A Day in France

 Denise Pritt and Erin Clegg, friends of mine from Echo Ranch Bible Camp in Juneau, Alaska, came to visit me from April 6-14.  They flew into Basel, Switzerland after visiting a friend in Barcelona, Spain.  The first thing I did was take them to downtown Basel to see the Rhein River.

 This vacation was a busy one...the next day we drove for about an hour and a half to Colmar, France.  This area of France is known as wine country and is very quaint.  Here Denise and Erin are in the city center.

The main thing we did was go to the Bartholdi Museum.  He is the French man who made the Statue of Liberty.  Colmar even has a "Statue of Liberty" in a traffic circle.  It was fun to see his sculptures.

 I loved this huge horse head!

These are some of the models he worked on before making the Statue of Liberty.

This is the size of the Statue of Liberty's ear.  I am whispering secrets into her ear.

Then we drove to a castle called Hoch Koenigsbourg...which was a challenging finding with my GPS.  (By the way thanks mom for the GPS...I use it often!!)  But we did find it.  It is on top of a HUGE hill or a small mountain...however you want to look at it.

Inside the castle is this cool winding staircase.  Denise and Erin enjoyed seeing the mid-evil kitchen and the furniture and apartments where people lived back in the 1600s.

Erin found this really cool window within the door.

Here are some knights standing at attention.  This is in the weapons room.  These suits of armor are actually very small.  These guys were NOT huge men...in fact they rather small in height and stature.

Here is the castle with the beautiful French countryside in the background.  I took this picture out of the tallest tower.  As Erin said quite often..."Everything the sun touches is your kingdom."  (Quote from the Lion Queen.)

Denise uses her brute strength to move this cannon.  I am not sure how her shot would be with a cannon....

Here I am with the tallest tower behind me at the end of a lovely day.