Bavaria

Wednesday morning, after Darren headed off to work, Mom, Doreen, Mikayla, and I piled into the car with all our luggage and drove off in a different direction. We were going to the Bavaria region of Germany and were pretty excited to go. Darren had to work, so it was just us girls for a couple of days before he flew to Munich to join us for the weekend.

When I first was planning the trip, I thought we would stay in Munich itself and just do a day trip to see the castles around there, but when I started looking into hotels in Munich I found that they were really expensive because Oktoberfest was just starting up the weekend we were there. So, instead, through a tip from a friend, I found a cute little hotel in the town of Oberammergau, which is near both of the castles we were interested in seeing. And the town itself is really cute and known for both its Passion Play (put on once every decade and all the town gets involved in putting it on) and its wonderful houses which have frescoes of traditional fairy tales painted on the exterior. The town is nestled in the Alps and just the location is worth the travel.

Mikayla, Mom, and I getting ready to check in to the hotel

The view from the deck of my hotel room the first morning I woke up

Nana C and Mikayla

Our breakfast table at the hotel. We had a fun waitress named Sabine who made the dining experience a lot of fun.

Mr. Schmidt, the owner of the hotel

Fresco house

Fresco house

After talking to the owner of our hotel, we found out that in addition to the two castles that we had planned on seeing there were also two wonderful little churches in the area that were pretty famous as well. He gave us a little map and outlined the route we should take. After seeing the churches that he pointed us to, we were glad that we took his advice.

Mom and Doreen in front of one of the little churches we visited. It rained most of the day that we were touring there, so they bought a couple of cute umbrellas to try to stay dry.

Mikayla and I in front of the church

There were a couple of horses in a field right next to the path leading to the church. They were pretty friendly horses and one of them decided to check if Mikayla had any food in her pockets.

The rococo style of one of the church's interior. It was amazing. The other one was amazing as well, although a bit different style than this one, but our pictures didn't turn out quite as well.

Candles in the church

After touring through both churches and stopping to snap a couple of pictures of a wonderful old concrete bridge in the pouring rain, we were finally on the way to see one of my favorite castles. Neuschwanstein. It was built by King Ludwig II, although never finished since the king died during its construction and all work was halted upon his death. Only about a third of the rooms were finished, but the ones that were finished and the exterior of the castle are wonderful. It is the reportedly the castle that Disney modeled his Disneyland castle after, and you can see why since much of it seems like it is part of a fairy tale.

We hiked up to the castle after buying tickets for the tour. The walk took about 40 minutes and was a good hike up a fairly steep hill. We timed it just right for this part of the trip since it didn't rain the entire time we were walking, and started to pour again just as we were getting back in our car at the end of our time here. I would love to include pictures of the inside of the castle here, but they don't let you take pictures inside. After that and after walking up and down the steps inside the castle during the tour, we decided that we didn't need to walk down the mountain back to our car, so we paid for a ride in a horse-drawn carriage to take us down.

The Alps near Füssen, the town nearest the castle of Neuschwanstein

Our first view of Neuschwanstein

Another view of Neuschwanstein from our hike up the mountain

The main part of the castle from the courtyard gates

Mom and Doreen and Neuschwanstein

Mom, Mikayla, and I on the hike up to see the castle

The ride back down the mountain. Mikayla was mesmerized by the horses and loved the entire ride.

And now there was only one thing left on our itinerary for the day, which was a smaller one of King Ludwig's castles (he had several besides Neuschwanstein) called Linderhof. I have heard it referred to as his "hunting lodge." It is a small but beautiful castle, located just across the border in Austria. We had a beautiful drive through small windy roads in the Alps to get there. Too bad it was raining. The views were impressive despite the mist and grey skies, so we could hardly imagine how beautiful it would be on a clear, sunny day. We got to Linderhof too late to take a tour of the inside of the castle, but we were able to look through the gardens and some of the grounds. Mom and Doreen took a tour through the Grotto near the castle while I stayed in the car with a napping Mikayla.

The fountain in front of Linderhof

Swans at a lake on the grounds of Linderhof

It was a long, but very good day. We enjoyed seeing each of the places we stopped at. We made it back to Oberammergau in time to have a late dinner at a little Italian restaurant. It was yummy and the owners were nice. They even had toys for Mikayla to play with while we waited for our food. It was here that we had our first apple streudel (no, that is not Italian... but we didn't ask questions since it was so tasty). And then it was off to bed. We woke up the next morning, checked out of the hotel, spent some time in the main part of Oberammergau doing a little shopping, and then headed to Munich to get Darren from the airport.

Mikayla, completely soaked, as she plays in a fountain in Oberammergau

Mikayla trying out hair curlers and other beauty products in the hotel room

Brussels, Belgium

For our second weekend trip, we decided to go to a different country and check out Brussels, Belgium. It is only a two-hour drive from where we live, and it was a city we both had never been to before, so we packed up our bags and went. Because it was so near by, we left Saturday morning and only stayed one night there before heading back home.

Brussels is a crazy international city. Not only do they have two official languages for the entire country (Dutch and French), but Brussels is also home to many European Union offices as well NATO offices. Every sign is posted in at the minimum two languages, but often times more. It was pretty easy to get around in the city and most everyone we spoke to spoke English. Well, I should say that it is easy to understand the signs in the city. Actually getting around we found a little difficult since the streets twist and turn and it is hard to see where they post the road names most of the time. When we were driving in to the city and trying to get to our hotel the GPS kept telling us to turn on certain streets, but it was almost impossible to tell what streets we were on. We made it to our hotel after a few wrong turns and circling around.

Our hotel. They built the new hotel around the old city gate tower. Our room looked out over the tower

Mikayla trying on my sunglasses around her neck

Mikayla saw this empty cupboard and spent about a half an hour getting in and out of it

Peeking over the door of the cupboard

After we checked in to our hotel, we went out walking. Neither of us knew very much about the city, but we looked at the map our hotel concierge had given us and thought it would be interesting to head towards the cathedral. The bells in the bell tower went off about every 15 minutes and would play some pretty music in addition to counting out the time.

St. Michel's Cathedral in the center of town

A window in the cathedral

Darren relaxing on one of the lounging chairs available in the park in front of the cathedral. We stopped here to have a picnic lunch in the shade of the trees before heading on.

The Grand-Place, a fun square that is surrounded on all sides by gilded houses and museums.

A crossbow competition in La Grand-Place that was taking place while we were there... not sure who won, but it was fun to watch for a little bit.

Darren and Mikayla in La Grand-Place

Downtown Brussels

Mmmmm.... Belgian chocolate

Museum of Chocolate

The sign for the Museum of Chocolate

The "Chocolate Master" at work, showing us how he makes his wonderful creations

The Musical Instruments Museum

A close up of one of facade of the Musical Instruments Museum building

L'Arc de Triomphe du Cinquantenaire - built to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Belgium's independence.

The Royal Palace

Gardens of the "Mont des Arts" and a view over Brussels

A Shopping Gallery

The Atomium. It was built for the 1958 Worlds Fair and represents an elementary iron crystal enlarged 160 billion times.

Darren at the Atomium

Taking the subway. Mikayla loved riding on the trains. She now points out trains wherever we go, and knows that they go "fast."

They love their comics in Brussels. We saw stuff like this everywhere. They even have a whole museum dedicated to comic strips.

A fabulous little store that I went into and found some delicious biscuits, chocolate-covered almonds, and many other wonderful things.

Yummy biscuits. You can buy them in bulk and try out the many different flavors

A display of candies

The little cafe that we ate at on Sunday before we headed home. We had to walk a little ways to get here, but thought that we couldn't leave Belgium without having some authentic Belgium waffles

And it sure was worth it! It was delicious.

On Sunday morning, we looked out of the hotel window and saw that it was raining. We thought about waiting for it to let up, but we only had one day to see all the rest of the sights of Brussels and didn't feel like we had time. The one thing that Darren had been talking about that he really wanted to do while in Belgium was go on an "Art Neveaux" walk. He had read about it in a book and saw the suggested walk on our map. We hadn't gotten to it on Saturday because Mikayla was starting to melt down and my feet were hurting (I had definitely worn the wrong shoes for the amount of walking we did), so Sunday was our only chance. So, we set out in the rain to see what we could see.Mikayla and I ready for our walk. We were sure glad that the hotel had a big umbrella we could use!

Darren all geared up for the rain. The stroller was along for the ride in case it ever stopped raining and if Mikayla got tired of being in the backpack carrier. She did get tired of being on my back, but it never stopped raining. So he had to carry it the entire time.

A street in Brussels that we saw during our rainy walk

A heron that we saw during our rainy walk

We really enjoyed the time that we spent in Brussels. It was beautiful and a fun place to go.