family trip to germany

My family arrived to visit on the 4th of July. I will write more on their visit in Switzerland later. On Friday the 5th we left in the morning to drive to Munich. On the way we stopped in Neuschwanstein. The town is very cute. We had lunch outside at a good german place. The main attraction in Neuschwanstein is the castle. As you can see in the pictures below, the view of the castle is breathtaking. You also might recognize the castle as this is the castle that the Walt Disney World castle was modeled after.

Me and Kaylynn 

 

I think this picture mom took after lunch is so funny. Between Kaylynn's face and Eli trying to drink beer, you can see that even with 5 adults, we had our hands full!

This is the bridge we walked over (well, some of us did ;) )

After our Neuschwanstein stop, we drove the rest of the way to Munich. We checked into our hotel and then we took to the train into the center of the city. We walked around Marienplatz and had dinner.

The next day we toured Munich. The first stop was the Olympic park.

Then BMW World where mom, Kaylynn and Eli all enjoyed driving this nice car:

We spent a lot of time in the Englischer Garten. We walked around and saw these guys "tight roping". They were very talented - doing flips and all sorts of tricks on the rope and only occasionally falling in the water.

We had a lunch of soft pretzels and beer at the garden. Afterwards the kids played on the playground for awhile.

 We went to the Hofbrauhaus for dinner.

We had a great time in Germany!

lauterbrunnen hike with becky & caitlin

For Becky and Caitlin's last day in Switzerland, I took them on one of my favorite hikes in the Lauterbrunnen valley. We had great weather which made for a great hiking day and great views of the mountains.

I introduced them to my friends the Swiss cows :)

Caitlin drinking from a mountain stream. She said it was very delicious.

We had so much fun taking goofy pictures. I sure do love these girls!

 

Probably the most hilarious piggy-back ride ever.

After a cable car ride down the mountain we walked to Trümmelback falls. It was my first time visiting the falls and it was very impressive. There is a series of 10 waterfalls inside the mountain.

Becky made friends with this goat.

 


This was such a great day and I will always cherish the memories of the good times with these two great friends. Thanks for visiting. Love you girls!

lausanne roadtrip

Becky, Caitlin and I went on a little weekend roadtrip to the west of Switzerland - the french-speaking part. This was really my first time west of the "Röstigraben". It is really funny to see when all of the "Ausfahrt" signs change to "Sortie". Our first stop was Broc and the Cailler Chocolate Factory.

The tour at Cailler takes you through the history of chocolate, you get to see one production line and then.....the sampling room!!!! After about 10 years of training for this in the form of Bloomington and Bright Indiana chocolate fests, I was ready. I did well and stuck to only the good stuff. Caitlin with her lack of chocolate fest-training couldn't resist and sampled everything. She suffered the rest of the day because that is just too much chocolate for one person!

Our next stop was Gruyère, the home of Swiss cheese!

We had a great lunch at the Gruyere cheese factory restaurant - rösti and älplermagronen.

Our next stop was Chateau de Chillon, just outside of Montreux. We walked around the castle to walk off some of the chocolate and cheese we'd eaten. The chateau sits right on Lac Lémon (Lake Geneva) and is really beautiful.

I'm beginning to realize what a LONG day this was, but the next stop was our wine "hike". This was by far my favorite part of the day. We walked along a path through the vineyards with Lac Lemon on our left side and the most breathtaking views. Unfortunately it was Sunday, so most of the wineries were closed, but we managed to stop for one tasting.

Finally we made it to Lausanne, where we stayed for the night. After finding a hotel and walking around a bit, we walked to the store, grabbed a light dinner and headed to the lake to watch the sunset. It was a little chilly, but we had a blast taking pictures and jumping around.

In the morning we woke up and went to Geneva. We didn't let the rain deter us and walked around the city and saw all the highlights.

St. Pierre Cathedral 

Le Jet d'Eau

United Nations 

Reformation Wall 

Broken Chair

Flower Clock

Crepes for lunch

On the drive home to Zurich we stopped in Bern to say hi to the bears, have dinner, and be entertained by Caitlin's seatbelt testing :)