It was a Niece Visit

How do you fit Rothenburg, Ramstein, Hohenzollern, Triberg, Stuttgart and Munich all in a nice long weekend?  You have a niece visit.  Cramping their style is a bonus!

Curtis and Jordan visited and we visited with them.  We ran to Rothenburg with Max and Joseph

while Emma stayed home and made tons of money bagging at the commissary and Sam had football practice.    We started by coming in the wrong entrance- at least according to Curtis and Jordan. 

It looked like the main entrance to us.  Their entrance looked like the main one to them.  Hmm... I wonder if anyone knows which one is the main entrance?

  We walked the wall and noted all the names on it. 

They were people that had donated money to rebuild parts of Rothenburg after World War 2 ended.   We went to the crime and punishment museum

Joseph throwing vegetables at Max 

Max getting him back 

Now it's time for Jordan and Curtis

and got tired of seeing instruments of torture- which was perfectly acceptable to help the guilty admit their wrong doing.  After the witch trials, it went out of favor, because people were...wait for it... confessing to stuff they didn't do, just to get the torture to stop.  Shocking, I know!  My favorite, though were the shame masks!

  I really think we need a few more shame masks! 

 We also visited the church,

 tower, 

gardens

Joseph and Max showing you on of the hobbit doors that were all over the town

 and Christmas house. 

We tried the Schneeballen that Rick Steve's described perfectly as bland bits of pie crust dusted with sugar. 

 It tasted more like "Taco Bell cinnamon twists that have stayed in your closet for 2 weeks" as Jordan put it!

Saturday while Curtis and Jordan toured Nurenberg we had Football at Volgeswey 

 Sam on the tackle in the backfield!

Rob got roped into helping!  Sam lining up to receive kick-off.

which was beyond heartbreaking as they lost in the last minute of the game!  We went to Ramstein afterwards and indulged in Chili's chips and salsa, buffalo wings, entrees and Molton Lava cake.  All the things we don't usually get and hate Ramstein for having- while I couldn't even get hamburger or 1% milk at my commissary! 

That's right, we hate you Ramstein!!  But man do we love you when we get to come over for a visit!

Sunday we watched some conference and then headed to Hohenzollern castle.

It was shrouded in fog.

You couldn't even see it when you were in the top parking lot.  The climb up is steep, but it was well worth it.

Hohenzollern is an amazing castle!  It is quite medieval and has wonderful military advantages!

It did get successfully sieged once- after 10 long months of starvation.  Only 32 people survived in the castles.  They let us take a "royal stroll" inside with red capes on and very large shoes to help with preserving the floors.  They let the boys try on the chain mail shirt and try to fight with wooden swords.  Very cool day! 

 We give it two heel clicks- way up!

The kids had to go back to school Monday, so Rob and I took the visitors down to the Ritter sport museum and watched the truck bring us chocolates

Come on little truck, bring papa some chocolate!

Oh man!  Marzipan?  I don't like Marzipan!

Luckily, Jordan and Curtis do!  Don't worry, it brought us some other kinds as well!

and fed them cocoa beans (yuck!) and then loaded them up with chocolate to eat the rest of the time or take home (None of it would make it home, if we had bought it!) We then went and saw the pumpkin festival and gardens at Ludwigsberg palace.

This year's theme was sports

 Look at that alien pod and those snakes!

 So cool!

Translation of sign:  Germany's largest Pumpkins

The marchengarten (fairy tale garden) is an amazing place.  It's meant for children, but we are children at heart.  We rode the swings and the boats

and played in the maze and crossed over ponds with spitting frogs.

We also wandered in beautiful gardens and into fake deteriorating castles to yell at Rupenzel to let her hair down.

Rob was going to climb up and get her

Tuesday we ran down to Triberg in the black forest. 

It has the largest waterfall in Germany which was beautiful!

It has the largest cuckoo clock in the world, which we never found.  And it has lots of cuckoo clock sellers! 

Jordan and Curtis bought one from Oli who is the best.  Us- no way.  I am not a big cuckoo clock fan.  I like the non-traditional and non-traditional runs a pretty penny!  Of course, because of Oli, I can now tell you what is a good cuckoo clock and what isn't!  They also have red squirrels everywhere, but we never saw any of them.  Curtis even bought them some nuts, but they still wouldn't come out and see us.  But we did get to see an actual nutcracker!

We found out his limits of how close he was willing to come to us and get a nut!

Finally we took them to Munich and bid them adeiu after totally cramping their style there.  The parking situation was horrible!!!  Never, ever drive and expect to park in Munich- take the train!!  We followed one sign that said there was over a 1000 parking spaces free.  We expected it to be a parking garage.  After following the signs around and around we finally decided it was all a big joke on tourists! There were no parking spaces and no parking garages. It took us an hour and a quick turn around over 3 lanes of traffic to secure a spot after we saw someone leave one.  Then it cost us 50 cents every 12 minutes.  Not much time.  We wandered around the Marianplatz, saw the outside of the Residenz and saw the Glockenspeil- do absolutely nothing!  Don't know if it only goes off at noon or what, but it sure didn't go off on the hour or the half hour!

We also saw a beautiful church all done in white and gold with amazing 3d details!  What we saw, definitely didn't make up for the drive and the stress of trying to park, however.  I think we will avoid Munich in the future!

These are a few places I have been meaning to see, some of which I would have had a hard time convincing my family to go to (Triberg for one!) so in the end, it was definitely a Niece visit!