Visitors

My Mother and Stepfather have been here since last Friday so we've been on the go ever since they got here.

We started out pretty light on Saturday just visiting the local area but we've been down to the Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castles in Southern Germany, we moved on yesterday to the Seehof Palace and downtown Bamberg, Germany, a city with a unique beer brewing style that I talked about here, here, here and here. According to my European Daytrips guidebook Bamberg residents drink an average of 330 liters a person per year, a world record, but that's a story for another day and another blog.  Oh yeah besides the beer it is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In Bamberg we of course had some beer and we visited St Peter's Cathedral, the Prince Bishop's Rose Garden and New Residence.  Today we headed down to Kelheim and took a River Cruise on the Donau River to the Weltenburger Monastery, home to the World's Oldest Monastery Brewery, where we had a lunch and enjoyed an afternoon lounging in the biergarten, very relaxing.

Tomorrow and Thursday it's off to Munich and Prague.  Friday starts the Ironman Regensburg activities.  So there is still plenty of fun ahead.

Ok enough talk, here are the pictures.

 

Hohenschwangau Castle

The clouds rolling down the Alps to Neuschwanstein Castle

Macen, Dad, Grandma, and Grandpa

A view of the waterfalls from the Marien Brucke just above Neuschwanstein Castle

A picture of Neuschwanstein from Marien Brucke

Hohenschwangau from Neuschwanstein

One very sleepy little boy

One very sleepy Grandma

Seehof Palace

The fountains go off every hour on the hour

Macen being silly with Grandpa's hat

St Peter's Cathedral, Bamberg

The Prince Bishop of Bamberg's New Residence 

The Rose Garden

Can you spot the crazy American 4 year old in the Rose Garden? Hint he's wearing blue.

St Peter's Cathedral on the right and St Michaels Monastary on the left.  We spent an hour trying to drive to St. Michaels only to be continously routed the wrong way down a one way street by the GPS.  We finally gave up.

Grandma and Grandpa on the River Cruise. 

Grandma with Maddox and Macen

Grandma, Dad, Macen and Maddox

Dad trying to teach Macen how to skip a rock

Weltenburg Brewery

Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day outside and what did we do, a picnic, go to the park, nope we hopped in our car took a ride about 90 minutes south of here to visit a Benedictine Monastary and in Germany that means only one thing, beer. God bless those monks. The brewery we visted was the Weltenburg Kloster brewery We went down to Kelheim and got on a river boat, took a leisurely 40 minute cruise on the Danube River where we got an early taste of the beer whose brewery we were going to visit and ate a light lunch. We hoped off the boat right at noon and went inside to find out about the tours. The 1230 tour was full so we asked for the next one which was at 2pm. We wandered around the monastery, looked in the beautiful chapel and finally found a seat in the beer garden, where I tried two more of the monastary's excellent beers and plate of wurst and potatoes in a cream sauce. Shantel split a plate of french fires with Macen and had a Radler. Everything was excellent.

The time for our tour finally came and despite the fact that 90% of it was in Germany it was really interesting. The brewery is a completely modernized/computerized operation. Our guide, Josef, was exceptionally knowledgeable and kept apologizing for his poor English. His English was still better than my German and he provided simple explanations of what we were seeing in English so Shantel and I could follow along. Josef did let us know that some time later this summer the brewery plans on having English text or placards to hand out to their German challanged visitors, so they get a better explanation.

About halfway through the tour we got to sample their Hefe Weissen, the Anno 1050, the Asam Bock, and the multiple World Beer Cup award winning Barock Dunkel. We finished up the tour got our complimentary 12 oz glasses and then we let Macen play on the rock beach on the river before we returned back to the boat for the quick trip back to the car and then home to Vilseck.

The monastery was founded in the 600s and it is thought that the monks started brewing beer there in 1050, some people claim this to be the oldest monastery brewery in the world something that is disputed by the Weihenstephan Brewery which claims to have been founded in 768 and licensed as a brewery in 1040. I really don't care which one is the oldest because they both brew darn good beers.

I hope all of our family and friends have enjoyed this post because this is probably one of the places that we will take you to if you come to visit. It was just too cool to not share.
Here are some more pictures.

The view from the river boat as we approached the monastery. If you aren't into biking or running, I really recommend taking the boat cruise instead of driving there.

This crest was on the tank on the main floor. The inscription says For Mary and Jesus. See God really does want us to drink beer, or at least the monks say so.

A couple of pictures of the brewing area. Josef our guide was very knowledge and did his best to give us a quick English run down.

The area where the barley is stored and then poured into the brewing vats.

The two glasses were what we sampled beer the beer from during the tour and got to keep. The stone bierkrug in the middle is something I bought. I'm a sucker for cool beer mugs and I really like the German stone ones.