thankful in bavaria.

Bavarian Alps anyone? Yes, please--I'll take a long weekend in the alps.

We had a marvelous weekend in Garmisch-Partenkirchen at an Army lodge called Edelweiss!  It was honestly so wonderful - the whole thing.  We drove down (about 5 hours) on Thursday morning and walked straight into the lodge for our Thanksgiving feast!  We had all the delicious Thanksgiving food without any work.  We were very much missing family that day and may have mentioned it a few times - love you Moselles & Blomgrens!

Evelyn & David enjoying some turkey.

We were mostly nervous about the hotel stay at night with the littles in the same room as us.  We weren't sure what people do - leave them there (we brought a monitor), go to bed (no way!), or do what we did and try to watch a movie while they went to bed!  It fortunately worked pretty darn good.  We just had the tv on and turned all the lights out and then once they were quiet we popped our movie in and enjoyed a little down time.  In the mornings we drank coffee, ate pastries and played around the room...

At night, we took it easy...

On Friday we decided to start exploring! We drove down this beautiful quaint road (below) and right in front of us was the ski jump from the Olympics held in Garmisch in 1936 - what a scary looking jump!

Once we parked we took about 3.5 hours exploring the Partnach Gorge.  The girls both took naps in the Ergos while we walked and we were in awe of the beautiful waterfalls, aqua water and lots of icicles.  It was very loud and windy and we had to walk through these super creepy long tunnels where there were no lights - quite the adventure!  We're sorry we didn't get a great picture but you get the idea...

 

Once we were through the gorge we took these stairs about 25 minutes up to a high mountain village where we ate a little German white sausage (Norah loved it), a pretzel, and German beer. It was a stunning view.

That evening we took it easy and ate at the lodge again and then watched a friend's kids for a bit so they could get out and talk!  It was so easy having 7 kids (they had a movie on so really, it was easy!)!

The following day we drove to another nearby village to check out a beautiful catholic monastery. It's still being used daily and has monks living in the quarters connected to the worship center.  This is one of the interior of the worship center.  One more interesting thing - the monastery has a brewery.  This makes me laugh. They make beer and liqueur and sell it.

This is Norah's "smile". Whenever we ask her to smile for the camera, this is what we get - it's kinda fugly (funny and ugly all at once).  I keep telling David - at least she looks and posses instead of running away or turning her head!

Eating in bed and cartoons - gasp! - what parents allow that?!

On the final day, on the way home, we stopped at Neuschwanstein Castle. This is the castle that Disney modeled their Sleeping Beauty castle after. We took a bus up to this lookout area and got some good pictures and continued the walk to the castle for a tour.  The castle is unfinished because Ludwig II died before it was finished being painted etc (although the 1/3 of it that is complete took 17 years!).  Ludwig had another castle within walking distance (see below) but this castle was much more magnificent.  We were not allowed to take pictures of the interior but it was stunning and detailed and very well preserved with wood carving, painting, mosaics and chandeliers.

The front door to the castle and view from the opposite side.

You can see one of his other castles there on the hill.

We took a carriage ride down pulled by horses and Norah was elated. She just kept talking about horsies this and that (we couldn't understand what she was saying), it was so fun to see her that excited.

Evelyn, getting more expressive as the weeks pass!