Another 6 o'clock start. I awaken to the cheerful voice of Big Mom asking, "Why do we have to get up so early every day." We don't everyday but she's not hearing it. At least at this hour, we get breakfast. Any later and we're out. Today we're going to pile on 4 buses to visit the Heidelberg Castle, one of the most famous along the Rhine. I get us set up on the "leisure bus" which means they walk slower on the tour and get us up as close as ...

The 6:00am alarm comes very early and Mom's not happy. All night she complained of being hot. I don't think the room was but she opened the slider during the night to let the cold air in. Then she complained it was too noisy. When we went through the locks during the night, there was noise as the boat rubbed up against the stone walls and the water rushed in and out. I'm sure most people had their sliding doors closed all night.We had a nice breakfas...

We're up early, as usual, even though it doesn't get light until 8am. We have our free breakfast, of course, steal some fruit and yogurt for the train trip and take the taxi to the train. It's a 2:08 hour trip from Regensburg to Augsburg with a train swap in Nurmberg. We've done it many times but this one is only 5 minutes. That might scare the average traveler, but not us. The day before when we went to the Nurmberg Christmas Market, we were wel...

It was nice waking up today without the thought of hauling those suitcases somewhere. We were still up at 6:30 but Karen cleaned and organized while I checked email and loaded photos to the blog. We went downstairs for a complimentary breakfast which was great. After breakfast, we decided to make a side trip to Nuremberg. They have a large Christmas Market there and we have the time so we caught the train around 10:30 for the one hour ride.Grabbing a taxi at the...

We're up by 7 and Mom begins her grueling task of packing. It gets more difficult each day as her Christmas goodies look for a free ride back to the USA. Now she says she's going to leave some of the clothes that she packed for the poor people here in Germany. Ah, that's why we brought all this stuff. I take a few pictures around town now that the crowds are gone. When I return, we have a delicious free breakfast compliments of our hotel. I bring d...