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Kya Travels
I was feeling quite a bit better this morning, with hardly any pain, so we got ready, had some bread picnic breakfast, then got in the car and drove out to a tiny town near Lüdenscheid called Altena, where they had a castle we were going to check out. We parked the car on this crazy narrow street on a steep hill, then climbed up the hill to the castle. We did a lap of the castle with some pretty great views over the little town, then headed inside the castle walls. When we got to the cashier, we realized we had no cash on us! And Pancho only had €10, where the entry is €5 each! Oops! The girl behind the counter was super nice though, and gave us student prices so we only had to pay €2.50 each! What a legend! All the exhibitions in the castle were numbered, so you only had to follow the numbers to make sure you see everything. The first section was full of old stones and stuff found in the area, some with fossils in them which dated back to around 300-400 million years ago! Crazy! The next room had bones of bears, humans and other animals that had been found in caves in the area. We went into a dining room set up how it would have been when the castle was in operation, and a room that was probably how the houses would have looked, with beds, table, cooking facilities and all that in the one room. When we left this part of the building, Pancho's friend Carina, who we'd met the other night got there, so we went out to meet her, then after a chat, went into the next exhibition. There were rooms dedicated to hunting and weaponry, rooms with ancient maps, family trees, and family shields. One room had old armor that you could put on, so Pancho and I put on a helmet each and had a bit of a sword fight! That was pretty funny! There was a room full of doll houses, which was weird and creepy... Other rooms were filled with old artifacts, and all sorts of remnants from life in the time of the castle. It was pretty cool. After this we went into the courtyard, and the guys had a beer while we sat in the sun, then we left the castle grounds. We said bye to Carina, then jumped in her car for a lift down to ours, then said bye again. We got in the car, then made our way down some crazy skinny scary streets to a town called Herscheid, which is where Pancho grew up, and went to meet his parents, who had just gotten home from a holiday in the north of Germany. We met the crazy dog Powell who never stopped barking, until we'd been there a while and were sitting on the couches and not moving too much! Pancho's parents brought us some tea and cakes and we stayed for a few hours having a good chat with them about everything! Pancho's dad found a box of Pancho's old toy cars, and gave one to Darren for his dad, who was born not too far away, and had once told Darren that he missed his toy car he'd left in the mountains! After a while longer, and many cups of tea, we got up (which set Powell off again!) said thank you and goodbye to Pancho's parents then got back in the car and drove back to Dortmund. We parked the car, then walked into the city to go out for a nice meal together, for our last night here. Nina had already eaten by the time we got home, so we organised to meet her later and went down to a restaurant called Dortmunder Thier. We had a delicious meal there, and the boys got a couple of beers each. I got a samosa salad, and Darren got a steak with prawns, and we were all extremely happy with our food! After dinner, we set off to meet Nina at her house, and I managed to find four more rhinos for some photos, then we stopped at a kiosk before getting to Nina's. We got there and had some beers together for the last time here, then Darren had a play of a guitar and Nina got her cello out and we all started to have a jam together! It was awesome! I don't know why we haven't done this yet?! We recorded a song then were starting to work on another one, when there was a bang on the wall from one of the neighbors... Oops! But we had such a good thing going on with the next song, so we moved into Nina's housemates room which was further from that wall, and jammed on that song until it was good enough to record. By that time it was getting pretty late (and we had to be up at 4am!) so Darren and I said goodnight and walked back home to Pancho's. When we got back, I spent some time transferring a bunch of photos from Pancho's camera to my iPad before we packed up our bags, and got all our things in one place. Then we went to go to bed so we could get about an hour and a half sleep! As soon as I lay down, I realized I hadn't checked in for the flight yet!! If you don't check in 4 hours or more before the flight, you get charged an extra check in fee with Ryanair, so I left Darren to sleep and checked in with an hour or so to spare, then tried to get some sleep! I was really struggling to get to sleep, probably because I knew I had to get up very soon, then finally I think I fell asleep about 5 minutes before the alarm went off!!
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