TIME WITH FRIENDS
Our good friends, the Siebert's, invited us to go see a few of the sites in the country near where Werner grew up, a castle, lake, some pretty towns and have a picnic with them.  What a fun day we had with them.

The wine area along the Bad-Durkheim area is a rolling hills landscape filled with various beautiful vineyards and small towns that make their living growing grapes and making wine.

It was a really quiet day on this main street in this pretty little vineyard town.
Usually it is a bit more busy with tourists.

Many of the homes in this town are set up with a courtyard right next to the main entrance that is a garden or a place where there are tables for people to sit and enjoy time eating and drinking and visiting with friends.
These courtyards used to be where the animals where kept.

Beyond the grape vines, up on the hill is Schloss Villa Ludwigshohe's summer home.

Martin and Debbie.
You can walk or ride bikes all through the beautiful vineyards.

Werner knows many interesting things about the area so he shared history, stories and sights all day and made everything so fun for us.

The picturesque scenes kept coming up on every curve and hill.

There are many picnic spots along the roads.  This is where we stopped for our picnic.

We had a wonderful tour of one of the many castles.  The Burg Berwartstein castle was built on top of a really huge rock. The rock was carved out on the interior to form much of the castle then much more of the castle was built on top with the sand stones.

Inside the castle was a deep well, 2 meters wide (6 feet) and 104 meters (341.2 feet) down to the water.
This way the people in the castle could survive when it was under attack.

Yikes, they had torture rooms.

On the terraces, the tour guide explains some of the history and stories of this castle.

The earliest mention of the castle is in 1152.  It is now privately owned and was rebuilt after a long time being abandoned and burned by a lightning strike.

Do you see the CAT on the roof?

How did this cat get way up there on the roof?

This is part of the rock that is natural.  Inside it has been hand carved out with tunnels and rooms.

 This used to be the only entrance into the castle.  A vertical shaft that a rope ladder was dropped down so men could enter and pull up the ladder when enemies came.   Hot oil would be poured onto the enemies from the top of the shaft.   It is said that when a man in the castle wanted a bride a woman who had never met the man would be lifted up the tunnel in a basket.  If the man saw that she didn't meet his expectations, his hands would become slippery, and she would be dropped.

Looking straight up the entrance chimney shaft.
It is about 45 meters (147 feet) high.

Beautiful hydrangea flowers do very well up here.

When we first arrived, this  nice courtyard area had about 6 fine horses in it waiting to take someone for a ride through the forest.

The crow and the golden ring.  There is a story about a king who had put his rings onto the window ledge and left the room for awhile.  When he returned, the rings where gone.  Since no one except a member of the staff was in the castle, the servant was accused and sentenced to death.  Later the rings where found in a ravens nest on the roof.  So in shame and sorrow, the castle symbol became the raven and ring.  Two ravens where imprisoned and forever kept.

Friederun showed us this cool plant that had seed pods that would EXPLODE when you lightly touched them.
I could have done this all day, it was so interesting how they could do that!

We then went to a small town in France, Wissembourg.  This chapel tower is where Werner first kissed Friederun.  The tower isn't open to go up in very often, so it was just meant to be that when they went there it was open and they went up.  FIRST KISS is pretty special.

The pastries in France are way to pretty to eat, they are works of art.
We had the best chocolate eclairs that I have ever had.