Jenni and John Guest Post #2

Sunday January 10th – CASTLES
Sunday morning we walked to a bakery for breakfast and then got on the road to Braubach, Germany to go to St. Marksburg Castle.  The drive along the Rhine River was very scenic.  The snow had stopped and everything looked very clean and white. 

Captions:

Top - Can't wait to get to see the view from the tower!!

Middle - FIRE IN THE HOLEEEEEEE!

Bottom - Wheels' holding the English tourbook that I didn't want to read...

The castle was awesome – it was built in the 1200’s and was the only castle along the Rhine River that was not defeated in war.  Ask Matthew about the drive up the hill to the castle in the snow…he was a little nervous, but did a great job.  We took a tour, that was supposed to be in German but luckily for us there were some other non-German speakers in the group so they asked for it in English.  The tour was very interesting (Matthew's input: EXCEPT WE COULD NOT GO TO THE TOP OF THE TOWER!!!) – there are still 3 families that live in the castle part of the year – I would assume the summer as it was pretty cold in there!  It also houses 1 of 3 collections armor worn over the years.  The other two in London and Paris. 
After we left this castle Matthew was in the castle mood and wanted to go to another one…we checked a map, and the Garmin and saw that the Burg Lahneck castle was only a few miles away.

Unfortunately this castle was closed for tours from Dec-Feb, but we were able to walk around the outside of it and see a little of it through the door.
It was very cool looking…we were sad we couldn’t go on the tour.  After this Matthew still thought we could find more castles, but we convinced him that we should head back to Belgium – we had about a 4 hour drive back. 
Once we were back we went to the train station to see if we could get our tickets to London and Paris.  The int’l counter in the Aalst station was closed so we went back to the hotel.  Due to all of the adverse weather, the Eurostar trains (to London and Paris) were running limited schedules and asked that people only travel if necessary.  This made us a little nervous so we decided to take the train to Brussels to get our tickets Sunday night.  Because Matthew couldn’t find the room key – we only had 6 minutes to get to the train (including the drive that normally takes 10!).  We parked and sprinted for the tracks…and just as we got to the stairs we heard the train pull away…so we sat in the station for 20 minutes waiting for the next train.  This isn’t the only time we sprinted!  (Stay tuned…)  Once we got our tickets and back to Aalst one of the only restaurants we could find open was an Italian restaurant.  John and Matthew got pizza and I got spaghetti…it was srcumtious!