Germany

Sunday night we arrived to St. Goar, Germany. It is a cute little town in the Rhine Valley on the Rhine River that has the world's largest cuckoo clock. We stayed at this cute family owned hotel that was very old fashioned. Most of the hotels had twin beds that they pushed together for us which was funny, but this one was all Brady Bunch yellow and right out of the seventies. This night we went to a wine cave for Reisling tastings. The Rhine Valley is known for Reislings, which I typically think is too sweet, but they had a dry Reisling that was really good. We also got to taste ice wine, which is really expensive because it takes the amount of grapes to make 8 bottles of regular wine to make this. It was super thick and syrupy, like honey, but sort of good. After the tasting, everyone hung out at the hotel bar, which was fun and low key!

The next morning we left for Munich. The hotel we stayed at here was a lot more modern/nicer and they had my favorite gummy bears on the bed like we put mints on pillows :) We started out at Marienplatz Square and saw the Glockenspiel. We also went to Frauenkirche Cathedral where there is supposedly the devil's footprint. Legend has it that if your foot is the same size as this print, you are the son of the devil! Luckily, our feet were too small! Woohoo.

After exploring, we met the whole group at the Haufbrau Haus. This place was one of the highlights of the trip. It basically is a huge beer hall/restaurant where everyone drinks out of gigantic beer steins, sits at long tables, listens to the oompah band, and eats. The servers are dressed in traditional German clothes and they carry all the steins your table orders at one time! There are lots of tourists here, but one side is reserved for the locals who have their own steins in locker type things. We tried gigantic pretzels, sausage, schnitzel, and of course saurkraut! It was an Australian guy named Kane's 19th bday, so it was fun to celebrate with him. This guy reminds me of what Adam would have been like at 19...he was never dull to be around. We basically played games and drank beer all night. We even tried this liquor called obstler, which supposedly is supposed to melt all the food and beer in your stomach so you can keep drinking without getting too full...didn't work for me, but it's a nice thought! Anyhow, this was one of the most fun nights I have had in a super long time, and I would LOVE to go back to this place!

Rest of Germany Pictures: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbM3DRi0cuWQf