Kwan ba. It's our happily ever after. : More Bavaria Adventures

Day 1: Wurzburg, Rothenburg, and Colmburg Castle

Rothenburg is known for it's well preserved medieval old town. It is part of the popular Romantic Road through southern Germany. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows 1 and 2 had some filming done here and it was the inspiration for the Pinocchio village. Cool city!

Our bedroom at the castle. Day 2:

Mom found an Aldi in Germany which was hilarious and awesome. There was a bread vending machine there and it was AMAZING, delicious, FRESH, incredible bread. I was in heaven. Mmmmm.

Nuremberg: Nuremberg is a city in the German state of Bavaria and it is famous for the Nuremberg Trials after WWII. Nuremberg was the headquarters for the Nazi Rallies and their military. The Allies bombed this city and fought Nazi resistance door to door. After we toured Hitler's colosseum we got to our car just in time for a crazy storm! We found out later there was a tornado not too far away. We drove through flooded streets and had quite a fun time.

We explored the Imperial Castle of Nuremberg as well as the amazing downtown.

Day 3: Dachau, Munich-- In 1933 the Dachau concentration camp was built east of the city by the Nazis and was operated until 1945. It became the prototype for all other camps. 25,613 prisoners died in the camp and almost another 10,000 subcamps. Visiting Dachau concentration camp was difficult, but it was incredible to see the memorials built by different churches focusing on hope and overcoming the evil that had once occurred there.

We then went to Munich and visited the famous Residenz there. It was so MASSIVE. Too big we decided. The Munich Residence was the political and cultural centre of first the dukes, then the electors, and finally the kings of Bavaria. There was a beautiful, massive theatre in the Residence that was my favorite.

Day 4: Next we headed to Austria where we stayed in the town of Schlitters, hiked in the mountains,enjoyed Rattenberg, and had dinner with my brother Jarrett's old college friend Andres. Austria was literally picture perfect and we loved the town we stayed in. We did also sneak a drive into Italy just to say we had been there.

Day 5: Mittenwald, Garmisch, Ettal, and Oberammergou There were beautiful ornate paintings on all the buildings and the towns were quaint and gorgeous. We hiked in the mountains and ate so much gelato.

We stayed in Ettal on Thursday night, but visited Oberammergous during the afternoon. This city is known world wide for their Passion Play that the town comes together to perform. It is performed every ten years since 1634 and people from around the globe come to witness it. The town people vowed to God that if He would spare the town from the Bubonic Plague they would produce the play there for all time to honor Christ. It wasn't the year for the play (the next one is 2020, but we were still impressed by such a huge undertaking and how long the town had been performing it.

The Ettal Abby was also massive and beautiful.

My brother Aaron had a business trip and was able to meet us for the weekend in our cute Ettal Hotel.

Clearly we got pretty good at selfies on this trip...

Day 6: Castles! We went to Hohenschwangau, Neuschwandstein, and then on to Bodensee. We stayed the night in a little town called Titisee. (these names!). We also drove through the Black Forest country and were amazed and the beauty of this place! We also hiked the longest waterfall in Bavaria in the morning. We stayed in Heidelberg that night. Heidelberg is soo beautiful! A popular belief is that Heidelberg escaped bombing in WWII because the US Army wanted to use the city as garrison after the war. We also heard that the Allies would not bomb Heidelberg because they went to the University there. Heidelberg Castle is built up on the mountains and it is more like a huge town up on the hill. So impressive. We had so much fun!