Day 9 of Germany was pretty action-packed as we knew our time there was almost up. Early in the morning Daddy Bear, Little Bear, and I headed out on our own. Since DB has an international driver's license and is familiar with the area this worked fine for us. We headed to a spot about 30 minutes from the house (several towns away--the towns are so close together there!) that has trails one can hike up to visit some castles. This place is on the crook of a river and has 4 castles positioned around it, all of which can be seen from the one hike. One of the castles is currently lived in so we knew we couldn't get very close to it so we decided to head in the other direction towards the two castle ruins. The hike was pretty steep in places, but beautiful and fun to do as a family.
This is the first castle we visited on our hike. If you look really closely you can see little DB and LB on the castle steps.
It had a very tall tower that we decided to climb.
Inside the tower was too dark to make out the steps so it was a little eerie. Once we finally got to the top, though, there was a great view of the castle that is currently occupied. And if you look at the far right middle of the photo you can barely see part of the fourth castle.
The next castle on our hike was even further up the trail. It was a little bit less "ruined" and maybe a hundred years newer (still built back around 1200, I think it said).
Little Bear got to ride on Daddy Bear's back for the hike up...
...we admired the view a bit more from the top...
...and then I got to carry the load on the way down.
That night we headed to one last beautiful town with the family for dinner at an authentic Greek restaurant. You can't tell how Greek it was by the German building it is in, but the owner/cook was definitely Greek and knew how to make delicious food! They weren't serving Baklava for dessert this night so we headed up the street to another delicious Gelato place (they're EVERYWHERE!), and enjoyed our last Italian ice cream for the trip.
The next morning was spent repacking the suitcases, stashing Daddy Bear's bottles of German Beer, and getting things ready to head back home. We headed to Mass that night with the family but stayed at the house the rest of the day spending our last few hours with Uromi, Oma, and Opa before heading to bed early for the long day we had ahead of us.
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Now we are home and still adjusting back to Oklahoma time. We had been in Germany just long enough to get our internal clocks switched over and now we're having to go through the process all over again. Today seems to be Little Bear's first HALFWAY normal sleep day so far! Which I'm very thankful for! We probably won't make it back to Deutschland for a little while, but we'll savor the memories and the photos until then! Thanks for joining with me to reminisce!
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