The flow of visitors continues...

The summer of "visit before Shelly and Ed come home" rolls on. Steve-o and Susan arrived on July 1st, a couple weeks after our cruise. Shelly and I had hoped to be able to hit the road with S&S, but the timing just didn't work out - Shelly had the 4th and 5th of July off, a Wednesday and Thursday, but had to be at work on Friday. We discussed trying to bridge the mid-week vacation with the weekend, but Army regulations dictated that Shelly would not be allowed to go on leave on Friday without signing in to the clinic from the Wednesday-Thursday two day pass. Having to be back in Hanau to sign in on Friday morning essentially made tagging along with Steve and Susan a no-go. Word is the folks down in Heidelberg were not required to sign in, and therefore got an unofficial 5-day weekend at the cost of just 1 day of leave. Figures.


We brought Steve and Susan back to Hanau to drop off their luggage, freshen up and stretch their legs after the long flight. After Madison awoke from her nap we all headed off to Kreuzberg, one of our favorite day-trips in the area around Hanau.


Kruezberg is considered a holy mountain by many in the area, and Kloster Kruezberg, a monastery, sits near the peak of the mountain. Many Germans make the pilgrimage to Kreuzberg to hike in the surrounding area and visit the monastery - which just happens to brew its own beer. The Kreuzberg monks brewed their famous beer on site until 1985 when the brewery was moved to a nearby city, but they still serve many liters of the potent brew to the "pilgrims." I have a feeling the pilgrimage to the monastery goes something like this "Hey, there's the monastery. Let's grab a beer!"














Is that Susan behind the krug?!?! If you are going to come all this way to see the monastery, you don't get a half liter - you get the full liter of what we have been told is 12% alcohol beer. The high alcohol content doesn't take away from the taste, the beer at Kreuzberg is good. Very good. Throw in a brat hot off the grill and a fresh pretzel and you have experienced all you need to of Germany.

I took S&S to Rothenberg A.D.T. on their second day, and while "the tourists" were visiting some of the local sights Madison and I took a stroll in the garden to eat lunch and have a nap...well Madison had a nap, I tried to keep us dry.







Flowers!! Nothing, not even rain, will keep Madison in the confines of her stroller for long, no matter how warm and dry the stroller might be.





Over Shelly's mid-week vacation we took our visitors to Ruedeshiem and Heidelberg - two popular destinations for all of our visitors. After our day in Heidelberg we dropped Steve and Susan at the train station where they continued to Munich, Innsbruck and Rome, and we said another good-bye to friends from home.

Who's got next?

--Ed