I hope everyone is enjoying our blog. Its turned out to be a little more work than I had planned for, which is probably why I've never been faithful in keeping a travel journal on past trips. Too lazy! So I thank you, even though I have no idea if anyone is actually looking at this dang thing. Just the thught that someone is interested (or the fact I told everyone I was going to do this and now I'm too stubborn to quit) has kept me comitted too the task. So now I will have a chronicle of this trip, and no matter how inadequate it is, it still beats the heck out of any of my previous (nonexistant) journals. So we hit town late yesterday afternoon. We drove in from Reutte after visiting Neuschwanstein ... read more

Here begins my review of Heidelberg. Rick Steves and I would normally avoid this place (too touristy) but I'm very happy I decided to stop here. Why? Elizabeth loves it, that's all I need to say. I will explain why Elizabeth likes it so much this way: when we were in Paris I had to lead us around because Lizzie was totally lost (not completely true) EXCEPT when we went into this huge department store. And I do mean huge. The place was six stories high and made up of two buildings. What made it worse - it isn't divided into departments like Womens, Juniors, Casual, Shoes, etc. Each brand actually has its own section. So instead of walking past one Women's, and one Juniors and one Shoe department, you keep passing them over and over ... read more

Last one form Paris - I promise On Sunday morning I did a load of laundry and let Elizabeth sleep in. Then we went back over close to Notre Dame to see another Gothic church (cathedral?? not sure what the difference is technically) called St. Chapelle. This place has more Medieval stained glass than all the rest of the catherdrals in Paris put together, maybe even all of France. It is truly amazing. I'm coming back here sometime in my lifetime on a bright sunny day. And finally, though our hopes of the internet reservation system working or of the elevator repairmen being successful were not fulfilled, we returned to the Eiffel Tower and decided to brave the long line since it was our last chance. Actually, Elizabeth wasn't sure if she really wanted to wait ... read more

Our tour guide at Versailles acted (and sounded) like he was half historian and half curator of the museum. The pure grandure of Versailles and the fact fact it was open for public spectacle is probably what what contributed most to the French revolution. To say this place is over-the-top is not exageration. It is sparsely furnished now because after the revolution most of it's furnishings were sold. Was is here now either authentic 18th century furniture similar to what would have been found here or actual peices from Versailles that they have been able to buy back when they become available at auction (such as Christies). One interesting story is of the furniture in Louis' office (I have pictures of his personal desk that was comissioned and made just for that room - it took ... read more

OK. We are on the train to Heidelberg and I will now endeavor to catch up on Paris before we get back into Germany. If it seems strange that we started in Germany and then went to France, just wait, we'll hit France again in a couple of weeks. Paris was nice, though I will admit that I am glad to be out of the big city. I think Elizabeth will appreciate the smaller towns we stay in more now. I am still not going to write much of a blog as time and internet are in short supply. I will try to make informative (if not brief) captions on the pictures and hope that they will be sufficient to tweak my memory later to complete my journal since I was originally going to use this ... read more