I occasionally get complacent in communicating with friends and family. To battle this, and for giggles when I am old, I am blogging the goings on of my life. Share, comment, enjoy.
The majority of our trip we stayed in bigger cities where once we arrived we would just walk through it sight seeing. However, there were some attractions that we really wanted to see and fit in either on special day trips or along the way between our bigger destinations. Quick hits on each of our favorite side trips.
Bonn
A quick train ride from Cologne is Bonn, the former Capital City of West Germany. From a young age I was always fascinated by "why Bonn" was the Capital and the city has always stuck out to me as a place I wanted to visit. Once Sophia learned that it was the birthplace of Beethoven she was all in. She has a love for Beethoven that Chrissy and myself have never fully understood. She is like a version of Schroeder from Peanuts.
Turns out Beethoven and classical music is everywhere in Bonn. Sophia loved it.
Beethoven's House
Plenty of street music
Often our city explorations end up at playgrounds
Altenahr Summer Toboggan
We took a quick pit stop between Cologne and Trier to speed down a summer sledding hill. You get on your sled at the bottom of the hill and the sled is then pulled up 200 metres up the hill on a cable system. Once you reach the top, gravity pulls you down with the curves and a brake mechanism keeping you on the track. It was so much fun. I wish these were more common. I could envision this being a great addition to the Edmonton river valley parks.
A friendly goat came by to see what we were upto
Nürburg Castle
Technically the first castle that the girls toured was the Nürburg Castle ruins that we passed by a few times while witin the Eifel area. Nürburg is most famous today for its race track, the Nürburgring, which Chrissy and myself were mostly familiar with through Top Gear. The sounds of cars racing was always present. From the higher points of the castle ruins you had a great view of the beautiful countryside and parts of the grandstand and track with cars whizzing by.
We knew Sophia shouldn't be climbing walls but it was her first castle and she wanted to be a lion so we just went with it
Cochem
From my only other previous trip to Germany I remembered that Cochem was a gorgeous little town and I knew that it had to be on our to do list for this trip. Situated right along the Moselle river this small town with a castle overlooking quaint buildings and shops did not disappoint.
Eltz Castle (German: Burg Eltz) is a medieval castle nestled in the hills built strategically along the lower Eltz River, serving as a Moselle River tributary. It is still owned by a branch of House of Eltz who have lived there since the 12th century (35 generations). Eltz Castle is one of the few Rhenish castles never to be destroyed surviving many conflicts and wars, including the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century and the bombings of the Second World War. It has been preserved through the continuous efforts of the Eltz family and has been open to the public since the mid-19th century.
As we visited during shoulder season the Castle was not open for tours but you could walk up to it from the parking lot either along the tour rode or the forest path. We chose the forest path not knowing that it was slippery from all the rain and followed a circuitous route winding down the valley near steep slopes.
Although the walk was beautiful it was a bit trying with the kids slipping around. Eventually the whining started to pick up and us parents were at a breaking point. Chrissy and I started discussing alternatives and we came around a corner when Chrissy remarked "Holy Shit It's Right There". It was stunning and the kids immediately were back on good behavior with the site of the fairy-tale castle.
Chrissy loves Indiana Jones. So it became a must do for us to go visit Bürresheim Castle near Mayen. The castle's exteriors stood in for "Schloss Brunwald" in Austria in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), where Indiana Jones' father was being held captive by the Nazis. Our drive to the castle was memorable for two reasons. 1) The beautiful colors and picturesque landscapes 2) Josie got carsick and puked in the back seat of the rental car. Poor girl.
After a quick cleanup of the car and a wardrobe change (draping herself in her mothers scarf) we were ready for our tour of the castle. Unfortunately no pictures inside but a very cool experience.
Frankfurt
Our trip to Germany started with an arrival at the Frankfurt airport and then a train ride to Cologne without actually entering into the City. Our return trip to Canada was also out of Frankfurt and we arrived a couple of days early to tour around Germany's most modern city.
Car dropped off at the central station. Time for a beer!
After checking into our hotel we decided we wanted to head over to the EXPERIMINTA ScienceCenter. We got into the taxi out front our hotel and when we told him where we wanted to go he told us "No". He wasn't being rude though, it was a just a 3 minute walk from our hotel. That saved us a few Euros and we thanked him profusely. After our short walk we arrived and the kids had a great couple of hours.
We started our last day of our vacation at Frankfurt Zoo. Highlights were definitely the tiger, many African birds, the giant seal lion tank and the penguins who put on a show just for us.
Photobomb
The Römerberg, one of the main squares in Frankfurt was setting up for the Christmas Markets to start at the end of the week. It was bittersweet to see the setup knowing that we would miss it as we left the next day but still cool to see what it would look like. A highlight was they had a stall setup for mulled wine already so we imbibed and grabbed a couple of mugs to take home.
A pop-up book fair break in the Romerberg
As the sun started to set we spotted some lights that looked like a market on the other side of the river so we crossed over for some warm cider (Frankfurt is famous for its cider). The views of the city off the bridges was beautiful and a seemingly fitting transition from the more 'traditional' architecture we had seen over the last couple of weeks as we head back to Canada.
Back to the Romerberg and a pub for our last schnitzel and beer. For our schnitzel we added in the famous Frankfurt Green Sauce made of seven different kinds of herbs: borage, chervil, cress, parsley, salad burnet, sorrel and chives. Chrissy helped me finish my beer.
The next morning we were off back to Canada.
There were some challenges but Chrissy and myself were very happy with how the girls handled themselves. Home now for a number of months we have noticed that the girls will bring in their experiences in Germany into their play or drawings. They tell us now how much they enjoyed the trip and how they want to go back to Germany and do more traveling. That to us is a sign of a successful adventure.
My wife, Chrissy, travels for work. She usually travels with a colleague or on her own and I stay home with the kids. However, for a conference to Cologne Germany in November we decided that we would leverage her work covered airfare and hotel to do a family trip.
We had a lot of hesitations. Our girls don't like to eat anything, they fight us on leaving the house and then often when at a destination fight us not to leave. Plus, sleep is always a challenge. Some palpable parent dread...but what the hell, you only live once.
We committed ourselves to going hoping that it would be a great learning experience for the kids and to help me fight off my own mid-life crisis of being too comfortable.
The kids got only maybe an hour or two of sleep on the airplane but they did remarkably well for the flight to Frankfurt and then the train to Cologne. Certainly off to a good start.
Highlights from our time in Cologne below:
Cologne Cathedral
I have read about and seen pictures of the Cathedral for years but was still immensely impressed by the structure.
It is Germany's most visited landmark, attracting an average of 20,000 people a day.
One time tallest building in the world
Today at 157 m (515 ft), the cathedral is the tallest twin-spired church in the world, the second tallest church in Europe and the third tallest church of any kind in the world.
Josie and Sophia had absolute looks of wonder as they got their first glimpse of the building, and I imagine I did too.
Chocolate Museum
On a past work trip Chrissy had visited the Lindt Chocolate Museum and so while she was busy at work she begrudgingly allowed us to visit without her. The place was super cool with a museum on the history of chocolate production, special Lindt exhibits and the ability to tour the working floor of a chocolate producing factory.
The girls especially loved watching the machines work and pressing the buttons to be delivered samples.
Coming out of the museum we immediately jumped onto the Chocolate Express a fun little tourist train / vehicle that takes you on an information packed ride directly between the Cathedral and Chocolate Museum. It's the only way to travel :)
Cologne Carnival / St. Martins Day
In Cologne the Carnival season is declared open at 11 minutes past 11 on the 11th of the 11th month. It is a big party that day and weekend and then the Carnival spirit is then temporarily suspended during the Advent and Christmas period. You may notice the day being November 11th and the time being when a moment of silence is held in our native Canada for Remembrance Day. As a Canadian with German heritage I carry some embedded shame every Remembrance Day so it was surreal to see crazy revelry on what is usually a solemn day. As good tourists we headed out to the main square near the Cathedral to see all the people in costume (that's a thing) and having a good time. Fortuitously we ended up finding a fenced portion of space right in the thick of it to help keep the kids safe and just took it all in. Brass bands leading sing alongs, adults from 16-60 in groups costumes, tons of beer with many willing to share.
I was left conflicted: In many nations of the world people were reflecting on the loss of life through war while an aggressor nation of said wars celebrated having a super fun party.
Of the thousands of people in the square we saw there were only a handful of kids the age of our girls. We recognized it may not be the best place for them so we decided to go visit the zoo.
Cologne Zoo
The Cologne Zoo is the third oldest zoo in Germany it features over 10,000 animals of more than 850 species. It is big and awesome!
Highlights were the cool amount of birds I had never seen before, a massive elephant area with multiple pachyderms, giant apes, hippos, rhino, an anteater (I never saw one before) and some comical baboons who were putting on a show.
The faority for the girls was the giant playground. They deemed it the greatest playground they have ever been in and dubbed it "Uber Park".
At one point Josie got too scared to go across a metal link tunnel. Superhero Sophia came and rescued her and bravely led her across. They then were addicted to going across.
Eventually we just let the kids play and the park and Chrissy and myself just grabbed a coffee and watched the many elephants directly beside the park. Pretty cool.
Other Highlights:
Watching the world go by from the Hotels corner spot (especially the people heading to the main square for Carnival)
Walking along the Rhine daily and spotting parrots in the trees
Wandering the city between playgrounds, and finding some near cool old medieval walls (the girls like to point that I peed on that wall when I couldn't find a washroom)
The girls were a point of fascination for this little German boy who kept trying to talk to them. It was exceedingly cute.
Turkish food -- The largest group of foreign nationals in Cologne are from Turkey. There are many great locations to get Turkish cuisine.
Traditional German food and drink
Pork Knuckle
Schnitzel with a fried egg is apparently the Cologne way to serve
Kölsch beer, the bigger the better
Multiple pretzels a day for the picky eaters
Sightseeing through the Alstadt (Old Town). I happened to really like this photo.
