Luxembourg

Luxembourg is a Country and a City. It is a very tiny country. It also has a royal family and a Palace in the city. They speak french so Dad can talk to them for us.

Luxembourg has lots of castles and has an old fortress around the city with tunnels that you can go through.

In Luxembourg they also have the American Military Cemetery because the Americans liberated them in world war 2. The cemetery is where George Patton is buried.

We visited his grave and walked through Luxembourg and around the fortress walls. We saw a film being made in the old city streets. There was a woman dressed in armour walking a horse. 

Luxembourg has lots of elephant statues around the city.

The camp we are staying in has an indoor pool, trampolines, a soccer pitch and lots of playground equipment as on the weekends it has lots of activities like jumping castles and sumo suits.

Military cemetery

Some of the graves. It was huge

Amelia with an elephant

Orlando with an elephant

Part of the fortress in the city

Luxembourg

The tunnels you can travel through, inside the fortress walls.

Luxembourg

Nuremburg, Germany

Nuremburg is where Hitler held a huge rally and built huge parade grounds for his soldiers. It is also where they held trials for lots of the Nazi's after the war. Hitler was already dead so they couldn't put him on trial.
We saw the rally area and walked all over the parade grounds looking for the Metro. Then we visited the Palace of Justice where the trials were held.
The campsite where we stayed was really nice with a great play area and a soccer pitch and we liked the cool place where we ate Nachos.

The Nuremburg rally

The courtroom where the trials happened

The Palace of Justice

Rothenburg, Germany

Rothenburg is a really pretty little town. It still has it's medievel houses and streets and fountains. We spent two days walking through Rothenburg looking at the streets.
We also visited the Christmas shop and Christmas Museum. The museum tells the story of how people first began celebrating christmas, when they started having trees, decorations, presents and stuff. In the old days Santa was called St Nikolas and he had a person who travelled with him called Ruprecht who hit and ate children who were not good. Luckily he is not allowed out anymore.
The Christmas shop also did not let people take photos but it is so nice in there and there are so many rooms of different christmas decorations.

Nutcrackers are everywhere in Rothenburg

Rothenburg

At the Christmas shop

We also visited the Kriminal Museum which is basically another museum of torture where they have an old Iron Maiden, iron masks, and other horrible stuff. It also had some displays about marriage which probably should not be in this museum. One of the sentences they had in the old days was stocks that a husband and wife were locked into together if they were arguing. They were not allowed out until they agreed.

An olden day police car

An Iron Maiden

Rothenburg

One of the entry gates into Rothenburg

Neuschwanstein Castle and Hohenschwangau Castle.

Neuschwanstein Castle was used for Sleeping Beauty's castle by Walt Disney. King Ludwig had it built as a summer palace and it took 17 years to build but he was deposed and died 2 weeks after. The second floor was never finished. We took a horsedrawn carriage up to the castle but had to walk back down.
Hohenschwangau Castle was one of the homes of the Bavarian royal family. It was still used by royalty until early 1900's when Prince Luitpold lived there until he died.
You are not allowed to take photos inside the castles.

Neuschwanstein

Neuschwanstein

Hohenschwangau

The view of the lake from Hohenschwangau

Swarovski and the salt mines in Hallein

We visited the salt mines at Hallein. Salt made the Archbishop of Salzburg very rich. The celts used to mine for salt back in the dark ages and when they began mining for salt again they found a preserved body of a celtic miner in the mines. But they don't have the body anymore, only a model which was a bit disappointing.
In the salt mines we go down 1500 metres under the ground. We took a little train down. Then we slid down the slides that they used to slide the bags of salt down. Then we took a boat across a little underground brine lake and another slide. They had a chapel down there.

Then we drove to the Swarovski Crystal Caves in Watten. Amelia spent a lot here. They have an enormous round dome with crystal walls and ceiling and they have displays of crystal and neon and figures. It was really cool.

The entrance to the caves. This is the giant.

Crystal pyramids

Crystal butterfly

A tiara

Salzburg, Austria

Salzburg is where Mozart was born. Austrians are very proud of Mozart and many stores sell Mozart stuff.
Today, we took a cable car and went 1800m up a mountain. Mum was very freaked while we were going up and back down. It was freezing up there.
We had lunch up the mountain in a little restaurant. It had a cute snow dog there.
We went to Hellbrunn Palace were they had trick fountains. The trick fountains play jokes on people. One part of the fountains had a table and chairs and when the Prince sat his guests down, water was squirted from all the chairs and the ground onto the guests so they got wet.  There were lots of these tricks and we got a bit wet. The fountains were built in 1615 and they used water hydraulics because they didn't have electricity.  They had really decorative grottos at the fountains and they had little figurine's that moved due to water hydraulics.
Orlando got stung by a wasp while we were at the Palace.
We also went to Hohensalzburg fortress. They had a marionette museum there as well as lots of cannons and guns, torture devices, war uniforms and medals and you could see the whole city. We got up and down by a small cable-car.
We also went to see a graveyard and went into the catacombs which are tunnels dug into the walls of the mountains.

A busker

View from the Fortress

The Marionette Museum in the Fortress

View from the fortress of Salzburg

The hillside catacombs

Shopping

Trick Fountains

Water Hydraulics operated Orchestra at the Trick fountains

Trick Fountains

The golden crown at the Trick Fountains

View from the Cable Car

View from the cable car

Budapest, Hungary

We only spent a couple of nights in Budapest which is the capital of Hungary. Hungary was part of the Soviet Union until 1989. Hungary was also under Nazi control during the war. We visited the Terror Museum which shows how the Nazi's treated people and then how Hungary became communist and how the Communists treated people.  It has cells under the building which is where they kept people and you can visit the cells. They have photos of the people who were kept there.
Budapest has lots of churches and bridges and the Danube River runs through the middle of the city. the Buda half is the oldest part of the city, and the Pest part is newer but it still looked pretty old to us. A lot of the buildings look ruined but some are very pretty. There are lots of statues here too.

Shopping area

A theatre

Parliament

Orlando loves the huge escalators

St Stephens Basilica

The Chain Bridge

a statue

Vienna, Austria

We stayed in a motorhome camp site in the city of Vienna. It was very wet and a bit cold in Vienna.
There was a buskers festival on when we were there which was lucky because it was Sunday and most things were shut. Some of the buskers were really good. There were clowns and musicians and dancers.
We visited the Butterfly house at the Hofburg Palace and walked the streets to look at all the statues. A lot of musicians came from Vienna. The most famous was Mozart.

Mozart

We also visited a cathedral at Karlplatz. This is where they had the Busker's festival. Outside the church is a huge square.

Cathedral

One of the buskers. He was pretty funny.

The Bubble makers

We also went to see Shonbrunn Palace where the Austrian royal family lived. They also lived at Hofburg Palace.  Shonbrunn was huge but they wouldn't let us take photos inside it. It had huge gardens and fountains and had a zoo and some mazes.  We were not allowed to go to the zoo but we went through the Mazes. Some had things to do in them like trying to spray water over people walking over the bridge or a xylophone in the ground you could jump on. They also had a mirror maze and a pretty large playground.

Shonbrunn

One of the garden areas.

The Gloriette - you can see all of the Palace and most of the city from the top.

One of the mazes

The xylophone