delighted to have their buddies Anya & Jake.  We wonder which ones we can see the more amazing sites with?

We have taken repeat trips to Bruge and Oostduinkerke, both about an hour and half away and at the Belgian coast.  The reason to visit the town of Oostduinkerke is to see the shrimp fishermen on horseback.  Our first attempt was a bust, but the second was a jackpot.  Very cool to see them fishing and combine it with a trip to a beautiful beach.

Bruge is a great little Belgian city, finally we found the Madonna, that was carved by Michelangelo and was recovered by the Monuments Men at the end of WWII. 

The church really needed an audio guide, we saw many things inside and didn't know what they meant, we were really curious about this statue with the skeletons, we couldn't figure out how to translate the Dutch either...

Canal walk in Bruge

We also visited Leuven, which is a great city very close to us.  

The Irish Institute

College town and the World Cup is a huge deal here!  Go Red Devils!

Leuven has a famous library that was burned by the Germans in WWI and rebuilt with funds from good old American schools and institutions.  

This is one school that sent rebuilding money...it is right down the street from us in Wakefield!

Burned books, they call the one on the left Snow White...

Outside the library

Front of the library-what a building!

Kids in Leuven by the canal.

Eric and I decided it was funny hat day but he decided to step it up by also riding Charlie's bike through the main square...lots of funny looks!

Stay tuned for our upcoming adventures...