On our second full day in Germany, we took a cruise up the Rhine River from a point on the river just west of Wiesbaden upstream to St. Goar. After a few false starts at a station that wasn't actually operating for the season yet, we made our way to another station and a different cruise line and got underway. It was a lovely day, a little chilly in the morning, pleasant in the afternoon, and we all thoroughly enjoyed our relaxing time on the water. Along the way, we say multiple castles and several monuments, as well as a few historically significant buildings and then we had (and underwhelming) lunch in St. Goar before taking the boat back down stream. The boat explained the sites we were seeing in 6 languages so we didn't miss a beat. We all stayed up on the open top deck but we could have eaten downstairs in the fully equipped dining room and there was always someone around offering us drinks if we wanted them. We brought our own snacks, of course, and the boys had fun running around the deck, searching for the castles, and playing with the faux helm.
The cruise was longish, about 5 hours up and back, plus the drive to the station and back to our hotel, so we arrived back home in the late afternoon. We had thought about going somewhere else when we got back but the boys were pretty tired and didn't even want to go out to get dinner, so we ate cheese and bread and snacks at the hotel room instead. Still, it was a great day, as you can see!
The next day was full as well. We began at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History, which was so much fun! They have a huge dinosaur fossil collection as well as giant displays of stuffed animals, some of which we had never seen before. There is also a working volcano display and a really great exhibit on the Grube Messel fossil site in Germany, a UNESCO world natural heritage site which has yielded a ton of interesting information about the past. The boys were in heaven with the dinosaurs and all the animals, running from one display to the next, yelling out "Look, it's a moa!" or "Mom, did you see the different kinds of kiwis?" They had a great time!
After a great lunch at a nearby mall's food court (sometimes you just have to use a food court, right?) where the boys had fun looking at all the mechanical Easter scenes featuring moving bunnies and simulated brooks, we headed to the Museum for Communication, which was a revelation! This pedestrian-sounding museum chronicles the history of communication in Germany, including everything from cuneiform and semaphores to the postal service, telephones, television, and the internet and all of the displays are fun and interesting, but the star in this museum's crown is the second floor kids' workshop. You get an hour at a time in a huge space with craft stations set up all over the place. The kids got to make sculpture out of old telephone pieces, learn about print making and the printing press, write and send letters to each other through a pneumatic tube or an electric wire delivery system across the room, you name it, they did it! They absolutely loved their hour and would have spent several more hours there if we had had the time or energy. There was also great interactive temporary exhibits upstairs about sound (fun microphones that changed the quality of your voice and individual reclining cubbies with videos about music and tonality) and beauty (lots of Barbie dolls and displays about ideal beauty characteristics and body image). This museum has a sense of humor about itself (notice the sheep!) and it was so much fun for adults and kids. I would go back in a heartbeat, and the boys are still talking about it a week later!
That day was my birthday and for dinner we had AMAZING soup outside at a famous soup place in downtown Frankfurt (three kinds: pea with ham, chili, and potato, all delicious. E ate almost his entire huge bowl of pea soup and J even polished off half a bowl of chili, amazingly!) and finished the day off with three kids of cake from a nearby bakery (strawberry, chocolate banana cream, and cherry strudel). YUM! Happy Birthday to me!
The cruise was longish, about 5 hours up and back, plus the drive to the station and back to our hotel, so we arrived back home in the late afternoon. We had thought about going somewhere else when we got back but the boys were pretty tired and didn't even want to go out to get dinner, so we ate cheese and bread and snacks at the hotel room instead. Still, it was a great day, as you can see!
The next day was full as well. We began at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History, which was so much fun! They have a huge dinosaur fossil collection as well as giant displays of stuffed animals, some of which we had never seen before. There is also a working volcano display and a really great exhibit on the Grube Messel fossil site in Germany, a UNESCO world natural heritage site which has yielded a ton of interesting information about the past. The boys were in heaven with the dinosaurs and all the animals, running from one display to the next, yelling out "Look, it's a moa!" or "Mom, did you see the different kinds of kiwis?" They had a great time!
After a great lunch at a nearby mall's food court (sometimes you just have to use a food court, right?) where the boys had fun looking at all the mechanical Easter scenes featuring moving bunnies and simulated brooks, we headed to the Museum for Communication, which was a revelation! This pedestrian-sounding museum chronicles the history of communication in Germany, including everything from cuneiform and semaphores to the postal service, telephones, television, and the internet and all of the displays are fun and interesting, but the star in this museum's crown is the second floor kids' workshop. You get an hour at a time in a huge space with craft stations set up all over the place. The kids got to make sculpture out of old telephone pieces, learn about print making and the printing press, write and send letters to each other through a pneumatic tube or an electric wire delivery system across the room, you name it, they did it! They absolutely loved their hour and would have spent several more hours there if we had had the time or energy. There was also great interactive temporary exhibits upstairs about sound (fun microphones that changed the quality of your voice and individual reclining cubbies with videos about music and tonality) and beauty (lots of Barbie dolls and displays about ideal beauty characteristics and body image). This museum has a sense of humor about itself (notice the sheep!) and it was so much fun for adults and kids. I would go back in a heartbeat, and the boys are still talking about it a week later!
That day was my birthday and for dinner we had AMAZING soup outside at a famous soup place in downtown Frankfurt (three kinds: pea with ham, chili, and potato, all delicious. E ate almost his entire huge bowl of pea soup and J even polished off half a bowl of chili, amazingly!) and finished the day off with three kids of cake from a nearby bakery (strawberry, chocolate banana cream, and cherry strudel). YUM! Happy Birthday to me!
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