Chicago Pizza

When we were up in Chicago last week, we had dinner one night at Lou Malnati's-- famous for their deep-dish pizza. Absolutely delicious pizza from the first bite till the last... so good that the crust just could not be left on the plate. (Which is what I usually do with all pizza crusts.)

This past weekend, as we watched the Chicago White Sox beat the Chicago Cubs (how did that happen?) we got to thinking about deep-dish pizza. Could there possibly be....

We found Star Pizza near downtown Houston. Our friends K & B had told us about Star, and B used to live in Chicago years ago, so she knows good pizza when she has it. So that's where we went for lunch today-- Star Pizza. We must have passed that restaurant dozens of times and not paid much attention to it-- a green and white restaurant that was once a private house. Handpainted tables and booths inside, tables outside on the porch, and the pizza aroma gets to you as soon as you get out of your car.

We ordered a deep-dish pizza, half of it topped with spinach and cheese for me, the other half topped with different kinds of meat for my husband. As we sat there waiting for our Chicago-style pizza, we could smell other pizzas as they were carried out of the kitchen. Could they possibly taste as good as they smelled?

We weren't disappointed. This pizza was as delicious as Lou Malnati's, and by far the best pizza we've had since leaving New York in 1993. I told my husband that the two Italian restaurants (one near our home, the other in Galveston) can no longer be our pizza source. From now on, we've got to drive downtown to Star pizza. Either that, or fly up to Chicago again. (Go Cubs! Come on, Cubs-- Go! Go!)

We came home with a pizza box filled with the pizza slices that we didn't eat at the restaurant. One slice of deep-dish pizza is about all the calories I want for one day. Tonight's dinner will be salad, but tomorrow's lunch will be another slice of that delicious pizza. (Is it tomorrow yet?)

The Last Dinner

We had a bittersweet dinner last night with friends K & B, and C & R. We all met at a downtown Italian restaurant near Rice University. Can't think of the name just now, but it's a cute restaurant that was originally a private home with lots of little rooms. Before being turned into an Italian restaurant, it was a bookstore. Its name is an odd one, not easily remembered, and the only way K & B got to know the name was to just drive there and copy it out with pen and paper. They've been eating there ever since, and last night was our first (but not last) dinner at that cute little place. The restaurant has lots of little rooms filled with small and large tables, and we were lucky enough to have a table for six in a room by ourselves. We were there for over three hours, just talking and laughing and catching up with what everyone has been up to.

The celebration last night was a send-off to C & R, who will be moving to upstate New York in a few weeks. Actually, R will be starting a new job there in mid-August, but C will be staying on here till the end of December. Their house near the downtown area sold in just six days, and they have already bought a house near Rochester. The moving truck will pick up the contents of their Houston home at the end of July, and C will be renting a tiny apartment for the rest of the year, then he will be off to the frozen north before the year's end.

We had going-away gifts for C & R, and R walked into the restaurant with a red and green shopping bag filled with wrapped Christmas gifts for all of us-- she had shopped after last Christmas, and she said she had enough to pack without packing our holiday gifts as well. So we had a combination moving north party/Christmas celebration last night. Bittersweet, as I said. We're happy for C & R, but sad that they won't be here with us for holiday dinners and Charades parties.

"Go Cubs Go!"

My husband and I are still talking about last Sunday's night game at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Cubs vs. White Sox.... and the Cubs won all the games against the Sox, with Sunday's game being the one that made the Cubs fans bring out the brooms for the "sweep" chants at the end of the last inning.

All during the game, the Cubs fans were chanting the "Go Cubs Go!" song. My aunt knew all the words and she was singing along with all the fans. By the end of Sunday's game, we knew some of the words, but not all, but my husband and I were singing along as best we could.

I looked on YouTube for the Cubs song.... impossible for me to write down all the lyrics, but the verse that always gets the loudest singing is this one-- "Go Cubs go! Go Cubs go! Hey Chicago, what do you say? The Cubs are going to win today!" And as the fans are singing the "Go Cubs Go!" song, everyone is up on their feet and swaying to the music, hands in the air and big smiles on their faces.

We have two Cubs hats in this house now... one that my husband bought at Wrigley, and one that my aunt gave us the day after the game. I have a feeling that both my husband and I will be watching all the Cubs games from now on, with both of us sitting there wearing a Cubs hat.

I should have bought us Cubs shirts when we were at Wrigley. Oh well. Next time. And I know there will be a next time.

Go Cubs go! Go Cubs go! Hey Chicago... what do you say? The Cubs are going to win today!

Chicago... the city, the Cubs.

We had a long weekend in and around the city of Chicago. We visited family that I hadn't seen in years, went to the museums, the zoo, the aquarium, Navy Pier, and (the best part!) saw a night game at Wrigley Field (Cubs vs. White Sox).

The city is bigger than I remembered, busier than I thought it would be, but it does seem to be more of a community than a city. Chicago really knows how to be small-town nice, rather than big-city busy.

This past weekend was the 75th anniversary for a couple of the museums, so admission was free, and everyone in Chicago seemed to be there. The museums were packed, so we quickly toured the Science & Industry Museum, and the Aquarium-- it was just too, too busy at both places and the noise was deafening. We took our time at the Field Museum-- not as many people interested in Natural History, I guess.

After the Aquarium, we took a Lake Michigan boat to the Navy Pier... lots of restaurants and shops, and we were going to ride the Ferris Wheel there, but the sky clouded up and there was thunder in the distance, so I didn't want to be that high up if a storm rolled in.

Buckingham Fountain seemed larger than I remembered, and they light it up at night and it's just beautiful. We were there at 9:00 pm, and the lights and water was accompanied by Sousa marching music.

The Brookfield Zoo was a beautiful park, nicely laid out, mature trees, nice exhibits for the most part, except for some very old smaller ones that have seen their day and really should be removed or renovated. We had great weather over the weekend, with just a couple of light rain showers while we were there.

The baseball game at Wrigley Field was incredible. Chicago Cubs vs. the Chicago White Sox-- both teams at the top of their leagues, with a city rivalry similar to that of the NY Yankees and the NY Mets. Wrigley itself was just amazing... no large television screens, no digital scoreboards, no over-the-top advertising. Everyone is there to watch a baseball game. Period. We had a very light rain just before game time, but it cleared up quickly, and before the sun game out, we saw a double rainbow over Wrigley. It was magical, beautiful.

The fans were really into the game, from beginning to end. Singing, chanting, clapping, dancing in their seats. The game we went to was sold out, and we were lucky to find tickets on eBay weeks before our trip. Big bucks for the four tickets, but worth every penny and then some. We took my aunt and uncle to the game, and my aunt thought we were joking when we started walking towards seats right close to the field. She's a big Cubs fan, but hadn't been to a game in years.

There are apartment buildings all around Wrigley Field, and the apartments have bleachers built on top of the roofs... seats are sold in those roof-top seats, and they have barbeques going, umbrellas up to catch some shade, and those fans are as much a part of the game as those at Wrigley.

I've been to other baseball games, here in Houston, and back in NY, but the game at Wrigley was unlike any other. I hope no one ever gets an idea to replace Wrigley with (yet another) corporate ballpark. And if someone should, I hope every Cubs fan in the city of Chicago goes to Wrigley and sits right on the field, and in all those seats, and just stays put. After seeing that game at Wrigley, I just can't imagine any other ballpark being any better. And, with apologies to our own Astros, Wrigley Field surpasses any ballpark that Houston has to offer.

After the game (the Cubs won, 7 to 1) we walked about six blocks to my uncle's car. All the way, we could hear the fans talking about the game, televisions in the bars and restaurants were showing the game's highlights, nearly everyone was wearing either a Cubs shirt or a Cubs hat, and baseball was just in the air. And I do mean in the air. It was electric, incredible, unbelievable.

A night game at Wrigley Field. Chicago Cubs vs. the Chicago White Sox. The game we saw was the third one, and the Cubs won all three against the White Sox. Next weekend, there will be three more games at the White Sox ballpark (I forget the name of it just now), and I'm sure we'll be watching the games here, and my husband will be sitting in front of our television wearing his Chicago Cubs hat.

I think I'd rather be a Chicago Cubs fan than an Astros fan.

The only thing I didn't get to do in Chicago-- see Oprah's studio, and The Oprah store. We'll just have to go back.

Go Cubs!

Four-legged kids.

That's what Oprah calls her dogs-- her "four-legged kids." I can relate to that, since I talk to our dog and three cats as if they were children in this house. And don't laugh too hard at that, because I swear they know what I'm saying most of the time.

Since we've been home from our trip to Germany, our middle-cat ShadowBaby has been more than living up to his name. He follows me all over the house whenever he's not on the screen-porch. He will sit on the newspaper when I'm trying to read it, he looks into the mirror with me as I put on my make-up, and if he's comfortable on one side of the house and I walk to the other side, he's right there with me, sometimes beating me to the room I'm heading for. If he sleeps inside at night, he's right on top of my pillow, taking up more than half of it. I think he missed us most of all. (Except for Gracie, who misses us if we leave the house to check the mailbox.)

AngelBoy spends most of his time on the screen-porch and I guess he's getting used to that now. When he does slip into the house, he does so with race-horse speed. I will open the door to the screen porch to let Gracie out there, and AngelBoy will be hiding right by the door so he can race between the dog's legs... Gracie goes out, and AngelBoy runs in and sits in the middle of the kitchen. He gives me that blue-eyed innocent look of his, and I tell him "AngelBoy, go and use that litter box. Go use your box!" Within a second or so, he will slowly prance into the laundry room and use the litter box. Then he watches me clean it out, as if to say "There! Are you happy now?" His reward is that he gets to stay in the house for half an hour. But I still watch him... I just don't trust that blue-eyed cat anymore.

Mickey Kitty has been trying to climb into my husband's slippers since we got home. Those slippers are his favorite things in this house, I think, besides his little red mouse. We left the slippers by my husband's chair in the TV room when we were away, but we don't think he played with them while we were gone. When we got home, the slippers were perfectly set side by side, just as we left them. I don't think Mickey Kitty is that talented, to have put them back that way after he tried to shove his little head into the toes of the slippers. And I don't think the pet-sitter would have bothered to straighten them. Mickey Kitty is still rather small, and looks like a kitten. If he tried hard enough, he could get half of his body in one of those slippers. He plays his own little games with the slippers, but his favorite part seems to be stealing them from my husband's feet. So I guess if the feet aren't in the slippers, it's not as much fun for him.

Gracie got a bath today... my husband took her out in the driveway with the shampoo bottle and the hose. She went out there smelling like a dog, and came back in smelling like Dove soap. All the cats have closely examined and sniffed her since the bath. I guess they were all used to Gracie's puppy-in-the-grass aroma, since she loves to roll over in any patch of grass that's sun-soaked.

Speaking of soaked, the backyard got a good soaking last night. So much so that we had a little pond back by the fence. I've always thought we might as well dig out a pond in that spot since the rain gathers there every time when we have heavy thundershowers. We had lightning and thunder last night, and at one point during the storm, I was on the phone with one of my cousins and a huge loud clap of thunder broke--- I screamed into the phone, my cousin screamed back at me. Scared us both to death.

And today is hot and sunny and beautiful. Looks as if it had never rained... unless you look at the shallow pond near our back fence where the sparrows are bathing.

Joe's Barbeque

We went to the locally famous Joe's BBQ Restaurant last night, taking Miss C with us. She had never been to that restaurant in Alvin (home of baseball great Nolan Ryan). Around here, whenever you mention Alvin, Texas, you have to mention Nolan Ryan's name. It's a rule not to be broken.

Miss C asked me if she could wear jeans to the restaurant, and I told her that jeans would be more than perfect for Joe's BBQ. So there was Miss C, dressed from head to cowgirl-booted toe in her best western outfit when we picked her up last night. On the other hand, my husband was wearing shorts, and I had on white capris. I told Miss C that she was more appropriately attired for Joe's than we were.

It's a good forty-minute ride, from here to Alvin, but the scenery is country-like, once you get past League City (we took all the back roads) and we saw a fair share of horses, goats, sheep and cows along the way. Not to mention the interesting and eclectic yard decor of some of those houses in the smaller towns.

There used to be one house in the Santa Fe area, real close to Alvin, that had about a dozen old toilet bowls and claw-foot bathtubs set up in the front yard-- all of them filled with the most beautiful flowers and plants. We found the house, but it looked abandoned, with boarded-up windows and badly in need of fresh paint. Sadly, all the yard decorations were gone and the lawn was filled with weeds, not colorful flowers. Only that house in that area, would flower-filled toilet bowls and tubs make perfect sense. If you tried that where we lived, you'd have all the "subdivision police" on your front porch by morning.

My husband ordered ribs at Joe's last night, C ordered a hamburger, and I got the salad bar, as always. And, as always, I have a taste or two of the ribs. That's about the only time I eat red meat here, or anywhere else-- Joe's BBQ ribs, certainly the best in this part of the state. My salad plate was half-filled with salad, half-filled with corn fritters. That's my weakness at Joe's-- the corn fritters. No matter how many of them you eat (they're just a bite's worth) there always seems to be room for more, and the tenth one (or the 20th one) tastes as good as the first.

So there we were last night, C and I, filling up on corn fritters. C also tasted the waffle-fries from the salad bar, and she said they were the best she's had. My husband says that Joe's waffle-fries tastes like Nathan's fries. (High praise indeed, if you're familiar with NY's Nathan's.)

We had a nice dinner, enjoying C's reaction to all the western decor inside Joe's... the mounted moose head hanging by the salad bar, the longhorns hanging up all over the walls, the collection of hundreds of license plates from all over the US making a unique wallpaper all over the dining room, the wide-plank wood floors that make everyone's shoes sound like cowboy boots (the only exception being if you're wearing sneakers). Sneakers at Joe's is like not tasting the ribs-- it's not really against the rules, but somehow it just doesn't settle right. The rest of Joe's is filled with photographs of Nolan Ryan when he played for the Astros, photos of John Wayne and Gene Autry, and Texas Rodeo stars whose names I don't know, along with boots, spurs, barbed-wire art, and everything else that screams out We're in Texas and don't y'all forget it!!

When we got home, C looked at more than half of the Germany photos in my husband's computer. It was getting late, so we saved the other half for another time. C was enthralled with the pictures from Germany... the castles, the fields, the cute little houses. She wants to go to Europe now, and I'm thrilled. I had told her that if she ever got the opportunity to be an exchange student in any European country, she should jump at the chance, and now her interest is piqued.

My husband said it would be fun to take her with us the next time we go there. That would be such an adventure, and I hope we get to do just that.

"In the void of my youth..."

Those words are the phrase of the day.

We had lunch today with our friends K and B, and K's granddaughter E. We hadn't seen K and B for weeks now. We were away in Germany, and K was off in Montana, where she learned that bears are pronounced bars over there. Given a few moments, K can carry on an entire conversation in Montana-speak, as she calls it.

We all had a nice lunch, in a corporate-type of local restaurant. My husband and I usually avoid that restaurant, not because the food isn't good, but everyone in it seems to be on their lunch breaks from the nearby office complexes. Cell phones going off, sales people meeting clients, tables of staff members discussing office politics. And-- my biggest peeve -- two walls filled with floor to ceiling windows, none of which are tinted or covered, so the sun shines in off of the surrounding parking lot, blinding anyone sitting near the windows. And guess where we were sitting....

Oh well. As I always say to my husband... this wasn't our last meal, so we just enjoyed the lunch and the company, and tried to ignore everything else.

While my husband was showing K and B some of the pictures from Germany, I was talking to E, asking her what books she was reading this summer (she's an avid reader) and what classes she was planning to take during her visit with her grandmother. K always signs her up for special programs during her time in Houston-- this week, it will be watercolor art classes.

When E was talking to me about some of books that she has read, she was telling me about a science fiction series that she had been particularly fond of, "in the void of my youth." All I can say is, I must have very good self-control. I didn't smile, didn't laugh, just looked at E and let her tell me about those stories. She takes her reading very seriously, and that phrase was said very seriously. The funny part about that phrase is that E is a young teenager, just graduated from 8th grade and will be a high school freshman when school opens again.

"In the void of my youth" is a phrase for someone much, much, much older than E. But, in the context of her conversation with me, she said that without blinking an eye, without a thought that "her youth" is still with her and not in the distant past, as that phrase would suggest.

I think of that phrase now, and I'm not laughing at her, but I am smiling and wondering what book of her youth contained that phrase.

The germs on the plane go round and round...

Before the plane landed in Houston, I was sick with a sore throat and the sniffles. The non-stop flight from Germany was ten hours long, and I heard so much coughing and sneezing as soon as the doors closed in Frankfurt... I knew I'd get a bad cold, but I didn't think it would come on that quickly. Maybe I picked up a germ or two towards the end of our trip, and those tiny germs just burst into full bloom on that plane.

I've been sick with this cold since we got home, and that was nearly two weeks ago. It hasn't been fun, but it was surely not the worst thing that could have happened. We had safe flights both ways, one thousand miles of safe driving in the rental car, our GPS Greta helped us from getting lost in the Bavarian Alps, and we have wonderful memories of our beautiful trip.

During our trip, whenever our hotel or guesthouse room had a television, we would turn it on and flip around the channels. We saw German cooking shows, home-shopping channels, decorating shows, old Arnold Swartzenegger movies, morning cartoons, afternoon soap operas, American sit-coms (the worst, most inane ones), German game shows (with contestants dressed as knights), and (in the larger cities) we could listen to CNN-- in English.

The churches in all the cities and towns would ring their bells in the early morning, and then every hour thereafter. It was a wonderful nostalgic sound, and I've thought of those bells every day.

The linens in all the guesthouses were wonderfully soft, the pillows large and plump. Rather than a comforter or bedspread, there were always two fluffy blankets on our bed, one for each of us. The blankets were folded in a tri-fold pattern and would be set vertically along the bed, from the pillow to the footboard. Being that the sturdy form mattresses were so low to the floor, those thick triple-folded blankets would make the bed look higher than it actually was.

Since we got home, I've been using my teapots every day. Instead of having just one cup of tea, I use a teapot and indulge in two cups of chamomille tea for breakfast, and sometimes I do the same for lunch and dinner as well. Every cup of tea in Germany was an event, and I'm trying to recreate the same feeling here.

I've tried to make some of the potatos that we had during our trip. I would call the small quartered potato wedges roasted, the Germans called them baked. Whatever you call them, their potatoes were better than mine. But I will keep trying.

Every morning when I have my tea and bread and fruit, I remember all the wonderful breads we had during our trip. We have just one bakery in this area (I don't count the bakeries in supermarkets) and I guess if I want really good bread, I will have to go there and buy some. Either that, or start baking my own. I have a bread machine, and that makes very good bread, but I know it just won't be the same as those cute little rolls that we had at the German guesthouses.

I imagine that we will be talking about this trip for a long time to come. And that's fine. It was a good one, the best one, and worth everything we can say about it, and more.

I miss the Black Forest and the vineyards, I miss the Mosel and the Rhine, I miss the narrow winding streets filled with the tiny shops and outdoor cafes. I miss all those castles, both the ones we toured and the ones that sat abandoned in the middle of the mountains. And most of all, I miss the thousands upon thousands of fields filled with those bright yellow butterblooms. But, as Monika told us... "If you come back next year, or in five years or twenty years, what you see now will still be here."

May 26 - Home

Breakfast that morning was a beautiful buffet at the hotel. We were tired from not sleeping well-- much too hot in the room, without the air-conditioning, but the breakfast was lovely. The shuttle came to the hotel right on time and we had a stress-free ride to the airport knowing that we didn't have to worry about turning in the rental car. We wondered if Greta would miss us.

While we waited at the gate for our flight, I looked through my stack of postcards, nearly eight inches thick. We saw so many beautiful castles and palaces, churches and cathedrals. And the villages and the towns... all those white homes and red-tiled roofs, the mountains, the vineyards, the museums, the quaint villages. Church bells ringing in the morning, fresh eggs from the chickens in the yards of the guesthouses, women washing their steps with wet brooms. All those fields of tiny yellow butterblooms dancing in the breeze. Greta telling us "You have arrived!"

My husband put weeks and weeks of research into this trip, planning out every day, every city and town, every place we visited. During that process, I thought he was going over-the-top, above and beyond in his researcher mode. It didn't take long for me to realize that had he not done that, we would have missed so many beautiful places along the way. With the itinerary my husband planned out, we saw as much as we could in the days that we had, and we rarely back-tracked as we drove with Greta telling us where to go. A hundred times, we blessed that GPS in the rental car.

Our trip to Germany was like a dream. Wherever we looked, there was beauty and history. Even in the larger cities that were too busy for us, we were still surrounded by interesting architecture that made us look up.

Before we went to Germany, we had decided not to visit the concentration camps. While we were there, as I looked at the beauty surrounding us, it was so hard to fathom how such horrible, atrocious acts could have been committed not far from where we were. I have read many books on the Holocaust over the years, all of which broke my heart and numbed my spirit. We chose not to see those places.

We didn't spend all of our Euros, and I don't want to bring them to the bank to cash them back into dollars. I told my husband that we'll just keep them here, tucked away, and when he's ready to do more research again for another trip over the Atlantic, then the Euros will be waiting for us.

When we got home, Gracie jumped all over my husband for about twenty minutes, then she gave me two minutes of her happiness. ShadowBaby followed me all over the house for days and days, and Mickey Kitty slept on my pillow at night. And AngelBoy... he gave me his little blue-eyed kitty look which seemed to say "What on earth could you have seen over there more beautiful than me?"

May 25 - Evening in Frankfurt

We arrive in Frankfurt in the early evening. My husband decides to bring back the rental car tonight, rather than tomorrow morning before our flight. We will miss Greta and her directions, and her proud "You have arrived!" as we got to all of our destinations. We filled the car up with gas for the last time, return the car at the airport, and take their shuttle to our hotel. We will take the shuttle back to the airport in the morning-- retracing our steps, but it would be less hectic for us before our flight.

Our hotel that night was the NH Frankfurt (there's that NH again). This hotel is newer than the other NH we had stayed in, but this air conditioning isn't working and the evening is hot. My husband complains (at midnight when we can't sleep) and we get a discount on the room. This is our second time in Frankfurt but we will not get to see the city. The first time was on our arrival in Germany, when we were at the Frankfurt airport to change planes for Leipzig. That seems like so long ago now. Frankfurt is a big city, Munich-sized, so we're not disappointed that we have no time to walk around here. Besides, after all the castles today, then walking around Rudesheim, then touring the cloisters and being overwhelmed with the opera rehearsal, our senses are overloaded.

May 25 - Rudesheim & Rheingau

That Sunday was a glorious day, sunny and warm. We had breakfast at Das Boot-- fruits and breads, homemade jam, cheese and sliced meats. Delicious tea for me, too-strong coffee for my husband. (He will not miss the coffee in Germany, and can't wait to taste "real" coffee again.)

We drive along the Rhine once again, still going towards Frankfurt, and we see castle after castle tucked up into the mountains. We stopped at one called the Schonburg, which is a hotel. An actual castle that they have renovated into hotel rooms with private baths. We looked around the grounds, and the rooms, and vow to stay at this castle when we come back to Germany. Before this trip was half over, we both knew we wanted to come back again.

At one point during our drive, we have to take a ferry across the Rhine. The river is wide at this point, and there's a small castle on a tiny island near the other side of the river. My husband is excited about the ferry ride and he stands outside the car and takes pictures. I stay inside the car and keep my eye on the little castle, hoping to forget that the car is on a boat and we're in the middle of the Rhine. GPS Greta is silent for the ferry ride, happy that we're following her directions.

We stopped for lunch in the prettiest of towns... Rudesheim. We love it here. So many beautiful cafes and shops, winding streets that have no cars, everyone walking and smiling and shopping and just happy to be in that sweet village. We had lunch there in an outdoor cafe, then went to the Music Box Museum (Siegfried's Mechanisches Musikkabinett) for a tour. The museum has the largest collection of music boxes in Germany. Every sort of music box and calliope you can imagine... big and small, simple and ornate, wood, gold, silver... we were awestruck by this magnificent collection. And when they let the music play... the sounds and the songs just took our breath away. We truly didn't want to leave that magical building. I bought postcards of the town, the museum.... and my stack of postcards is now over seven inches thick. This is a town that needs a longer visit, at least another full day, but we have to be on our way to Frankfurt. Next time we come to Germany, we have to spend more time in Rudesheim.

Our last stop was the Kloster Eberback, in Rheingau. This is a centuries-old monastery which still makes and sells wines. The grounds are beautiful, the monastery is larger than we expected. We tour the rooms and the cloisters, and we hear singing. We continue walking and follow the music and the singing, which gets louder as we get closer. In the largest part of the cloisters, there is a forty-piece orchestra set up, and singers are on the stage practicing their operatic performances for the "Opera Classica Europa" which will be presented that night. Tickets are sold out for the evening performance, but anyone on the grounds of the cloisters that day can watch and listen to the rehearsals. We quietly take seats and stay there for almost an hour. The music is so beautiful that it brings tears to our eyes. Some of the performers were from Spain, Italy, NY's Metropolitan Opera, Germany, and South America. My husband and I look at one another and we can hardly believe that we have stumbled upon this rehearsal.

Between the Music Box Museum and the cloisters, our last full day in Germany is better than we could have imagined.

May 24 - Cochem, Koblenz & St. Goar

We woke up that morning to the sound of a wet broom going back and forth on the steps of the little guesthouse. I would know that sound anywhere... my grandmothers used to wash their front and back steps with a wet broom every morning. It made me smile, to think that the elderly German woman who owned this guesthouse in Valwig was washing the steps as the sun was coming up.


Our breakfast that morning, in the dining room of the guesthouse, was bread and cheese, with homemade jam and smoked bacon. Delicious tea for me, strong, undrinkable coffee for my husband. I gave my serving of bacon to my husband but he couldn't eat either his or my serving--- just like the coffee, the smoked bacon was very strong. I hoped we wouldn't hurt the woman's feelings, when she saw the barely touched meat slices on our plates. As we ate breakfast, we were kept company by all the trophies around every wall of the dining room. The woman's father was a hunter, and he mounted every deer and goat that he killed, I think, because the dining room was just filled with all the heads and horns. I tried not to look up too much as I ate.


We said goodbye to the owner, thanked her for her hospitality, and we crossed the little bridge to get to Cochem, on the opposite side of the Mosel River. Beautiful little village, with lots of shops and outdoor cafes (always, always, lots of cafes in the small towns). We walked around the town for just a little while, then drove up the mountain to the Eltz Castle. The Burg Eltz has been owned by the same family for 33 generations. As we toured the interior of the castle, we saw a photo of the present owner and his family. We had lunch that day at the cafe tucked into the side of the Burg Eltz... wonderful views of the mountains from that high up. As we were leaving the Burg Eltz, two little boys and their parents were on their way into the castle. Both of the young boys were wearing silver plastic knight-masks, and holding plastic swords. They made us smile, and we wondered how many castles these miniature knights had seen.


Driving on now towards the Rhine and the city of Koblenz, which wasn't as big as Munich, but larger than Leipzig, and much bigger than all the small towns we've seen. We parked the car in Koblenz and walked along the Rhine, to the spot where the Rhine meets the Mosel. There is a huge military statue there at the junction of the two rivers, and everyone congregates there to take pictures, meet friends, and enjoy the view of the rivers. We found a cute little outdoor cafe and had tea and apple cake, and we agreed that Koblenz was too busy for us, and we decided to drive on. Before we got in the car, we noticed a church there near the river, and we walked in to have a look. Once again, an outstanding, breath-taking cathedral-like church.


We drove along the Rhine, with our GPS Greta giving us directions, reminding us when we were over the speed limit, telling us to "please return to the planned route" if we stopped or made a turn to look at something interesting along the way. We drove towards Frankfurt, looking for an interesting hotel or guesthouse along the way. In a little town called Saint Goar, we found "Das Boot," German for "The Boat" -- a very small family-owned hotel that was built to look like a ship. It was right on the Rhine, completely nautical inside, outside, wherever you looked. We loved it, and we got a room there for the night. Our room looked like a ship's cabin, of course.


Dinner in "Das Boot" was delicious.... salmon for me, once again... our waiter spoke some English, which was helpful. The dining room was nautical from the floors to the ceiling, and every nook and cranny inbetween. A lot of thought went into the planning of this hotel-- all designed by its owner. We watched the river as we ate... ships and barges going back and forth constantly. We decided that we had to splurge on dessert in Das Boot-- their specialty was a large cream puff shaped like a swan, filled with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream, and topped with red cherries. Inserted into the body of the swan was a white paper head and neck of a swan, with the logo of the restaurant on it. So pretty on the plate... we asked for two spoons and two forks and we shared that delicious cream puff. After dinner, we walked along the river for about an hour.

There was a very small castle on the other side of the Rhine... we can see it from here. It's called The Mouse Castle because it's so small. It's so small, compared to all the other castles that we have seen (and there are dozens and dozens to be seen as you drive along the Rhine)... the Mouse Castle looks like a child's playhouse, rather than a "real" castle.

We have a bittersweet stay at Das Boot.... we know we are getting closer to Frankfurt, where we will be giving back the rental car and Greta, and where we will catch a plane leaving the Frankfurt airport and heading towards home. This has been an outstanding, amazing, overwhelming trip, and we are both sad that it's coming to an end.

May 23 - Trier

We spent last night in a hotel called the NH Trier. We were too tired when we checked in to ask what the "NH" stood for. (New Hotel? This isn't a small German guesthouse; it's a larger hotel that looks like it's been built in the last twenty years or so.)

The NH Trier is next to the Mosel River. It's also next to a main highway, and the traffic went on and on all night long. We slept fine, but I did wake up from time to time, and I could see the headlights from the cars decorating the walls of our room. As usual, we're up early, had breakfast in the hotel, and off we went to explore Trier, one of the oldest towns in Germany.

Our first stop is the Porta Nigra, a ninety-foot-high stone wall and gate that was built around the town during the Roman Empire. Twenty centuries later, my husband and I are walking through the gate, climbing the stairs into the towers of the walls, and looking out into the town. We can see for miles. We learn that the town of Trier was founded by the Roman Emperor Augustus in 15 B.C. Once again, we think we should be pinching ourselves, to be looking at such history.

The central marketplace in Trier, surrounded by the Porta Nigra, is just beautiful. Some of the most intricate, most wonderful buildings and shops and cafes are here in the center of town. Trier is a cobblestone heaven of Roman history and present-day German hospitality. We go to the Trier Dom, the cathedral. A castle-like church of magnificient proportions. Once again, a beautiful organ (this one is silent), and an ornate ceiling (this one is intricately engraved and carved, stark white on gray stone). In this cathedral, in a heavy clear glass casket, there is a brown robe which is said to be the robe of Christ. The robe is dark brown, a plain fabric which looks to be thick material, rather than light cotton. Is it really the robe of Christ? I have no idea, but I wouldn't dare to voice that opinion in this church which has designated a large gilded altar to that robe.

We have done so much driving, seen so many castles and palaces, churches and museums, that our senses are overwhelmed and bogged down with details. My husband says that this vacation is a cross between The Amazing Race (listening to Greta, our GPS guide in the car) and House Hunters (walking around castles and palaces, deciding which one is our favorite). As we drive, we see a brown UPS truck... same logo as the UPS trucks here in the states, but the truck there was smaller, to accommodate the narrow winding German streets. Seeing the UPS truck makes us think of home.

Interesting thing about the town of Trier: within that ancient wall surrounding the inner city and the marketplace, the town is old and quaint, perfectly clean, picture-postcard perfect. On the other side of that 90-foot-high wall, Trier looks old and depressed, sad instead of quaint, dingy instead of sparkling, with too-close-together apartments and houses. I told my husband that the best part of Trier is inside the Roman gates.

We drive along the Mosel River, and we see vineyards for miles and miles, for as far as our eyes can see. It is early in the growing season, and the plants are filling with these teeny tiny green infant grapes. The grapes are planted close to the road, and then go straight up the mountain in a vertical path. How do they plant the grapes on such a steep mountain? How do they pick the grapes without falling down into the roadways? At the tops of most of the vineyards, we see large crosses made of wood, and even very tiny chapels that could hold a dozen or less people. Before coming to Germany, I had no idea that the Germans were so devoutly religious.

We continue driving along the Mosel River. We are getting hungry for lunch, so we keep watching along the drive, looking for interesting restaurants. And what do we find? A Greek restaurant, in a tiny town called Bernkastel. The name of the restaurant is Poseidon. The owners speak Greek and German, hardly any English. But we manage to order spanikopita for me, gyros for my husband. The food is delicious, the spinach pie better than most that we've had, the gyro meat tender and moist. The Greek salad has a scattering of sweet cabbage hiding in the lettuce leaves. Throughout the meal, we cannot believe that we have found a Greek restaurant in the middle of Germany.

We find a small guesthouse for the night, after more driving along the Mosel and stopping to see what's left of some mountaintop castles. From the mountain tops, we can see most of the town, and much of the Mosel. From this bird's eye view, the towns are bigger than we thought. The Einig-Zenzen Guesthouse is run by an older woman, who has inherited this small hotel from her parents. The rooms are tidy and neat, with pristine linens and large pillows. Once again, the bathroom is tiny, but there's an outlet for my hair dryer, so it's perfect. This guesthouse overlooks the Mosel on one side, and a mountainside filled with vineyards on the other. We cannot believe how many acres of grapes we have seen since leaving Trier, and we wish that we could appreciate the taste of German wines.

After checking into our room at the guesthouse, we walk up and down the main street of this town called Valwig. Eventually, after a day of walking up and down pathways to the castles, and walking up and down the Mosel, we're ready for dinner and find a restaurant close to the guesthouse. Once again, we point to the menu. In the smaller towns, finding someone who speaks English is very rare. I point to a vegetable dinner on the menu, my husband orders a plate of German noodles in sauce. And then we walk again, finding streets behind the restaurant, behind the guesthouse, which give us a vertical view of the mountainsides filled with grapes.

We sit by the Mosel for a while, watching the ducks floating along with the current. We decide to walk again-- it doesn't get dark till nearly ten o'clock and there's a lot of daylight left. As we walk along the river bank, we see a small plastic picnic table set up with two chairs. We get closer and we see two children enjoying an evening picnic. There is a tablecloth on the plastic table, along with cloth napkins, china plates and cups, spoons, forks, a small teapot. All the accessories are porcelain, all of the food is imagined. The children are so absorbed in their picnic that they don't even notice us as we pass by. A picnic for children, complete with an embroidered tablecloth. Their elaborate picnic makes me think of my grandmother's house, where nothing was simple, and everything was special.

My husband and I love this little town of Valwig. We are pinching ourselves once again, and we know we're lucky to be here. My notebook is filling up with scribbled entries of each day; my stack of postcards grows so thick and so heavy that I take them out of my suitcase and leave them in a travel bag in the car. I have two piles of postcards... one stack for me to keep, one stack to mail to family and friends when we get home.

May 22 - The Black Forest

We drive along through the Black Forest, riding through such beautiful little towns. Today is another religious holiday, but we cannot find out which holiday it is. I'm guessing that it's a saint's day. We are in a tiny town called Schwarzwald, and there is a beautiful church, with its bells ringing. Then another town called Saint Margen, and yet another glorious church. Because of the religious holiday, all the shops in both towns are closed, but everyone living in the towns is either marching in the parade headed towards the church, or they are gathered on the sidewalks to watch the procession.

In each town, there are small children dressed in white, teenagers dressed in traditional German costumes, and elderly ladies in floral hats and black dresses. In front of every house in the towns, there are branches of evergreens laid out on the walkways, and vases of fresh flowers are on every windowsill and doorstep. In the center of the towns, and also in front of the churches, there is a tapestry of flower petals set down in the middle of the road-- an intricate room-sized design completely made from colorful petals of all sizes, shapes and colors. It is beautiful, more so because by the end of the day, the breeze will have laughed at its attempt at permanence. I look at the design for the longest time, because I know I will not find this on a postcard.

Our next stop is Triberg, and "The House of 1000 Clocks." This is a tourist-y shop, which is not closed because of the religious holiday. This large store is filled with cuckoo clocks of all sizes, from tiny ones that you can pin on a lapel, to huge ones that look as if half a tree's worth of wood was used to complete it. We look at all of them, and my husband watches a video of a carver making an ornate clock. My husband is not alone-- every other man in the store is also watching this video. The women in the shop are browsing and shopping. I find my favorite cuckoo clock, my husband finds his. Both are expensive, more than we want to spend. And do we really want a cuckoo clock? My husband takes photos of the clocks that we like, and I buy postcards. My stack of souvenir postcard is now nearly six inches thick.

Still in Triberg, we stop to see the highest waterfall in Germany. We pay a couple of Euros each to walk down a trail which brings us to one of the landings where we can see part of the waterfall. The walk is long and the trail is steep, and slick from the sprinkling of water. My husband wants to walk all the way down, to get the best picture, but I opt to sit in the wooden gazebo on the second landing and enjoy the view from there. After he gets the picture, we both walk all the way back up the trail towards the car. We've seen other waterfalls, in Maine, Australia, Hawaii, to name a few. This one was okay, but not worth the Euros it cost to see it, and not worth the walk to get there: 20 minutes walking down to it, 50 minutes walking back up.

We find a small cafe nestled in the mountains. The parking lot is filled with motorcycles and expensive cars. The motorcyclists here take their driving seriously-- they are all covered from head to toe: helmets, black leather jackets and pants, black boots, elbow-pads and knee-pads. We have seen countless groups of motorcycle riders in every town and city that we've visited. We stop at this cafe and have hot potato soup, served with delicious bread. Even in this tiny cafe in the middle of the Black Forest, there is homemade soup and hand-baked bread.

With all the driving around this country, we have not seen one dead animal in the road. Not a squirrel, not a deer, not a bird. We have seen very few squirrels, even in the parks. The few we have seen have been reddish in color, with furry pointed ears. The birds sing us awake every morning, and it seems that there should be hundreds of them, but we have only seen a few from time to time, and they look like ordinary sparrows to us. We never did see the bird that makes the famous "cuckoo" sounds.

Our next stop that day was a town called Furtwangen. My postcard of this town shows exactly how it looked... white houses with red roofs, set down at the base of the Black Forest. We stopped here for one thing-- their clock museum. Thousands of vintage and new clocks of every size, shape and design you can think of. They also had vintage music boxes, and we were lucky enough to catch a demonstration of their wonderful calliope-styled boxes. My husband's dad used to collect clocks. He would have loved this museum. Before we leave, I buy two postcards which show two of the calliope music boxes. Each of them is big enough to sit on a carousel and provide the music for the ride.

Before we leave this area, we find The World's Largest Cuckoo Clock. It is a house-sized clock, set off the road towards the main highway. The house/clock is very ornate, with figures in the windows, piles of wood on the porch, a dog sitting by the door. It is 5:50 in the evening when we find this huge clock. Would it chime at six? Would the figures move around in the doors and windows? Too good to miss, if it does, so we decide to wait. We were rewarded at six o'clock... chimes from the clock, cuckoos popping in and out of the tiny windows, the carved figures moving and dancing through the doors and around the porch, the dog opening his mouth in a silent bark, even a chimney-sweep popping up in the chimney and tipping his hat. Wonderful! My husband took pictures of all the action, but because of the church holiday, the little stores near The World's Largest Cuckoo Clock were closed, so I couldn't buy a postcard.

We then got onto the main highway, headed towards Trier, one of the oldest towns in Germany. We had dinner that night at a restaurant on the autobahn. It was called "Axxe," and seemed to be Germany's equivalent to our Howard Johnson's restaurants. This day was our longest driving day. We didn't get into Trier until ten o'clock that night... enough time to find our hotel and fall into bed. My husband was determined to start the morning in Trier, rather than stay the night somewhere else and then have to drive to where we wanted to be after breakfast.

May 21 - Neuschwanstein & Hohenschwangau

Another cloudy day, and the two castles are peeking out of the white mist surrounding the mountains again. We were hoping for a bright and sunny day, but this is our last day here, so after another wonderful breakfast, and then saying goodbye to Monika and her guesthouse, we're in the car and driving on the road leading to Ludwig's castle and his parents' castle.

Neuschwanstein was first that morning, with its Disneyesque turrets. (Or maybe we should refer to Disney's castles as being Ludwigesque, being that Ludwig built his first.) Neuschwanstein rises up into the sky... it is the largest castle that we've seen, even though many of its rooms remain unfinished.

The rooms that are completely decorated are outstandingly ornate, gilded with gold, crowned with crystals, sprinkled liberally with painted ceilings, marble walls, plush fabrics and priceless porcelains. This castle has an elaborate throne room, with a wide staircase leading up to the platform where the throne would have been, but the throne itself was never built because of Ludwig's sudden death. There is an extremely ornate and beautiful mosaic floor in the throne room, consisting of nearly two million tiny mosaic squares which took years to complete. The rooms in Neuschwanstein are darker than those in Linderhof, being that this larger castle has more carved wood ceilings, wood floors, and large pieces of carved wood furnishings. Linderhof was a bright jewel, Neuschwanstein is beautiful, just not as bright, not as alive.

Before leaving Neuschwanstein, we have a cup a hot chocolate in the pretty cafe in the castle. I buy my postcards, and a little china tea bag holder. My souvenirs from this trip are few and far between.... I've been concentrating on collecting the postcards, and the library of memories in my mind are more than enough to take home with me.

From there, we drove to Hohenschwangau, the castle of Ludwig's parents, the home where he grew up. Depending on which biographies you read, Ludwig has either grown older or grown up over the years. This castle is definitely royal, regal, stately, important. Its rooms are dark, filled with paintings, heavy wooden furniture, and huge silver and gold decorative items that were given to the royal family over the years. In Ludwig's room, there is a telescope standing at one of the windows, still pointing to the other side of the mountain where Neuschwanstein can be seen through the lens. It was at this spot in his room that Ludwig watched every bit of the building of his most famous castle.

After leaving Schwangau, we drive to Meersburg, to see a castle there which was built in 1548. Unlike Ludwig's creations, this castle is rather primitive in design, with bare wood floors, suits of armor standing ready, walls filled with the weapons of knights, simple five-candle chandeliers, and a bottomless pit of a well that is covered with wire mesh but is still frightening to the senses when you peer down into it. How many prisoners met their death down at the bottom of that? (I've read those Ken Follett books about the Middle Ages... it all comes to life in this castle.)

We then drove to a town called Titisee, in the Black Forest. We have a room for the night, at the Parkhotel Waldeck. The room is German and cute, the bathroom is tiny and cramped-- if I hold out my arms, I can reach from end to end. But as long as there's an outlet to plug in my European hair dryer, I'm happy.

Dinner that night was in the Waldeck's dining room.... beautiful wood-filled room, large tables, heavy chairs, a warm patterned rug. After this damp and cloudy day, the dining room warms us up right away. Once again, I point to the menu and find the salmon. When the waitress brings our dinner, the potato on my plate is covered in a yard of tin-foil, which is shaped into a silver swan. Of course, I inspect every inch of that foil swan before I touch it, imprinting the design in my mind so I can try to duplicate it when we get home.

The following morning, before we leave, there is a breakfast buffet which is included with our room. This is one of the most elaborate breakfasts we've seen... plates of local fruit, cheese and sliced meats, eggs, hot and cold cereals, jams, yogurts, vegetable dishes with corn, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers. And the breads and rolls and biscuits--- too many to taste, all too beautiful, and we know that they're all delicious, so we choose just one or two.

The food, wherever we have gone, has been outstanding. From the smallest of cafes to the largest of the restaurants, everything has been proudly served and beautifully presented. A simple cup of tea or a glass of ginger ale becomes an event, not just a moment. Within the first week of our time in Germany, I had vowed to use my teapots when we get home... to make every cup of tea an event, simply by brewing the tea in the teapot instead of the cup. (We have been home now for over a week, and I have kept that promise to myself. I have also lingered over breakfast, enjoying every sip of tea and every bite of fruit and bread.)

May 20 - Linderhof Castle

We woke up to a cloudy day. Looking at the mountains, we can see the two castles (Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau) shrouded in a white mist. Beautiful and magical, to see those castles peeking out of the mountains.

Breakfast at Monika's guesthouse.... delicious homebaked breads (from a huge covered oven behind the restaurant), homemade jams, delicious cheese and sliced smoked meats. For breakfast every day since we've been in Germany, I've had a sampling of the bread, a slice of cheese, and whatever fruit and jams are offered. Chamomile tea is always there, and it's all been delicious, but Gary still hasn't had a full cup of coffee. No matter where we are, it's all too strong.

We've been waking up with the dawn... around five o'clock on most mornings. I don't know if the early sunrises gets us out of bed, or the anticipation of everything there is to see here. (Or the home-baked breads......)

We decided to drive to the smaller of the castles today--- Linderhof, which was the favorite of Ludwig II. When we get to Linderhof, I can see why. This castle is like a jewel box, both from the outside and the inside. Plus, due to Ludwig's fascination with the operas of Richard Wagner, there is an underground grotto, complete with hidden caves, a stage for the performance of the operas, and an elaborate boat in which Ludwig could glide through the underground spring of the grotto. (Ludwig was as prolific as Walt Disney, with his fantasy-inspired creations.)

The statues in the water fountains outside Linderhof are gold. Gold-leaf? Solid gold? I have no idea, but the brightness of those fountains was like a sunburst on that cloudy morning. In the reflecting pool in front of the castle, there is a burst of water, a la Old Faithful, rising up around the largest gold statue. It is just the beginning of the castle tour.

Inside Linderhof, once again, we don't know where to look first. Each room is magnificent in its beauty. Paintings, lush furnishings, embellishments, statues, fabrics, tapestries, carpeting, inlaid wood floors, marble columns, candle-studded chandeliers. Rich colors, bright golds, delicate porcelains... and once again, the "hidden" dining room table that can be lowered to the bottom-floor kitchen so the table and the food can be set without disturbing Ludwig. I found myself appreciating all the over-the-topness of this small castle, and feeling sorry for the sadness of the King's life. No matter his wealth, Ludwig II led a solitary life. (In my opinion.)

Every castle has a gift shop, and it was here that I found the little silver charm for my bracelet, which is growing and bursting with tiny charms from every place we have visited over the years. I chose a tiny silver crown for my bracelet, to commemorate our trip to Germany. I thought a crown was just the perfect thing, since it would remind me of all the castles, palaces, and churches that we had seen. (I had seen other silver charms during this vacation, but I didn't want a tiny pretzel or a stein of beer dangling from my bracelet.)

We left Linderhof reluctantly. So far, this has been my favorite of the castles, and at the end of our trip, after we had seen Ludwig's other and larger castles, Linderhof was still the best, my favorite. It was the smallest of his castles, but Linderhof was also the only one that was complete, from top to bottom. Ludwig II ran out of money, and out of life, before the interiors of the others were finished. During the castle tours, we learned that Ludwig's family had amassed a huge fortune which spanned many generations (over 800 years). Ludwig II, with his opera-esque fantasies and his French-inspired over-the-top tastes in everything that was embellished and gilded, managed to spend the 800-year-old fortune is about twenty years.

In the car again, driving around the mountains..... snow still tops the Bavarian Alps, but the weather is spring-like, complete with a warm drizzle of rain. We went to the Kloster Ettal, a monastery in a small town called Ettal. Once again, a small town gifts us with a huge cathedral, with the most glorious of painted ceilings. The dome of this church is breathtaking, both inside and outside. I believe this church has the most gold, the most gilding, the most handpainting, of any that we have seen so far.

After that, we drove to Oberammergau. This town is famous for their re-enactment of The Passion Play, which is done every ten years. (This was not the year.) There are hundreds of wood-carvers in this town, and the main market streets of the town are filled with their shops. We looked at hundreds of carved wood items, and even met one of the carvers, who had a life-sized carved wood horse in his shop. There was just too much to look at, and after the lushness of Linderhof, we didn't even buy one piece of carved wood. One wood-carver's shop had hundreds, if not thousands of Nativity sets--- some of the smallest, and the largest, that I've ever seen. We also noticed that many of the houses and shops in Oberammergua had hand-painted designs on the outside of the buildings. The houses looked like plain ordinary stucco to me, but with the elaborate painted designs, every home looked like a doll house. Very quaint, very cute.

Before leaving this town, I bought more post cards, which I had been buying all along, from every stop along our trip. My pile of post cards was continually growing, and I guessed it to be about four inches high by this time. At the end of our vacation, my collection of post cards would be nearly nine inches thick. I also bought earrings in Oberammergau... a fair price for sterling silver heart earrings, each with a dangling pearl. I thought they would be the perfect reminder of our 13th anniversary trip to Germany. Plus we were driving along the famous Romantic Road, which offers the most castles of anywhere in the country.

On the way back to the guesthouse that evening, we drove to a small church (Saint Coloman) on the outskirts of Schwangau. Once again, a tiny church in the middle of a field of wildflowers. And, once again, the seemingly plain white church with a red roof was holding a magnificent surprise inside-- elaborate leaded windows, an ornate embellished ceiling, a glorious gilded altar, beautiful statues. Behind the church, the Bavarian Alps, and Ludwig's famous Neuschwanstein Castle peeking out of the mountainside. My husband said we needed to pinch ourselves to see if we were really here and seeing all of this.

Dinner at Monika's guesthouse-- again delicious. I ordered the fish again, feeling the hot sizzle as it cooked on the hot stone on my table. My husband ordered one of Monika's specialities-- wienersnitzel (and I hope I'm spelling that correctly). The veal used for this dish is locally grown, and it was the most tender veal, breaded in what must have been Monika's own homemade breadcrumbs. She also made a side-dish of cooked onions with bits of bacon, which went with the veal. During our trip, after leaving this guesthouse, my husband ordered other veal dishes, none of which compared to Monika's meal.

This was our second and last night at Monika's..... we would miss her hospitality, her cooking, and the view of the two castles on the mountains behind her guesthouse.

May 19 - Schwangau

We have checked into a lovely guesthouse called The Landhotel Guglhupf. This small family-owned hotel is within sight of Ludwig II's most famous castle, Neuschwanstein, and his parents' castle, Hohenschwangau. The two castles sit on the mountains, across from one another-- within sight, but not within easy walking distance.

This guesthouse is wonderfully comfortable, and Monika (the owner) is a third-place award-winning chef of Bavaria. Homemade breads, delicious desserts, hot-stone dinners (fresh fish and meats cooked on a flat hot stone right at your table). She is the most gracious hostess we've met in this beautiful country. Which isn't meant to discredit any of the others, but Monika just had something extra, something special.

On the first evening at the guesthouse, we walked all over Schwangau, a small town at the base of those beautiful mountains. Houses large and small, each with gardens, all tidy and neat and charming, any one of which we would have bought and happily settled into. This was, once again, a lovely little town. Monika assured us that if we came back in five years, ten years, or fifty years, the town would look the same. If there are, for example, two hundred homes in any given town like Schwangau, then there will forever be two hundred homes. No more, no less. No more to be built, no apartments, no private homes, no large stores. Just those homes, guesthouses, and the tiny shops that are already there. The green fields filled with wildflowers, crops and livestock--- they will stay just the same, for always. That just made us smile.

Our first dinner that night at Monika's was cooked on the flat hot stones that she heats up in the oven until the stones reach a temperature of 400 degrees. When she brought our stones (resting on top of heavy wooden boards) to our table, my stone held a sizzling piece of local fish, and my husband's stone held a thick slice of locally grown pork. Before the main course, we had helped ourselves to fresh vegetables beautifully arranged on a buffet table, and with our dinner, Monika made the most delicious roasted potatoes, which she called baked potatoes.

That first night in Schwangau was damp and drizzling, and those hot stones sizzling at our table surrounded us with a private warmth that made us feel as if we were eating in the sun. The fish was delicious and tender, as was my husband's dinner of pork (a sweet maple-ham-flavored kind of pork steak). The little chunks of potatoes were out of this world, and the little pot of chamomile tea was just the icing on the cake.

And, with Monika being an award-winning chef, we couldn't leave the dining room without dessert--- she had baked an apple streudel, which was filled with the sweetest apples and surrounded by the flakiest of pastries. We ate every bite, then went out into the town and walked around for almost an hour.

We found a path that wove around the houses at the bottom of the mountains, and for as long as we walked, we could see the two castles nestled up into the trees. Endless fields there around the walking path, one field holding half a dozen huge cows. Each of the cows wore a brass bell around its neck which sang like a windchime as the cows walked around the pasture. When the cows saw us approaching, they came right over to the fence by the path. They didn't meander over in a slow-cow sort of way.... they rumbled up quickly, their bells beating out a symphony which echoed all over the mountains, or so it seemed to me.

My husband picked some grass and tried feeding it to the cows, who were clearly not going to be hand-fed by a stranger. They made grumbling noises, their bells not singing, but striking against their necks. I started to back up, my husband tried getting still closer to the cows. I looked behind me--- could I outrun a cow? And where would I run? Behind us was just a walking path surrounded by flower-filled fields. Could those cows jump the fence if they had a mind to? My husband kept telling me to relax...... I kept telling him to get away from the fence, away from the cows.

Finally, finally, my husband said goodbye to the cows and started walking towards me... and I, by that time, had walked farther away from the cows and their private pasture. My husband said I worry too much. I told him that we had a wonderful, delicious dinner, and I just didn't want that memorable dinner to have been our last. Besides, we still had lots of castles to see.

Plain old Wednesday.

My cold/flu/whatever is still lingering, but I feel better. Yesterday was a busy day, considering that I haven't been out of the house much since we got back from Germany. I wanted to keep all my germs to myself, and I didn't feel well enough to go out until yesterday.

I had a dental appointment, which I was able to keep. Miraculously, I didn't cough or sneeze while the hygienist was cleaning my teeth. I told her to work fast, just in case, and I was in and out of there in record time. The dentist has moved to a newer, larger office. Their old location was small and cozy, now it's big and corporate. They're in a four-story building made of black glass. When you're on the inside of all those black windows, you can see out but no one can see in. Everyone in town calls it "the onyx building," because that's what it looks like-- a giant block of black onyx, dropped in the center of a lush green lawn.

I also kept an appointment I had made to get my hair trimmed. I was overdue for this trim, the ends getting a little scraggly. As always, N asked me if she could cut my hair shorter. Her scissors are aching to give me a shorter, more trendy style. Which is why I never let her wash my hair and cut it wet.... she cuts it dry, just snipping off tiny bits here and there, keeping my style the way I want it, which is easy for me to keep up, easy for her to maintain. When N is finished cutting my hair, she always does the same thing--- points to the floor around the chair and tells me that I hardly let her cut anything at all. Which is just the way I like it. N may not be entirely happy, but I am.

After the cut (or non-cut, depending on whom you ask), I went into the antique shop to see our friend J. Well, J wasn't there... he has been in and out of the hospital since we went to Germany-- with heart problems, for goodness sake. He went in for routine tests and his blood pressure plumeted to next to nothing, and they rushed him to a heart specialist. The general prognosis: he needs a pacemaker. Not only a pacemaker, but one that will jump-start his heart if he flat-lines again, which he did three times during his hospital stay. J will know by the end of this week when the procedure will be done, and for right now he's home, but he isn't allowed to do much of anything. Dealers and friends are taking care of the shop, and struggling with computer records and J's unique bookkeeping style.

This day may be just a plain old Wednesday to me, but it's a glorious day for our friend J. Any day when he isn't on an operating room table with a flat-lining heart machine next to him would qualify as a great day indeed.

May 19 - Prien, Herrenchiemsee Castle

After checking out of the little hotel in Prien, we drove to Schloss Herrenchiemsee, the first of Ludwig II's castles on our list. Herrenchiemsee was inspired by Versailles, and by Ludwig's love of everything French. There is a Hall of Mirrors in Herrenchiemsee, just as there is in Versailles, and had Ludwig been able to keep building and building, this castle would have been just as large as Versailles. The fountains on the grounds of Herrenchiemsee are as ornate as they can possibly be, too many to describe, too varied to remember as I type this.

Ludwig spent a fortune building this castle (on its own private island) and then spent only ten days in it before he died at the young age of forty. The interior of the castle was never completed, but we toured ten finished rooms filled from floor to ceiling with everything beautiful your mind can imagine. Crystal chandeliers studded with candles, plush carpets, statues and clocks, rococco-style furniture, French-inspired art and collectibles, painted ceilings and gilded ornaments, porcelain mirrors and marble walls, red-carpeted stairways.... it was all just too beautiful to even take in at once. Every nook and corner, every spot on every wall and ceiling... everything was just decorated and gilded and painted and embellished and its over-the-topness seemed to just be right for the location, the era, the king. In every room, we just didn't know where to look first.

There was such a sadness about Ludwig II and his life. Here was a King who had everything his mind could imagine, and he spent most of his life and his days by himself. In the King's dining room (in this castle and in others), the dining room table was set on top of a portion of the floor that could be lowered down to the kitchen with an elaborate chain and pulley system where the table was set one floor below, the food was arranged.... and then the table would be hoisted up to the dining room so Ludwig could have his meal without even seeing the servants.

Today also, we visited The Wieskirche, in Bayern.... "The White Church." In the middle of a field of wildflowers, within view of the mountain ranges.... this white church with a red roof looks elegantly plain on the outside, but when you walk inside, your breath is taken away by its magnificent beauty. Gold and porcelain, marble and wood, painted ceilings, gilded statues.... it's all here, and when you look around at the unbelievable artistry in this church, your first thought is that this must be what heaven looks like, and if heaven doesn't look like this, then why bother to go there?

This entire day, our eyes have seen more beautiful things than our minds can process. The mountains, the castle, the church, the endless fields of those yellow wildflowers called butterblooms. It has been a day to remember, in an ever-growing list of days we don't want to forget.

May 18 - Prien

We stayed in the beautiful town of Prien for one night, at the Bayerischer Hof.... cute, cute, cute, right in the center of the village. Chocolate ladybugs on our bed pillows, wonderful little hotel owned by a German family. Before dinner, we walked around the village and found the cutest little candy and bakery shop... such creative chocolates, truly beautiful cakes, and the most charming little petit fours that looked like little jewel boxes. They looked delicious, but it seemed a shame to actually eat them.

The dining room of this small hotel was lovely... all wood tables and chairs, with plates and steins and clocks arranged around the perimeter of the room. Once again, I ordered salmon and salad, and roasted potatoes. For someone who never eats white potatoes, I found the German potato dishes too delicious to resist. Especially the warm potato salad that we had for lunch in a couple of the towns--- made with mild vinegar, not mayonnaise.

We walked around the streets of this little town of Prien... up and down all the cobblestones, looking in the windows of the shops that were already closed, and walking into those that were open. There was a tiny butcher shop which also sold fresh vegetables. And another shop that sold sliced meats and cooked foods, neatly arranged behind glass counters. Every store had its speciality... no mega-markets here in Prien, nor in any of the other small towns. Clothing stores for women, separate clothing shops for men. Adorable stores filled with children's clothing and shoes and toys.

Outdoor cafes with small tables and chairs..... people sitting with tall glasses of beer or tiny cups of strong coffee. A lot of the residents had their dogs with them, on leashes, and the dogs would sit quietly underneath the table until their owners were ready to leave. We saw dogs in restaurants (both inside and outside) in every town that we stopped in. In most cases, the waiters would bring a small dish of water and place it underneath the table for their four-legged customers.

We loved Prien... the streets, the shops, the people, the feeling that was there. It was clearly a German town with a touch of Switzerland thrown in-- we could be wrong about that, but that's how we perceived the design of the town. And, of course, this small village of Prien had a large and beautiful church, and we were lucky enough to hear the organist practicing on the church's ornate instrument when we walked into the church for a look-see. We just loved it there, but we were stopping for just the one evening and one night..... we were on our way to see Ludwig's castles.

May 17 - Munich

When we left Waldsassen, we drove to Munich. After the smaller cities of Meissen and Dresden, and the tinier towns and villages inbetween, we weren't prepared for the busy-city-ness of Munich. My husband had made a reservation for two nights at a large hotel in the center of Munich. Shortly after we checked in, we changed that reservation from two nights to just one.

Added to the too busy, too noisy, too crowded, too litter-filled atmosphere of Munich, their soccer team had just won the championship and all the soccer fans were gathered in the center of the city, in front of the town hall. They were waiting for the soccer team to arrive so they could all celebrate together. We played language-Charades again, found out when the soccer team was due to arrive in the square, and made our plans to be out of the city center and in our hotel room by that time of the night.

One little glitch with the rental car on our way into Munich-- the dreaded little red engine light came on a couple of times. Luckily, the rental car office was right in the Munich railroad station, which was across the main road from our hotel. My husband walked over there, told them the problem, and they told him to bring them the car and they'd exchange it for a new one. On his way to the laundromat (Munich had a laundry salon just a few streets away from the hotel), my husband dropped off our defective car and arranged to pick up the new car in the morning, which would save us the parking fees for the night. (While my husband did his laundry, I wrote out postcards and enjoyed a nice bubblebath.)

Munich had two art museums, and we saw both. The first museum was gray and dreary, filled with religious-style paintings of saints and martyrs pierced with arrows and tied with ropes. Honestly, after seeing the first dozen of those huge paintings, the rest seemed sad and redundant. Plus, the entire building just had a cold and lonely feeling and I couldn't wait to get out of there. The second museum had more beautiful, happier paintings by the Impressionists. I wish we had seen that art collection first... maybe the first building of religious art would have been easier to take. Once again, the cafes in the museums were lovely, and the delicious food was served on delicate china, with silver flatware and crystal glasses.

Just after our early dinner that night in Munich, we stood in the town main's square and waited for the Glockenspiel to chime at six o'clock. It was lovely.... bells ringing, chimes chiming, and carved figures moving and dancing in two levels of the huge clock. Even with all the hundreds of soccer fans crowded into the town square, the Glockenspiel was a sight to behold. I told my husband I would have been happy to leave Munich right after that, but he had had enough driving for the one day, and we had the reservations at the hotel anyway. (Plus, he had to do his laundry... who knew if we'd find another laundry salon?)

There was also a toy museum in Munich... much smaller toy collection than we thought it was, and it took us only half an hour to see everything. Interesting miniatures for dollhouses, plus a lot of vintage Steiff teddybears, but it was a museum that we could have done without. I told my husband that I've seen larger collections of old toys in some of the antique malls in Texas. But we smiled at the lady who was at the door, and I bought a couple of postcards from her. As we traveled, my pile of postcards kept growing... two inches high, five inches high, and at the end of our trip-- nine inches worth of postcards.

May 16 - Waldsassen

We left Dresden that Friday. We were up early again, this time even earlier than the owner of the villa. She had shown us the kitchen of the house (on the bottom level) and we just went down there and put together our own breakfast. I didn't know how to use her coffee machine, which was just as well since my husband thought their coffee was too strong as well. But we found the breads, cheese and jam, and the fruit was already on the table, so we just made do with all of that. When the villa's owner did come downstairs, we were already finished eating and had begun to tidy up the kitchen. When we paid our bill before leaving, she didn't charge us for that day's breakfast being that we put it together ourselves.

During breakfast, we talked about yesterday's Historical Green Vault and all of its treasures. Amazing, the art objects that can be collected from the around the globe when you have a limitless trove of money. Before going into the Green Vault, all the women had to secure their purses into lockers, and all coats and jackets had to be removed. The only thing you could carry into the Green Vault with you were your eyeglasses and some tissues, and the little key for the locker. Nothing else, no exceptions. And there were two sets of double-locked, double-sealed doors going into the Green Vault and coming out of it.... I would imagine that while you were inbetween the two sets of doors, you were being watched on camera to make sure your hands were empty and your pockets weren't full. My husband said "Beam me up, Scotty!" as we got into the first set of locked glass doors, and I gave him a look and hoped that the German-speaking guards didn't think that meant "Quick, grab everything you can!"

Before driving away from Dresden, we took the ferry to the other side of the Elbe and went to see the Pillnitz Castle, which we looked at from the villa's side of the river each night as we had dinner. Beautiful grounds here at this castle, and there was a walking path which we followed and we were rewarded with a duck pond and a stone gazebo hidden in the woods. Pillars held marble statues by the pond, wooden benches were set around it, and we just sat there and watched the most beautiful orange and white ducks sitting at the edge of the water. The inside of the Pillnitz hasn't been restored very much, but the outside was beautiful, and the landscaping all around the castle was just perfectly flower-filled.

Our next stop was a small town called Waldsassen. We found a very small hotel in the center of the town and we arranged a room for just one night. This hotel room was filled with painted furniture and fluffy quilts and oversized pillows. It looked like a room in a dollhouse, or a little girl's playhouse. Very charming, no matter how "chick" it would look to a man. The town itself was so small that we walked all around it before dinner as well as after. There were a lot of Italians in this town, who spoke fluent German, of course, as well as Italian. Lots of Italians meant a lot of Italian restaurants, so we picked a small one for dinner. Their specialty was individual pizzas. I chose spinach and cheese, my husband chose pepperoni. We both thought that pepperoni meant the thin slices of Italian salami that we're used to.

Not so in Waldsassen. Pepperoni meant green peppers, and my husband just hates green peppers, or peppers of any color. The owner of the restaurant walked proudly to our table with our two little pizzas, then saw the look on my husband's face as he saw all the chopped-up green peppers on the top of his pizza. It took us six seconds of language-Charades to figure out what happened, and the owner whisked away my husband's pizza, put together a "real" pepperoni pizza, and brought it out again, apologizing all the way. Before we left, my husband paid the man for both of the pizzas, and went through language-Charades once again because the Italian didn't want to take the extra money.

In Waldsassen, there is a huge basilica and a very large historical library. They are side by side, near the center of the town. The basilica is one of the most beautiful churches I've ever seen, but I found myself saying that about every church, cathedral, basilica in Germany. This particular basilica has a glorious main altar, plus numerous side altars all around the church. At every side altar, there is a glass coffin filled with the skeletal remains of a great knight, bishop, or exalted hero. The skeleton is dressed in the person's most regal garments and surrounded by their favorite treasures. Beautiful and eerie at the same time.

In the attached Klosterbibliothek (church library), we walked up a massive, ornately carved flight of stairs and found ourselves surrounded by wooden shelved filled with centuries-old volumes of hand-written and hand-illustrated books. The floor of the library was original (as was everything else in there) and we had to put oversized soft slippers over our shoes so we could walk around the wood flooring without scratching it. This library's ceiling was as ornately painted as a cathedral, the shelves and the carved wood statues around the room were so striking and creative and overwhelming that you didn't know where to look first. My husband and I, along with everyone else in the room at the time, just stood there with our jaws dropping at the massiveness of the carvings and the endless shelves filled with these truly priceless books.
My husband and I both love libraries and books, so this bibliothek was a "gift" for both of us.

The town of Waldsassen is only a couple of hours away from the Czechoslovakian border.... we were amazed that we had driven so far. While we walked around the town after dinner, my husband asked a few of the shop owners if they had a laundromat in the village. Again, after some language-Charades, they realized what my husband was asking for, and told him that the town didn't have a "laundry salon." Our next stop would be Munich. Surely in a city that size, there would be a salon for washing clothes. My husband was counting on it, since he had packed enough clothes for half of our trip, fully intending to wash his laundry for the second half of the trip. I had packed clothes that I could rinse out easily and hang up to dry, which I had been doing all along. Sitting in a laundromat, even if it's called something fancy like a laundry salon, is not my idea of what to do on a vacation trip.