Here a Castle, there a castle everywhere a castle.

This very cool castle is only an hour drive south of here and is actually #2 on the top 10 castles of Germany currently.  VERY worth while to see, especially since it's a short drive down here!

We had planned to see a movie later in the evening and we didn't leave the house until noon and I still feel like we got to see a good amount of the castle and not be super rushed through it all.  I would have liked to have had the time to walk down to the parking area from the castle rather than take the shuttle both ways, but we timed our exit and trip back to within a minute of when the movie was to start.  Seriously it was a 6pm show and we walked in the door at 6:00, got popcorn and went to sit down.  We didn't miss much of the opening fluff and being military movie theatre we were there before the national anthem (yeah, that is still something they do before every movie - it's nice)

So that said, here is some of the formalized history from the brochure we got

 

 Even a shot of our parking pass...Not a bad deal - park for 2 Euro, ride the shuttle for two of us for 6.20 - round trip for two.  Bargain for the whole thing.  I think the tour tickets was the most expensive thing at 12 euro for the two of us.

And so starts the snap shot portion of our tour...

 At the entry gates

 Love the little metal waves that keep you centered in the entry... there is an almost clover leaf set of circles to actually get you TO the castle.  Seriously... there were a lot of gates that would keep you out in the case of war... well defended place!

 Another gate with a moat... there was no water in this one, but there was a small well like thing at the bottom of it.

 double gates...

 The counter weights - you will see these again because I opened the gate a little more to take the picture - they doors worked very smoothly - but they didn't affect the counterweights at all, so they are linked to the draw bridges.

 Looping on itself again....

 Butch was behind me and was trying to seduce me from the windows :)

 When we finally did get to the top these were the gates that were to this side of the castle...

 Where we were looking... turn your head, I am not in a good place to rotate this bad boy!  the above was looking at this scene over the country side...

 You will see that centrally located tourret in the near future...remember it... it's not on the corners like the one on the left and the one in the distance on the right... there is a reason.

 very old graffiti or just signing the wall when it was worked on?  Or simply just very old graffiti?

 That's the walking trail you see to the left.  It wound it's way down the mountain to the parking area.

 There was a wedding going on when we were there... fun!!

 Door to the small chapel at the entrance.

 very cool locks

 exterior doors to said small chapel

 This turret is over the large chapel (where the couple in the prior photo were married) - and above are some of the rooms we toured.  We eventually came out of the door you see on the ground floor on the left.

 The Chapel story.

 very pretty chapel...

 doors here were a touch more ornate than on the smaller chapel.

 Butch "hiding" with his e-cigarette while I was in line to go on the tour of the interior rooms...

 interesting slippers we had to wear to protect the floors in our tour.

 The last picture I was able to take before heading out on the tour... they didn't allow any pictures inside of the place.
It was impressive - in the courtyard we entered in on the right side about 1/2 way down the building, wound along the outer wall rooms to the far left side of the courtyard to the nursery - then doubled back through the interior rooms/halls to the door that I showed in the above picture.

The "walk" through in exterior rooms is indicated in the blue light starting on the upper right of the courtyard, circling the outer wall, lopping back on the inner rooms and out the end of the courtyard.

The only place we were able to take pictures was the cellar... which start here and we'll let you read all about it.

 these are the winding stairs that I came down... then the halls wound through and under the castle....

 with lots of nooks and cranny's and storage areas for weapons and other things needing cooler air - it was VERY cool and nice down there for sure!

 So this picture is a good indication that we're not going to end where we started....

 Again, indicating this was the way to get outside from the battlements.

 There were two choices once we got to this juncture... if we had been allowed to take the left fork we would have gone down and out into a very tiny courtyard that was protected from above and had a door in close to the castle.  I think they used that for protection to let people out to fight at the foot of the wall then give them protection to get back in.  A back door if you will.

 the stairs to the right on that juncture lead to hear... look familiar?  Right in the outer courtyard.  So, you could bring guns and ammo UP or you could go down and out to the base of the wall - both ways you could protect your castle.  I would have used my map to circle this area, but it's behind the upper left side of the map... so totally out of sight for this purpose...

BUT look what you can do with Google maps... you can make your OWN map.  Now the entrance to this and the way we walked I didn't note.. but essentially the BASEMENT walk of the blue from the top right through the basements and up to the asterisks.  The battlement at the ground level is circled... its a small (?) area that is set right against the lower wall and has protection from above and from within... the asterisk indicates where the above tower is on the outer courtyard.

 and back out the main gates to the garden - to the right in this picture is a garden that was locked from the gate inside the walls.  It wasn't very visible and it wasn't until I was leaving through these gates that I noticed the ramp and door to the right as you exit... I took that ramp to the door...

 took some pictures of the cute garden... Until Butch pointed out...

 This is really a graveyard.  Ok, it makes total sense why they had it locked.  They don't want folks walking all over their relatives who are buried here.  Fair enough!  I do love graveyards however..

Here is an odd sign, eh?

 So this turret is the one to the bottom left off most of the maps I have on here...

Yep, right there at 12.  The tree is gone now - it's just a stump - I'm hoping it died FIRST before they dug the sample hole... as he tree was gone, why not see about making this an access point for an elevator?  I applaud them for making it a bit more accessible to those with needs as those corkscrew entrances are a good hike up hill - I never did check to see how many flights of stairs that counted for

 There's the poor stump that is left of the tree... sad, as I'm sure it made for a nice shady spot right before you enter the castle area.

 A carriage house on the way up/down the battlement... that roof is not jointed at the top - its ONE piece of stone in a V. Very impression.

 The case of the missing stairs... this cour yard in the battlement was one of two - the other had a cistern in the center with some very stagnant water in it.  Looked to be ran water supplied.  Butch took pictures of that one... apparently it didn't thrill me like the idea of the spiral stair case that is missing and the adorable wooden pigs with the crest in flowers.

 One more parting shot with a person in there to show you the size and scope of those counter weights, not to mention the size of the door!

 One of the best pull offs we noted on our way up to the castle... pretty field in front

Short Whirlwind tour home (yes, already!)

Well, since I was in the states already and Butch came with me, of COURSE we were going to stop on the way back to Germany!

There are VERY few pictures on this part.. not sure what is up with my lack of "documenting" of things...I just have stopped taking a lot of "every day" pictures.

We flew into ATL and hopped into a rental car on Saturday the 24th and headed down to Florida.  Why you ask?  Because of this!

The trip from ATL to Fort Walton is 4 hours 55 minutes
The trip from Fort Walton Beach to Warner Robins is 5 hours 10 minutes
The trip from Warner Robins to the airport is 1 hour 35 minutes....

It's FASTER for us to go to Fort Walton from ATL directly then backtrack.  Saved us a few hours on the trip - although we could have reversed the trip and ended in Fort Walton, but that wasn't the plans, now was it?  LOL

So.  our rental Car... yeah....  We didn't get the car until 7pm - it was a Nissan Altima - PRETTY and nice car full size, comfortable for long road hours... and it was a lemon.  We stopped to get snacks and tinkle about an hour into the trip and it stalled going into the gas station area... keep in mind we are in NOWHERESVILLE Alabama at this point as it's now 8pm.  There are NO Dollar Rental Car places anywhere near us - none.  They aren't even open in Tupelo - which is our next major town.  So I said a prayer, revved the gas a bit, got it back into gear quickly before it could stall and got it on the highway - once on the highway it was fine.... so, we just can't stop... hum, this could be interesting.

The thought process was "maybe it's bad gas" so we'll get gas and when we do we will hope that is what the issue was/is.  Nope.  We got gas south of Montgomery and had to do the wing and a prayer and fiddle with the gas pedal to get it going and out of traffic... then once we got gas we had to do the same thing to get back on the road.  We though "OK let bad gas get out of the system?"  Nope... there are small towns on that route and near as we can tell it's the auto stop/start feature like they have here in German where when you stop the car the engine stops, which is great, but our car was NOT restarting automatically.  Yeah... fail.  So we call roadside and see if we can get them to get a replacement car at the airport in Fort Walton as we will be coming in just as the place closes. 

NOPE.  They were NOT helpful... they couldn't get in touch with the place, nothing... come to find out the next day that NO ONE has the right number for the car rental for Dollar in Fort Walton - not even the main line for Dollar.  Very inefficient as I was trying to call them all morning to see if they could get me a replacement car.  NOPE.  No answers.  I get there physically and there are three people sitting around doing NOTHING.  And NO phone calls are going through to them.  How convenient, eh?  hum... what a crock.

MY replacement car was a Hyundai mini suv.  Good enough car, but a step down from the Nissan.  Sigh.  I wrote a nasty gram to Dollar which only got me $45 in credit back to my credit card but no apology or anything about the phone number snafu.  Oh, well, we had a car and it now worked.  Good enough at this point!

We spent a few days with Sally before having to head on up to Warner Robins as Angela only had one day off during the time that we would be there.  So we made sure that we were there when she was so she could get some mommy time. 

We stayed at Liz's house with her kitty - Salem.  Love that cat!  She isn't nearly as friendly as I would hope but she will still sit near you for petting, so that's good enough for me.  She would sleep by Butch, but not by me - darn her!  I did have her come sniff me in the middle of the night a few times and she would love me in the morning because I would feed her :) 

We went out to eat, visited with Mom and Dad and our bonus guests was that Robert and Janet were there in town as well, so we visited with them as well.  Mom and I even tooka  day and went out to Cochran to relive our consignment shop days.  It was good for me as I had done a final drop off and told Liz she could go out and get the money from them if she wanted.  She never went out there so I was $150 richer when I left!  Bonus for me!!

We even got to meet with the renter of the place in Georgia.  He was nice.  The house is in order and all looks to be well with the world.

And THIS is the only picture that was taken - and it wasn't even taken on MY phone, it was on Butch's phone.  How funny is that?  Seriously I seem to have lost my desire to take pictures unless it's a castle or food - and sometimes not even food :)

I did take a few pictures of the cabinets in the garage... but even that I won't share here, I just put them on facebook to see if they would sell.... they didn't.  I think I shared them to Mom's pages, but no one needs cabinets it would appear.

Oh, well, I'll try again in a bit to sell them.  Speaking of which I just went and re-posted them. Maybe someone will be able to use them.  My Aunt in Virginia expressed interest but not sure they will come down to get them... if they do, they can have them :)

Anyway... we spent some time with mom and dad, Robert, Janet and even met Liz's boyfriends parents for dinner one night.  It was a pleasant experience, they are nice.

And just like that our time was over in the US and we were back on the plane to Germany.
I think there is another photo floating out there that Butch took of the two of us in the airport.... but really, you've seen us :)

Home again, Home again, Jiggity Jog....

In May I had the GREAT opportunity to go to some training in the states - it just so happened it was in Las Vegas!  Bonus!  Two homes to visit at one time!

I took the first week and went to Vegas and the 2nd week and went to Florida and Georgia - talk about a whirl wind tour...

 Pushing back that morning for our flight out to ATL for the first stop of our trip...
but just a short stop...

We had a 3 or 4 hour lay over in ATL, the perfect amount of time to have Angela come meet us at the airport for a quick dinner at TGI Fridays.  It worked out perfect, she got there just as we came up the escalators into the terminal and we met her just as she was coming over the walk way.  We had a quick bite to eat then we were headed back into the airport for the last leg of our flight... on to Vegas.

 That's actually the moon in the distance.... hard to see on a plane zipping through the air with a smart phone as your only "camera" in sight...

 Darker now.

I'm not quite sure why on earth I don't have many pictures of this visit... I guess mostly because I was "experiencing" the trip and not documenting.  I DID take a few pictures of the whole SharePoint Conference - the whole reason I was there, but not of people... much... I'm a sad individual!

 I did find this funny however, the Hunger Games right next to the wedding chapel  Are they trying to tell us to kill each other AFTER the wedding, or prep by going to the Hunger Games first?  LOL

 Breakfast did get documented that first morning... as it was DELISH and Mexican food - something we really can't get here... sadly

So our first room was the typical cracker box with NO room what-so-ever.  It had glass doors for both the shower and the toilet room - NOT good for us... so I went down the very next morning and asked for an upgrade to a room with a door on the toilet... and pulled the cancer card... I know, I know, that is HORRIBLE, but I did it.  I asked for something nice with doors on the toilet as I needed my husband to look at me a bit better after all I had gone through and a door was IMPERATIVE...  ha!  NO lies there, for sure...

What we ended up with was a HUGE suite with a separate bedroom - below

 And an equally large living room right next door along with a large bathroom with TWO showers - one with a tub, one just a stand up shower... and a toilet nook.  and it had doors... a HUGE plus for me!!!  And wouldn't you know it, we NEEDED that room separation as Butch came down with the flu RIGHT after getting there and was quarantined in the bedroom.  I even had to call housekeeping to get them to dispose of a garbage can that he destroyed... ewh, I wasn't touching it!!!  They came with a hazard bag and just took it all away.. thank you housekeeping - awesome job!!!  AND I had a nice sofa with a pull out bed (not so nice, but a bed) and Linda came and slept on the other half of the sofa and we had TONs of room!!

More details...

Those pictures are from the website... awesome pictures... and really, awesome room.

 This is the view from our 12th floor of the loading area for the Electric Daisy Carnival - there were some really "fun" and some very nude outfits and wouldn't you know it Vegas was in a cold snap - as in the 60's and 70's with wind and rain at times - very unlike Vegas for sure!!  Those poor nude-ish girls (bathing suits) froze their bits off!!)

 This guy is advertising that the end is neigh... repent or burn in hell or something... interesting sitting in the room and watching the comings and goings of them all..

Night Views.

OK here is a fun picture... this looks like there is a mirror about 1/2 way down... NOPE.  That is the OLD hall (where we were originally booked on the 5th floor) and the new hall closer in... LONG walk down that hall to the first room of choice... ever so glad we got the upgrade for the week... WELL worth it!!

 Night view out our bedroom area... we were on a corner.

Taking a selfie while waiting for Linda to take a selfie with me to prove she was here!!

 SEE - she was here!!  We had a nice evening gabbing and eating - we went to Morimoto's (Iron Chef) and had appetisers and sushi for dinner and a flaming ball of fire - video only on those and I'm not sure how to load videos without having a YouTube account ... and not willing to get one for this :)  I'll see if I can screen shot part of it.

 really should roate this for you... but I don't have the energy - turn your head :)

I went with Linda because I wasn't sure Butch would be up for it any time soon... wouldn't you know it, Butch recovered quickly and we ended up going on Tuesday night with our friend Doug.  What's funny is Doug is from Dayton Ohio - he was out for ONE day for work - bonus for all of us as his wife pimped him out for dinner :)  We went to Morimoto's but this time had the "Tasting Menu" it's a bit of EVERYTHING and was really good!!

 those are truffle flakes on there... can't remember, but I'm sure that was some sort of fish with a ceviche sauce to "cook" it in the acids.  It was tasty.

 THAT is Tuna TarTar..  yep, RAW and I actually enjoyed it - I didn't like the OTHER Neguri suchi that was served, but I did like the tuna... weird.... but I'm willing to try just about anything.  There is supposedly a pork tartar here... not sure about THAT one but I hear it's highly regulated and no-one has ever gotten sick from it here....

LOTs more happened while here... lots of classes, a great visit with my girlfriend Leslie - not sure why we never take pictures!!!  I was too busy gabbing with her :)  I am a horrible friend and we didn't get together but the one time I was there... I just could NOT drag myself to the pool the ONE day if was finally sunny and warm because it was the start of the holiday weekend and the pool was CRAMMED packed full - uh, no, thank you.

All in all a good time was had by all, I got some visiting in, even had a massage and a salt scrub - always wanted to try one of those!  All too soon it was time to head on out to the NEXT leg of the trip....

 Goodbye Nellis AFB as we flew over!

And goodbye Lake Meade - boy is it LOW now!!!!