Munich

We left Salzburg on Saturday evening for Munich. All day Sunday we walked around and stopped into a few places. Frauenkirche was our first stop.

I loved these Christmas decorations:

At 11 we watched the Glockenspiel.

Then we headed for the Olympic Park, site of the 1972 Olympic Games.

 I loved the seats in the stadium!

The torch:

Right next to the park is BMW Welt, where we pretended to own expensive cars.

Salzburg, Austria

This past weekend we traveled to Salzburg, Austria and Munich. It was a cold weekend, but thankfully it didn't rain or snow!

First we went on a salt mine tour, which the boys loved. It had slides, a boat ride over a salt lake, and you even got to taste the walls.

 I loved the protective clothing.

This salt mine goes into Germany and back, which led to some conflict over who the mine actually belonged to.

After the salt mine, we went up to the Festung Hohensalzburg, a fortress on top of a hill. The views were amazing!

Noah was manning the cannons, keeping us all safe.

Before we left for our train, we made a quick stop inside the Salzburger Dom, a beautiful cathedral in the middle of town.

First lost tooth!

Noah is so excited that he lost his first tooth here in Heidelberg! He has named the tooth fairy Ms. Sparkles, and is looking forward to seeing what she leaves in his special box.

Missing home

The kids have been doing extremely well adjusting to this adventure, but in the last few weeks Noah has been asking when we will be going back to our house, asking where his things are, and missing his old school. Benjamin hasn't been as vocal about missing things, but we are pretty sure he is feeling the same way. If you want to send them a little note from home, they would definitely love it!

Our address is: The Lucas family, Pepperdine University, Graimbergweg 10, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany 

For fun, we did some crafting the other day - Turkeys for Thanksgiving!

Noah's:

Benjamin's:

St. Martin's Day

Last evening we got to join with Noah's school to celebrate St. Martin's Day. (There is a great paragraph in that link when you click on Germany to see what the tradition is for this country.) Noah and his classmates made lanterns at school and there was a schoolwide procession with the lanterns and the kids sang songs ("This Little Light of Mine," "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," "Ich geh mit meiner Laterne," and a few others) and we had some snacks.

Berlin {part 2}

On Friday, we enjoyed the Aquarium and Zoo (after we had Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast!). Noah really loved the aquarium. And the donuts.

He really likes the seahorses, and instructed them to "Smile for the picture!" It cracked me up!

Being rhinoceroses. Obviously.

While the kids played at the zoo playground with daddy, I got a couple of hours to go through the Museum for Photography, featuring photographs by Helmut Newton (beware, not kid appropriate. he liked nudes, apparently.).

Then we went to Checkpoint Charlie.

 On Saturday, we went to the Berlin Wall Memorial.

And finished our trip with the Berlinerdom.

The Berlin train station was basically a huge mall with trains running through it. We had a little compartment all to ourselves on the train ride back, and it was so relaxing. It was a great trip! I feel like we could spend many more days there enjoying more museums!