Worms, & Heidelberg, Germany

Another stop in our quest to see the world, one country at a time...  the day after Christmas, we boarded a flight for Germany, and as flights go, it was pretty awesome.  We were in the back third of the plane, which was almost empty, so Finley got her own seat, and the whole side of the plane was empty, so the kids could get up and down and look out the window and wander the aisle a little.  Also, defying many other illogical things about this country in which we live, their airline does one thing we love - when they see we are flying with a baby, they automatically seat us in the row with the baby bassinet - no extra charge, no "first come first served", just done without us even having to ask.  Brilliant.  So, on to the actual trip - everything fit in the back of the rental car, all our luggage arrived safely, and we were on our way to Worms, the home (?, birthplace maybe) of Martin Luther.  Nate just finished studying about him with his classes, so he wanted to make a quick stop to pay his respects. 

The kids loved the puddles, and I loved their matching track suits:)  For the most part, they were really good sports about bundling up, but I realized what a pain it is - we couldn't get Fin's car seat buckled with her puffy coat, so it had to come off and on all the time, and Will didn't really like wearing gloves, but overall, they were good sports and didn't complain about the cold like I did.  We may have to live in a relatively warm climate forever...

Next stop, Heidelberg, and its ancient castle.  It was a good trip down memory lane for me - I stopped there when I accompanied a group of high school students after my 2nd year of teaching.  My memories were pretty vague, some rain, ruins, and an enormous wine barrel... We didn't have the rain, the ruins were pretty much the same, and the wine barrel was still there, and still enormous!

Finley loves to run, and the bumpy cobblestones, and hills on the grounds were making me so nervous - I kept visualizing another split open eyebrow, but she survived pretty well, although I had to restrain her forcibly a couple of times, with which she was not pleased. 

I wish I had access to my photos from my first trip - I staged this picture of Nate and the kids standing just where I did 15 years ago - yikes, that's a long time ago!

I'm not quite sure what to call this thing, but it looked like a really old fashioned telephone, and when you pulled the chain at the bottom, a bell rang, and a raccoon tail popped out of the box.  Will could have stayed there all day - he thought it was hilarious. 

Will has a couple of favorite fairy tales - the Three Little Pigs is one, so any door becomes one of the Pig's doors, and we have to play the wolf, and go through the whole "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down" scene.  Good times.  2nd favorite is Goldilocks and the Three Bears - we don't eat oatmeal at our house anymore, it's always porridge:)

We found a cute restaurant not far away from our hotel in Heidelberg, and a sweet parking spot, and we at there three times - and got the same spot each time.  Luckily the waitresses were different each time, but we did see some of the same regulars both times we ate breakfast there...  Day 2 of Heidelberg - the zoo...  we got there kind of late, so missed some of the animals as they had been put to bed for the night, but we saw enough to get an animal fix for Will, and their gift shop had some taxidermied life size things, so that was cool.  One of the big reasons we chose Germany was to give Will a chance to play in the snow, but unfortunately the temperature never dropped quite low enough for the rain to make the change - we were all disappointed, but unwilling to drive the extra 2 hours south we would have had to go to find the white stuff.  So we made do with a zoo, and cold weather - and a little ice one morning that Nate discovered for us and saved the rest of us from injury...