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...