A Lazy Saturday...

Today we decided to just take it easy but still managed to have an interesting day. B and I laid around alternately until noon or so at which time we thought it about time to feed the crew. We walked to a little Italian restaurant called Da Renato. The place was really quaint and made a mean plate of spaghetti for the girls. Robert, B and I split a couple of pizzas.

On the way home from the restaurant, we decided to take the kids to the public park almost next door. Even though this is a small town, the park is really cool. As you can see below, they passed the Positive and Negative "G" test with flying colors (bad pun intended).

On the way home from the park, our van looked lonely so we decided to go visit our new neighborhood (again). There is no doubt about it, we have a crush on our new apartment. We took a few pictures so we'll remember what it looked like under construction. We then washed the Family Truckster as the snow storm some weeks ago left it looking neglected (the real reason we decided to wash it was that our hands were getting dirty opening the back door).

The windows above the empty first floor on the right belong to our apartment. You can see S-Bahn tracks in the foreground.

Then we drove to another city in the area, Wiesloch, to poke around downtown and look for a place for the kids (and B) to have some ice cream. Even though it was almost deserted (most shops etc. close early on Saturdays), we found a few open places.

We went into a café that had some of the best ice cream I've ever tasted. Robert got chocolate as he has done since he was 2. Emily decided to switch things up and go vanilla; Sophia wanted "pink" so she got strawberry (and it tasted like it was made with actual strawberries). B ordered a bowl of ice cream that looked like pasta and tasted of pistachio. Out of this world all the way around. To avoid shocking the locals with a sudden change of habits, I had a Weissbier.

By the way, I know I've been throwing that "best I ever had" phrase around quite a bit, but I'm not exaggerating. We've have happened upon some extremely good food since we arrived.

On the way back to Bad Schönborn, we picked up my rental car that we'd left at Thomas's house. I had downed a few beers the night before and decided the inside of a German jail isn't the sort of attraction I need to experience (for now anyway :)). BTW, the place where I had the beer also has some hamburgers that put most places in Texas to shame.

We're still impressed with the relaxed pace of life on the weekends. It seems to be just our style. It was nice to see groups of friends escaping the rainy weather over beer and coffee. Ever pushing the dog-inside-establishment envelope, this place had two dogs beneath the same table that seemed to be sparring for dominance. It's not every day you watch a dogfight over a cappuccino, but when in Wiesloch, do as the Wieslochians do (or something like that).