This trip to Germany was brought to you by the letter ß and made possible entirely by the income Rachel has earned by watching kids each day. So thank you, dear, for taking us to Germany, for paying for our flights there, for getting us an all-you-can-use rail pass, for buying us so much delicious food, and for visits to so many memorable sites while we were there. Thanks also for spending so many days' nap time finding the best places to visit and planning the whole trip! You are a gem.
He also got to ride in a KD boat on the Rhine...
...with a playground on top!
That didn't stop him from treating the inside like a playground, too.
He rode a a cable car over the river from Koblenz to Ehrenbreitstein Fortress.
And he rode a funicular down from Schloss Heidelberg...
Going on a trip like this is an adventure for a three-year-old boy perhaps for no reason more than the number of interesting vehicles he gets to ride and see. Within the first 24 hours of our departure from home, Elliott took a taxi, a bus, a plane, a train, and a trolley, and saw more single-purpose vehicles at the airport (trucks with stairs on their backs, baggage trains, portable conveyor belts, plane pullers) than you can shake a stick at. He thought all of this was very cool.
...but not before riding in his stroller all the way up the hard way (this was one bit of our trip where our research missed one particularly valuable bit of information--the existence of the funicular).
For your benefit (and for my own satisfaction), I have created a map that will allow you to follow the route we took from our hotel to push the kids up the mountain to the palace so that you can appreciate just how grueling a climb it was. Okay, and so Rachel can roll her eyes again at how much I complained about it. :)
Pushing the stroller was a central theme of our trip to Germany, because we only used trains, feet, and a boat to travel once we arrived there. For all the schnitzel and bratwurst we ate, we probably worked it off and then some just by pushing our two kids and our backpacks around on the stroller the entire time.
We were determined not to have this trip be one where we had a thousand things we just HAD TO SEE, when we knew we'd only get frustrated when something inevitably went wrong with a packed to-do list. Having two children under the age of four in Doha teaches one this lesson very quickly. So instead, we decided that we'd be prepared with a list of plenty of things we could see if we had the energy and if they happened to be convenient, as well as anything that looked interesting along the way, with just two or three things in each city that we really wanted to see. That way, whatever we saw besides those two or three things would just be icing on the cake. And we ended up with a lot of icing!
I would like to state for the record that I love Germany's public transportation system. To live in Europe with such easy access to a comprehensive, extensive, and inexpensive rail system would be a dream. America, I'm sure I'm not the first to say it, but can we get our act together and get a cheaper and more effective public transportation system in place, please? And Qatar... I still hold out hope for you, too. Maybe by 2022's World Cup, eh?
The train stations also generally had luggage lockers, which was nice because it let us explore at stops along the way without having to check into a hotel or something first. The only time it caused a problem was when I didn't realize it charged again after the first 24 hours. So one night in Mainz, I walked all the way from our room by the river to the train station (about 25 minutes) to pick up our luggage only to get there and realize I needed 5.50 euros in coins to even get the key to turn since it had been there more than 24 hours already. I seriously considered pretending to be a busker outside the station just to earn the money, but I decided walking back to pick up the money would be more practical and likely to result in me going to bed some time soon. So back I went through historic Mainz, got the change, came back AGAIN to the station, picked up the luggage, and dragged it back AGAIN through historic Mainz to the room we were staying at. This wouldn't have been so bad if not for all the historic cobblestones which resulted in the outer layer of our luggage's (which we borrowed from my mom) little plastic wheels completely disintegrating into bits. Don't worry, Mom. We'll replace it.
I would like to state for the record that I love Germany's public transportation system. To live in Europe with such easy access to a comprehensive, extensive, and inexpensive rail system would be a dream. America, I'm sure I'm not the first to say it, but can we get our act together and get a cheaper and more effective public transportation system in place, please? And Qatar... I still hold out hope for you, too. Maybe by 2022's World Cup, eh?
The train stations also generally had luggage lockers, which was nice because it let us explore at stops along the way without having to check into a hotel or something first. The only time it caused a problem was when I didn't realize it charged again after the first 24 hours. So one night in Mainz, I walked all the way from our room by the river to the train station (about 25 minutes) to pick up our luggage only to get there and realize I needed 5.50 euros in coins to even get the key to turn since it had been there more than 24 hours already. I seriously considered pretending to be a busker outside the station just to earn the money, but I decided walking back to pick up the money would be more practical and likely to result in me going to bed some time soon. So back I went through historic Mainz, got the change, came back AGAIN to the station, picked up the luggage, and dragged it back AGAIN through historic Mainz to the room we were staying at. This wouldn't have been so bad if not for all the historic cobblestones which resulted in the outer layer of our luggage's (which we borrowed from my mom) little plastic wheels completely disintegrating into bits. Don't worry, Mom. We'll replace it.
This concludes my first post. They will be thematic rather than chronological, so you can look forward to posts about food, hotels, museums, castles, churches, things that surprised me about Germany, and probably a miscellaneous photo dump for whatever else I feel like mentioning. Auf wiedersehen!
2 comments:
The luggage is now yours to keep. We are determined to wear out our own as well. That is what luggage is for. Rather pointless to leave it on the shelf filled with old blankets. . . .
You are making my mouth water! I think you two had a full experience of a little bit of everything.
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