The hills are alive...with the sound of children that have been in the car too long

Wow! How to begin? All six of us set out for Garmisch, Germany last Monday. Our trip began uneventfully, flight on time, no major meltdowns... We arrived in Friedrichshafen airport and proceeded to pick up our 6 passenger van that I had booked. There is a picture later- I would be interested to hear your thoughts on our "6 passenger van". We had a beautiful but looooong drive to the resort (several of us had stopped speaking to each other by that point). Apparently it takes twice as long as the promised 1.5 hours to get there in a "6 passenger van".
All was okay after seeing the resort, however. It was beautiful and right in the heart of the German Alps. Our rooms had one wall that was entirely glass with a beautiful view of the Alps.Here we are at about 10pm eating a very late dinner- notice how wide awake the kids still are!
As promised- the "6 passenger van". We probably could have added a few hitchhikers, some goats, and all 7 Von Trapp children- but at least we were comfortable!
The next morning we took the cogwheel train up the Zutspitz (tallest mountain in the German Alps). This is a picture of Eli trying to jump out of his seat at me. Because the train was going up, gravity would not let him jump forward. He was rather humorous as every time he would jump forward he would be thrown back into the wall...and I let him continue this...

As we went up

Here we all are on the glacier, most of the way up the mountain, from here we had to take a cable car to the top.
Here is a view from the very top- Eric had to take the picture, I was clinging to the children and the inner wall, convinced that we were going to fall over the four foot fence to our death...
It was not enough for Eric to be 10 feet from the top, he had to climb the rocks, holding nothing but a rope to the VERY top. While up there, the clouds rolled in and it began to thunder and lightening. They started yelling in German for us all to evacuate the mountaintop, well, we assume that is what they were saying. So, in all of our wisdom, we took a cable car, through the rain and thunder, back down to the glacier.
Here we are eating at a restaurant in Garmisch. This is Schnitzel with Noodle- and it is now truly one of my favourite things-so yummy! I did have to omit the name of the restaurant because I don't want the grandparents to stop reading my blog...they definitely had some, um, interesting names for things here...For instance, the word for exit is "Ausfahrt". We kept pronouncing this "house fart" which was less than music to my father-in-laws ears. He had really brushed up on his German for the trip which saved us more than once!
The following day we visited Salzburg- what a beautiful city! We climbed up the hill to see a view of the city, went shopping, ate, and took a carriage ride.
In both Garmisch and Salzburg, there were cows running loose in the city. My children decided that they needed to ride one, she was pretty tame...
Here we are in our carriage ride. Our horses names were Apollo and Boobie...

Here we are having (what we thought) was our last dinner on vacation. Ava took this picture by the way- she is becoming quite the little photographer! On the way back we asked Ava how she had liked Austria. She sat in the back giggling and said, "Austria is like a hole in my nose, like nostril!" You just never know with that one...
We arrived back at the airport the next afternoon, returned our "6 passenger van" and boarded our plane. For the next 3 hours we sat in afor mentioned plane waiting for a tire to be fixed. It was not fixed. We deboarded the plane and received instructions in broken English that we would leave the next morning. That was it. No "here is a taxi to your hotel", nothing. We did eventually convince a taxi to take us to a hotel and actually had a very good dinner. There were no tire problems the next morning, so we finally made it home. My in-laws decided against London and Cambridge that night- I don't blame them. Traveling with two small children does wear you out, but, despite the unplanned adventures, we had an awesome time! So, as I have rambled long enough, I will Ausfahrt for now!