will WE play in Peoria?

If I never see another sausage or bowl of sauerkraut or giant pretzel or beer again… it won’t be too soon. We got back last night from 10 days in Bavaria. Germany.

We actually really, really enjoyed ourselves. Except for the part at the Porsche Museum where Kaitlyn said she didn’t feel well and we thought she was just bored and then in the car on the way across town to our hotel and the Mercedes Benz Museum she threw up in the car. Guess she wasn’t just bored. Thank goodness that hotel had room service. Even if it wasn’t the best food…. we’d have starved without it. And at least it wasn’t sausage or sauerkraut. There were big pretzels at the breakfast buffet the next morning.

I think my highlight of the trip was the bike tour we took in Munich. It was completely easy, featured an hour in a giant beer garden drinking those huge mugs of beer. (And eating…. you guessed it…. sausages and sauerkraut.) Or maybe it was the royal residence in Munich. There was a stunning collection of jewels. There was also a freakish fountain covered in seashells. Bill liked the room filled with disgusting religious artifacts. I don’t know how well I managed to explain to Kaitlyn the fancy boxes made to hold human bones. And, yes, you could see the bones in most of them.

Kaitlyn’s favorite day had to be Legoland. That place is entirely made for a 6 year old. She could ride everything. And they were twisty-turny enough for me to pass on nearly all of it.

Bill and I had intended to buy a cookoo clock. We found a couple we liked but none we thought were worth the 800 Euros (or more) price tags. Especially when I admitted that very quickly, I’d be purposely failing to wind the mechanism to make it sing, dance, twirl and, well, cookoo.

Bill didn’t seem phased by the price tags on what he thought were souvenirs in the BMW Museum. He spent a lot of time in the attached showroom. He left with three thick brochures about some of the cars. He cleverly included a convertible to try to suck me into it. Most people buy post cards… maybe a scarf… but not a car. We didn’t buy one. But the seed has been planted now in his mind.

We did spend a lot of time in Munich just hanging around outside the Apple store. They have free wifi. So Bill could take advantage of his new iPhone.

We also managed to find a great Chinese restaurant in Munich. And they didn’t serve pretzels. We skipped the KFC down the street from our hotel… and all the Burger Kings at the rest stops along the autobahn. Although I do think that if they’d had a sign before the last one you pass saying “this is the last Burger King before you cross the border” I’d have probably made Bill stop. Not that it would have been too easy… given how much he enjoyed taking full advantage of the no-speed-limit stretches of the road.

It’s kind of funny. For a long time, we never had any desire to even go to Germany. And it turned out to be one of our favorite places to visit.

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