Day 2 Germany: Burg Eltz and Cruising the Rhine

Our second day in Germany was spent hiking to Burg Eltz and cruising on the Rhine River.  Made me feel like an old lady carrying baby around in my belly up the hills!  Rick Steves says this is his favorite castle.  I thought it was pretty cool looking on the outside.  I feel like we've seen so many castle interiors since living over here that I could have skipped seeing the inside though.  The kids are pretty much over seeing the interior of castles, too.   Once you've seen a few, you've pretty much seen them all.  This one is in a magical location, which made it worth the trip!   The hike to get there is so pretty.  The history is pretty neat, too.  The same family has lived in and owned this place for 33 generations...since the 12th century.   Crazy.  

A hiker saw me taking some pictures with my phone and took this one of our "family of 5".  The only family picture we got of all of us...  a phone pic :)

And a few more from our castle hike...

Ella picked flowers along the way.

Always on the lookout for treasures...

Up close!  Pictures weren't allowed inside.

Going inside!

Climbing on castle walls.   The only thing they wanted to do once we were there.

View from the castle...

This one is blurry but I liked it since it shows Luke with his walking stick.  Ella was done walking at this point.  Lucky she had her dad to carry her the rest of the way up the hill to the car.  I was working pretty hard just getting my own rear end up the hill.

 

After our castle excursion we drove over to Bacharach for our Rhine River cruise. We drove through some cute towns and pretty countryside to get there.

I don't know if there was a biking event going on that weekend or if there are always a ton of bikers around, but we passed a lot.

 A lot of vineyards too!  They completely covered most of their little mountains.  Rick Steves always talks about where to try alcohol in his travel books/movies.  It's a good thing we don't drink.   Saves us a lot of money on these European excursions!  I love seeing the vineyards though.

 Driving into Bacharach...  such a cute town!   The roads were so narrow. 
pics taken from inside the car.  Don't mind the bug splats on the windshield.

These next pics were taking while waiting for our river cruise...

The boat :)

And some of the views from the river.  So pretty.

Lots of castles along the Rhine.  Castles and super cute little villages.

 

 We got off the boat at St. Goar and took the train back to Bacharach after looking around for a while.  Here are some pics from St. Goar.

Seeing all the 'fart' signs made us chuckle the whole trip.

 Lots of beer steins to buy for souvenirs! 

Both towns were just super cute and stereotypical German.   

 We always have to stop for some Gelato.  Ella had no idea it was on her nose and that she had a moustache here.  haha.

 

And I think that was about it from day 2 of our Memorial Day weekend getaway. :)

Memorial Day Weekend in Deutschland. Part 1: Trier

The Friday of Memorial Day weekend we hopped in the car when Jake got off work and headed to Germany.  We made Spangdahlem Air Force Base our hub and visited the sites and villages around the Rhine and Mosel River Valleys.  We were off to a late start on Saturday because we got in so late, but our first little outing was to Trier.   It's the oldest city in Germany.  Here's the old Roman gate to the city.  Kind of cool.  We just walked around and looked at the cute shops.  The kids had fun finding "jewels" (colored airsoft pellets) around the city on the ground, and we caught the tail end of a street festival that was going on.   The gate (Porta Nigra)...

Luke wasn't flipping off the camera... just holding the treasures he found.

Checking out the town...


Lots of 'wursts'!

 
I think Luke and Ella could look for these things all day.  They seem to luck out and find them wherever we go.  Weird since I never see anyone shooting the airsoft guns...

Cathedral of Trier...

Random

Some pictures from the car window.  I didn't realize NW Germany is so pretty.  A lot of it looks similar to England.  Excuse the smashed bugs (blurs) on the windshield :)

A few more pics from the car...

 

Mr. Smith's 32nd Birthday

Just a few pictures from Jake's 32nd Birthday!   I'm a month late posting this.  It fell on Mother's Day this year, so he was nice and shared his day with me.  Even remembered to get me a little something.  What a guy.  I guess twins are pretty used to sharing the attention though.  We went to church and then we relaxed at home that afternoon.  Jake requested pistachio pudding cake again.  He says it brings back good childhood memories.  It is quite tasty :)  Happy 32 Jake!  I love you.

 

Audley End

On the way home from dropping Abby off at the airport, we stopped at Audley End.  We drive by the exit for it all the time, but had never taken a day to see it.  Since it's another English Heritage site, we got to use our memberships again.  Got to get our moneys worth out of that!  It's an early 17th century mansion on a huge plot of land.  We'll have to go back sometime to see the inside since we were just in the mood to play on the grounds and explore outside.  Cool place. 
Here it is from the front.  A lot of these were pics Jake took with his phone.

Cool bridge in front of the house.  Luke and Ella had a good time watching ducks and swans.

 From the back of the house..

 English gardens are so pretty.  Now that the summer flowers are out, I want to go back. 

 Exploring the grounds behind the house..

 and more of the gardens

 We liked these crazy bushes.  Edward Scissorhands style!

One more day in London with my sis! And Queen E's Diamond Jubilee!

Looking through pictures and thinking about blogging just makes me want to go to sleep lately!  Maybe it's because I have so many pictures to look through.  I don't know.  I'll blame it on being pregnant.  This is the only place I document this stuff though so I know I need to suck it up and get going!  I'm getting behind.  Another excuse for slacking is that our desktop that I usually use for pictures and blogging seems to have bit the dust.  It won't even turn on anymore.  Super annoying!  I'm glad pictures have been backed up for the most part.  I'm hoping there isn't much that I hadn't transfered onto the external hard drive. Pictures look a little funky after editing them on this laptop, but I guess it will have to do for now.
Anyhow, to finish up with fun things we did with Abby in April... this was our last full day together before she headed back to Arizona.  We started the day at the Royal Mews.  It was fun seeing the carriages and horses.  Speaking of carriages, today is the last day of the official Jubilee celebrations throughout the UK, so we got to see them put one of these carriages to use again.  Well, I saw on TV.  Not about to go down to London without Jake (he had to work) to fight the crazies for a glimpse of the Queen going by.  Everyone has been off work since last Friday and British kids are out of school all week this week.  I really feel lucky that we have been in England for so many big events.  Last year was a national party with William and Kate getting married, and this year there is a lot going on with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics.  It's a good place to be!  Back to playing with Abs though, here are some pics from the mews...

The Gold State Coach.  Fancy shmancy.

The Glass Coach...  Royal brides have ridden in here to the church to be married.

One of the royal cars...

Horse stuff...

 Gifts for the horses to Prince Philip from the Obamas...

The horse stables ...

Royal Riding School...

  And some carriage action from today!  I found these online.  Happy 60 years, Queen Elizabeth.

 This is the same open top carriage that William and Kate used after they got married :)  Charles and Camilla rode with her since Prince Philip is in the hospital today.

 The crazy crowds!  The whole city is like this for blocks with these kinds of events.

 People have been decorating their houses, cars, and restaurants with flags.  Neighborhoods are having block parties and other celebrations, and wearing crazy clothes to celebrate, too.  :)

She's so cute. 

 RAF Red Arrow fly over

So, there's a little of the Mews in action today!  Kind of a big deal around here.  :)  Now, back to London with Abby.  After visiting the Royal Mews, we walked up to Buckingham Palace and then over to the National Gallery, ate some dinner and then browsed stores until time to catch our show. I love West End Theatre! Matilda was a great show and we lucked out with literally the last two (awesome) seats. I wish Abs was closer so we could play more often! Guess she just needs to come back to visit.

 Buckingham Palace Gates...

 Cambridge Theatre..

 Before the show started.  Don't know if pictures were allowed or not, but it was such a cute set!  I loved Matilda!

Love my sister!  Thanks for making the trip, Abby!  We loved having you here!