I would like to apologize for the lack of a second post last week. See, I was kind of busy and didn't get a chance to write much, but it was for a good reason - my grandparents were in town! They took a 3 week long, trans-Atlantic cruise from Florida to Italy, and then came to visit for the week. I was too busy showing them our new home and spending time with them that I forgot to write a blog post for Friday. But don't despair, we got lots of fun in and I even managed to get some pictures. And for I think the first time in the history of this blog, a lot of the pictures in this post are my own! Of course they aren't quite as good as the hubby's are, but I don't think they're too shabby.

So, on to what we did! One night, we took a drive down to Schwetzingen. The weather was absolutely gorgeous last week, so I wanted to take full advantage of it. In Schwetzingen, there is a castle with some lovely, absolutely giant gardens out. The fountains were flowing, the flowers were blooming, and the trees were starting to get their leaves. We wandered around them for a bit, enjoying the warm weather and being outside before ending up at the mosque on the grounds. This was my first time to the gardens and although people talk about them all the time here, I had no idea how large and magnificent they were! The setting sun made for some dramatic lighting and beautiful scenery. We will for sure be taking a return trip there later this summer to explore more of them. 

On Friday, we headed down to Speyer. We used public transit because I thought there was supposed to be a wine festival in front of the Dom there, and we didn't want to have to deal with driving back. But I had misread the dates and it was only Saturday and Sunday, not Friday through Sunday. Alas, the weather was still gorgous and we got to pop into the cathedral for a bit before they closed. We headed to dinner at a traditional German place nearby - Domhof Hausbraueri. If you're in Speyer, looking for good traditional German and Palatinate (the region we live in) food, not to mention some excellent beer, make sure you check them out!

I loved having my grandparents stay with us for the week. It was so nice to see them and spend time with them, and they handled the 3 flights of stairs to our apartment like champs all week! It was really nice to have a visit from home after being here for about 8 months, and it was hard to say good bye to them at the airport yesterday. I hope they enjoyed their time here as much as I enjoyed having them here :)