Our Trip to Germany

One of our fond memories of Germany is waking to the sounds of the bells from the Ulm Munster on Easter morning. The Ulm Munster is the tallest church steeple in Germany and we did force the children to visit it for a few minutes. Our not-so-fond memory is of the Deutsche Polizei knocking on our hotel room door at 6:00 a.m. on Easter Monday. Apparently there was a problem with Kevin Hoeppner's passport number. Oops - the hotel made a little mistake. Well, at least they are keeping the world safe for tourism!

Left is the Ulm Munster tower. Right is a street scene in Ulm. Notice the Pace flag, the same as the ones we saw in Rome. There were peace flags in many places in Germany. And there were absolutely no problems being an American tourist in Germany. The German people are very open and kind, even the Polizei early in the morning!

On Monday morning we walked around Ulm a little and then headed to the Neckar Valley for our stay in a castle hotel. On the way there we wanted to visit a garden outside of Stuttgart, but, guess what, we drove around in circles for half an hour, found it, decided we were hungry, and made a stop at Burger King. Remember, Easter Monday is a HOLIDAY in Germany, so hardly anything was open and we were grateful to find anything - even fast food! We actually didn't get lost on the way to the castle hotel. We stayed at the Schloss Liebenstein, located in Neckarwestheim.

This is the chapel located on the castle grounds. In the background you can see the vineyards on the hill and Neckarwestheim in the background.

This is a view of the castle hotel from the castle tower in the court yard. We had a really nice afternoon exploring the castle and having treats on the patio.

The kids loved the knight armor located in the lobby of the hotel. We were the only guests at the hotel both nights we were there, so we had the restaurant to ourselves for all our meals and had a great time pretending we were the royal family!

On Tuesday morning we went to Heilbronn to see the clock at the Rathaus (town hall). The clock has four faces, and on the hour one of the statues strikes a bell with a hammer and the angel statues blow their horns and twist back and forth. We had a nice snack on the town square waiting for the clock to do its thing. The kids liked this adventure, even if it was a little cultural.

Click to see:

* more of our Germany trip

* our home page