Once again I’m making it easy on anyone who reads this. Pictures only (for now). The day was spent driving from Prague, Czech Republic to Frankfurt, Germany with a quick stop in Rothenburg, Germany. A pretty little town where Christmas decorations are the hot item to buy and nothing is cheap.
I’m too tired to blog so if you are reading this, I’m making it easy on you today. It’s our day in pictures. I’ll update my thoughts to go along with the pictures another time…Enjoy!
I feel like I haven’t added a whole lot of detail in this blog for each day of this trip. There are things I want to remember like the great conversations we have in the car while we drive miles and miles every day. Or the funny things Alison and I notice and all we do is look at each other and know we both saw the same thing and start laughing. People watching in Europe is pretty awesome, by the way.
I want to be able to laugh at all the money I’ve spent on using bathrooms all around Europe. Just this morning I had to stand there dancing in the parking lot of a gas station waiting for Mark to get enough change out of his pocket so I could have ‘pee money’. One thing I’m super grateful for are free public restrooms in America. I will say, though that Europe has some of the cleanest restrooms I’ve ever used. I also miss free water at restaurants.
This has been an incredible trip so far, even after having seen a few things for the second time. Today was a day of ‘seconds’ but I loved every minute of it!
We didn’t take a whole lot of pictures today while at Castle Neuschwanstein. We have great photos from three years ago but we caught a few new ones that I loved. Alison took this one which I will add to our vacation wall at home next to the other castle picture from three years ago.
This year the scaffolding was gone (woohoo!) so this picture looks so much better. And I can’t get over the fall colors.
We are tiny in this picture but we made it to the castle gate!
So did Jeff and Alison.
Last time we came we didn’t visit the other castle, Hohenschwangau. We totally should have! I love it. It was nice to see a finished castle after having seen Neuschwanstein. I want these bronze water features at my house.
This was a very cool lion water fountain.
We bought tickets to visit both castles at certain times of the morning. We visited Neuschwanstein first and then two hours later, Hohenschwangau. I’m so glad we did it in that order, for two reasons: we were some of the first people up to the big castle and got great pictures without lots of other people and we didn’t have to deal with the clouds rolling in and obscuring our pictures, like this…
Our last picture of the beautiful castle as we left on our 4.5 hour car ride to Prague.
I drove for about two hours of the trip today. I needed to do something other than sit for hours. At least now I feel like I contributed. We arrive in Prague around 7:15 pm, checked into our hotel and quickly left to walk the streets of Prague and get some dinner.
We are back at Marriott hotels for the rest of our trip. So glad! Reliable internet, free breakfast and spacious rooms are nice to have. Last night’s Hotel Sonne room was big but the internet was terrible. I couldn’t even post my last blog page. I had to wait until morning.
Mark was able to find the Italian restaurant we ate at three years ago with no problems. I was quite impressed. It’s like he’s a local or something.
I really like this place and the food is great. We originally came back here because Alison was interested in buying one of their olive oil/vinegar glass containers. Turns out they don’t sell them anymore! Strike out.
I had a calzone…
Mark had gnocchi…
Then we walked to the main square and I got my beloved trdelnik dessert. Heaven!
I have been talking up this dessert to Jeff and Alison. I sure hope they like it. By this time it was 9:30 pm so we headed back to the hotel and now it’s bed time. Tomorrow we will explore Prague in the daylight and, unfortunately, in the rain. Wish us luck.
