Spring Vacation

We knew we wanted to take the kids somewhere fun during spring vacation, so several months ago we asked them to choose between the Playmobil Funpark in Nürnberg, Germany and Legoland near Ulm.  We had been to Playmobilland, as we call it, many time, and had never been to Legoland.  They hemmed and hawed for a while, and finally decided to try out Legoland.

Chris only wanted to be gone one night, so we drove up the first day, and hung out in Ulm and spent the night there.  Then spent the next full day at Legoland and came home that same night.  Fortunately it’s only about 3 hours away, so this was a very relaxing trip, despite the shortness.

I was excited to see Ulm, since I had heard so much about it while on my mission, but never got to serve there.  It did not disappoint.  We found our hotel first, right downtown, and dropped off our bags.  Then we went out on foot to explore the city.  First stop was the cathedral.It was all of about 4 minutes from our hotel, and very easy to find due to this giant tower looming over everything.  I am lucky that my kids are very respectful in other churches, and very rarely have to ask them to whisper or anything.  This place was no exception.  Whew!  They genuinely enjoyed looking at all the carvings and interesting things hanging on the walls.  For example, we had fun trying to figure out what these things were. We all agreed they were beautiful, though.  And then there was more modern stuff like this.I liked the look of the candle sticks in the sand.  And the mosaic in the cross was amazing.

After we had seen all there was to see inside, we decided to take it up a step, or several hundred.  For 20 Euro our family could have the pleasure of walking up all the steps to the top of the church steeple.  Chris went into it knowing he would most likely end up carrying Alexandra part of the way, but she ended up walking the whole way by herself.  Pretty impressive for a 4 year old!

This was at the second highest point, about 600 steps up.  Sophie and Nicholas have a hard time with heights, and wanted to stop a few times on the way up, but they finally made it.  They did not, however, want to enjoy the view. 🙂

These three, however, thought it was pretty fun to run around on a cathedral roof.  Don’t worry, there were protective barriers on all sides.  Noah, Sarah, Chris and I decided to continue on the last 113 steps to the very top.   But as the tower gets taller, it also gets narrower.  Which makes the steps small and VERY windy.  Like vertigo inducing, total dizzy spell windy.  After just a short bit, Noah decided he had had enough and headed back down to wait with the others at our resting spot.

I almost turned back myself at one point.  I was just so dizzy from the constant turning, turning, turning.  But if Sarah was going to make it to the top, so was I, darn it!  It was also creepy because there were all these filigree cutouts in the stonework, so I couldn’t rest my hand on the side on those spots to give me some sort of stability. 

Chris took this about halfway up, looking down on the children waiting for us.  They are so small!  We are up so high!  (Yes, my children may have inherited their height issues from me.  I will admit it.)  See what I mean by all those open windows?  shudder  We didn’t stay too long up at the top.  It was small and crowded and we wanted to get back to the other kids.  But here is one of the pics Chris took.  That red gabled roof in the lower left hand corner is the roof of the cathedral!  The people in the square are just tiny black dots. Crazy.

The kids quickly discovered that going down is just as hard as going up.  Their legs were getting all jittery and shaky, so we let them sit down and take a rest for a bit.  I was glad I had thought to bring water along!  Here is the sign out front with the official stats.Pretty cool for Sarah to be able to say she climbed to the top of the highest church steeple in the world!

As a reward for walking all those steps by herself, and not killing his back, Chris let Lexi choose one of the giant postcards in the gift shop.

Afterwards we wandered around the old part of the city, just seeing what there was to see. And there was plenty.  Like this gorgeous building with the art on the outside, rather than the inside.

We also stopped to get a drink of water, European style. 🙂

Then we ran into a wall.  A really old city wall, that is,complete with a cool lookout tower.

Eventually we found ourselves on the river, which was beautiful looking but a bit smelly.  That didn’t seem to deter the throngs of teenagers hanging out there, though.  We walked along the river path for a bit and then crossed a bridge over another second smaller river to get back into downtown.  There were these bird statutes all over the whole city. And the girls made a new friend. This dog belonged to the owner of the nearby restaurant and was obviously used to random strangers walking by and petting it.  The girls didn’t want to stop!

Seriously such a charming old city.  Chris and I decided it would be fun to come back just the two of us one day.  And do some more exploring and sightseeing.

Maybe we even could stay in this famous inn. Or maybe not!  I would be too afraid of falling out of bed and into the river.

One of the things I miss most in Switzerland is the ice cream stands that are everywhere in Germany in the summer.  And they are all so cheap.  Still just one Euro a scoop, although back in the day it was one German Mark a scoop. 🙂

After delicious pizza for dinner, it was time for bed, so we could get up nice and early for Legoland!