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.

Venice!

 Where do I even begin... Venice is amazing!!!!!  It's been at the top of my wish list for vacations for a very long time and it did not disappoint!  It was so magical walking around the city.

 The sun was really bright, I left my shades at the hotel.

 We had dinner right on the Grand Canal.  It was lovely.  And quite delicious.

 Every corner we turned was another breath-taking sight.  

I love to see this one's creativity and imagination.  He never does things the "normal" way.  I love him.

Carter is normally such a clean eater, always has been.  We got a good laugh out of his messy face because it's so rare to see him like that!

 Rooftop balcony

Our first night there it started raining on us.  It felt so good!  It cooled us right off and the kids had a blast splashing through the puddles.  Maybe a little too much fun, we got several "Mama Mia!"s from innocent victims of splashes.  Haha!  And sorry....

 Dennison was tickling them trying to get them to smile, haha!  We're on top of the Rialto Bridge.

St Marks Square at night.  Very pretty.

 I'm pretty sure I had to bribe them to get them all to stand here and look at the camera for me.  Why is that so hard for kids to do?!  Don't they know how cute they are??

We didn't have enough room in our vehicle for strollers so we ended up carrying at least one child at all times.

 Shane and Aunt Ellyse.  We had a blast with them!

 I love this picture of the gondola rower pushing off the wall.

Narrow passageway anyone?

We got lost the second day!  All that walking and we ended up in the furthest point from our destination.  Oh man.  We took the water bus back since we didn't have enough time to walk.  It was nice and relaxing to take in the city one last time from the water.

Monaco

We had visitors last month!!!  It was so much for having Dennison's brother Shane and his wife Ellyse here!  We did a lot of fun things with them and they also got in some pretty amazing things by themselves in Italy.  We walked around Old Town Nice with them the first night but I didn't take any pictures.  The next day we heading to Monaco.

 We ended up walking pretty much across the whole country.  Not really, but it sure felt like it!  We first headed up to the palace.  This is the view from the top:

And the palace:

 We got there just in time to watch the changing of the guards. Pretty cool.

Then we walked all the way over to Monte Carlo.  But rest assured that we did NOT take the most convenient or direct route.  We'll call it the "scenic route".  Also know as "the route of up-hill climbs".  It was fun though and very beautiful.

That night we had dinner at one of the restaurants on the beach here in Nice.  The view and company were superb, the food was just ok.  Ellyse and I had the pleasure of sharing some raw salmon.

Carter took a picture of us before we left.

 He also couldn't leave without taking a picture of the lobster tank.