One of the cafes near Neushwanstein Castle.

Megan trying out the local headwear.

Hohenswangau Castle.

Everyone waiting for out tour of Hohenswangau to start.

We we starting to wonder if the rain was every going to stop.

This snail was litteraly as big as my hand. I should have put something down so you can guage the size.

Mitzi had fun even if it was raining.

6-2-10
Hohenschwangau. Again it’s raining when I woke up in the morning. I’m not quite dedicated enough to wanting to go out and get soaked for an hour or two on my bike. I’d probably just get sick any way and be miserable for the next week. When I was at the internet café yesterday I pulled up the 10 day weather forecast, and it said rainy for Wed. and Thursday and then mostly sunny for the next week with highs in the upper 60’s and lower 70’s. That would be nice, as we haven’t hardly seen the sun since we’ve been here and it would be nice to have sunny weather for a change. We went and saw Hohenschwangau today. We were planning on seeing that an Neuschwanstein as well, but it was raining, and by the time we finished the first castle the kids didn’t want to go do the other one, so we decided to do it tomorrow. Neuschwanstein castle is the fairy tale castle built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and Hohenschwangau was his dad’s castle and where he grew up. They are right close together near the town of Fussen. There’s a great place that has Doner Kabap’s. They are similar to a gyros, but larger and probably better if they are done right. We had Doner Kabap’s for dinner.

Today we visited Linderhoff Palace, which was one of King Ludwig II's palaces he build. It was pretty small but impressive. I especially liked where he used to dine in private, and the table he ate off of was on a kind of elevator so it would be piled in the basement with food, then raised up when he was ready to eat.

It was a pretty rainy day at Linderhoff Palace in Germany.

The girls trying to stay dry.

Megan and Ian in from of the long staircase waterfall at Linderhoff.

6-1-10
Linderhoff and Garmisch. I woke up this morning thinking I’d go on another bike ride, but it was raining pretty hard, and I didn’t feel like getting soaked. Brecken and Kindra went for a walk that was supposed to be a jog. I went into the nearest larger town looking for a laundry mat. I thought we had a washer and dryer at the place we are staying, but we don’t. I also thought we had an internet connection which we don’t. I didn’t find a laundry mat, but did find a replacement camera to the one Brad lost. Prices are pretty good here. I bought a Casio Exilim with over 10 mega-pixels that is pretty small for 59 euros or $75 at the current exchange rate of about 1 euro = $1.23. I think a similar one back home would cost at least $125. The drop in value of the euro over the last 6 months has helped. We decided to go to Linderhoff castle today. It’s certainly off the beaten path. You have to drive way up this isolated canyon for about 30 minutes to get there. It’s pretty ornate, but not terribly large. It’s in a beautiful setting though. Then we drove to Gamisch and decided to find a laundry mat. Parking and maneuvering around these small towns isn’t always the easiest, especially in the little larger van we have. I found a parking place near the town center area and decided to find a tourist information place and ask them where we could find a laundry mat. We didn’t have a ton of laundry to do, but doing about 1 load of whites and one of darks now would get us through Germany and to Austria, and I’m pretty certain that we have a clothes washer where we are staying in Austria. I walked all the way through the pedestrian center of town and couldn’t find it, and finally asked at a shop, and it was back where I started, so I had to walk all the way back to the start. They showed me on a map where the laundry mat was, and I found it pretty easily. I dropped off the clothes and they said they’d be done in about 2 hours. Kindra said the Mitzi needed another warm outfit, so I took most of the kids and went in search of a warm outfit. I found one, and found and internet café. I dropped the kids off at the car and hit the internet café. I had over 300 new emails and my mailbox was full, so I hit the emails as fast as I could. I responded to as many as I could as quickly as possible and deleted a lot of them. By the time my internet session was over the clothes were done, so we picked up the clothes and drove back to the apartment. For once I wasn’t totally exhausted and we fixed dinner and had a bite to eat, although Mitzi and Ian were fast asleep.