When I first arrived to Frankfurt, I was greeted by our friend Erin who picked me up and drove me to her house in Sembach for a day of napping (since Chad was still on mission) and then she took me out to dinner at a cute German restaurant called Alt Landstuhl. I had a delicious steak there with roasted potatoes and a yummy salad. Then, we were off to the base where hubby was soon-to-be waiting for me. We pulled up right about the time his crew arrived in their silly blue van. After big hugs and unloading my luggage, we headed up to the room and I was given a tour of the bedroom and the base. :) The boys (and me) all went into town to eat around midnight at a place called New York's Doner Kebaps...it was a little place where they shave the meat right off of this huge slab that is hanging on a rod under a heat lamp. And by shaving, I mean with a meat razor. It was one of the weirdest things I've seen, but they all said they were delicious. Had I not been so full from my dinner, I would have tried one too.
The next day was pretty slow-moving. We had decided we would take the day to catch up on some sleep and to start planning some trips. With Erin's help, we ended up spending a day in Frankfurt at the Palmengarten botanical gardens. This place was HUGE! There was no way, even if we had all day, that we could have seen everything there was to see in this place. It was acres and acres of beautiful plants, water, ducklings, flowers, and fountains. We ate lunch & had a dessert at a sweet little restaurant within the park and continued our walk through the jungly parts. We found a cute pond that rented out row boats and decided we had to take advantage of them, so we rowed around for about 30 minutes, dipping and dodging all of the other crazy and untrained rowers. It was therapeutic and stressful at the same time. Turns out I'm a good rower, but we probably already all knew that ;). We got back in the car to drive home right as the rain started coming down. It was a lot of fun & a beautiful day. Here is a silly video of prego doing her 'row thang' :).
We are obviously not professional videographers, but you get what you get. :) And my gum chewing is sooo extremely annoying, I apologize. I think I will work on that from now on. Ha.
The next day we decided to catch a train to a little town about 2 hours away called Heidelberg. Chad had been there before with his crew for a day and saw how many shops and fun things they had to do there, so we knew it would be a good time for wifey. One thing that caught me a little offguard there was that you have to pay 50 Euro cents to use their bathrooms in most public places...like in the train station, for example. It would be so funny because I would walk away from Chad to go in and then come right back out because I didn't have any coin money in my pockets, haha. He'd have to give me some and then I'd have to go in for round 2. I guess they do that to keep hobo's out and the place clean. It was rather annoying though.
We spent the whole day walking through this cute little town and finally came upon their downtown area known as Alstadt. We grabbed some lunch at a super cute little bistro in the center of the shops and then continued on to enjoy some browsing and a little bit of buying. We later came upon a beautiful cathedral that was right in the middle of a courtyard nearby, took some pictures, & got a Starbucks. Ha. Then, we came upon the Schloss Castle up on the hill. Being that my feet were already on fire from walking so much, I didn't have it in me to make the uphill hike to see the castle up close, so we took pictures from afar. That was good enough for me at that point. :) We ended up stopping by to admire a pretty river and a few waterfront properties before getting back on the train to go home.
In the middle of our journey home, Chad freaked out all of a sudden and quickly realized that both of us were without his iPhone. HOLY CRAP. Talk about putting a damper on the day. We couldn't find it anywhere and the last place we remembered having it was at the Starbucks where he was checking the stocks. So many things ran through our minds about where it might be, who it might end up with, and how we were never going to see it again. FRUSTRATING!!! But, a short couple days later we got a call from a German guy who had found it and Chad & him worked everything out to get it back to us. Thankfully, that gentleman and his brother were very upstanding citizens and honest individuals. It makes you realize there really are some pretty great and caring people out there. We (especially Chad) were so happy about how it all worked out. It might have helped touch their softy bone that Chad had Kenady's ultrasound picture as his background on the phone, haha. But, whatever works! Either way, a reward was given and all parties were left happy. :)
If you haven't seen them yet, here is a link to our pictures that we posted of Germany on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2041191&id=54100340&l=456ea56e16
That's all I have for the Germany part pretty much. Left to come...our journey through France to Paris and through Switzerland to Lucerne & Interlauken. It was all so beautiful.
1 comment:
It's been eight years since I was an exchange student in Germany, but I still remember the döner. It really is good; I hope you had the chance to have some later during your trip!
Paying for a bathroom was pretty inconvenient. Sometimes if I was lucky someone would be coming out of a stall and would hold the door open for me so I wouldn't have to dig for change. :)
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