The morning we left Heidelberg, we traveled to Opel Zoo in a little town called Kronberg Im Taunus. We had heard great things about this zoo, and even though we had already visited the zoo in Frankfurt, my audience members love their animals! So we went to see another zoo, and we were not disappointed.
This zoo is incredible! It's built on a hill, so there is a LOT of walking involved which actually comes close to hiking, but the place is so beautifully designed you don't even notice until the end of the day when you realize how tired you are. The zoo also operates on a mixed habitat principle, so the animals are mixed in together instead of separated by species and surrounded by fences covered in natural plants with often just a few points for the viewer to see the animals clearly, so it feels a lot wilder than most other zoos. J even got stuck by a thorn trying to squeeze in to get a closer look at the leopards! They also sell bags of carrots at the entrance and you are encouraged to feed all the animals. The kids and the animals love it!
I enjoyed the diversity of animals and the chances to get very, very close to them, but the highlight for the kids was definitely the giant playground we discovered in the middle of the zoo. Somehow the English version of the website never even mentioned this part of the place and yet it turned out to be the kids' favorite part. The playground was filled with tall slides, giant ropes-course like climbing nets, all sorts of unique merry-go-round-esque rides, a huge ball pit, trampolines, and, best of all, a zip line just the right size for the boys. Check out the wild pictures below! It was just as dangerous as it seems; actually, the whole place was on the verge of being on a banned list in the States, but in Germany the kids were whooping it up unsupervised. There were all kinds of school groups who arrived when we did and swarmed the place like locusts, but they were mostly gone by the time we got there so the boys had the run of the place. They would have spent the entire day there if we had let them. (Did I mention that many of these school groups came from a music school and would spontaneously burst into song accompanied by teachers on guitars throughout the day? Very surreal!) Conveniently, the playground was also situated in between three food places, so we had a lunch of bratwurst, rindwurst, and bockwurst mit brotchen und pommes, all sorts of sausages with bread and fries, our favorite meal on our unofficial pork tour of Germany. We passed up the German specialty, a waldmeister flavored slushy, though we did have that at our last zoo in Frankfurt, where we discovered that the uber-sweet "wild flower" flavor is beloved in Germany. Who knew? At Opel Zoo, we loved the food, the animals, the rides, the whole day. I highly, highly recommend that everyone who is in the area go visit Opel Zoo; you will NOT be sorry!
That afternoon we went to the LDS temple in Friedrichsberg, the real purpose of our visit to Germany. We stayed in the temple guest house, which was right on the temple grounds, and we were joined by a lot of other folks from our ward here in Doha. We were meeting for our ward temple trip, and we had to go all the way to Germany to do it, but it meant we had this whole fun trip AND we got to the temple at the same time! The rooms were simple but comfortable and very inexpensive since we were responsible for cleaning the room when we left, which we did. And the boys had bunk beds again, which they loved. That evening we went out for breakfast groceries again and ate dinner at a local pizza place. Such good pizza and pasta and such happy cooks and proprietors, it was like something out of an Italian sit-com...set in Germany! We went to bed early and got up ready to attend the temple. The boys stayed at the guest house with some of the teenage daughters of the other ward members who graciously consented to watch them while we went into the temple. In the afternoon, the husband went back to the temple and I played games with the boys. We walked around the town later, ending up at a mall where we bought lots of shoes. The shoe shopping situation here in Qatar is, in the words of one of our friends from here who was also shopping for her daughters there, very "dire," particularly for kids' shoes and women's shoes for feet bigger than a size 6. I was very happy in the shoe store! And we got the kids some pool toys, which are also few and far between in the desert. Later that evening, we all walked a very, VERY long way to a very good restaurant for dinner, Stadt Berlin. We had lots of meat, turkey, pork, beef, you name it, and potato pancakes with applesauce and german potato salad and apple strudel with ice cream. There were many people at dinner and service was a little slow, so I wasn't looking forward to the long walk back home late at night with two very tired boys but as we left, J said "That was fun! I hope I always remember this dinner!" and then he literally skipped most of the way home, though that was probably largely to keep up with how fast I was walking!
The next day we flew home. We had trouble returning the rental car because we missed the entrance to the garage, but we had left ourselves plenty of time, so even with the rental car snafu, we had time to play at the space-themed play area in Terminal 2 before heading to our gate. Once again, very easy flight. The seats were divided up in threes so the husband ended up sitting with the boys and I was by myself across the aisle. Again, I got to see some new movies pretty much uninterrupted...still so shocking to me!
The boys were NOT happy when they had to get up for school the next day, so my lesson learned here is build in days after vacation to recover from vacation instead of leaving days between when school lets out and vacation begins, as I did this time. To make up for the cruel reentry into life in Qatar, I took them to a play place at a mall after school (because it's now really, REALLY hot here, the weather took a turn for the worse while we were walking around in the cool German villages) and we ate some gourmet popcorn. And vacation is officially over and officially a great success! Huzzah!
This zoo is incredible! It's built on a hill, so there is a LOT of walking involved which actually comes close to hiking, but the place is so beautifully designed you don't even notice until the end of the day when you realize how tired you are. The zoo also operates on a mixed habitat principle, so the animals are mixed in together instead of separated by species and surrounded by fences covered in natural plants with often just a few points for the viewer to see the animals clearly, so it feels a lot wilder than most other zoos. J even got stuck by a thorn trying to squeeze in to get a closer look at the leopards! They also sell bags of carrots at the entrance and you are encouraged to feed all the animals. The kids and the animals love it!
I enjoyed the diversity of animals and the chances to get very, very close to them, but the highlight for the kids was definitely the giant playground we discovered in the middle of the zoo. Somehow the English version of the website never even mentioned this part of the place and yet it turned out to be the kids' favorite part. The playground was filled with tall slides, giant ropes-course like climbing nets, all sorts of unique merry-go-round-esque rides, a huge ball pit, trampolines, and, best of all, a zip line just the right size for the boys. Check out the wild pictures below! It was just as dangerous as it seems; actually, the whole place was on the verge of being on a banned list in the States, but in Germany the kids were whooping it up unsupervised. There were all kinds of school groups who arrived when we did and swarmed the place like locusts, but they were mostly gone by the time we got there so the boys had the run of the place. They would have spent the entire day there if we had let them. (Did I mention that many of these school groups came from a music school and would spontaneously burst into song accompanied by teachers on guitars throughout the day? Very surreal!) Conveniently, the playground was also situated in between three food places, so we had a lunch of bratwurst, rindwurst, and bockwurst mit brotchen und pommes, all sorts of sausages with bread and fries, our favorite meal on our unofficial pork tour of Germany. We passed up the German specialty, a waldmeister flavored slushy, though we did have that at our last zoo in Frankfurt, where we discovered that the uber-sweet "wild flower" flavor is beloved in Germany. Who knew? At Opel Zoo, we loved the food, the animals, the rides, the whole day. I highly, highly recommend that everyone who is in the area go visit Opel Zoo; you will NOT be sorry!
That afternoon we went to the LDS temple in Friedrichsberg, the real purpose of our visit to Germany. We stayed in the temple guest house, which was right on the temple grounds, and we were joined by a lot of other folks from our ward here in Doha. We were meeting for our ward temple trip, and we had to go all the way to Germany to do it, but it meant we had this whole fun trip AND we got to the temple at the same time! The rooms were simple but comfortable and very inexpensive since we were responsible for cleaning the room when we left, which we did. And the boys had bunk beds again, which they loved. That evening we went out for breakfast groceries again and ate dinner at a local pizza place. Such good pizza and pasta and such happy cooks and proprietors, it was like something out of an Italian sit-com...set in Germany! We went to bed early and got up ready to attend the temple. The boys stayed at the guest house with some of the teenage daughters of the other ward members who graciously consented to watch them while we went into the temple. In the afternoon, the husband went back to the temple and I played games with the boys. We walked around the town later, ending up at a mall where we bought lots of shoes. The shoe shopping situation here in Qatar is, in the words of one of our friends from here who was also shopping for her daughters there, very "dire," particularly for kids' shoes and women's shoes for feet bigger than a size 6. I was very happy in the shoe store! And we got the kids some pool toys, which are also few and far between in the desert. Later that evening, we all walked a very, VERY long way to a very good restaurant for dinner, Stadt Berlin. We had lots of meat, turkey, pork, beef, you name it, and potato pancakes with applesauce and german potato salad and apple strudel with ice cream. There were many people at dinner and service was a little slow, so I wasn't looking forward to the long walk back home late at night with two very tired boys but as we left, J said "That was fun! I hope I always remember this dinner!" and then he literally skipped most of the way home, though that was probably largely to keep up with how fast I was walking!
The next day we flew home. We had trouble returning the rental car because we missed the entrance to the garage, but we had left ourselves plenty of time, so even with the rental car snafu, we had time to play at the space-themed play area in Terminal 2 before heading to our gate. Once again, very easy flight. The seats were divided up in threes so the husband ended up sitting with the boys and I was by myself across the aisle. Again, I got to see some new movies pretty much uninterrupted...still so shocking to me!
The boys were NOT happy when they had to get up for school the next day, so my lesson learned here is build in days after vacation to recover from vacation instead of leaving days between when school lets out and vacation begins, as I did this time. To make up for the cruel reentry into life in Qatar, I took them to a play place at a mall after school (because it's now really, REALLY hot here, the weather took a turn for the worse while we were walking around in the cool German villages) and we ate some gourmet popcorn. And vacation is officially over and officially a great success! Huzzah!
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