Vacation to the Black Forest

Vacation! We left on Thursday around 7:30am to go on our 4 day vacation to the Black Forest in Germany with our friends Jannis and Meike and their 4 yr old daughter Zoi. It was a 4 hour drive, mostly uneventful other than the normal crazy Solano interactions. The kids were fascinated by the windmills. Elijah would squeal “Castles!” whenever he saw one popping over the horizon. He’s called windmills “castles” for almost a year now and I don’t know how to fix that. Not that I really want to, because we think it’s funny! Isaac pointed one out that was close to the road and exclaimed “LOOOOK! The windmill is following us!” I forgot a knife to make PB sandwiches, so I had to use a carrot instead…

When we got to the bed and breakfast that our friends had booked, we discovered that it wasn’t quite what we had expected. The website advertised a completely fenced yard, a petting farm, free breakfast… The promised “fenced in yard” was indeed there, but apparently it was only for the hotel owners 5 dogs. It was a farm, but we couldn’t go near the animals. (We found out when we checked out that the bread and jam and coffee breakfast was 5 euros a person, not free.) The house was decorated with creepy porcelain dolls and witches. Weird. The kids got in trouble for playing in the well, we were informed that the water is too cold for them, but I think they didn’t want their beautiful perfect green grass patch to get ruined! We had only been there an hour when the lady yelled at us to watch our kids because one of them had let one of her dogs out. I couldn’t believe it. That set the stage for a slightly uncomfortable stay there…

Our room:

The twins fighting over a flowered bedspread:

There was nothing for the kids to do, no place to really let them play, so pretty much any time we spent at the hotel, Martin and I were getting irritated with the kids who were just acting their age. They were jumping from bed to bed, squealing, fighting… Sigh. Jannis and Meike had brought their big Doberman Aris. They were equally as disappointed and confused about our accommodations, but since we had registered when we came in, they did not think that we would be able to get out of paying for the whole time, even if we left early. Anyway… our kids were going bonkers. We had to get out. So get out, we did.

Isaac and Zoi at the first restaurant we ate at:Jannis and Meike:Elijah eating cucumbers. He loves them.

We went to a lake called the Suchtsee. We walked around for a few hours, it was gorgeous! We found a nice little pizza place and the people there were very nice.

Aziel saying "I don't know":
Isaac posing silly:
Koutras family: The boys throwing rocks: Martin and me: The boys: We went back to the lake on Friday and swam the day away. Just fantastic! The kids had a blast swimming and playing. That made up for the sorry bed and breakfast, haha!

All of us chillin' at the beach:

Eli was so tired that he fell off the bed and didn't even wake up!

On Saturday, we woke up to find that it was pouring rain. We did not want to be stuck at the hotel. There was absolutely nothing to do other than try to get the kids to watch the portable DVD player that we’d brought along. We eventually decided to venture out and find an ATM so we could pay when we checked out the next day. When we got to Todtnau, the closest town with a bank, it wasn’t raining anymore and there was an outdoor market. Aziel making a silly face for me:There was a little waterfall, and we were going to try to hike up to it. Jannis hitched Aris to the stroller and he took off pulling the twins up the hill. It worked really well until we got to a huge flight of stairs. We didn’t make it to the waterfall. Double strollers are tough going up stairs!!!

Next, we went to a huge “slide”. It was built into the side of a mountain. Kind of hard to see but here's the "slide":Reminder here, Martin is scared of heights. Terrified. So he was more than happy to stay down in the van with the twins who were too little to ride, and to watch Sammie and Aris. I managed to talk/bribe Isaac into going with me, even though he was nervous. We had to go on a lift (like a ski lift) to the top of the mountain. Isaac asked why we had to be up so high, he was pretty freaked out! I had him pretend we were birds flying and he and I flapped our way by the trees on up the hill. Then we got to go down this gigantic slide on a sled type thing. It was almost like a single car roller coaster. Really fun!!! Isaac loved it and talked about it for hours.

After that, we took the kids back to the room for naptime. While they were napping, we found out that we could check out early since it was raining and there was nothing to do. We were soooo happy. Haha. Our vacation was cut short and we were all relieved! Funny…

The drive home went pretty well. The twins sang for quite awhile. This is a bit of what we heard:
Elijah: “Whad want?”
Aziel: “Whoa, whoa”
Eli: “OK.”
Together: “Whoa, whoa, whoa you boat zenlee ow nasteeeem. Mewwy, mewwy, mewwy, mewwy. Lime is but a deem. Wok, wok, wok you boat zenlee ow nasteeeem. If you see a cwokadial don agit to scweeem. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!”
Elijah: “Whad want?”
Aziel: “Whoa, whoa”
Eli: “OK. Whoa, whoa, whoa”
Aziel: “NOOOOO!”
Elijah: “Whad want?”
Aziel: “Whoa, whoa”
Eli: “OK. Whoa, whoa, whoa”
Aziel: “NOOOOO!”
Elijah: “Whad want? ABCDEFG?”
And so on it went!

Elijah kept repeating the GPS instructions: “Turn right, mama. Turn right.” He said “mama” a million times on the way home. I think he just wanted to make sure I didn’t forget him!

We also accidently drove through France on our way home. What an adventure! But we made it safely home with a bucketful of memories. I love how Martin put it: If our vacation went perfectly, what stories would we have to tell?