Tuesday, May 20, 2008

9 years and counting...

Karl and I were married on 18 May 1999...9 years ago Sunday!

We had a weekend-long celebration full of surprises for me!

Karl planned a weekend for us and didn't tell me a thing about it. He told me to pack an overnight bag, put me in the car and drove us not too far away to Baden-Baden, checked us into a pretty hotel, and handed me tickets to the horse races!!

So we spent Saturday at the track and had so much fun! I was one of those girls who grew up in love with horses...and I never got over it. I was giddy with excitement every time the horses rushed past us as we stood on the track rail!





It happened to be the first race day of the season and they had this bag-pipe band playing between races:






One of the last races of the day was a jumping race that had a thrilling moment: on the last jump, one of the horses fell, throwing it's jockey who, luckily, rolled clear of the other horses still jumping over the fence. Horse and jockey were unharmed...here's the jockey after the race strolling down the track to collect his rider-less horse:


That night we strolled around the beautiful streets of Baden-Baden and ate an Italian dinner outside along the sidewalk. The next day we drove up the mountains overlooking Baden-Baden and visited the old castle we could just see from our hotel window. We've seen and done a lot in Baden-Baden, but we've never visited the old castle ruin that overlooks the city. And we were actually quite surprised at how big and complete the ruins are!

Most castle ruins around the area are not much more than a few broken walls and an empty tower or two. But the old Baden-Baden ruin is complete enough that you could actually imagine the spacious halls, catch glimpes of disappearing staircases, see where the old fireplaces once kept the stone rooms warm. The ruin was one staircase after another going up towers, into large halls, into dark underground storage...it was huge! And beautiful!








A glimpse of Baden-Baden below the ruins:







It was such a fun weekend...Karl did good! Only proving again that I sure did the right thing in marrying him!

5 comments:

Rachel said...

I would love to see that castle! And the horse jumping, too!

Rachel said...

I tagged you, if you're interested in playing!
http://cornflowerbluestudio.blogspot.com/2008/05
/tagged.html

Livy said...

Castle ruins! How romantic. I'm so envious :)

Katie said...

Oh man, you may be envious of the baked goods, but what I wouldn't give to be someplace green like that beautiful castle. That's really some stunning photography also. :-)

(Getting to know fellow Market Tote Swappers :-) )

woolladyfelter said...

Wow that looks so cool! My husband and I honeymooned in Scotland and it was great running thru the ruins.

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