This is the main gate where all the prisoners entered the camp.
We spent about an 1:30 there and by then both Sean and Amber were extremely whiny so we started to head back home. The drive home was horrible. It took us 10 hours to get home! The traffic was horrible. It should have been 7:45.
Jacob and Amber sleeping on the food bag!
Then Jason's car started acting up. It could go fast ok, but when we had to stop at almost every big city for the merging and leaving traffic it was about a 20 min. delay each time and Jason's car didn't like it. It was making a funny noise and then the RPMs would shoot way up and then sometimes it would just die. So we got over to the far right lane amongst all the traffic and were able to pull off and it died again. Here if you get out of the car on the road/highway you need to be wearing a yellow vest. So we opened his vest and he put it on to go see if he could see anything under the hood. The dashboard is all electronic and it didn't say anything was wrong. So he went to check the oil. When he gets back in the car I asked so what did he see. He said that he couldn't find the oil! Ha, too funny, these cars are so electronically built we can't even figure them out! So we sat for a bit and waited to see if that would help the car. It started back up but still kept doing it. But as we got further down south in Germany the traffic lightened up and we didn't need to slow down as much so the car was able to make it home! We got home around 9:30pm. Everyone was pretty tired. Good news was the tick leg fell out of Jacob's skin around his ear! It is probably in my food bag now!
Monday morning the cab picked Jason up at 4:45am for him to head to Brazil and then he didn't get there until 9:30 pm our time! The kids all slept in until I had to wake them up. Amber had show and tell, and x and y day and then I was reading this morning. So a lot of do since we got in later last night!
Jason's car didn't get picked up by the garage until around 11:45 but I don't think it had any tickets on it. I was on the phone with a friend when the guy came. He first drove it around. I look out the window and he goes cruising backwards up the street in reverse! He is lucky he didn't hit anyone! After he drove it around for about 5 min. he put it on the tow truck and away they went. We will see if they find anything wrong.
I did the usually Monday stuff, grocery store, exercise, laundry, kitchen cleanup. After school Amber and Sean had friends come over. The weather here has regressed and today was raining on and off and in the 50's.
Tuesday I moved my French to Thursday and went to the Dr. this morning. I did tell my French teacher I don't know if I will continue. It always seems like something else comes up for the day and time I normally have the class. With summer coming soon I wasn't going to do it over summer anyway.
So I went to the Dr. b/c I seemed to have developed a rash and I am really itching just on my head and face. He didn't see anything. He said he thinks it was allergy related or something I ate or touched in Berlin. So I got some corticosteroid to see if that helps.
I met 2 friends for lunch at the healthy little lunch restaurant. Today the special was a chicken spinach salad. It had a good mango type dressing on it. Then back to some things at home and off to school. Sean had math and Jacob played in the library with a friend on the computer. Amber and I had her friend with us and they watched a movie. When that ended we raced home and ate dinner and then back to school for Jacob's band concert tonight. It was the band and choir. They did a good job!
Things moving along with the basement at home. They have the walls painted and the trim back on.
Wednesday Amber went to the theatre for a little production. They didn't need volunteers so I didn't go but they took a bus over the the theatre by school and saw a show where they didn't talk it was just motions. She seemed to enjoy it.
Then she went home with her friend for lunch and back for ballet. The boys had RE and then after that we waited about 20 min. for one of Jacob's friends to finish his German class. On Wednesdays kids that can speak another language, "the home language", can take it after school if it is offered. So he is half German so he takes German. So once he finished he came over for a playdate.
Thursday I had finally rescheduled my French for today. I don't think I have had it in like 5-6 weeks, the last 3 weeks something had come up and I had to cancel. She was 15 min. late and didn't even call. When she got here I told her I could only do 45 min. b/c I had plans, but since she was 15 min. late that gave us 30 min! At the end of class I told her I was done for this school year with it. I have other things that I want to do with my time and the kids have field trips and things coming up, we have family coming and then summer. So we will see if I go back to it in the fall.
So once she left I quickly ate my sandwich and met my friend at school so we could drive to France to go to the big sporting good store there and we needed all the time we could get. It is a lot cheaper there.
I went with her and her GPS avoided toll roads b/c that is what we had set it on last week to get home and avoid all the traffic, well now it was taking us through all these small towns, so it was about 45 min. to get out there! Of course we didn't realize what it was doing until we were already headed into the first little town.
I wanted to pick up Amber a scooter, and get Jacob some more things for his Swiss trip. So we got what we needed and then went back to school.
Sean had bball and then the neighbor girl brought him home and Jacob had track, so Amber wanted a friend over. She asked one of her boy friends from class. She talks about him all the time. They were so cute. They were holding hands walking out of school. I tried to take a picture but of course I was carrying too many things and by the time I got the camera ready they ran apart. They were kind of funny playing. He has never been over before and they sounded like an old married couple arguing about which way to play with what they had chosen to do, so funny!!
Later went back to school for Jacob and to drop off Amber's friend. For dinner I decided to do pancakes and fruit slushes. The kids weren't thrilled with breakfast for dinner, but since Jason was gone it sometimes is just easier to cook easier things. They all ended up enjoying it. We ran back to school for guitar, only for the guy not to show up. I emailed him but never heard back tonight so not sure what happened?
Friday, I believe it has now been raining, cold and cloudy since Sunday! And it is suppose to stay like this until Wed.! Crazy weather here!
I had coffee at school with friends this morning. Then ran to the Woman's club for groceries with friends. Did tennis. Then right before I was leaving for school pickup Jason arrived back from Brazil. His car still isn't ready, and the secretary can't seem to get an answer from the garage as what is wrong with the car. They did the yearly or whatever checkup but that is all we know- ugh! So Jason took a cab from the airport.
After school Sean went home with a friend, and I drove Jacob and a friend to a party at Lazer tag. Went home for a bit and then Amber stayed with Jason while I went back to the party to pick up Jacob and Sean's friend brother was at the party too so the dad just brought back Sean to the party and I picked him up there too. Perfect! There was a dry patch of no rain before dinner so Jason quickly mowed the lawn. He couldn't believe how tall everything was and how wet everything was.
After dinner we had to drive to Jason's office to pick up a car for him until his is done. They didn't have any 7 seaters available so he had to just take a 4 door sedan, but still BMW. But it won't be very fun to travel with this weekend.
Saturday we left for Heidelberg for the weekend since Monday was a holiday here. We left around 9am and it took about 2 1/2 hours to get there. We took the company car so the kids weren't happy about all being stuck in the one backseat together but at least it wasn't 10 hours like last weekend! So this is a cute little town that wasn't destroyed by any of the World Wars. When we got to the hotel we parked in their lot, which here in Europe you always have to pay for but it is always worth it! I tried to check in but it was of course to early. I got a map and the guy at the front desk pointed me in the right direction. The hotel is in a great location since we can walk to everything. It is also along the river so has great views. We walked over to the street he recommended.
This street is considered the "old town" and it was packed with people. Today here it was a beautiful day and sunny, so loving it! So many stores, cafes and restaurants here. Even Build A Bear! At 1.6 kilometers it is Europe's largest pedestrian only street, at a little over a mile. So we walked it all and then back at the end of the day! We stopped and ate at Subway- not very European I know! Along the way we stopped in 2 churches. The 2nd church we saw we climbed tons of small stairs and went to the top of the tower and saw over the town.
At the end of the street we turned and went towards the cable car building. Here we took a cable car up the mountain. The 1st stop was the castle, we skipped this for now. So the second stop you have to get off and change cable cars to get to the top of the mountain. The 1st cable car was going up a 30% incline- pretty steep. The next cable car we got on was an old wooden one that creaked as it went up and it was one of the oldest cable railways. It was a longer ride and it went up a 40% incline at the end. This cable car just kind of inched up the railway.
The 1st cable car was newer and speedy. Once at the top we had a great view over the city.
It was a lot cooler at the top with nice fresh air. It was very peaceful. We all split this cookie ball thing we had bought on that street. We came across this store that had these big balls- softball size. I should have taken a picture of them. We choose the cinnamon sugar one for purposes of being less messy then the chocolate ones. They also had some where they had a filling in the middle. These cookies are like pieces of pastry dough cut into pieces and then all stuck together in a ball. They were ok. Kind of dry. From here we took all the cable cars back down to the castle stop.
The castle is still up in the mountains. About 1/2 of it is in ruins now. It is a big castle, but you can only get inside when you book a tour and we didn't do that, so we just walked all around the outside and inside the courtyard area.
Part of the castle was open to see the Pharmacy Museum which is in there. That was interesting to see how they did medicine back then.
Another part of the castle we could visit was the wine cellar and bar/snack area. Here is also where the largest wine barrel in the world is! This first picture isn't it.
Here you climb up the stairs to walk on top of it and around it!
Next to the castle is its garden.
We sat here for awhile in the sun resting. The boys climbing the trees. Then we took the cable car back down and walked over to their famous bridge, Alte Brucke.
It was built in the late 1700's and the towers even have dungeons in them. It has been rebuilt 9 times! We walked across it. It is not for cars. This is a picture of the castle that we had just seen.
Now we had pretty much seen everything in town so on that main street we had walked earlier we saw Hard Rock Cafe. So we walked there for dinner.
When we walked in it looked more like a sports bar. And once the big soccer game ended most people left and the place was pretty dead. The menu was not the normal "Hard Rock" menu and everything was much cheaper. We couldn't believe this was a Hard Rock. Not sure what happened here. So I ordered the chicken cesar wrap. The menu had foods written in English and then translated the descriptions into German and English. Sean and Amber had chicken nuggets, Jason and Jacob had chicken wings. Their food was all ok. When my food came I called the waitress back over and told her this isn't a chicken cesar wrap and this is not what it said on the menu. She tells me, "Oh yeah the menu isn't translated right" Ok, maybe that would have been helpful to know when I ordered it b/c I was clearly only reading the English one and we were speaking English with her. Ugh! It was 3 flour tortillas rolled up with a chicken stew inside them. It was gross. And then there was a regular salad on the side of the plate. So I ate the salad and then some of Amber's dinner. We were all disappointed with the food. After dinner, we just walked back towards the hotel, back down the pedestrian street. We picked up some ice cream, of course. I found this Christmas store that I like that I have seen in other cities. It has all sorts of nutcrackers and Christmas decorations. So I went shopping!
Further down the street there was a band playing English songs so Jason got a drink and we listened to them for a little bit. By the time we got back to the hotel it was after 7pm and we had walked up and back down that mile street so everyone was pretty tired. Amber and Sean had whinnied on and off all day. I told them this was our last trip this school year so just enjoy it!
Views from our hotel.
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