Bye Bye Campervan, HELLO hotel!

Well we left Freiburg, which was quite a pretty place, just a pity it poured with rain the whole time we were there, so we didn't enjoy it too much. We moved on to a lakeside town just south of Konstanz, which was a quiet little place, very scenic and the lake was lovely, but again, the rain just didn't let up, so we couldn't enjoy it too much. And the poor boys continually looked out of the window of the campervan at the great big sportsfield outside, with goalposts etc, eager to get out and play soccer.

So we didn't stay in this place too long either, leaving early in the morning as we had a long drive back to Munich, with a detour to the castles in southern Germany - one of them made famous partly because it inspired Walt Disney. The walk up the hill in the rain to get to it wasn't so wonderful, but the castle was beautiful! And very popular. We spent a few hours looking at the castle and at the village by the carpark where all the shops and cafes are, then carried on to Munich where it continued to rain.

Schloss Hohenschwangau, the 19th century German royal palace

Schloss Neuschwanstein, the original "Disney castle"

So trying to clean out the campervan in the rain when we couldn't send the kids outside was a huge mission. We got up really early this morning to continue cleaning and packing up our stuff, then took it through the car wash (and now the kids don't want to wash our own car any more - they want to sit in it while I take it through a car wash!), and returned it to its home. Yay! We lost a small part of our deposit due to the broken mirror and a scuff mark, and apparently there was a wipe mark and 2 crumbs on the bench, so they deemed it to have not been cleaned properly! The fact that I was up till midnight cleaning, and back at it from 6am, while trying to keep 4 kids calm as it kept raining, was beside the point!

Anyway, we then took the most expensive taxi ride in history, from the rental place to the airport and had an uneventful flight to Copenhagen. And we are all in heaven. The sun is shining, and we are in a nice hotel with big comfortable beds, a big bathroom with shower AND bath, free wi-fi, TV, and perhaps more importantly, enough space to swing a cat around! The kids have all just enjoyed long baths and showers, and a few hours of downtime. We have 4 days ahead to explore this city, while Glen attends a conference. There seems to be alot to do here, and all within walking distance from our hotel, which certainly makes life easy! So except for the fact that this is quite an expensive city, I think we are really going to enjoy it here...

(PS we have now started to put up all of our photo collection on Picasa - enjoy!)