On the Road Again...
My goal for the morning is to sleep in…something we haven't been able to do since we left Eindhoven. But my back is uncomfortable in bed and doesn't allow for too much extra sleep. We do let the kids sleep while I reorganize suitcases so we will only need to bring in one of our smaller suitcases instead of the largest one.
We leave the hotel around 10 AM and drive a few miles to a McDonald's for breakfast. They have some interesting menu items like a "Big Farmer" and even beer.
We don't have much planned for today. Mainly trying to get most of the way back towards Amsterdam. There is a cool looking park that is a couple hours away called Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe in the town of Kassel, Germany that we head towards.
This park has a huge statue of Hercules on the top of a monument at the top of a long hill. There are reservoirs and channels that supply water to a system of waterfalls and fountains that cascade down a 350 meter long area. The park itself is huge, covering 590 acres. Construction of the park began all the way back in 1689 and took around 150 years to complete.
On Sunday and Wednesday the waterfalls run, but since they are fed by natural springs they shut the water off on the other days to allow the reservoirs to refill, so they won’t be going today. When we get to the town our GPS directs us to just some random place along the park, instead of the visitor center, so we have to reroute and backtrack.
Nate has been telling the kids a few Aino and Toivo stories on this trip (if you know you know), so when we start following an extremely slow car from Finland, Nate tells the kids we are following them up the hill. They start imagining what kind of shenanigans they must be up to.
We eventually make it to the visitor center which is closed, but we are able to go check out the view from the top of the hill overlooking a couple castles, forest and town below.
One of two castles that are on the grounds of the park
It is actually quite cold and a little windy up top, so we don't stay long before heading on our way again.
Today most of our driving is full of construction zones with little stretches of unrestricted autobahn between. The place we are staying for the night has a castle I was hoping to check out, but when I doublecheck the hours online it says they are temporarily closed.
Once we figure out where our hotel is we park and walk toward the castle anyway. This is another castle on a hill, but not as steep as Neuschwanstein. We are actually able to go into the courtyard. I believe they are having a wedding in the chapel as we see people going into the church dressed up, so we leave.
On our walk up to the castle I saw on my GPS there is a kids park down below that looks like it would be fun for the kids, so we head down there and let the kids play for a while to burn off energy after sitting so much in the car today.
We walk back to our hotel and check in. We are shown to our room which is actually the lower level of a little house next door! We have two bedrooms: one with two twin beds and another with a queen bed. There is a bathroom with a large walk-in shower and a separate toilet room with its own sink. Out back there is a large covered patio with a table and chairs and a pretty garden surrounding the house on the side and behind. We play a couple rounds of Uno Go on the patio before we head to dinner.
The hotel and restaurant is run by an Italian family, and we get some tasty Italian food for dinner.
While the kids are getting ready for bed we turn on the TV because they want to see what German TV is like, and we let them watch an episode of the old American show Home Improvement that had been dubbed over in German. Then it is off to bed.
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