Bonus pictures taken by T

This was taken in the toy museum. I wanted it to be a square picture. It's messed up glass. I'm looking at the buildings and the people. It's cool wobbly glass.

I wanted this square, too. I wanted to see the wheel.  I think this is Andy's bike. Andy is my (imaginary) friend.

It is babies standing on a chess board playing chess. The shower is to keep them warm.

These are good robots. They do fighting jobs battling bad guys. The gold one is from Star Wars. The blue one is from the blue planet. The other one comes from alien planet.

The rooster cart is my favorite. Their Easter job is bringing presents to kids. 

I like that picture. I did not know I was taking a picture of myself. I am going to take pictures of myself this way again.

I like flowers. They are reflected from the glass. They were against a window. They were real.

And that's all that I want to say!

Easter in Munich

The Easter Bunny came to our hotel room in Munich. He left an egg and a treat for each of the kids and a note explaining that he'd visit the apartment, too.

S egg hunting.

Easter breakfast

After breakfast we hurried to go to the Deutsches Museum. We wanted to get there as soon after opening as possible so it wouldn't be too crowded. That worked out very well. The museum itself was a bit of a disappointment, though. We expected a lot of interactive science exhibits, which it didn't have. The kids' favorite part of the museum was the Kinderreich section for little kids. It had waterways and pumps, giant legos, musical instruments to play, a firetruck, and the best moon phase exhibit E has ever seen. 

Saturday in Munich

We love seeing markets in different places, so that is where we started Saturday morning. We passed the time looking at the different stands, finding a few fruits we've never seen before (like salak and loquats, which I have heard of but have never seen), and drinking freshly squeezed juice until it was time to go to Marienplatz and see the glockenspiel chime. Twice a day the figures move, dancing and jousting while bells ring. L loved the Glockenspiel. She was "ooohhh"ing the whole time. 

We were cold watching the Glockenspiel, so we decided to go to lunch in a nice warm beerhall. But first we had to split up. The girls and I checked out Dallmayr delicatessen to see the specialty foods. E and the littles searched for diapers. When they finally found a shop (which was surprisingly difficult) as they were leaving an employee went up to them and asked if the kids would like a stuffed dog. The would, and were each given a small stuffed animal. T names his dog Duncan.

We all reached Hofbrauhaus at the same time and were lucky to get a table before the lunch crowd completely filled the place. The kids loved it. The enormous pretzels were a hit, they liked the food, they were fascinated by the size of the beers (S wants a huge beer mug for her root beer floats), and L enjoyed dancing to the oompah band. S noticed that the food was all very salty. I told her that would make people want more beer. She thought that was sneaky, and wondered how anyone would want more than one of the huge beers. Later I was walking with R and she said, "I can understand wanting to drink beer in Munich as sort of a novelty since beer is a German specialty, but why do they want to drink huge jugs of it? A small glass would be better."

Neuschwanstein

Here is the main reason for our weekend trip - Neuschwanstein Castle. This picture was taken from the bridge above the castle. I remembered thinking the bridge was the best part when E and I went almost twenty years ago. E still liked it, and so did the girls, but T and I weren't fans. The floor of the bridge was made of wooden boards that were popping, straining, and creaking. It didn't help that it was very windy, extremely crowded, and T is afraid of heights in general (we are working on that.) It was a beautiful view, though, and I crept out far enough to take the picture. T was brave and went much farther out to pose for pictures with his big sisters and to see the waterfall.

The view from town, and a picture of S and T climbing around the castle.

The tour of the castle itself isn't very long since only a few rooms were ever finished. S was impressed with the grotto and the winding staircase with stars on the ceiling and a dragon under a palm tree at the top. R loved the blue tapestry fabric and the secret door in the bedroom. L liked the castle, too. Whenever we entered another room she would look around and then say, "Ooooooohhh!" At one point there was a great view of the bridge and I pointed it out to T. He said, "That bridge is NOT awesome!"

We were lucky that our timing went as planned. We got there fairly early to avoid the rain which was forecast and it started to rain just as we boarded the bus to the train station. Not long afterwards the rain became snow. The whole weekend was a bit colder than was forecast. It was okay, but I did regret sending my winter coat back to the US with E.

Long weekend

A month or so ago when I started seriously planning a summer trip it became clear that it would be very difficult to include Neuschwanstein castle as we had promised the girls. Since we punted plans of going to Turkey over Easter vacation a small getaway to Munich seemed sort of reasonable. So here we are. It is about a four hour train ride from Zurich. That sounds horrible, and it did seem long, but lots of the places I write about take a while to get to. Luzern and Frick, which we went to last week, are each an hour and a half one-way.

The first thing we did was visit a toy shop near the train station. It seemed to have a bit of everything. The ground floor isn't very big, but the basement is huge. Then, because the weather was so nice, we walked a mile or so through the main tourist drag to our hotel. There were at least a dozen produce stands along the way, all selling nothing but white asparagus and strawberries.

We also passed a bakery selling these adorable Easter petit fours, which we couldn't resist. The yellow ones weren't lemon like we expected. Instead they had a mild alcohol flavor. That made L happy! If you remember my carrot market post, you know that L loves a booze cake!