Bamberg

On Tuesday we took a day trip to the city of Bamberg. Bamberg is one of the few cities around us that escaped Allied bombing during WWII, so there are some really old and intact buildings ... in fact, some of the oldest in Germany! It was a great day and we couldn't have asked for better weather ... Germany is so much more enjoyable when it's nice outside.

I had done a lot of research and had our day all planned out, but when the GPS wouldn't take us to the parking garage that I had all the directions from - we kind of had to wing-it.

This is a church in the main square downtown ... they had a farmer's market type thing set-up and it was pretty crowded.

Statue of Poseidon ...

They call Bamberg 'little Venice' ... fr obvious reasons ....

Elliott slept though most of the day. He was a lot easier to travel with than I thought!

We decided to start the day with a boat tour. It was only 8 euro, and they served beer on-board .... you can't beat that.

This view of the river was so cute .... there are all of these little half-timbered fisherman houses all squished together - it was really pretty.

Vic on the tour boat, with the previously mentioned beer.

Elliott passed out - this is how he looked for a majority of the day.

During the tour we had to go into this little contraption that cut off the water flow and lowered us under a bridge. They explained what was happening over the speaker, but of course it was all in German. I'm pretty sure we were the only Americans on the whole boat, so we just looked in the general direction of everyone else when they would point out something, and we would pretend to know what was going on. I don't think we were fooling anyone.

He woke up for the last leg of the tour.

Ol' one-eyed Willy enjoying the ride ...

Back at the docks ... and now it's time for lunch.

We definitely wanted to eat outside so we walked around until we found the perfect little cafe. The waitress took one look at us and brought us the English menu. We both had these amazing baguette sandwiches, and washed it down with a famous Bamberg beer. This was our view from the table ...

After lunch we were ready to start or tour of the city. We really had to plan, so we just wondered aimlessly until we stumbled upon cool stuff. The next two pictures are the old town hall building, built in 1744-ish ... it was really pretty.

Ol' JC, hanging out in front of the Old Town Hall ....

Bridge leading into the Old Town Hall ...

Looking up at the Town Hall ... the detail was amazing ...

The following pictures are from the outside/inside of the Bamberg Cathedral ... it was massive and so beautiful ...

 Entryway ...

Tomb ...

Front alter ...

Gigantic organ ...

This picture doesn't do justice for how high these ceilings are ... every little whisper echoed, so thank God Elliott didn't start crying ...

These are tombs where bishops of the church are buried ... it was underground and really creepy ...

You could light a candle for 1 euro! As I'm not a catholic and also not huge into religion, I had no idea what the meaning of this was ... but everyone was doing it, so I thought I'd join in ...

I then proceeded to ask Vic who lived in these little tiny church houses ... he looked at me annoyed and filled me in on the whole confessional thing. I swear I knew that ...

Another tomb ...

View from outside ...

This was inside the Old Fortress ... there wasn't much to do inside here, but we did find a much needed bathroom. Side note ... you have to pay to use most public restrooms in Germany (which got pretty pricey when I was pregnant). This particular one was 50 cents ... which seemed slightly ridiculous to me.

From the Old Fortress we walked over to the Neue Residenz, where the bishops lived after the 17th century ...

There was an amazing rose garden in the back ... I can't wait to go back in the summer when all the flowers are blooming...

You could see St. Michael's church from the garden.

The view was so pretty. Next time we will take the hike to see St. Michael's, but it was pretty late in the day and we were pushing our luck with Elliott being so good ...

We saw this basketball goal while walking along the river, and it explains why Germans don't excel in this sport. Smallest backboard and thickest rim ever.

We will definitely make a trip back to Bamberg soon. Our next trip is tomorrow and we're going to Heidelberg - which  I'm so excited about. Vic goes back to work on Monday, but only for two days and then we're off to a mini-vacation/marriage retreat to a beautiful resort in southern Bavaria. I can't wait to post pictures from both trips!!

Please excuse grammar and spelling errors ... it has taken me three days to finish this, and I don't feel like proof-reading!!

Vacation, Day One: Kloster Kreuzberg

Vic has the next ten days off work and we decided that we are going to take several day trips around the area, before we move further east in a few months. Our first trip was to Kloster Kreuzberg, a mountain-top monastery/brewery, about 40 minutes away from Schweinfurt. We picked today to go because the weather forecast looked clear, and I figured it wouldn't be crowded since today is a big German holiday. Wrong on both accounts. It was FREEZING, foggy, and packed. We hiked up the initial path to the main restaurant and I had already lost feeling in my toes. We walked around for a bit and checked out the area. We decided to grab a beer and some lunch, when we noticed how insanely crowded it was. The beer line wasn't even feasible, so we settled for just getting lunch. I sent Vic inside while I held down a table outdoors. He came back 15 minutes later with a plate of spaghetti and what he thought was an American-style fish sandwich. Upon further inspection of this sandwich, it appeared to be a large slab of raw fish, scales and all, with onion and egg - barf. My spaghetti was delicious and Vic ate the bread from the sandwich. After lunch we took a few pictures around the restaurant and scoped out the distance of the hike to the monastery. It was just too far of a walk to keep Eli in the cold for that long, so we decided to head home and we will try again later in the week. Hopefully when we try again it won't be so foggy, so we can get some better pictures!

This picture is from the first hike from the parking lot to the restaurant. It was so foggy on the drive in that you could barely see in front of you. I'm glad Vic was manning the wheel because with the twisty roads along with the fog - I would have likely had a nervous breakdown. 

Eli hiding out from the cold during the hike. Check out his obnoxious new car seat attachment that keeps him entertained on car rides.

 The restaurant. There were two main groups of Germans overtaking this place - bicyclists and beer-guzzling men and women in traditional German attire ... lederhosen and all.

Statue outside the restaurant.

Along with being and brewery and monastery, they also breed Saint Bernards. This is Hugo, and he was enormous.

View looking up at the restaurant.

Our new camera does a panoramic shot, and this was our first attempt at it. Pretty cool.

This was on the side of one of the buildings ... creepy.

Huge statue on the walk up to the restaurant.

Vic and Eli through the fog.

The little German lady walking away from us in this picture stopped and attempted to to talk to us, even though we tried a few times to politely tell her we had no idea what she was saying.  We ended up just laughing and smiling until she finally continued on her way - I imagine she just telling us that Elliott is the cutest baby she has ever laid her eyes on ...

 Little villages from the view on the autobahn ....

You can barely see the little castle on top of the hill in the distance ... it was much cooler in real life, but you get the point.

So, even though we left beer-less, souvenir-less and without even seeing the main attraction ... it is a short and beautiful drive, so it will be no problem to attempt it again.

In other news, Eli had his two-month doctor's appointment last week. He was assigned to a new doctor, which I was excited about because the last one was a dud. Everything went well during the examine and Eli was on his best behavior ... he didn't even fart or pee on this guy. After the examine we sat down to talk about his progress. The doctor informed us that Eli is a little underweight, and I'm probably not feeding him enough. After this statement, I start to get a little angry. He then adds that breastfed babies are typically very chunky at this point, and they have at least three chins. Now I was pissed. First of all, if he was underfed then why is he a content, happy baby who rarely cries? I'm no baby expert, but I'm pretty sure he would be continuously fussy if he was hungry all the time. Secondly, you are gauging my child's growth on his number of chins?? I wanted to gather my things and dramatically storm out of his office, but I remained calm and let him finish his ridiculousness. I'm going to take him to the nutritionist on post for a second opinion, but I think Eli and his two chins are just fine.  

Vic and I also had a little adventure in babysitting this week. Our neighbor Kim needed to take her driving test, so we gladly agreed to watch her adorable (almost) two-year-old. JJ is a good baby, but verrrry curious.  If you take your eyes off him for second he'll have your whole refrigerator emptied and be sitting inside the dishwasher. He seemed to listen to Vic pretty well and loved watching him play video games. We had a good day with no emergencies and no melt-downs ... but we definitely decided to put off Baby #2 for awhile. 

Here's a couple of pictures from this week. He is getting really good at laying on his stomach and lifting his head and chest off the ground, and he looks more and more like Vic everyday.