Weisbaden Christmas Market

Well I figured I better get on here what we did last weekend before this weekend gets going.  :-)  On Saturday we woke up to beautiful sunshine here in Kaiserslautern, but was told by a friend it was raining in Wiesbaden.  We decided to take a chance anyway and headed down there.  It is about an hour drive to get there.  It was a beautiful drive and when we got there no rain.  The only problem is that we didn't have a GPS coordinate to get us to where we wanted to go and I was only there once, but had Amber with me to navigate.  Well it took us a little time but we finally got there!  We walked through a park (because we had to park so far away) and the lake was frozen.  It was really funny because we watched the ducks landing on the ice and they slid quite a ways before they stopped.  The boys thought it was hilarious!!!  We also had to go to the bathroom and there was one there, but it cost .50 euro to use it.  That is one thing that I have learned is to always carry some spare euro to be able to use the restroom.  Most places you have to pay to use the bathrooms.  So we made it to the market and it was a really nice one.  There were tons of booths that had all sorts of items for sale.  We enjoyed walking through it and looking at everything.  We all found something we liked and of course I got my gluwhien cup!!  There are also some beautiful buildings there, we will have to go back and really take a good look at them but they were spectacular to look at!  There were also rides there so the boys went on a couple of them.  Michael was ready to go home a little before we were, but he survived with a shoulder ride from Daddy. 

 

This was the walkway by the park - David and I thought the trees where really neat

 

This is the central building in the downtown area - it is called Marktkirche.  When the old church was damaged in 1850 they decided on this new church to be built in a neo-gothic style. 

 

This is a view that you see when you walk down the booths of the market.  It was so crowded that you had to go with the flow sometimes and couldn't stop.  It was amazing how many people were there.

 

The other side of the church

 

The cotton candy is bigger than both their heads together!!  But they sure enjoyed it!!

 

They had a HUGE nativity scene there, it was carved out of wood and really gorgeous!

 

This was a double decker merry go round, you can just see AJ's head on the left side.

 

There was also a train ride - so of course they wanted to ride it!!  I figured since they were dragged around shopping that they could have a little fun :-)

 

Starting to get dark and it is so pretty when everything is lit up, this is on the other side of the market.  They almost always have two of these

 

I had to get one with it lit up in front of the church!

 

This was a theatre there, the architecture is amazing.

 

The sun setting as we were walking back to the car

 

here are the ducks walking on the ice

 

There is a full view of the pond, partially frozen over with some fog starting to lift

 

This one is kind of dark being this late, but the boys are trying to destroy the big snowballs!

 

Look out!!!!

 

Boys- gotta love them.  Those were their big purchases from the market. 

 

After the market we came on home and had dinner with some great friends at the Macaroni Gill on base.  It was pretty good, I have never eaten at one before in the states or out.  Our friends wanted an American steak.  It is really interesting, but the German meat is a lot different than the American meat.  If you are in a German club or sport on the economy and they have a BBQ they usually ask the Americans to bring the hot dogs, buns and the processed foods like Oreo's and such.  The processed foods are really expensive for them, one box of Oreo's cost them around $7 American.  They also say they like our steaks better.  All in all it was a wonderful day!!!!