Konstanz Cathedral and Mainau Island

When we woke up the next morning, the weather didn't look very promising. This is how the sky looked at 7:54 AM.

After a quick breakfast at a coffee shop, we returned to the Konstanz Cathedral. The current building is the result of construction from around the 10th Century through the 19th, so it is comprised of a number of architectural styles including Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and neoclassical.

The weather was becoming more and more dreary, but we gamely headed on to our main destination of the day - Mainau Island - one of places Jeanette enjoyed most during her high school trip. The park is full of fountains and floral displays and we had a lot of fun playing around with our cameras and taking pictures. Jeanette deserves credit for some of the pictures below.

Apprently, we had arrived at the park just in time to see those floral displays. They were being dismantled for the winter right before our eyes.

There is a small area with some goats and rabbits and the somewhat strange looking creature in front of the red wall. The goat below was outside his pen, and he looked like he was desparately trying to figure out how to get back inside.

I loved this giant head carved from a tree trunk.

As I said, we took many, many pictures.

After having way too much fun experimenting with our cameras, we continued on to the castle where Count Lennart Bernadott brought his wife Karin Nisswandt in 1932. The Count had been the heir to the Swedish throne, but Karin was a commoner so when they married, he was no longer entitled to become king. One of the previous owners of the island, Duke Friedrich of Baden, had established the beginnings of a botanical garden, but over the years, the vegetation had gone wild. Count Bernadott set to work improving the park and eventually, in 1974, the family created a foundation to preserve the island and opened it to the public.

There is also a wonderful butterfly house on the island. Approximately 80 species of butterfies from all over the world exist in this building at any one time. It was extremely humid in the building, so our camera lenses kept fogging up, but we managed to get a couple of good pictures.