A day in the Black Forest

It's time for....

You guessed it!

Another picture update!!

(So I'm sure you can guess who's writing this. I'll give you one hint: eldest daughter whose name starts with "K.")

Anyway....

We are in the Black Forest of southern Germany! After taking the Autobahn here, we are staying in a small town called Schiltach. It is VERY cute...







And this is our hotel!


It's run by an American woman and her German husband (who is a chef). While we have so much enjoyed being in Europe and experiencing the culture here this month, it is nice to talk to an American who understands why we would like ice in our drinks and why we keep looking for "flat" water (or my favorite term for it: water with "no gas"! hahaha). (On a side note, it is never good to hear "fizzzzzzz" when you open a new bottle of water. We have accidentally purchased at least two bottles of carbonated mineral water, and the stuff pretty much tastes like Sprite without the sugar. ewwwwwwwwwwwwww. No wonder they drink a lot of beer over here! haha) The couple has been great, and the hotel couldn't be any more wonderful.

Its superbness (if that is a word) was only matched by our day today. We went to another little town about 20 km from here called Triberg (pronounced "Tree-berg") and hiked up to a waterfall and through the woods some. Then, we had lunch at this neat place right by the lake and got to watch duck drama (the male was chasing the female and WOULD. NOT. LEAVE. HER. ALONE. AT. ALL.) while we ate Spatzle and potato soup and some traditional French thing that looked like pizza with alfredo sauce.

Then, it was about 5 pm and the Germany-England World Cup game was on. We have caught as many games as possible and as we are in Germany now, we definitely wanted to see this one! But, as our hotel was still 45 minutes away, we figured we'd miss it. Oh well.

As we were driving home, we saw the "Rodelbahn." Lisa, the woman at the hotel, had recommended it to us and we wanted to check it out. Basically, it's a rollercoaster-like thing on the hill. Sounded fun to us! So we pulled in, and guess what!?!? They had the game on there! WOOOOO!! So we ended up watching the last half of the game with 50 Germans, who were obviously thrilled with the outcome. Since the win, people have been driving around town honking, yelling, waving flags out their car windows, hanging flags out their house windows, etc. Excitement kind of like when Butler was in the final few games of the NCAA tourney, but German-style. Pretty cool. We've decided to get some flags for our rental car :)





Anyway, back to the Rodelbahn. It was WAY fun, but I'll let you see that in the pictures. I wish we could bring all of you over here to ride it...it was that fun. We all went 3 times. :)





















Okay, it's nearly midnight here and I need to sleep! I've had a cold these past few days so I'm taking lots of cold medicine and Emergen-C and trying not to miss visiting stuff over here :) But....sleep is probably necessary too, at least at some point.

Only 4 more days and we'll be back home! I can't believe it. SO going to miss Europe, but SO looking forward to seeing my Kiwi again.



And beautiful Miss Oreo.



And of course Gracie and Linus too.


Okay, off to bed!