Castles on the Rhine

This was Greg and I's favorite part. We just love ruins. And this was just like a treasure hunt and the castle was the treasure! Just about the whole castle was accessible and we just ran all around. Literally running, hopping and climbing on things, jumping off things. It was like the adventure never ended. We kept finding little passageways and just went in not knowing where it led. It was REALLY fun! (If you can blow up this pic- Greg has the best face! It ALWAYS makes me laugh histerically!)

I thought this was neat because you could see all the windows.



This was dangerous. Everyone commented on the way up and we all moved slowly. And when we couldn't find a way out we had to go back down.

This sort of shows how the stairs can be tricky. But really, it was worse than it looks.

I really wanted to get a shot of how the rock cement looked.

Chris
I don't know if you can tell, but Randy's poking out of the building.

We think this is where people had to where the masks and all those "punishments". I can't believe it was still there. It was right in front of the church.

Chris

Randy

Ok this was just madness. The boys found this random door with this never ending dark tunnel and suddenly everyone went in. I didn't want to go in, but I didn't know where they were going to come out of, so I was forced to go in. Within 10 seconds you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. I couldn't BELIEVE we were in there! Who knew if there was a way out?

And yes, these were in the darkness too. This is where we began to see the light from a doorway at the bottom.

This is just pretty.

The boys.

Me and Pat

Frozen water- mid-stream. Yes, is was VERY cold. So cold, in fact, that we all started wearing our pajamas underneath our pants- for the rest of the trip!!!! I'm not kidding. Randy was the first to start the trend.

The sun was falling and we were HUNGRY!!! So we decided to drive along the river and find some food. Little did we know that restaurants are open but apparantly don't serve food between the hours of 2pm and 6pm. So we had 2 hours to go and we were STARVING!!!! We walked and walked.

We finally found a place that served dessert and toast with interesting things on them. I got cheese and peaches on my toast. Randy had pineapple. It wasn't very good. But Randy went on and on to the lady who made it how wonderful it was. I started to realize that this something Randy always did. Whether it's amazing or terrible he sincerely looks at the waiter/waitress and says, "This is good. We've been to a lot of places and this is very good."

Then it was back on the road towards Amerstam. It was really neat. We just drove along the river and every 5 minutes there'd be a big castle!!! It was so cool! I wanted to see them all!!!