The weekend after Luxembourg I wasn't feeling too well on Friday so I wanted to take it a little easy.  The travel bug was itching though and I did need to get out!  I ended up going to see a couple of neat things!  First I went to Hardenburg because they have a nice caste up on the mountain with a great view.  On my way up I passed this monument:

Here is part of the outside of the castle.

The castle was fairly well preserved and had a nice interior courtyard and other passageways:

Like I said, the view was awesome!

I ended up having lunch at a little German restaurant nearby before heading over to the Limburg Abbey.  The Abby was pretty neat but all that was left of it was mostly the exterior walls and the tower.  I was glad I got to see it though!  Here is the outside of the Abby and the tower.

The inside was pretty and had a nice row of trees.  They still use the Abby for all sorts of functions, in one section it looked like a wedding reception was going to go on soon.

There were also some neat statues sitting outside of the Abby, here is a picture of one, there were 8 or so in total.

After the Abby I had to go to Bad Durkheim to see their barrel restaurant.  I wanted to stop to eat but I was still stuffed from lunch!

That's it for now.  I'll try to post up my pics from Mainz later this evening or maybe tomorrow!

Luxembourg Part 2

After visiting the War Memorials I went to check out the Bock Casemates which is an underground fortification that dates back to 1644.  There is really no way to describe it other that it's a fort dug into the side of a mountain.  And it is HUGE, originally spanning 14 miles of passageways.  I imagine is was really had to lay siege to the sucker!

Here are some views from the outside:

The inside of this fort was impressive!

Apparently they had an extensive artillery system for the fort, so much for your hearing once those cannons go off!  Although they only had a few cannons on display there was apparently a large battery that extended along the fort.

The picture above is from one of the cannon ports and you can see the other ports along the mountain.  The casemates were a lot of fun to see but it was not for the faint of heart.  Walking inside of the fort was pretty dangerous.  Case in point, check out this stairwell!

I would recommend the casemates though, you don't have to go up and down all of the stairs and most of the interesting parts were easily accessible.  You still had to watch your step though!

Luxembourg Part 1

I know I haven't updated in a while but I've been pretty busy.  Life isn't just traveling and having fun here, I do have to do other things too!  Anyway, I hope to get caught up with pictures in the next day or too.  Here are some photos from my trip to Luxembourg!

I had a great trip there, the county is beautiful.  It was interesting because everything was pretty much bilingual with French and German.  I'm not so hot with either language but I still made due.  My main reason for going was to visit Patton's grave.  There is a really nice American memorial and cemetery there.  The experience was really emotional and I highly encourage anyone to go there.

The entrance to the memorial is dominated by a huge chapel right when you walk in:

The Chapel has inscriptions on all sides and a nice place on the inside for people to sit and meditate/pray.

The inside as inscriptions on the walls too and a beautiful ceiling.

Here's the final resting place of Patton, such a beautiful spot!

Over his headstone you can see the chapel, the inscription says:
"Here is enshrined the memory of valor and sacrifice".

Patton is facing the rest of the headstones that are there.

There are a lot of Crosses but there are several head stones shaped like the Star of David.

A coworker of mine said that there is a German memorial cemetery nearby and suggested that I go and take a look.  It was really interesting to see it because as my coworker mentioned how do you honor the dead, people's family members, without honoring the war?  The memorial was really well done.

The center path of the cemetery leads up to a monument that you can go up and see.
Here is the view from the monument:

Both memorials were very nice.  I wouldn't mind going back there at all, it was a great experience!  After the memorials I went to find another cool place in Luxembourg.  I'll put that in the next post.

Lahneck Castle

I nearly forgot to post these pictures but on our way to Koblenz we stopped by Lahneck Castle and got a tour.  It was remarkably well preserved and really cool to see!  Here are some pics of the outside:

The inside was interesting and still had some of the furniture!

Here is the kitchen:

Lahneck Castle was the first castle I've been to over here, well at least getting to see the inside.  There are castles all over out here so I'm looking forward to visiting some more!

Koblenz

My buddies and I took a really nice trip to Koblenz which is a city that is situated between the Mosel and the Rhine river.  In fact there is a park at the point where the Mosel and the Rhine river meet.  The park is called Deutsches Eck.  Unfortunately, the park was under heavy construction so I didn't get too many pictures.  There was a really impressive monument at the park where we could get a bird's eye view.  The Mosel is on the left and the Rhine is on the right.

The monument:

The monument is HUGE!  You can see some people standing up there which gives you an idea of the scale.

Goofing around on the monument:

Around Deutsches Eck is a fortification system.  We were able to take a sky lift over the Rhine river and up the cliff to check a least part of the fort out.  Here is a few pics of part of Fort Ehrenbreitstein.

Here is the view from the top of the fort:

We also decided to take a 1 hour boat cruise which was a lot of fun and really relaxing

Koblenz was a great town and the park area is going to be really nice once they finish the renovation.

To get to Koblenz I drove us on the autobahn which was my first extensive autobahn driving experience, besides some brief 30 min drives to take care of business.  It is an intense experience but with the exception of one driver the whole day, everyone is very polite and rules oriented while on the autobahn.

Our QuickTrip to France

Two of my friends and I wanted to go to France the other week but it was looking like rain in France so we took a side trip down to the Black Forest.

The Black Forest is really beautiful, rich woodland.  We stopped at the biggest waterfall in Germany and walked around the nature park there:

We also went to an outdoor museum in Vogtsbauernhof which was basically a historical farming village that had artifacts and buildings that were typical of Black Forest life a long time ago.  This is a huge grinder used for processing plants:

This picture is an inside joke just for my sister, I have no idea what these contraptions are :-)

Here is the beautiful outdoor area:

No trip to the Black Forest is complete without a visit to the house of 1000 Clocks.  I didn't count them to see if their advertising was truthful.

We also went to a Cathedral in Freiburg but they were having a mass when we arrived so we couldn't go inside to look around.  The outside was impressive though!

Once we finished with the our tour in South Germany, we decided to cut through Strasbourg, France since it was on the way home.  The weather was nice when we got there so we took a look at some of their river area:

And we went by the Cathedral and looked around the outside:

It was late by the time we got to Strasbourg so all of the historical sites were closed.  We had a great time anyway and France was really a nice place.  I can't wait to go back!