Germany 2014 - Part 1

A couple of years ago, when we found out that Chad's SIP meeting would be in Germany this year, I said right away, "We are all going with you!"  But, as time got closer, we started thinking that maybe it would just be better for Chad to go, so he could concentrate on the meeting.  In the end though, we decided it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up, since most of the transportation and hotel room would be paid for.  So, we planned out our 10 day vacation to Southern Germany.
We rented a car, since we didn't think our old clunker would make it and they upgraded the car, so it was a really nice car, really nice!  It was really hard to give it back after the trip was over. =)  We headed out for Germany and our long car ride to our first destination.  We took the ferry to Germany, which is always a fun little activity. 

Especially when the boat is covered in ladybugs.

The kids had to catch a few.  Our drive through Germany was beautiful.  Especially the farther south we got, we started seeing castles and churches all over the place.  So beautiful!  We had booked our first 2 rooms through a site called airbnb.  Basically people rent out apartments or rooms that they have.  We were a little nervous about this, but our first night was fantastic.  We headed way off the main road to this old Mill built in 1766!  It's a house now and we had the entire top floor apartment to ourselves.  It was super nice.

 I think this was our only picture of the car.  It was so nice to have air conditioning, personal climate controls, built in gps and other fun gadgets.

 The next morning, we were a little sad to leave, but we had a lot of ground to cover to get to Stuttgart.  Along the way, we stopped in Rothenburg ob der Tauber.  What a fantastic little town.  It has a very interesting history, especially during World War 2.  The Nazi's claimed it as the ideal Germany town and it was used in a lot of Nazi propaganda.  At the end of the war, the town was bombed, with many buildings being destroyed, but not near as bad as many other Germany cities.  The US military sent in someone with a white flag to ask them to give up the city, so that it could be preserved, and the guy in charge of Rothenburg said ok, going against Hitler's orders and thus preserving the town.  Very interesting history!  It's one of the only towns in the world that still has a medieval wall surrounding the entire town.  And the town itself is really well preserved, not much has changed since the 17th century.  We got to walk around the wall and through the city. It was so fun and we wished that we'd had more time there.

This old tower is actually used as a bathroom now!

Noah took a bunch of fun pictures like this as we were eating lunch.

 That evening, we headed further to our place in Stuttgart.  Also booked through airbnb and we were a little freaked out to discover that we had inadvertently booked a room in someone's house!  Not our own apartment, like we had thought.  It was super awkward, but Ursula, our host made us feel comfortable and although we would certainly avoid accommodations like that in the future, it wasn't as bad as it could have been.  I think we were mostly frustrated that the room was really cluttered with personal belongings and we were worried about our kids touching things, etc.  But, they were super great, no problems! Our host even mentioned to us after that she was happy with how good our kids were.

Møns Klint Spontaneity

On Friday, Chad woke up and said, "What could we do today if I didn't go into work?"  Well, we drove into the city to the distribution center at the church and then, at around 10:30, decided to drive to Møns Klint for the day.  We ran to the local store and bought some snacks and headed out on our way.
This was my 3rd trip down here and Chad's 5th.  We started out on a nice hike up the hill that Chad had gone on a while ago.  It gave a great view of the surrounding area.  We decided to take an unknown trail down the back.  It was a great walk through the forested area, but we were really unsure where we would come out at.

 Picking Wild Raspberries.

 Cow Photo Bomb!

 We headed over to the cliffs.  They are so pretty.  Instead of taking the usual stairs down, we walked along the cliff top for about 1.2 km and then took a different set of stairs down.  It was great, hardly any other people and just as picturesque! 

 Looking for fossils.

 Chad posing for a picture and then getting a little wet!

 Lots of stairs!  The picture don't show that these stairs are super steep, almost more of  ladder.

 On our way back along the cliff rim we came across this snake.  We nearly stepped on it and I have to admit that there was a considerable amount of screaming.  I don't think Chad screamed, but he definitely jumped.  Although he denies it, he definitely jumped!  Haha!  It seems that we had heard several times that there were no snakes in Denmark, but this was definitely a snake....in Denmark.

It was such a fun spur of the moment trip!  We got back super late and everyone was really tired, but very happy!

Bike ride to the Sea

A friend of ours puts together a fund-raising bike ride every year to raise money for Pedal Away Parkinsons.  We participated in it a couple of times before moving here, I even won a bike at the giveaway!  This year we decided to go on a bike ride to lend our support from across the ocean.  We had planned out a 10 mile ride to the beach and back, but it ended up being closer to 15 miles.  Although all the kids ride two-wheelers now, we decided with such a long trip, it would be better to have the little ones in the trailer. 

 We handed off the camera to Lexi and Noah for part of the ride, here are a few pictures they took. =)

 Hahahaha!

 The ride was very beautiful, taking us through fields, by cattle pens, on dirt roads, it was a lot of fun!

 This cow was very friendly, letting us pet it and feed it. 

 Up and over a bridge.

 We made it to the beach for lunch, cooked some hot dogs on the grill.

 The beach was quite crowded and yucky today.  Funny thing though, these were the only 2 pictures we took of the sea.  The water was a dark brown/yellowish color and stinky!  Very gross, but quite refreshing on a hot day.