Eulenbis, Germany

How does one randomly end up in Eulenbis, Germany? Well, you have an amazing friend, lets call her A, from Colorado who is willing to let you and your crazy family come stay at her house. (Let this be a warning that if you invite us, we are likely to accept the invitation.)

Eulenbis is about an hour from Heidelberg, Germany and was the perfect place to lay up for a day and get in some good “friend from the states” time.

Eulenbis had its own Christmas Market going on although we did not venture to check it out.Our Christmas Market experience is that each market is different and worth checking out.

Truth be told when we rolled into Eulenbis I was in bad shape. I’m not sure if I was car sick or exhausted but I felt terrible. We met A out for dinner. I got the kids settled and then went out to the car and fell asleep! Yep. Folks. I, a grown woman, slept for an hour in the front seat of a packed car. This is precisely why some people don’t travel with children.

Jeff put the kids to bed and I went right to sleep when we got to A’s house. The next morning I was starving, but feeling up to snuff and ready to go.

Something very important to know about small town Germany on a Sunday is that everything is closed. Grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries; all closed. This proved challenging for meals and snacks throughout the day, so be prepared.

Our first stop were the Hohenecken Castle ruins. There is a small parking lot at the bottom of the hill. We followed the path to the top of the hill and into the ruins. H, our three-year-old, was enthralled. He pretended he was a knight in the castle. A and I were the princesses that needed protecting from dad, the evil dragon.

He was so immersed in his pretend world he cried when we told him we had to leave.

The views into the town, a village of mostly white buildings, were stunning. The morning fog was just lifting from the rooftops when we arrived.

Next we headed to the Kaiserslautern zoo. We have been to quite a few zoos and this one falls at the bottom of the list. It is not a bad zoo, per se, but does not offer much that you cannot see somewhere else. The kids, however love any zoo and were excited to be running around.

The barriers at the zoo were a bit low for my taste and many of the animals were inside for the winter.

The monkeys put on quite a show, rushing the window to stare at Jeff and then knocking their mango pit against the window at him. A small owl was screeching, which made our one-year-old laugh. (Watch him screech here.)

There were goats to pet and feed and a playground. The otters came out toward the end and ran around their exhibit in a single file line, following us as we walked around the glass.

The highlight of the zoo was the mechanical digger. €0.50 allows you to control an excavator in a sand pit. H would have spent all day doing this. He played in that dirt till we ran out of coins. The four knobs were hard for him to navigate at first, but he got the big idea after a couple of tries.

The zoo cafe looked closed, although the zoo staff insisted it was open. We opted to try elsewhere even though everything is closed on Sundays.

It was a wonderful way to laugh and enjoy the company of our friend, even if the attractions weren’t show stoppers.

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Our Christmas Market Road Trip included stops in Duisburg, Nuremburg, Heidelburg, Eulenbus & Trier.