Strawberry Patch!

Brian had off work yesterday so we thought it would be fun to take Luke to the strawberry patch after school. The patch is in Velburg, just down the road from our favorite German restaurant so at 3:45pm, we headed out to pick strawberries and afterwards we hit up the Winklerbrau for dinner. Luke loved picking strawberries! He kept telling me, "Mommy! We don't pick the green ones, only the red ones. Green ones aren't ripe and taste de-gusting" (He must have tried one. lol) While Hannah napped in her car seat, Brian, Luke and I enjoyed picking a kilo of berries and then it started to monsoon on us so we made a mad dash to the car. The torrential rain only lasted about 10 minutes and we enjoyed a nice sunshiny dinner at the Winklerbrau, where I had wild boar with juniper cream sauce, spaetzel, and pear with cranberries, Brian had the jagerschnitzel with brat-kartofflen (fried potatoes), and Luke had a paar (pair) of wurst with spaetzel. Jealous? Maybe you need to visit us!

Velburg Caves - Tropfsteinhohle

This weekend we decided to explore the caves (Tropfsteinhohle) in Velburg, a small town about 15 minutes away from Parsberg. We parked in a lot and hiked up a hill a small ways to a little cafe in the middle of the woods, complete with picnic tables everywhere and some wooden playground equipment for the kiddos. We didn't know that it was a guided tour so we paid for our tickets and Brian and I drank lattes while Luke ran around and played. At 11:30am the tour began and we slowly descended a bunch of stairs into the old caves. The caves are old drip stone caves which after taking the small tour, I am guessing that means that water slowly drips and drips and drips from the ceiling and the minerals in the water form many of the rock formations in the cave. Unfortunately the tour was only in German and since Brian and I know few German words, we pretty much trailed along and tried to figure out what we were looking at. The formations in the cave were pretty cool as was the temperature. There were little bats flying around which everyone got a kick out of and Luke kept saying "birds!" The sign at the cave entrance said no flash cameras so I didn't take any pictures at all at first but then everyone else on the tour started using their cameras with the flash and the tour guide didn't say a thing so we joined the crowd and took a few pictures as well. There was a small case full of fossils of all sorts of animals and huge teeth which looked like human molars. This particular cave was "discovered" in 1875. It was a neat little tour, a little claustrophobic at first but the beauty of the cave, the deeper we got, was really amazing. And as always, here are your pictures: