My Travels Abroad: Rhine River Cruise & Wine Tasting

On our way to France we enjoyed a 2 hour Rhine River Cruise.  The scenery was absolutely breathtaking. 

 We didn't have time to explore the town where we caught the boat.  But we did have time to snap a picture and buy chocolate croissants.  I sure do miss those chocolate croissants.

 There were beautiful castles all along the Rhine river. 

 I would love to live in one of these villages.

 Each village had a beautiful church.

 Not far from the beautiful church was a beautiful castle on a hill.

 Beautiful couple.

The weather, scenery, and company were wonderful.

We departed the ship just steps away from the quaint wine shop where we were scheduled to have a wine tasting.  I enjoyed myself so much that I didn't take one single picture.  Thanks to Stacy and Solveig for the pics.

A chocolate croissant for breakfast, a small plate of fries for lunch and 6 wine tastings make for one happy Katie.

My Travels Abroad: Schloss Merode

On our way back to Cologne from Aachen we stopped by the Merode Castle.  If I remember correctly I believe the Fienes are distantly related to the Merodes.  After looking at several castle ruins it was cool to go into a castle that was still standing and had been renovated.

 This castle has had quite a history. During the 19th century the castle fell into disuse when the Merode family moved to France.  In 1946 Charles Merode decided to move his family back and begin restoration on the castle.  Every room had been re-done and modern amenities were installed.  Then, in 2000, the castle caught fire, damaging every story of the castle.  The Merodes were devastated, but not willing to admit defeat. When funding permits they will begin to restore...again.  We only entered the main floor of the house, but we were able to see some of the damage the fire caused.

This is the front entrance taken from the inside.  The castle is surrounded by a moat. It was beautiful.

My Travels Abroad: Aachen

Great Emperors of Europe were crowned and laid to rest in Aachen.  Most notably it is the place where Charlemagne is buried.

Everywhere we walked we found wonderful little places to eat.  Sitting outside in the sun with these sights...who wouldn't want to eat?  All. The. Time. 

The churches were beautiful and right in the center of town.

We had a ton of fun just walking around these beautiful, narrow, brick streets.

Hans with Hanswurst.
We didn't eat here, but we really should have.
Ha!  Hans is the Wurst.

We happened to be in Aachen on the day the church brought out the 7 relics.  I'm not how often these relics are displayed, but judging by the amount of people standing in line and attending the service, not very often.  As our tour guide was taking us around Aachen we actually ran right into the processional of the relics.

This is supposedly Mary's birth dress.  I have much to say about this, but that would take all day.  There were people pushing and shoving to be near this and the other relics.

There were a ton of people around Aachen this day.  I'm assuming the streets aren't normally this busy.  The relics seemed to draw a big crowd.

We stopped for lunch at a quaint Italian restaurant with my in-laws.  Aren't they a handsome couple?

A handsome couple that produced a handsome son.

My Travels Abroad: Cologne

After our beautiful castle visit in Munzenberg we made our way to Cologne.  

There we had a walking tour of the cathedral and the surrounding area.

 The black gives the cathedral a gothic look.  All that black is dirt.  It takes a lot of time and even more money to clean the whole building.

 The pipe organ in this place was huge!

 The cathedral was beautiful.  We were given lots of information about the cathedral and its history.  But the one that stuck with me is that it takes 8 years to clean 1 of those windows.

Almost every street in Germany looked like this.  I could get use to this.

My Travels Abroad: Munzenberg Castle

On our way to Cologne we stopped to visit Munzenberg Castle.  The castle was built around 1160.  The counts of Munzenberg were politically powerful and sought to demonstrate their status with strong and sophisticated architecture.  Many counts and various families entered its doors.  In the 16th century the castle began to fall into disrepair.  After its capture during the Thirty Years War it became derelict.  In 1846 the first building measures were performed to preserve its historic substance.  Restoration and repairs still continue today.

Look at how thick those walls were.

King of the castle.

This place was just beautiful. 

The view from the side wall.

I loved the church steeple.

Visiting castle ruins was a lot of fun.  I loved trying to imagine what each room looked like.

My Travels Abroad: Hainich Tree Top Walk

After our 2 castle tours we made our way to the Hainich Nationalpark for the Canopy Walk.

 There were two rope bridges.  My mother in-law and I went right through.  If I was a better person I would have lost money thinking Hans wouldn't step foot on the bridge.

 Boy was I wrong.  I was pleasantly surprised.

 This is a peek at one of the bridges.

 There was tower in the center of the trees that hosted the highest viewpoint of the park.  At a mere 131 feet high you got to see a lot.  The viewing tower shown here is probably 70 feet high.

So, the center viewing tower's open top floor had a 4.5-5ft wall surrounding the top.  They just wanted to make sure no one was accidentally going to fall.  This did make it a little difficult to see the landscape below.  One of the kids on the trip was clearly not thinking about what was on the other side of the wall and hoisted himself up on the wall to take a peek.  I thought Hans was going to have a heart attack! As Hans says, he is not afraid of heights, but depths.  We were not up there long.

My Travels Abroad: Haineck Castle

After a big, heavy, and delicious lunch we headed out for our second castle of the day.

We all wished this castle had only 150 steps to the top.  But it had a mile and a half uphill hike to the top.

It was nice to hike up the countryside.

 After the trek uphill we finally made it!

 Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.

The view from the top of the tower.

Just beautiful.

After this wonderful hike, we had to make the mile and half track down the hill.  Going down is much harder than going up.  We got a great workout this day!