Southern Germany Sampler: The Bodensee

We arrived in Meersburg at our very cool hotel, Hotel Löwen.  It is another cozy Gästhof, with an amazing restaurant.  The night we arrived, after our day at the castles and in Schwangau, we checked into our hotel and had dinner out on this nice little patio.  We were the only patrons that evening, so Kellan was able to run around and drive his Hot Wheels wherever he pleased.  For our meal, we had a five-course dinner, with each course (except the dessert) containing a different local fish.  It was incredible.

The next day, we enjoyed a yummy breakfast buffet at our hotel and then headed to a playground.

 View looking towards the lake onto a square from the playground:

 All of the flowers were in bloom.  It was gorgeous.

 Once Kellan had burned off some steam, we walked down to the water to take a look around.

 This region is famous for their wines and everywhere you turn there is a vineyard.

 View of the Swiss Alps across the lake from Meersburg.

 WARNING!  The next three pictures are disgusting!  Unfortunately, there was no sign warning us of this as these figures are carved into a pole in a very public area.  I need to figure out what the story is behind all of this.  No matter what the explanation, it's weird.

Pretty sure this guy is farting demons...

 Demons that are, ahem, rather well endowed.  *shiver/gag*

So glad I didn't have an older child asking me questions about all of this.  I would have been at a loss for words.

We composed ourselves and walked along the water, which is lined with restaurants and shops.

We saw this yummy delicatessen with a produce stand and decided to grab lunch here and then take it to a playground.  The strawberries were literally the best I have ever had.

The walk to the playground was beautiful and full of flowers in bloom.  We released Kellan from his backpack and let him explore.

 This playground was perfect.  It had a great slide that K learned to climb up himself, some swings and a great view.

 After lunch, we walked back through town to our hotel.

We hopped into the car and headed to Friedrichshafen to visit the Zeppelin Museum.  I didn't bring the camera along for this trip, but here is a link to the website.  It was pretty cool, especially for the pilot in the family!  It houses the world's largest collection on the history of airship building and gives the history of German aviation.  Of course, there is quite a bit of information on the Zeppelin - the original and all the rest that followed.

From Wikipedia: "First Zeppelin flight at Lake Constance"

K slept through most of our museum tour, which made it a little bit easier to actually learn about everything they had to display!  Afterwards, we walked along the water in Friedrichshafen and enjoyed some gelato, then headed back to Meersburg.

We grabbed some beers and returned to the playground we visited for lunch.  The weather was amazing.
Next to the playground was a tiny beach and Matt took K down to practice skipping rocks.

We started to make our way back to the restaurants along the water to try to find a place to eat.

We picked an Italian place and settled in with glasses of local beer and wine.  K sat happily in his stroller through about half of our dinner, then he had a little to eat and played with his Hot Wheels on the boardwalk.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and crashed.  Yet another amazing day.  And we had no idea what kind of a beautiful day was in store for us the following day.