Visit from Joel

At the beginning of May, Brian's friend Joel came to visit us for a long weekend.  He was in the midst of a European trip and had already been to Paris.  After he left us, he headed to Amsterdam and London before heading back to home in Boston.  It was great to have him stop by us for a few days so that we could have a familiar face with us again. 

Joel arrived on Thursday evening by train and he spent Friday during the day exploring Friedrichshafen by himself.  On Friday evening, we headed to Ueberlingen for a cave tour.  There are hidden caves in Ueberlingen that were dug out during WWII by prisoners from Dachau and were meant to be used by the big companies in Friedrichshafen (MTU being one of them) to continue their production of war materials since Friedrichshafen was being heavily bombed and production could not continue there.  These caves were still in the process of being blown out when the French entered Ueberlingen and discovered the caves.  The caves were blown out during the day, but the debris was dumped into the lake at night to avoid notice from the Allied forces.  There is now a campground on the large piece of land that was made from this debris.

We thought the tour of the cave was supposed to be in English, so a lot of our friends from church had joined us.  Unfortunately, we found out that the tour would be in German.  We had two people with us that knew German and English though, so they were able to translate things for us into English.  We did not get all the information, but we did get the highlights of the tour.  The caves were quite large!  They definitely could have built an airplane in there!

We all had to wear hard hats in the caves and the guide called the police to let them know how many people entered the cave to make sure that everyone came out at the end.  Here's Joel and Brian in their hard hats.

After the tour, we headed to a friend's house for a pizza oven party.  Brian had helped these friends build a pizza oven about a month before this and we were invited over to try it out again.  Some of our friends also had friends of theirs from the States, so it was definitely a wide variety of people at the party.

On Saturday, Joel and Brian joined Gus and two of his friends and one German to do the Arlberg Klettersteig.  I don't really know all the details of this day except that Joel and Brian both came home absolutely beat!  I'll have Brian post a blog about the Klettersteig in the near future because he will do a much better job explaining it.

Also on Saturday, my sister's friends Justin and Shawnna who had visited earlier in the year came back for a couple of nights.  They had a few nights between places they were visiting and I invited them to stay at our place so that they didn't have to pay for another place to stay.  They were pretty low key while they were here, but they had just come off a week of sightseeing in Turkey and needed a few days to veg.

On Sunday, Brian and I took Joel to the Hohentwiel Fortress.  Brian had not been to the fortress yet, so it was fun to see him enjoy himself there.  I had been there, so I didn't take a lot of pictures while we were there.  In the evening we headed to church, but we were quite late because of the crazy amount of traffic getting there.

Brian took Monday off, so we were able to go several places with Joel.  We first headed to Neuschwanstein to see the castle.  This was the first time that Brian had seen the castle without fog covering it, so it was fun to watch him see the difference between the first time that we went there. 

From Neuschwanstein, we headed to Munich.  We walked around the old part of town and had dinner and beer at the Hofbrauhaus.  This is the biggest beer garden/restaurant in Munich.  They had great food and the boys enjoyed their 1 liter beers!

On Monday night, Joel left and took an overnight train to Amsterdam.  It was great to have him here for a little while!

Italy with the Campbells - Rome to FN

On Saturday, we decided to drive back from Rome all the way to Friedrichshafen.  We knew it would be a long ride, but we wanted to have Sunday to rest and do nothing before our last day of sightseeing on Monday before Ben and Laura left.  The whole trip took us about 12 hours with the few stops that we made and we were very glad to be out of the car once the day was over!

We took a different route home than we had taken to Venice and it was absolutely gorgeous!  We drove through northern Italy and then through southern Switzerland and the San Bernardino pass.  There are several lakes along the way and you drive through a beautiful valley with huge mountains surrounding you.  We stopped at one rest area to take a few pictures and this was our view.

I took lots of pictures of the mountains and you can find this on our share site (ponsteinpictures.shutterfly.com).

After driving through this valley, we stayed in Switzerland, but drove along the border of Liechtenstein.  Since we were so close, we decided we had to add a fifth country to our trip and stop in Liechtenstein.  We were just going to stop by a sign that said Liechtenstein, but then we discovered that there was a McDonald's close by and we had to eat there!  Brian and I have now eaten at McDonald's in Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Spain, Denmark, England, US, and Canada.  We still have to get Switzerland and Austria, but we don't think that will be a problem since we seem to go to one of those countries most weekends.

You'll notice that Brian is pointing at the Liechtenstein flag and we have the McDonald's sign in the background.  It definitely was the best view that we've ever had from a McDonald's!

Saturday Hiking

Saturday Beth and I along with the Pizzuto's went hiking to the Kreuzberg. It started with a 10km hike to the valley of the MT. The girls hiked around the area while the guys did some Klettern (rock climbing).
This is the hike in. You will notice our elevation gain was over 1080meters. The girls did some additional climbing bringing them to a height of 2122meters - which was higher than the boys. The Garmin site converted this all for you to units you can relate to.

The video below is the same rock climb that Gus and Brian did. We climbed a ridge that was very narrow as you will see in the video.

Italy with the Campbells - Rome Day 2

Our second day in Rome was packed full of big tourist sites...the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps.

We started with the Colosseum which was quite impressive!  It was much bigger than I thought it would be.  I think that we were most impressed with the underground section where people and animals were kept for the fights.  There were so many different hallways for them to go through and get up onto the stage.

Brian and Ben had to have a "fight" while they were in the Colosseum.  I'm not sure who won!

We then headed across the street to the Roman Forum which is a large area of ruins from around the time of Paul.  It was interesting to see so many ruins in one place and to think that Paul could have walked where we were walking. 

We then headed to the Pantheon which is a church with a domed roof.  The roof is made out of concrete and has lasted hundreds of years.  There is an occulus (a big hole) in the center of the roof and the sunlight was shining through when we were there.  I wondered what happens when it rains, but saw drains in the floor to take care of the extra water.

We walked next to Piazza Navona which is a big square with several statues in it.  There also were a lot of artists selling their hand-drawn pictures there and we enjoyed watching them work.

Our next stop was a very touristy place, Trevi Fountain.  This is a big fountain on the back side of a building in a place that you really don't expect to see such a large fountain.  We had some gelato while we sat and people-watched at the fountain before taking some of our own pictures.

Our last stop for the day was the Spanish Steps.  This is just what it sounds like - a whole bunch of steps!  They are called the Spanish Steps because they are near the Spanish embassy in Rome, but really have nothing to do with Spain.  We went all the way up to say we had done it.

We then headed back to the campground and decided that we would head back to FN the next day.  We had originally planned to stay another day in Rome, but we had seen everything that we wanted to.  It was a good idea though because then we would have a day to relax before a bit more sightseeing before Ben and Laura left to go back home.