Fussen, Germany, 6/24/10-6/27/10

Okay, so I blogged for about an hour about Fussen a few nights ago and it wouldn’t post and I lost the entire thing! Needless to say, I was a little bummed. So I’ve learned my lesson and I’m writing everything in MS Word now so I can at least save it! Blogging has been more difficult than I anticipated, mainly because our Internet connections have been weak most places we’ve been. We can usually get wifi access in the public areas of our hotels, but in our room the signal is so weak that it doesn’t work. So I’m really behind. Enough bellyaching….on to Fussen.

After leaving Rothenburg, we drove to Dinkelsbuhl, which is another walled city on the Romantic Road.

Dinkelsbuhl, Germany

We chose to drive there mainly because we spent a lot of time that morning shopping in Rothenburg, so by the time we hit the road it was basically time to eat again. Can you tell that food is a major topic of this blog? Anyway, Dinkelsbuhl was lovely as was Rothenburg, but seemed a little more spread out. The most noteworthy thing that happened there is that we got a parking ticket for parking too long inside the city wall; we didn’t know the rules until we read afterward in our book! We (I) have a bad habit of doing that, i.e. reading about things too late. Anyway, we decided to get back on the Autobahn and drive part of the way to Fussen to save a little time. Just based on what we had read and some instinct and pure luck, we got off the Autobahn at just the right time to get back on the Romantic Road (which is really just a signposted route that takes you through pretty little medieval villages). I say that because just after we got off the autobahn we began to see glimpses of the alps on the horizon. As we finally approached Fussen we could see Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castles perched on the mountainside.

Arrived at our hotel and parked in the tightest parking garage ever, to find that our hotel was nice. Like, really nice. Like 4 star nice. Anyway, we went in search of dinner, eating at a place recommended in our Rick Steves book only to find that we were the only people there. Regardless, the food was pretty good. We found after arriving at our hotel (again, should have read ahead in our book) that it is recommended that your reserve your tickets for the castles ahead of time to avoid lines. Only problem is that you have to make reservations by 3 p.m. (or 2 p.m. or 6 p.m. depending on the source), but regardless we missed the deadline to make reservations to tour the castles on Friday. This worked out okay, however, because we went to Tegelberg, an area just a short distance past the castles on Friday for a total day of fun. Tegelberg is, I guess, the name of the mountain there. There’s a gondola to the top (very expensive, so we gave it a miss) and many adventurous souls go up there to hang glide and/or parasail to the fields below. This was entertaining to watch and gave me absolutely no desire to do more than that (although Maddie and McIntyre both want to try!). At the base of the gondola there is a summertime luge course and an awesome playground. The luge was awesome fun for all of us, but Maddie and I seemed to like it best. McIntyre did a couple of runs (once with me and once with Jim) but he had more fun on the zip line on the playground.

Maddie and Tracy on the Luge.

Mac going back for another ride on the zipline

After spending a few hours at Tegelberg, we headed back to the hotel to hang out in the biergarden so I could catch up on blogging and Jim could drink beer! And so the kids could just chill out. It was great to have a day of pure fun when we weren’t on any sort of schedule. Turns out even 12- year-olds can only spend so much time walking around quaint little villages.

On Saturday we finally visited the castles, which were beautiful. I personally enjoy looking at the exteriors more than the interiors. Maddie seemed to like the tours, but she complained about the fact that we couldn’t see ALL of the rooms of the castles.

Maddie and Mac trying on their new hats!

McIntyre seemed like he could take or leave it and just wanted to go play on the zip line some more, but he was a total trooper. The castle tours involve a lot of stairs and a lot of being quiet so everyone can hear the tour guide and he was a pretty good little boy through all of that. Overall, his behavior has been pretty darn good on this trip considering all he’s had to do

Hohenschwangau Castle

Neuschwanstein Castle

Unfortunately, here is where I have to tell the story of the frog. After we had finished our castle tours and gotten back down to the bottom near the ticket center, we saw an odd looking and rather large frog on the sidewalk. It seemed like an unusual place for a frog to be, and at first we weren’t even sure it was alive. Jim snapped a photo of it (he’s been like the stereotypical tourist snapping photos of EVERYTHING on this trip), and then the kids decided it might be nice to help the little froggy back over to the wooded area nearby. McIntyre bent down to try to pick it up and the frog hopped away, but in the wrong direction. It hopped into the road, and was merrily hopping across the road when a car or van (can’t remember which) came up the road. We were all cheering for the frog to hop faster, but sadly it stopped and then hopped at just the wrong time. Yes, you guessed it, after the car had gone past there was a poor little dead frog plastered on the road. The kids were rather traumatized. For several days afterward, McIntyre kept bringing it up and saying he was sad for the poor little frog. I’m sad for the frog too, but my concern is that the dead frog is the only thing McIntyre will remember about this trip. When you look back on your childhood and think about the things you remember from your early years, say around the age of 5, it’s the traumatic things (at least for me) that stand out. I SO hope this is not a memory that sticks for McIntyre.

Doomed Frog

After the castles, we did a lovely cruise on Lake Forgensee (I think that’s the right name), which is the lake you can see from Neuschwanstein.

Maddie on the boat

After that, back to the biergarden to try to forget about the poor little froggy and watch the US lose in the World Cup!

Our hotel in Fussen

Rothenburg, Germany, Part 2

More Rothenburg....you'll be seeing lots of this city.

Suit of armor inside the doors of the restaurant at our hotet.

McIntyre and Maddie at dinner at our hotel our first night in Rothenburg. The inside of the hotel is rustic, yet nice, and the food was wonderful.

Another interior shot of the restaurant, shot by McIntyre, I believe.

Dad having his first bier in Germany, shot also by McIntyre (notice the low point of view).

Rothenburg, Germany, Part 1, 6/22-6/24

Maddie has already blogged a bit about Rothenburg, but it is unbelievable. The whole place looks like a post card...everywhere you turn it is beautiful. It almost looks fake it's so pretty, almost as if you're in a replica at Epcot but this is the real thing. Everything is so clean and beautiful and there are impossibly beautiful flowers in the window boxes of practically every building. I could have stayed here for days and days. Just absolutely loved it and so glad we included it in our intinerary.

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This is the exterior of our hotel in Rothenburg. This building is 550 years old, and it's in the "new" part of the walled city. The daughter of the owners (well, we learned they don't own the building but lease it instead) was named Nicole, and she was absolutely wonderful and helpful.

I'm pretty sure this is a shot that Maddie took out the window of our room. She's a pretty good photographer, huh?

Another Maddie shot. See what I mean about the flowers?

The street in front of our hotel.

Rheinfall, Part 4, Tuesday 6/22/10

More photos from Rheinfall...

This is a shot of the iron grip I had on McIntyre the entire time we were on the rock in the middle of the falls.

View at the top of the falls.

This shot will give you and idea of the power of the water....

Ditto.

Rheinfall, part 3, Tuesday 6/232/10

The ascent up the rock. Notice the look of worry and concentration on my face as I grip McIntyre's clothes to keep him from falling. I was the only one worried, apparently.

McIntyre and Maddie posing about a third of the way up the rock.

View nearing the top of the falls.

View from the top, looking back at Scholss Worth.

Rheinfall, Part 2, Tuesday, 6/22/10

More photos from Rheinfall....

This is one of the castles, Schloss Worth, on the side of the falls we visited.

This is the boat that takes you to the rock in the middle of the falls....

Here is the boat approaching the landing at the rock, amidst much roaring whitewater.

And yes, we did take the boat to the middle. Here we are on the approach. For me, it was rather terrifying to have all that roaring water around, and I couldn't even see where the life jackets were on the boat. That's the mother in me talking, I suppose.

Zurich to Rothenburg, via Rheinfall, Part 1, Tuesday 6/22/10

Tuesday, we departed from the wonderful Chez Hodgdon and set off for Rothenburg, Germany via Rheinfall in northern Switzerland. We of course got a later start than we had planned, and then were further delayed by going totally the wrong direction. (We were following what the GPS told us to do, but the real problem was operator error, i.e. the wrong destination had been plugged into the GPS.) When we finally backtracked and got headed in the right direction, it only took about an hour to get the Schaffhausen, the city nearby Rheinfall. We parked and found a restaurant recommended in our Lonely Planet Switzerland book, but once we got inside and were seated found that they were not serving food (it was around 2:30 or 3 p.m. and many restaurants in Europe close around 2 p.m. and don't begin serving food again until around 6 p.m.

Above is a shot of the restaurant, but fortunately the bartender/waiter was very kind. He was actually born in Michigan, but had moved to Germany when he was 2 years old. He spoke excellent English and apparently took pity on us, because while we were debating what to do he came back and said they could fix us a sandwich. It was that or McDonalds, so we took him up on it. The sandwiches were delicious. Plus he gave McIntyre some dice to play with. I have to say, overall people have been very kind to us.

After lunch we made our way the Rheingall, above, which was beautiful. There are castles on both sides, as you can see above.

Maddie, McIntyre and me in front of Rheinfall.

This rock in the middle of the falls is a destination that can be reached by boat....more on that later.

Lucern, Part 4, Monday 6/21/10

More Lucern photos....

Lovely view of Lucern....the foreground shows part of a system to control flow of water from the lake into the river, which was under renovation.

Another lovely view of Lucern.

Maddie, Jessica, McIntyre and Will clowning around in a Swiss phone booth (much more spacious than they would have you believe based on their pose).

McIntyre and Jessica formed a special bond, at least as far as McIntyre was concerned. Let's just say there was a proposal ("Jessica, will you marry me when we get older?") but she let him down easy with a diplomatic response ("I already have a boyfriend.")

Rothenburg, Germany

The hotel in Rothenburg was AMAZING! The room (a double suite) had two rooms and a huge bathroom. The breakfast was included and was wonderful. WE had bread, fruit, yogurt, eggs, meat, cheese, cereal and I could go on. Also, the staff was great too, they were kind and very helpful.

As for Rothenburg it's self, wow. All the building are mid-evil and and the streets are cobble stone. Bakery's, cafes and shops with postcards little are the main stores in Rothenburg. Speaking of stores, there is a fabulous Christmas ornament shop near the square. It had tons of ornament and things. There was even a giant one in the middle of part of the store. It was one of the little building things that moves by the heat (except the giant was was powered by electricity). Mac and I picked out our annual Christmas ornament there, I got a snowman, while mac got the Night Watchman.

Which brings me to our tour. At 8:00, in the square, we met the Night Watchman (with about a hundred other people) and started our tour. He is hilarious and it is definitely worth doing. During the day out side the Night Watchman shop, there is a manican of him! They look almost alike, although the real one isn't made of plastic.

Another thing we did was walk the wall. The wall goes around the city. At first we had a hard time finding the spot to enter (we did find a lot of dead ends), but after consulting the map several times, we climbed up the step and started walking. After maybe thirty minutes of walking we came to a tower that you could climb. It is worth it. The view was fantastic, both of the city, the new town, and the mountains in the distance.

Soon we grew hungry so Mac and Mom went to a playground right outside of the wall, while Dad and I went searching for food and a bank. Food was no problem but we needing more euros. The first bank we found didn't like the card. The second wans,'t a bank.....and finally we found an atm that worked and got some euros. Then we bought two pretzels.

That morning we had gone to the Criminal Museum. It was slightly scary.......but worth it. I found out that in the middle ages, all bread had to be the EXACT SAME size. Otherwise the baker got punished. I found that quite funny.

We also went to Saint Jacobs church. The ceiling was at least a hundred feet high. The glass windows were very pretty. But the main attraction was the High Altar. We took pictures, and I can not describe it, so I will post a snapshot of it. Short and worth while.

Overall Rothenburg was amazing and I am so glad that I got to see it. I really wish we could have stayed another day. :( But we took TONS of pictures so i am positive I will nt forget what I did there. :)

Lucern, Part 3, Monday, 6/20/10

More photos from Lucern....

Unlike me, Jessica has a way with birds.

Maddie posing by a fountain on the lovely streets of Lucern....

....then drinking from it. You can actually drink from most of the fountains in Switzerland.

Lovely painted building in Lucern.