Julia the Photographer//A Visit from the "King"

Had a great time catching up with some old friends from the Republic of Texas last week. Our friends James and Kim were out here visiting from the Dallas area and stopped in for a few days. James and Kim are old Army ROTC buddies from my Tech days and they were in Europe. Anyhow, Kim's maiden name is Koenig which means "King" in German. Let's face it, it's not everyday we have royalty in for a visit.

While strolling around Bacharach, our favorite Rhine village, Julia took a halfway decent pix of us all (see above). It was truly a point and shoot affair with no countdown or "everyone say cheese" but it's not bad for one of her first pix.

While they were here, we had the chance to hit up some of our favorite local spots. In addition to Bacharach, we headed over to Annweiler and checked out an amazing castle called Burg Trifels. This was a first for me and this castle was really awe inspiring. Unfortunately my camera crapped out so hopefully James (a great photographer BTW) has some good pix. After hiking down from Burg Trifels, I got a quick shot of the guy off to the right who was playing his little music box with a crank of the handle. It was raining when I took the shot so that is why he is under his lift gate. Nothing spectacular...just a cute slice-of-life experience.

We also hit up Speyer which is home to the famous "technical museum". Since their loss in WWII, the Germans are not big on war museums to nobody's surprise. Instead, they focus on things like technical museums and put all of the cool military hardware on display to show off the engineering aspect of the stuff. For my friend James, who is a pilot and an all out airplane junkie, this was right up his alley. His enthusiasm for the exhibits was infectious.

Speaking of visitors, my brother Daniel and his family are due in tomorrow. It's Daniel's first time to mainland Europe and Mandi's first time as well. We're really excited to have them out.