On Saturday July 23^rd, we took another touristy day, because we were leaving for Bavaria the next day. We went to the town of Neckarsteinach, in which one cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a castle. Seriously, I think there are four in this little valley, and apparently they were always fighting. Ah, the middle ages...















Entrance to the town, and that's the original town wall (I believe).

Manu looking a little skeptical...

Really pretty little church...















... How many walls can a little town possibly have? Apparently a whole lot.

Castle #1, which we went into. There’s not a ton left, but it was pretty cool. When we think of castles, we usually have something more palace-ey in mind, but this was a Castle. Basically all thick walls and towers. Seriously, that thing could probably have taken a nuclear bomb. Perhaps not the comfiest place to live, though.

Town from the top of the castle, and the Neckar.

Manu on top of the wall. Told you it was intense.

We hiked down from the town and came to the Neckar (hence the town’s name, Neckarsteinach). There was a dam that we crossed over, and we watched a huge coal boat going through the loch which was pretty cool. I’d never seen that before.

Pretty!

I wish I had more to say about the excursion, but I’m not sure if I do. The pictures speak for themselves. It was a nice trip, and especially good because we managed to be touristy without being excessively so. We went out to a very German dinner, where I discovered Reislingschorle—Reisling mixed with seltzer, basically. It was actually quite good, and really didn’t taste watered down, just a bit... Lighter.

The next day, we packed up for Bavaria! Manuel had decided that he wanted to take ride-sharers, to help pay for gas, and we ended up with two girls in the back seat, one headed to Munich and the other to Rosenheim. There was going to be another boy as well, but turns out there was a misunderstanding—Manu thought it was one more person, but turns out it was two, and there’s no way we could fit 6 people in that car... Hell, four was cozy. So, they gave us gas money and company, and we gave them a ride. Does anything like this exist at home? It’s really cool. So, the whole trip worked out well, aided of course by the huge bag of food that we had brought along. There was something like 5 sandwices, juice, bananas, chocolates, gummybears... Yeah. We were well-prepared. Om nom nom.