Thursday morning, we took it easy and let the kids sleep in a bit. Jet lag wasn't horrible, but it wasn't exactly a picnic either. After everyone woke up and changed, we headed to their village bakery for second breakfast and then prepared to depart on our adventure with only our backpacks.
 |
| Dom's first pretzel...of several on this trip |
Not only had my friend put us up for the first two nights, gave me the
Deutsch Bahn App (I love that app!) and day trip suggestions, and spotted us 30 Euro for
the taxi from the Air Base...she also recommended booking.com as a place
to find sleeping arrangements. This site offered a great selection and
best of all many had free cancellations up to a couple of days ahead of
arrival. Perfect for Space A travelers! I luckily even found a place
to stay for two nights in Kaiserlautern after we arrived.
 |
| All of our luggage, we left behind a duffle bag with air mattresses in case we got a cargo plane...we didn't |
|
|
|
|
|
The apartment I booked was about a kilometer from the train station. John was the only one that truly questioned why we were walking so far. I was impressed with how few complaints I heard from everyone else. And that was how it went for the entirety of our trip. They just walked where we told them to walk. That said, I did recognize one can only push a jetlagged 5 year old so far (not to mention a couple 30+ year olds...), and I figured out that we could use that handy DB app (I love that app!) to also use the local buses. Guess who had a bus stop right next to their apartment? That's right: US!!
And we used the bus to go to
Gartenschau Kaiserlautern. We missed our stop, but it was just a short walk back from the next one. And it was well worth the price of admission for three hours. And we didn't even get to over half the garden. If we go back, we will make this more of a priority rather than just something to do on a day we had no other plans.
When we were in the rough stages of planning (so like up to the Saturday before we flew), we tossed around ideas to go to Paris or Cologne. Luckily, the lego display had both the Notre Dame (pre-fire) and the Cologne Cathedral on display: Check and Check!
Will, Molly, and John could have spent at least an hour just looking at all of the displays, but we had heard there were dinosaurs and a neat park, so we moved them along.
And spent a couple of hours with dinosaurs and a neat park.
At one point, Eric attempted to get the kids to have a snack before playing...yeah right. It even started to rain, but that didn't thwart them. Luckily, the only rain we encountered on this trip did not last long and the kids were hardly wet even though they stayed out in it. I got cold, but that was the worst of the situation.
And then the sun returned and we grab dinner at the nearby Bier Garden. The kids watched me drink a second beer in two days. Dom commented this was the most beer he had seen me consume...an observation Molly and Will would also make in the coming days. For the record, it was nearly exclusively Radlers which are half beer and half lemonade. They taste particularly good on hot summer days.
The kids had a great time at this park. Even made some German friends. John was particularly excited to introduce me to someone he met, even chasing them down so he could point them out to me. We also attempted taking a jumping picture several times as our time grew short.
As we left the park, I realized how little of it we actually saw, but what we saw was wonderful. We didn't even mind that we missed our bus and walked a mile back to the apartment. Well...John might have minded, but he only mentioned it about 100 times, so that hardly counts.
Upon our return, we plugged in the Amazon Firestick, the kids watched some sort of documentary about the Planet, and we all retired for the night. Successful day Number 3!
Bis Bald!
No comments:
Post a Comment