Swissterical: The Great European Road Trip: Day 3

You can't tell, but yes, it's snowing.

Dash woke us this morning with the announcement that it was sleeting. CW told him to "shush"--perhaps SoulSwisster wouldn't hear that bit of exciting news. No luck in keeping it quiet. But no problem either, because it stopped sleeting. And started snowing. Yes, snow on Easter in Germany. But just a few flurries-to begin with. SoulSwisster jumped out of bed to exclaim, "Not again!"

By the time we arrived, the snow was laying on the grass.

After yesterday, we thought we might need a bit of a turn around. So after a nice breakfast, we checked out of our Dinkelsbuhl hotel without telling the kids where we headed and drove towards Munich. Those few flurries turned into quite the blizzard and CW and SoulSwisster were rethinking their plan for the today. Except that the surprise tickets were non-refundable. SoulSwisster kept trying to take pictures of all the snow, but the windshield was too messy. Suffice it to say that we started passing fields covered in the stuff and it was obvious it had been snowing for some time. We were thankful none of it was laying on the roads.

Enough for snowballs!

The kids finally figured out our destination--LegoLand Germany! Though we kept them going for a while by suggesting that we were lost and that the LegoLand signs must be for some kind of giant factory here in Germany. But when we finally drove into the parking lost (it's still snowing, mind you), they were very excited.

LegoLand Germany is actually quite a bit like the one in San Diego we've visited a couple of times. Except that it doesn't snow in San Diego. CW reckons it never got above about 36. Even when the sun tried to peak out from behind the clouds, it still snowed.

Here we are!

But that didn't stop us! We hit the store and must have spent a good 45 minutes going through every bin of loose LEGOs so that AAB could find critical pieces. He was very cute, though. We told him to pick out what he'd like and he kept worrying about picking too many. We did walk away with quite a haul, though. and we're expecting new and exciting creations when we get home. At this point, it had finally stopped snowing (or so we thought), but most of the rides were still closed.

Lunch was fantastic--we'd bought a meal plan and on entering the park, one of the ladies told us to go to the Dino Grill. The piles of food were way more than we needed-SwissSis got a pile of ribs (for the 2nd time in 24 hours) and if she'd managed to eat them all, she'd have doubled her weight.

One of these things is not like another.

After lunch, the park opened up a few more rides. We hit a roller coaster and then stumbled upon the flume ride. Why let freezing temperatures and flurries (yes, it started again) stop us from a ride sure to get us soaked? Discretion got the better part of SoulSwisster and SweetSwissTeen (whose back was bothering her--but she's a trooper!) and even AAB. But SwissSis and CW decided we wouldn't let a little thing like potential hypothermia stop us! We did, however, buy ponchos. And a good thing, too because you definitely get wet. We even convinced AAB to join us for Round 2.

Dash and Lauren on the 'whirly thing.'
No one else was 'brave' enough to go on!

We enjoyed the rest of the day in the park--a laser shooting ride (CW is the champ with the high score), another roller-coaster-like ride, and then what we refer to as "The Claw." It's a spinning ride where each seat can also completely rotate if you're able to work the wings correctly (and you're foolish enough to want to.) CW managed to do a full 180 and AAB got close, but SwissSis just enjoyed a nice soothing flight.

As we left, flurries were still drifting down sporadically, but the sin finally came out and we got to enjoy some of the countryside, which is a bit like it is around Lancaster with rolling hills.

In the factory.

Tonight, we're in a hotel in Aalen in a "family room"--all of us enjoying some together time! Even now, SweetSisTeen is asking us to turn out the lights and SwissSis is trying to fall asleep to the clacking of the keyboard.

Tomorrow, Prague!