The day started out great, we got out of the house with plenty of time to spare and were in great form manuevering all our stuff through the train station. However, as we were waiting at the station there was a notification that the train we needed to get on would be 40 min late. This delay would make all our connections late and we'd miss all the trains. So we hurriedly got new directions from the information booth and got on a new train. This was thee hottest train yet!! Sweaty McSweaterton!! I had brought our two hand-held fans and tried to keep the girls cool. We drank all our water in about 20 minutes and Naomi kept saying she was thirsty. I felt so bad! This train would drop us at a town and then we would take a bus to Rothenburg so we told her we'd get water at the next town. This was a good plan except that the town we stopped in was very, very small and very vacant. We walked around a little looking for any type of store but there weren't any. I noticed a church so we headed that way but the church was closed. As we turned from the church to go back to the station and wait for our bus Chris noticed a lady and her little boy in their yard. He said Hello and asked if there was a store nearby. She said No, and that the closest one was about 20 min by car. We said Thanks and that we just needed to buy some water. She said that she would fill our water bottle up. She called her daughter out and she came and filled our bottle for us. It was extremely nice of them!! We felt so grateful and thanked them so much!! I wished we would have gotten their name or something to remember them by.
We took the bus and walked to the city which was beautiful!!! The entrance through the wall was a great welcome to the city. We settled into our hotel fast, had a delicious dinner, then went exploring the city before dark.
A group passed by and all had to look, smile and coo at Fiona. Her adoring fans!
I love this picture because she stood up on the step and posed for me to take a picture. She usually doesn't do that :) She looks a little raggedy but it'd been a LONG day and we all looked raggedy :) Except Chris because heroes are always fresh as a daisy :)
We also didn't plan to all wear blue shirts this day. I had dressed Naomi and Fiona and midday I noticed they had blue shirts on. Took another hour or so to realize I did too! When Chris got home I pointed it out to him and jokingly suggested he change into a blue shirt too. I didn't notice that he actually did until we were walking to the train. I guess a lot goes on that takes me a minute to notice :)
This was the most beautiful 'secret garden'. It was so wild and unruly but perfect behind the rusted gate. The paths were overgrown. If there were a rope swing in the corner or baby lambs jumping around I wouldn't have been surprised. Made me think of the movie, "The Secret Garden".
It was dusk but we decided to walk a little bit of the wall. We started at the bottom of the stairs on the picture on the left. As we progressed down the wall we noticed all the stairs to get down were really steep and narrow and with Fiona asleep we didn't want to carry the stroller down.
We came to a really, really narrow spot and almost turned back but Chris saved the day with his genius plan to semi-collapse the stroller in half and zip through! It was perfect. Fiona was a tad bit smooshed but didn't even wake up! This stroller is truly amazing. We had to do it in another spot too. We walked halfway around the wall and it was getting dark fast. As we approached a tower we scared a bat and it went zipping around and right past us. It scared us as much as we scared it and Naomi has been afraid of bats ever since :) We decided we'd better get down the tower before it was pitch black so we woke Fiona up and I carried her down while Naomi scooted down the steep stairs on her bum. Chris carefully came down with the stroller. Whew!!
The cobblestones at night are so pretty with the glistening lamplight! It's very magical.
