Germany: Day 6 and 7- Top of treetops and flying home

Day 6:  We decided to make our last day something more exciting for the kids.  We drove to the forest near Dahn and took the kids to a biosphere that had a treetop path about 1 1/2 hour drive.

On the way:

We were worried about it being open because of the rain and clouds.  This is the town where the treetop path was.  A cute place. 

And, our trusty navigation system.  It helped us soooo much!  And it made mistakes, but we were smart enough to avoid the mistakes it made.  BTW, our car only took diesel fuel, weird and Denver wanted me to say somewhere on the blog that he got up to 200km/hour or 120 mph on the autobahn. 

We went to the building to see if it was closed.

A picture in front of the dinosaur.

Cool metal people riding bikes

A view from the inside of the building.  beautiful!

We went inside and found out the treetop path was closed.  We were so bummed.  All that driving for nothing!  So we went into the town to find some bread to buy.  We heard the bread was really good in Germany.  We went to a bread shop first and the man recommended a certain kind of bread.  It was good, very similar to the bread here.   We then went to the grocery store in town and looked for some sweet breads.  We bought nougats which were delicious!  I don't know where the picture went or if we even took a picture of it.  It had a peanut butter/nutella type cream in the middle.  It looked horrible (Sterling innocently said he didn't want any because it looked like poop and it did!), but it was sooooo yummy.  He even tried it after we all raved about it and liked it.

The sun was out by then so we thought we'd drive back to the treetops and see if it was open now.  It was!  Here's a picture of try #2 in the sun with the dinosaur.

Heading to the path.

This was harder than it looked.  Maybe just because I'm pregnant and my balance is off.  These round circles move like crazy!  It took Sterling a long time to get across with Dad's help.

We were pretty high up.

At one lookout point.  I'm sure in the summer it would be beautiful.  Some of the trees were barely getting their green buds.

Looking down.

This round lookout could rock back and forth if you shook it.  It seemed really unstable. 

The bottom of the slide.  The slide was closed all day because of the rain.  The worker did a test run with a bag of something that was supposed to be the weight of the child.  It went down too fast so it wasn't safe enough for the the kids.  Only kids 6 and up could go down the slide when it was open.

We were a little bummed it was closed, but better to be safe.

After the treetops, we went into the museum and the kids got to do hands on things to learn about nature and bugs and trees and our environment.

Oops, out of order.

The drive back.

For dinner we went to this restaurant in Ramstein village.

We were the only ones there, which is nice because we didn't have to worry about the kids being too loud. 

Denver and I both ordered the special:  Bratwurst and sourkraut with mashed potatoes.  

Sterling and Cole were very happy with their nachos (nacho cheese flavored cheese sprinkled with mozarella) and Maelie and Garrett got BLT's. 

After dinner we went to get spaghetti eis, a dessert the Kartchners told us to try in the village.

It was a crowded place with lots of American military families (many still in their ABU's-that's how we could tell).  Spaghetti Eis was good.  It was custard made to look like spaghetti noodles, topped with a strawberry sauce-looked like Spaghetti sauce and then sprinkled with 'parmesan cheese' aka candy bits.  It was delicious and would be a hit in the states! 

We got home and packed up and relaxed in our room until bedtime.

Day 7:  We got up really early to get to the terminal on time.  It's always a little scary to wait and see if you're on the plane or not because it is based on space availability.  With this rotator, there is usually no problem because it's not a nice commercial plane like Italy and no one is usually going to the Azores to stop.  They usually go on to the states, but this Germany rotator only goes to the Azores and back.  We got on no problem, but quite a few people (around 15) didn't have a 'seat'.  It all got worked out and everyone got on the plane fine.  The flight home was around 6 1/2 hours.  We were all tired and ready to be home.  It was nice to arrive at the Azores and have our car waiting for us in the terminal parking and to get 2 hours back.  We had a relaxing Friday evening and still had Saturday to recover and rest before Sunday.  We had a great trip and made many memories.  I only wish the 2 younger ones would remember it, but they probably won't.  We'll just have to go again when they're older :)!