Always wanting to take advantage of our long weekends, we planned a trip to Erding (just outside of Munich) over Martin Luther King weekend -- thank goodness for government holidays! Why Erding, you ask? Aside from having a very quaint downtown, it's also the home to
Therme Erding, a huge indoor water park/spa, where we spent a very relaxing Saturday.
Unfortunately, in a lack of forward thinking, the long weekend fell in the middle of Ellie's first two weeks of school which meant we had to be back in town by Sunday evening so Ellie could go to school the following day. On the bright side, she did not have school on Friday (and Brian didn't have work), so we were able to take advantage of that and head out of town Friday morning. We stopped in Ulm on the way where we saw the Ulm Münster, a church noteworthy for having the tallest steeple in the world!
On a whim we decided to take the challenge and climb all 768 steps to the top -- with a three-year-old in tow.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, but this was how Ellie made her way to the top 60% of the time -- Brian is my hero.
About halfway up!
There was no shortage of sights to see as we made our ascent.
This was the final spiral stair case to the top viewing deck. They just don't make them like they used to -- such beautiful, symmetrical architecture.
We made it!
The view from 469 feet was pretty spectacular but still too cloudy to see all the way to the Alps, which I read you are able to see on a clear day.
The descent was a little hairy and even I had a few shaky moments of vertigo on the way down. Ellie rode on Brian's shoulders but it still didn't prevent her having several freak-out moments. I tried to distract her by telling her to look outside, to which she replied, "But the problem is I can't look outside because I'm looking down!"
We sang several rounds of her favorite song from Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood in an attempt to keep Ellie from covering Brian's eyes with her hands the entire time. After recovering from our downward spiral (hahaha) and having built up an appetite, we found a cute German restaurant to have lunch.
It was delicious! On our way back to the car, our ever-observant daughter found this painted on someone's house.
As we drove in the steady rain to Erding, something miraculous happened.
We checked into our hotel and upon arriving in our room, Ellie immediately hoarded the little bags of gummi bears that had been left on each of our pillows. Speaking of pillows, I discovered that I must travel with my own pillow whenever possible (our hotel's were flat as a pancake!). The windows in our room had low sills perfect for a little girl to sit and watch the world go by.
The view from the skylight above Ellie's window. Very cool until we found out the church bells ring on the hour until 10 o'clock at night and pick up again at 7 the next morning.
Talking walk-in shower at its literal meaning.
Exploring Erding.
We found a Mexican restaurant through Trip Advisor that had decent enough reviews for us to try it out. It must have been sheer desperation that led us there, but we found out that Mexican food in Germany is a term used
very loosely. Absent were the complimentary chips and salsa and instead sweet
Asian chili sauce was served with one of our appetizers. Ellie wasn't very discriminatory but it didn't quite do it for Brian and I and made me long for the plethora of delicious Mexican restaurants in Tucson. Ellie was a fan of the desert decor which reminded us all of Arizona -- as we were waiting for our food, she kept asking me to draw her a cactus.
The next morning we hit up Therme Erding! I didn't take our camera to the Therme for obvious reasons but we all had a ball. Brian and I took turns riding the big water slides and Ellie surprised us both by enthusiastically riding the kid-sized slides by the end of the day.
Sunday morning we drove down to Tegernsee, a lake town 12 miles north of the Austrian border. I love how almost all the houses in the area are painted with some sort of pastoral scene.
We had hoped to go sledding from the top of the mountain Baumgartenschneid. Unfortunately, Bavaria has been experiencing the same mild winter that we have in Stuttgart and while there was snow on the top, the sled runs were closed at the time. We still enjoyed the gondola ride and all the surrounding views from the top.
It was at the point when this picture was taken, while watching Ellie run around on the slippery snow, that I started having this irrational thought that she was going to slip and somehow fall down the mountain side. She did not.
On a completely random note, I saw this door on the way out of town and decided I must have one just like it.
