Once we arrived in Vancouver, we had to wait for three hours
in the Vancouver airport. We explored the Vancouver airport which
includes an indoor stream, a huge fish tank stocked with local varieties of fish and a moving walkway. All very interesting to Sabine who hasn't travelled much since we have been home from China.
Our flight to Frankfurt was long but uneventful. We landed pretty much on time, around 1:20PM on
Tuesday which is 4:20AM at home. Needless to say, we were all a bit tired and
very ready to get off of the plane. Anna
says that she is going to stay in Germany so she doesn’t have to endure another
long plane ride.
Getting our rental car sorted out proved to be a real
challenge. First, we followed the signs
for rental cars only to find that the company we had our reservation with wasn’t there and was in
fact, in the other terminal a good 10 minute walk away from where we were. So, tired, hungry and weighted down with all
of our luggage we had to make the trek from the bottom corner of terminal one
to the opposite corner of terminal two.
This required a sky train ride that Sabine enjoyed but that required us
to ditch the luggage cart and wheel/carry all of our stuff onto the train. Once we got off the sky train and down to the
bottom level of terminal two we still couldn’t find the rental car agency. Fortunately, the information desk
pointed us in the right direction and we could finally see the light at the end
of the tunnel. Most literally, since the
Sixt offices glow bright orange. At last we had a car and were on our way. Sabine was most excited to see that it is an Audi. A brand she is familiar with in her current quest to identify every car brand.
Finally, at 3:20PM (2 hours after we had landed) we were on our way to the hotel. In direct contrast to our experience with the
rental car, we found the hotel without a problem, got a place to park easily
and they had our reservation. The hotel
– Hotel am Schloss Garten – is directly across the street from the Schloss
(castle) park. After a rest in the hotel
room to recover from the previous events, we strolled over to the garden
to enjoy the sunny, breezy spring
afternoon. We walked through the garden
to the Rhine and then along the Rhine for a bit. It was very relaxing and pretty.
We then made our way back through the schloss
garden to the SpielPlatz (play ground) to give the girls a chance to get their
wiggles out. There were two huge
playgrounds one designed for smaller children and a second with much larger and
more elaborate climbing structures and obstacle courses. Anna had a great time navigating her way
through everything.
At last, time for dinner.
Our hotel recommended a pizzeria that had excellent food. After dinner, we made our way back to an eis
café (ice cream parlor). Ice cream
desserts in Germany are far more elaborate than anything we have at home. Anna's is called Biene Maya (Maya the Bee) and Sabine's is Mickey Mouse.
Our final stop
of the evening was Rewe (a grocery store) for some important road trip
supplies – gummis, erdnuss flippies (sort of like peanut flavored cheetos),
Kinder chocolate and fizzy water.
We are all exhausted!
Tomorrow we are going to drive up the Rhine from Biebrich (where we are
staying tonight) to Koblenz. The whole route is a
Unesco world heritage sight and is supposed to be beautiful. We will get to see castles, roman
ruins and lots of scenery.
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