July 10, 2014

We were up and out of the youth hostel early today - on a tour bus, rather than public transportation for a change.  We drove for about 2 hours to Füssen, where we hiked up to Neuschwanstein Castle.  The castle is beautiful, as is the scenery surrounding it.  Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take pictures inside the castle.  After the tour, we hiked up to the Marienbrücke - a bridge across the gorge behind the castle.  Those who dared to go out onto the very full bridge got a great view of the castle and a great photo opportunity.

Then we loaded back into the bus and headed to the smallest of King Ludwig II's castles - the palace of Linderhof.  It is the only one of his castles that was actually completed - once again, we were not allowed to take pictures inside, but we took plenty of pictures outside.  After the tour, we walked up to the Venus Grotto, an elaborate man-made cave that was intended to be used for King Ludwig II to watch performances of Wagner's operas.

When we got back to the youth hostel, the kids were too tired to go back out to the Tollwood festival again, so we are staying in the youth hostel for the evening.  (A good choice, I think, given the nasty weather - cold and rainy...)

July 7, 8 and 9, 2014

Wow - a busy couple of days.  The students all had school with their partners on Monday and Tuesday.  On Monday, a small group chose to go back to Esslingen to climb up the over 300 steps to see the old fortress section of the original wall around the city.  The same group then went with us to the park at Killesberg.  Although we did not ride the old steam engine train for tourists, we did climb up the tower, which is somewhat free-standing - you can feel it swaying in the wind - a little scary, but the view was great.  The tower has 176 steps going up.
Tuesday, a small group came with us to the Kunstmuseum (a modern art museum in downtown Stuttgart).  Unfortunately, there were only two rooms available for viewing - but the students enjoyed what they were able to see.  Tuesday evening was the farewell dinner - traditional Maultaschen and Kartoffelsalat and some singing of German soccer songs by our group.  It seems that our singing helped out a lot - Germany soared to a 7-1 defeat over Brazil - I hope many of you got to watch the game also! 
Today, we said a very tear-filled goodbye to our partners in Stuttgart and got on a train to head to Munich.  Despite the cold, rainy weather, we went on the bike tour of downtown Munich.  It was quite entertaining - I think the students enjoyed it.  After checking into the youth hostel, we headed the Tollwood festival at the Olympic park - lots of good food, music and shopping.  The students asked to go back again tomorrow night.  I think we can make that work!