Friends, Fest and France

Our good friends, Kim and Brian, came out to visit us last September for some German fun at Volksfest: Stuttgart's Oktoberfest.  We not only had a great time at fest, but we enjoyed plenty of beautiful sights in Germany, as well as in France!

Their trip started off a bit rocky...we got locked out of the house within 5 minutes of their arrival!  It was all uphill from there after some MacGyver maneuvers to get back in.  We spent the day strolling the streets and chowing down on some excellent German food in my favorite local town of Tübingen. The next day we headed to Volksfest for some beer and chicken to start off their Germany trip in just the right way!

Fest bound! (Kim's pic)

We slept in the next day before heading out to check out some abbey ruins in the Black Forest.  The ruins in the town of Hirsau date back to the 11th century.  After taking plenty of pictures in the ruins, we headed to the nearby quaint little town of Calw.  It's exactly what you think a German town should look like!

Calw

Of course you can't visit Germany and not see a castle, so we went to see the impressive Hohenzollern castle.  It looks so perfect from the distance perched up on top of it's hill.

We also did a nice hike to the waterfall at Bad Urach.  It's a pretty easy, flat, path, but we made it much more difficult by deciding to climb the waterfall.

On our way home from hiking, we stumbled upon a magical Italian place for dinner, just about 5 minutes from our house!  We ended up going back just a few nights later!  Their pasta is just divine!

Kim's pics

We drove a couple of hours to cross the Rhine river for an overnight trip to the Alsace region of France, one of our favorite places!  We started off in the northern part of the Alsace in the gorgeous city of Strasbourg.  We ate crepes for lunch, followed by gelato and a look at the beautiful cathedral.  From there, we headed south along the wine route through picturesque villages and vineyards.  We stopped and stayed the night in the picture perfect town of Ribeauville.  We did some wine tasting and found out that we are not big fans of stinky cheese, which is very popular in the region!

Beautiful gelato!

The next day we checked out two more beautiful Alsatian towns; Riquewihr and Kayserberg.  I don't think a town could be any cuter than Riquewihr!  I also love their free samples of delicious coconut macaroons!

These coconut macaroons make Riquewihr smell like heaven!

We took the scenic route through the Black Forest on the way home, stopping in Triberg for a hike up Germany's tallest waterfall.  It doesn't look that tall from the bottom, but the higher you climb you can see that it just keeps going and going.

I think this is the only pic of the four of us! (Kim's pic)

We entertained ourselves for a few days while Kyle had to work.  A cold rainy day was the perfect time to take Brian for a drool fest at the Porsche museum.  We also made a stop at the Motorworld in Böblingen, a car lover's paradise.  We even had time and a break in the rain for a hike up to the Birkenkopf, (aka Rubble Hill).  Rubble Hill is the highest point in Stuttgart with great views over the city.  It was created by piled up rubble from damage done during the war.  Most of the hill is wooded, but the rubble is visible at the top.

Brian and his dream machine (Kim's pic)

Motorworld

Rubble Hill (Kim's pic)

We lucked out with a beautiful sunny day to head to Dachau, a very somber destination.  Dachau was one of the first concentration camps opened in Germany, located just outside of Munich.

You can't be 20 minutes from Munch and not stop for a beer, so we did just that.  We also happened to be there the same day an old dance class friend was visiting!  Never would have guessed that we would be meeting up in Munich!

Dance buddies!

We had so much fun travelling and seeing the sights with Kim and Brian!  We're already looking forward to their next visit in fall 2017!!

Spring Time Fun in Germany

It's been a hectic couple of months around here, full of visitors, travelling and a move into a new house!  I figured this stretch of days with high temperatures reaching up to 100 would be a good time to try and get caught up on the blog.  We have a lot to catch up on dating back to the spring!

Spring is such a gorgeous time on Germany.  I think it might be when Germany is at it's prettiest. The patchwork fields are bright green with patches of brilliant yellow, spring flowers are blooming, and all of the orchards are full of blossoms.  Early this spring, Kyle's brother, his wife and our niece came to visit from London for Easter.  Unfortunately the weather wasn't wonderful, but we still had a great time together.  On their first day here, it was cold and rainy, so we went to visit Stuttgart's Schwein Museum, or Pig Museum.  We ate a delicious and porky lunch with pigs flying on the ceiling overhead before checking out everything pig in the museum.  It's a fun and quirky place, great for a rainy day! (I stole a lot of Lynn's pics from Facebook.  Thanks, Lynn :-)

Dinner later that evening at the Neckarmüller

On Easter day it was still cold.  It even flurried a bit!  We enjoyed the day at home, relaxing and eating a big brunch and dinner.  It was nice just taking it easy!

She wasn't too thrilled with the ears!

Someone's peaking at me!

Kyle and Cory spent most of the day in this exact spot.

Skyping with Grandma and Grandpa (Mom and Dad) Guynn while we open Easter surprises they sent!

The next day we headed to Rhine Falls, Switzerland.  We had lunch and checked out the adorable town of Schaffhausen before heading to the falls.  Rhine Falls on the Rhine river is Europe's biggest waterfall in terms of volume of water.  It's a very impressive site.  

A medieval fortress we climbed up to for a nice view of the town

We finally had nice, sunny weather on the day they headed back to London.  Luckily, they had a late flight so we were able to enjoy the day at the lovely Killesberg park before they left.  It was so nice having them here, and we will hopefully be able to meet up with them soon.  Being far away from family is hard, especially when little ones are involved!

This spring we had a couple of friends, Laura and Aaron, move to Wiesbaden, just a couple of hours north of Stuttgart.  Shortly after they arrived, Aaron was away on business for a week, so we got together with Laura to do some site seeing.  Kyle and I drove up to Wiesbaden to meet up with Laura, then the three of us headed to the picturesque town of Rüdesheim am Rhein where we hopped on a ferry on the Rhine river just seconds before it left.  We enjoyed the beautiful scenery of the terraced vineyards, quaint towns and castles along the river for a couple of hours before hopping off the ferry and taking a train back to Rüdesheim.  It was a great way to spend a sunny spring afternoon!

Laura came back to Stuttgart with Kyle and I to spend a couple of days.  The next day the three of us, along with a friend of Laura's that was visiting Germany from the States, went to visit the Insel Mainau (also known as the Flower Island) on Lake Konstanz.  It's a beautiful location, right on the border of Switzerland and Germany.  The island had amazing displays of spring flowers which reminded me a bit of the tulips at the Keukenhof gardens in Holland.  The island has a wide variety of plants so that it's always full of color.  

Laura was supposed to take a train back to Wiesbaden the next day, but a train strike prevented that from happening.  (There have been a ton of train strikes the past several months...I'm sure they've lost millions of euros.)  That gave us time to check out the Stuttgarter Frühlingsfest, or Spring Fest.  The Frühlingsfest is pretty much like Oktoberfest in the spring time.  It's a huge event that lasts three weeks.  They set up rides, shops, food stands and most importantly, beer tents.  We were there on a weekday afternoon, so it was very tame, but we still had a liter of beer and half of a roasted chicken in the beer tent as we watched people in their dirndls and lederhosen start to trickle in for their evening reservations. We walked around the fest grounds and enjoyed another sunny spring day!  Laura was able to catch a train home the next day since the strike was over.  We've all been busy lately, but we're looking forward to seeing Laura and Aaron hopefully sometime before too long!

Kyle and I went back to Frühlingsfest that weekend with a big group from Kyle's work.  We had so much fun enjoying our chicken and beer listening and swaying arm and arm with good friends to cheesy music!  

Old traditions meet new selfie technology...

We usually just post about our trips and travels, but there is so much to see and do locally!  We had a wonderful spring enjoying our local area with friends and family.  Now, with these 100 degree Fahrenheit days, I'm wishing for some of those cool (but sunny) spring time days!