Bavaria, Germany

 After Venice, we headed up to Germany.  Dennison's dad (who we met up with there) got us a few cabins at the Edelweiss Resort in the German Alps in Bavaria.  It was amazing scenery!

We drove past this abandoned castle on our way to Neuschwanstein Castle.

Neuschwanstein Castle.  It was the inspiration for Walt Disney when he created his iconic castle.

View from the parking lot.

We found a little gnome village on our way up.

We took a horse carriage from the parking lot up to the castle.  There's really no other way to arrive at castle gates, right?!

Vienna was absolutely enthralled with the horses.  The whole time we were at the castle she just wanted to go back down to the horses.  It was heartbreaking when we got back down right as the last carriage was heading down the hill without us :(

View from the castle

Jude played "run away from the camera" for quite a while.

The castle gate.

Inside the gate in the courtyard

View from the courtyard looking at the gate

Grandpa Harris did more than his share of carrying kids.  We loved having him here!  For more reasons than that, of course....

Looking out over the valley/lake below

Another castle down below

We hiked up to a bridge above the castle and were rewarded with this amazing view.

Looking down off the bridge.  I'll be honest, it was kinda terrifying.

Hiking back down the kids ran up this hill.  Some tourists walked by and took quite a few pictures of them up there.  They weren't speaking English but I think it's safe to assume that they thought they were cute.

We stopped here on our way back to the cabins to look around and take some pictures.  It was a picturesque Alps village.  I think we were in Austria at this point.