The Kids Visit - day 2

We drove Elizabeth and Alex up to stay with some of his friends in Ramstein.... and on the way we went to Heidelberg castle.

The hill I remember... good lord... that hill.  It was HARD in my 20's... it damn near killed me in my 50s!  Good lord I'm out of shape... I huffed and puffed my way up there... I did it, but I was hurting lung wise by the time I got up there!!

Because sometimes you just have to!!

 

So, Heidleberg isn't what I remember, with the exception of that HUGE hill (apparently I fell asleep before posting last night!)  

Anyway  The drive to Ramstein was good - the bridge over the river was very cool!  

Alex's friends in Ramstein:  

They were very nice and we really enjoyed meeting them!  

The hotel we were to stay at I called for a late arrival... it was a guest house.  They said "no problem, just call 15 minutes before you get here".  Oh, I did... I called 9 times... and then when to go there I ran the bell 3 times... then we went off on a hunt for a hotel for the night.  We did end up staying in a nice hotel.  Very nice.

The Kids are here!!!

We went to the house to get them to unload their gear and get a shower to remove flight grime... then it was off to Ludwigsburg to go see the pumpkin festival.  Lesson learned, take the TRAIN!!  Wow - parking was a mad house, but it did get us to park at the mall and drop in a few stores to find some sweaters for Ms Angela (who is still learning to pack without a mom - ha!).  That done, we walked over to the castle to see all the pumpkins and pumpkin items.  We had some pumpkin sangria, some pumpkin seeds (we still have a few of those, thanks!) and just wander the grounds.  The kids all took a tour of the inside and it happened to be the Kings side.  It wasn't an official tour - somehow they missed that one... but they still had a nice private tour of the place.   They did admit that it WAS worth seeing the inside. :)

 I found this one the most "fun" of them all... one pumpkin left a trail of pumpkin seeds behind him on his run and the monster had pumpkin seeds dripping down his chin - hahaha!

 The ONE benefit of parking at the mall was having to walk through the town square to get back to the car and there were restaurants there for dinner... and even a bit more fest and some music to boot, so not a bad set up!

 And one shot just for historical reasons... Europeans still smoke a LOT and they still have cigarette machines everywhere even on the side of the road.  They do, however have a "carding" capability I do believe.. you have to put in an ID to actually buy a pack... very strange to see these still exist.

Damian and Tandy's visit

 Damian and Tandy came for a super quick visit.  They came in on Thursday at about noon and left out on Saturday at 8am.  Friday I took the day off to go and play with them.  They chose to go see the two nearest castles to us that have tours

First up Hohenzollern.  We went later in the morning and had lunch there in the garden.  It was nice!

The next castle up was Lichtenstein castle in the afternoon.  Still plenty of time to make the tour (they close about 5:30) and enjoy the nice fall weather.

And with that, they were off and headed out again.  They were going to warmer climates... Croatia - one more place on my to see list!