More Germany

After a tour inside the castle, where it was strictly forbidden to take photos, we made our way down to the bottom of the mountain. For a few Euro you can ride down in a horse-drawn cart. In our case, the driver refused to accept our euro and we travelled for free. I don’t know why, but it was a nice ending to the day. One thing that especially impressed us was how green everything was.

Just beautiful.

We then started our drive to our accommodation for the evening.

Although it wasn’t the best day for taking photos, the scenery was magnificent.

We stopped to take a picture of these ruins on a hill.

You must remember that as Australians, if we want to visit another country we have to get on a plane and fly there, so it bemused us somewhat that the fastest way to get to our destination in Germany was to go through part of Austria.

This picture of the alps was taken in Austria.

Another view.

We weren’t the only ones who had stopped to take pictures.

 

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A long held ambition

A long held travel ambition for Gorgeous Man was to see Neuschwanstein Castle. So when he was to present a paper at a conference in Germany, we knew that we had to make the journey to get there.

We had to fly a number of legs to get there… PNG to Brisbane. Stop overnight to drop off Gorgeous Girl with some relatives. Then Brisbane to Hong Kong. That flight was the most ‘interesting’ I’ve ever been on. On the approach to Hong Kong it was so rough that they had to stop meal service three times and refused to serve any hot beverages.

Gorgeous Man and I were sitting near the wing. Suddenly there was a flash, a bang and the whole plane shook. For a split second I thought that the engine had exploded. The plane had been struck by lightening. There was no damage, but it certainly gave me a fright. The turbulence also meant that for the first time ever I had to get out the little travel sickness bag. I didn’t need to use it in the end. I have never been so glad to get on the ground in all my life.

The weather meant that our connecting flight out of Hong Kong was delayed as all planes waited for the weather to clear and then we had to wait for a space to take off. I got to enjoy some local cuisine (hand pulled noodles and vegetable soup) which made me feel much better, the anti-nausea pills from the airport chemist also helped. The flight into Munich was much smoother much to my relief.

Because we only had a few days before the conference began, we headed straight from the airport to Neuschwanstein. We drove through amazing scenery.

The first castle that we spotted was the castle that the builder of Neuschwanstein had been born in, Hohenschwangau. However, because our time was limited we didn’t tour this one, just admired it from afar.

Here it is from another angle.

Our first view of Neuschwanstein.

Not the best photo in the world… My little camera is great for taking craft photos, not so good with the tourist stuff.

Up a bit closer…

Some details of the castle.

One last photo.

It is impossible to get the photos like you see on the postcards from land. To get pictures from that angle it needs to be done from a hot air balloon.

We caught a horse-drawn cart back to the bottom of the mountain, but I’ll save you the photo overload and spread the trip out over a few posts.

(Love that blogging allows me to inflict my holiday photos on people 😀 )

 

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Quilt, cards and orchids

It’s been a bit of a busy time lately. I did manage to start putting a quilt top together.

This is my leader and enders project there’s all sorts of fabric and fabric scraps in this. A lot of this is from a scrap bag of fabric I was given (literally scraps) and vintage quilting fabric from a retiring quilter’s stash.

I made some cards recently. This one is going to a lovely couple who are expecting their first child very soon.

Colour is a bit washed out in the picture. Huge thanks to my friend Kerin for the circles punched from her stash/scraps.

This one is for a birthday boy/teen.

This one is for Mother’s Day.

Finally, the orchids are flowering. Gorgeous Girl took this picture.

I love these curly orchids.

This orchid smells fantastic in the morning.

We are heading off next week. We’ll be dropping Gorgeous Girl in Australia to spend time with family while Gorgeous Man and I head to some conferences in Germany and Poland. I’ve started washing the cooler weather clothes and sorting out craft projects to take while I’m on the plane, and have some down time.

I’m hoping to have internet while we are away, but not sure how much spare time we’ll have. Expect me to inflict lots of photos on you on my return…

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