It’s the day before R’s birthday and they day we’re celebrating it! 🙂 We wrapped up some gifts for her in some hotel towels, and gave her a list of options for the day.
L made a sign before we went down to breakfast that said, ‘It’s my sister’s birthday’ in German. He proudly walked in front of her and told the waitstaff it was her birthday. It was so dang cute!
Two wonderful ladies actually arranged to bring out a cake for her and it had a giant firework candle on it! Then we proceeded to sing her happy birthday twice. It was awesome!
After breakfast we rode the bus to the Hullbrunn Zoo. It was a great little zoo, with lots of fun exhibits. The areas for the animals seemed like some of the better ones we’ve seen.
After we walked through the zoo, we went off on a trail through the woods to the nearby Schloss Hellbrunn.
Before we got to Schloss Hellbrunn we came to the Volkskunde Museum. It was a beautiful museum tucked into the hillside. It had examples of life in early Austria, toys for children, religious artifacts, and an art exhibit on the heart.
After walking down the hill from the museum we immediately arrived at this beautiful field and we found several playgrounds. It couldn’t have been any more ideal.
We had to stop at the cafe for a quick lunch. We were starting to melt down from the heat and lack of food. Some quick cheese pizzas and frankfurters perked us up. Except for R who started getting really stuffy, and sneezing. I finally gave her some cold meds I had with me after we figured out it wasn’t any sort of allergies. We then made our way to the Wasserpiele Hellbrunn (also known as the Trick Fountains). At first we were a bit disappointed thinking it was just a single fountain but then we found multiple areas where we got sprayed. There are staff positioned around the gardens and they control the water jets. It was a perfect day for it because no matter how wet we got it was wonderfully warm and we dried quickly afterwards. The astonishing part was that these jets were created in the mid – 1800 century.
Right at the end we thought we had it all figured out. We saw the staff member coming to turn on the jets. We were feeling so smug. And then the secret jets that were on either side of us turned on! We got soaked, and it was wonderful, and hilarious all at once. What a fun job those workers would have, just spraying people all day long.
After the Trick Fountains we went into Schloss Hellbrunn and toured the house.
After touring the house we were all getting pretty tired. So we walked out to the bus stop and headed back into town. We stopped at the main tourist square. Did a quick exploration of the Christmas museum, and got ourselves a gelato. In honor of R’s birthday of course. Tried to do some shopping but we were in the high end district so we focused on just heading back.
We got back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit. Ty and I had a date in the lounge while the kids stayed in the room plugged in. We juggled our plans a little bit. Our goal was to go swimming at the indoor pool next to our hotel. However, we were also trying to get Indian food for dinner, per R’s request. So we decided to focus on food first then hopefully swimming.
We saw this awesome sign on the way to dinner.
Of course it started down pouring as we were eating dinner. So we had to make our way back to the hotel in the rain. It wasn’t freezing cold, so we just enjoyed it and made the best of it. L was being a ninja, running from every door frame he could.
So we got soaked, oh well. We made it back to the hotel and we decided to save swimming for another day. It was 7pm by this point. Our goal is to hopefully go swimming in the morning before we catch a train to our last ‘new’ town Stuttgart.
We tried to celebrate R with one more yummy dessert in the lounge. But it was really busy when we got there, and there were no yummy goodies. So the kids had some fries and a juice as a final splurge. They scampered back to the room to plug in while Ty and I enjoyed a bit more time in the lounge, and I finished the blog. Why does it feel like it takes us a solid 7 days of traveling before we begin to hit our stride?
