Wednesday was a work holiday in Germany, which meant that Armin was off, but his girls still had to attend school because they live in Austria. Armin and Carrie stayed at the house while Chris, Melissa and Everett took the minivan and drove to Hellbrunn. It was fantastic. We went on the water tour, the audio tour of the palace, walked through several secret passages in the walls and had a picnic at the playground. The weather was unbelievably nice. We drove there on local streets, an adventure in itself, but returned home on the A10/A1 in the afternoon. With regard to the water tour: the bishop who built Hellbrun had a sense of humor, and put numerous water spouts throughout the grounds that were designed to spray unsuspecting visitors. One set of of spouts are in the middle of the stools  at the outdoor dining table. You can imagine what it might be like to on one of these. Anyway, our tour guide had the same sense of humor despite the fact that many people were wearing nice clothing and had expensive cameras. At one point he asked Chris where he was from, and then asked him to go stand in a certain spot. Chris declined, so he turned his attention to others who were more compliant. Sensibilities aside, the tour was truly impressive, especially the animatronic medieval city scene powered solely by water.

That night we went to the Gasthof Schlößl for dinner. This was a great experience for us! It had a spectacular view of Bavaria and the sunset. The good was also great. Chris couldn’t help but remark how fun it would be to tour the area by bike, especially with places like this to stop, eat and camp (assuming that’s allowed). Toward the end of dinner the kids went outside to manhandle an especially patient cat who lives there.