Our First Guest to Germany

Well, we just hosted our first visitor to Germany. Valarie’s mom was able to spend an entire month with us. I think she had a great time. We tried to show her as much as possible, without wearing her out. That’s no slight at Grandma. Val was talking the other day about how our normal family vacation was to walk, tour, and sight-see until everyone is dead tired…then go two more hours! There’s always so much to see that we don’t want to miss anything. But that usually takes nearly everything we’ve got…then we’ve got to make our way back to the hotel or drive home. So aside from trying to make it easier on ourselves, we made the conscious effort to take it easy on Grandma. We took one muti-overnight trip to Garmisch and a lot of nearby day trips. Even trying to take it easy, we did a lot traveling and sight-seeing. Val’s mom was a great trooper and we’re all glad everyone had a great time. There are a lot of little stories we could share, but the quickest and easiest, and probably most interesting to you, our friendly readers, is to just share some of our best pictures (of us and of the beautiful scenery) from all of our trips.

A wonderful view of downtown Heidelberg, taken from the castle.

We took Mom to a Medieval Fair. I've always wanted to check one of these events out. It was interesting. The crafts were neat. The food was hearty and good. All of the rides were hand-powered. The jousting show was a little slow-paced; it didn't help that we couldn't understand any of the story line, which was all in German. And of course, it was entertaining to people-watch for the people (and families) that got all dressed up in the spirit of the fair.

We took an hour-and-a-half boat cruise on the Rhine river. We started in Rhudesheim and floated downstream (North) to St. Goar. The scenery was beautiful; vineyards up steep hills on the banks of the river, towns that looked like models placed on the riverside, and lots of castles on the peaks along the bends of the river.

Emily and Vance enjoying some hot cocoa. It started out as an overcast day and a little chilly.

Valarie and her Mom, with the Lorelei Rock in the background.

Of the many castles along the Rhine, the Burg Pfalzgrafenstein, "the ship of stone", is one of the most interesting. It's built on a small island in the middle of the river.

On the way to Garmisch, we took a tour of the Neuschwanstein Castle in Fussen. They say that Neuschwanstein Castle was Walt Disney's inspiration for Cinderella's castle. It was a beautiful castle, inside and out, but like many famous attractions here, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside (copyright protection on all of the paintings). So, you'll just have to trust us that it was extravagant! We were allowed to take pictures from inside the castle of the surrounding area. The above picture is a view of the lake and Lugwig's summer castle.

There is a bridge behind the castle that crosses a very deep gorge. It would have been a great angle/perspective of the castle, except that the entire side was covered with scaffolding. (I think it's great that they want to take care of one of their national treasures, but couldn't they do that during the low season?) (Also for the record, it was very windy up there and it inflated my shirt; I'm not that barreled chest, yet.)


A view of Neuschwanstein Castle as we were driving away. I literally saw it in my rearview mirror as we were leaving.

Now, we picked the hotel at Garmisch from descriptions on the Internet. And it sounded like a cool idea to pick a hotel that was so remote in the mountains above Parnachklamm Gorge that the only way you could reach the hotel was to ride a cable car over the gorge and up the mountain. What we didn't think of was how scared of heights Valarie's mom is. She made several white-knuckle rides up and down the mountain. The kids were okay most of the time, but each got nervous a time or two. I was busy hanging my head and camera out of the window to take pictures and videos.

But check out the view from our hotel window!

From our hotel, we walked about 20 minutes down the mountain to the Partnachklamm Gorge. (Grandma was more than happy to take the walk and avoid a cable car ride down to the van.) Partnachklamm Gorge was amazing! It's one of our most favorite things we've done since we've been in Germany. Over the course of centuries, the river has cut an 80-meter gorge through the mountain. Originally used for logging, but now for tourism, the Germans built a walkway along the river that you hike along. It was beautiful and awe-inspiring; being able to walk so close to the power of the river rushing by and looking up at the scale of the mountain walls.

Here's a great picture to show the scale of the gorge versus the young adventurers. Plus, it shows how green and wet the scenery was. After years of being stationed in Arizona and central Texas, we have really been enjoying the bounty of green nature.

This is just a scenic shot from our walk around downtown Garmisch. Not all German houses look this authenic; a lot are modern, geometric Ikea clones, but houses like the one in this picture aren't rare either. There are a lot of houses with dark wood trim, big flower boxes (the Germans have mastered the flower box presentation), and lots of flowers and shrubs in the yard. (Also, the kids got new sunglasses that day.)

Almost on a whim, we decided to go check out Eibsee (a large lake just on the edge of Garmisch). And I'm so glad we did. The water was so clear and beautiful. It faded from clear on the shoreline, to green, to deep blue in the middle of the lake. We spent most of the day there, taking a paddle boat across the lake, hiking through the surrounding trails, eating bratwurst, and even going for a quick swim (mostly me, but Vance and Emily got in a little). The water was pretty cold, probably around 65 degrees. It made me feel as manly as Vladimir Putin on vacation.

This is an amazing scenery view of the lake, with the Zugspitze (Germany's highest mountain range) in the background.

We visited the Schwetzingen Castle and Gardens. The castle is okay; I think of it more as just a palace (I know, I'm so jaded), but the gardens are really impressive. There are so many areas and zones that you can easily get lost trying to find a particular section. (And we have.) Not only are there beautiful flower beds and fountains, but also a salmon-colored mosque, a rough-stoned temple-tower to Mercury, a larger, rough-stoned temple to Apollo, and an opulent bathhouse, just to name a few. It's always a nice day spent, just exploring the garden grounds.

Another one of our easy day trips was to Trier, Germany's oldest city. The Porta Nigra (Black Gate) in the background was built in 160-180 AD by the Romans. There's a lot of shopping and restaurants in Trier now. We had a good Italian meal and did a lot of window shopping.

Here's Vance standing on the Porta Nigra. We like this photo because it shows, or at least hints at, the massive scale of the gate. We later walked up the four flights of stairs to walk through the gate and look across the town below.

We also visited the Trier Dom, the oldest cathedral in Germany.

A view inside the cathedral. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, the scale and beauty of the cathedral are awe-inspiring. At the very front, in the alcove, you ascend some stairs, and in the center you look through a gate into a smaller room where you can see a box. That's all you see, but everyone goes through it. In the box is the robe of Christ. Not the shroud, it is a robe woven as a single piece without a seam. The story is, that before Christ was crucified, the guards took this special robe from him. They had divided his belongings, but drew lots to see who got the robe. When Constantine's mother visited the Holy Land she came back and built a church here and brought back this relic. They also have a nail believed to be from the Crucifixion and links from the chains used to hold St Peter.