Hohenurach

Britni and I decided to take a Sunday trip to the little Swabian town of Bad Urach, which was having a city-wide festival/market today, to get apples to make some apple pie. We went and explored the town for a bit and then spotted these old castle ruins on top of a hill outside the town. We hiked up to the top of it and discovered that there was this huge old ruined castle complex that anyone can just run around in and explore. The castle itself is called Hohenurach and was originally built in the 11th century, but has been in ruins since the townspeople destroyed it in the late 1700s (it was a prison at that point). Anyway, it was really really cool to explore.

After that, we hiked a little further to a GIGANTIC WATERFALL in the middle of the forest. It was incredible, and incredibly difficult for me to make the decision to blip the castle instead of the waterfall. A stream basically launched off this giant cliff onto a bed of mossy rocks below, and rolled down the moss-covered hill for a few hundred meters in a bunch of little rivulets before meeting up again and continuing into the valley.

Through all of our exploring we still hadn't bought any apples, and we were getting tired and not looking forward to going all the way back to town to find them. As luck would have it, on the way back towards the train station we walked by a farmer's stand with a bunch of apples.

It started to rain a little and we walked pretty quickly to the train station. The sun broke through the clouds, though, and I said "after all this it would be awesome to get a rainbow." A few minutes later the rainbow materialized right in front of us. The train ride home was full of beautiful skies and dramatic lighting.

Once we got home we baked the apple pie and ate it while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.

best Sunday ever.