The Bultmans and Gunninks (Part 4)

Sunday was a pretty slow day for us since we hadn't gotten home until 11 pm the night before after a long and tiring day, so we decided to sleep in.  We had "German breakfast" for brunch (weisswurst, brezel, und bier) and then lazed around into the afternoon.  In the afternoon, I took our guests to Lindau to see the parade that the "friends" we had made on the train the night before were in.  It was a parade for Fasnacht with lots of different costumes.  They enjoyed seeing it, but it was quite cold to be sitting at a parade.  In the evening, we went to Ueberlingen for our normal church service.  We had quite the crowd since we had brought 4 extra people and the Van Wyks had 2 extras.  It was probably the biggest our little church has ever been!  I made Rice Krispie treats for a snack which was pretty exciting because it was the first time I had found Rice Krispies here!

Monday was a beautiful day to see some castles!  After dropping off the snowshoes we had rented, we headed to Neuschwanstein which is the castle that the Disney castle was modeled after.  This was definitely one of the more touristy things we did with our guests, but it was a beautiful day to do it!  Brian and I had visited Neuschwanstein the first time we were in Germany and were quite disappointed because it was very foggy.  The day I took our guests there was absolutely beautiful and I was finally able to realize how close the castle is to the town and the bridge.

We had some beautiful views of the Alps on our drive out there.

Once we got there, we decided to tour Neuschwanstein, but not Hohenschwangau (a smaller and less famous castle there).  I chose not to do the tour since I had already done it once before.  We got some great pictures of the castles from the town.

We then made our way up the big hill to Neuschwanstein to get some pictures before the tour.  The castle was beautiful, but so were the surrounding mountains!

And, of course, some pictures of us by the castle!

After the tour, we made our way to the Marienbruecke which is an iron bridge over a very scary valley from which you can see Neuschwanstein.  I am not a big fan of heights, but made myself walk about 5 feet onto the bridge, take 2 pictures of the castle, and then get off right away.  When Brian and I had been there before, you couldn't even see the castle or the bottom of the valley because it was so foggy, so I wanted to be sure that I got some pictures to show Brian how close it was.  The boys loved the bridge and wanted to explore the trails on the other side of it, but the girls and I were not too keen on that idea.

A view of the castle from the bridge.

Some views of the bridge from the castle.

Looking straight down from the bridge...eeek!

After we had taken lots of pictures and checked out everything we wanted to in the city, we headed back home to meet Brian for dinner.  We decided to go to an Italian place that Brian and I know in town.  We had some excellent food and the boys finally got to try some dark beers!