Traveling with the Bastians!

Thursday, March 28, 2013

I will never forget the day that we officially heard the tickets were purchased! Tracy and I determined not to share with the boys about the possibility of cousins visiting over Easter until it was a done deal. That was a hard secret to keep. We told them while on our ski trip in January with the response being much hootin' and hollerin'! We finally had to ask Noah to stop saying, "I just can't believe it. I'm just so excited. I just can't believe it. I'm just so excited..." It was well over 50 times in the span of a few hours.

Scott, Jill, Nick, Andy and James arrived in Frankfurt early on the 28th of the month. We rented a car and met them at the airport where they also rented a car. After waking a couple sleeping kids and catching up in the airport for a bit, we set off for the south of Germany. Sort of. It took us far too long to locate each other outside of the airport, which is the largest in Europe. It should be easier than it seems to find a meeting spot but it wasn't. What a tense time that was! Especially when our vehicle got stuck behind a non-moving bus for over ten minutes. This is not what you want to do your first hours in Europe!

Our plan was to make it to The Black Forest on Thursday as we were spending the night in Rust, Germany, which is just on the border of France and Germany. Little did the kids know that Rust is the home to Europa-Park, a major theme park for Europe. They still don't know. 

Desiring to see as much as we could in the three days of having vehicles, I planned far more than humanly possible for us to see. The only problem is that I didn't plan what to do once we got there. So our first stop was Strasbourg, France. I am thankful that we crossed the Rhine River into France just to see the city, but we didn't really get out of the cars. Let's just say that it is hard to follow each other through a city when you don't really know where you are going. And let's just say that we went down the wrong way on a couple streets or turned into lanes that had oncoming traffic or some such thing. Memories that might not need to be remembered! All of this while my brother and his family were experiencing some tough jet lag. We were all ready to get out of Strasbourg and into a much safer driving situation....so back over the Rhine we went! The city did seem like a neat place though should we ever return.

All of these photos are taken from the passenger seat while Tracy was
driving so not very good but at least they capture a few memories for us.

It was different just seeing buildings that didn't have the red tile roofs.

A poor photo but we wanted to remember the stone balconies.

From Strasbourg, we headed towards Rust as we knew the Bastian crew might be getting tired and ready to stop for the night. Prior to reaching Rust, we did meander along the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse - a road leading through the Black Forest. Absolutely beautiful drive! We ended up at Mummelsee, a small lake high in the mountains. My original thought was that this would be a good hiking area. Well...when it is still winter up in the mountains, it doesn't make for great birding or hiking. But the boys sure enjoyed the enormous mound of plowed snow on which to play. Snowballs were flying. Bottoms became sleds. They were content. I'll have to get some of Jill's photos from Mummelsee and add them as I didn't have my camera out at this point. It was crazy experiencing the difference of spring hitting the lowlands and yet a short climb later, winter was still in full swing in the mountains.

Our hostess at Pension Chloe was so surprised that we weren't going to the theme park the next day that she didn't charge the tourist tax for our stay. I guess there aren't many other reasons to visit Rust! It is so close to the Black Forest though that there must be other visitors like us. She also recommended a fantastic restaurant for the evening. I stopped in to the restaurant to get reservations and found out the wait would be an hour. Perfect. Wanting to make use of all daylight hours, we found a spot for Uncle Scott to go birding a bit before dinner.

Nick, Andy, Joel and Micah - the smiles say it all!

We traveled on a bike path just outside of town to reach this spot near the
woods. I would imagine that anyone driving by wondered at us! No one
dares to take a vehicle down a bike path....except those going birding.

~ Ochsen Restaurant ~
This was one of those kinds of places that if there are spots open at a
table, you join whomever is sitting there. Very good food! And always busy.

Because of having such a large group, they offered to stick us in a walled-in
room in the Biergarten. These aren't used this time of year so they turned on
several space heaters to take off the chill. Just about the time we were leaving,
the room was warming up for us. Still, it was delicious food so well worth it.

Every meal was tasty....as we do at every restaurant, we shared
our meals with each other. Jill managed to have about five
salads "shared" with her!

~ Pension Chloe ~
This is the residence of the family running the bed and breakfast. There are a
couple of rooms available in the main house, but we stayed in a house across the
street. Clean rooms, nice breakfast. I was glad that the Bastians got to
experience a typical German breakfast. Nutella all around!

James, Noah and Josiah - of course, the kids wanted to spend the night in
the same rooms so we dragged mattresses to various rooms to make it all
work. When this photo was taken, James was working on so little sleep
that I am surprised his eyes were still open. Adrenaline was running strong
on this day! They all did so great with their jet lag...made us look like
wimps in comparison!