European Adventure--September 30 to October 2, 2014

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

After a great night of sleep, we were feted to the Parr's excellent breakfast choices.  We then headed for Aschaffenburg to return our 24-hour car rental.  On a building next to the Europcar store, was a large building with Spider Man on the roof!  He really gets around.

It was a sunny day so we headed to the Fasanerie Park nearby to bird, walk and talk.  Robby again astounded us with his knowledge of birds.  For those of you who have never walked in German forests and parks, it is a well managed industry here.  The paths are well-maintained and clearly marked.  This particular park also has an exercise course.  We walked until about 1 PM identifying 8 more birds, some of which will likely be "life birds".

Gabi tries to straighten this leaning tower!

David climbs up to a really big woodpecker.  Unfortunately we never saw a live woodpecker. 

Just wandering along!

We went home and Gabi and Robby fixed potato pancakes with fresh applesauce. They tasted just like Ann's mother used to make when she was growing up on the farm in Wisconsin.

Potato pancakes are another of Robby's specialities.

Yum, yum!!

  Ann continued to do laundry. Robby is in a tennis club and got ready to go to his first Fall season meeting in a new club.  It's a doubles league and all three players were new for him, while the other three had been playing together for a long time.  We learned the next day, he wowed them.  Robby was 20 years older than any of them and when they were comparing ages, they under-guessed his age by almost 15 years.  He is in very good shape and he won every match with each of the other three players!! Needless to say, he was rather proud.  While Robby was gone, we got out the Rummykub game, which is Gabi's favorite board game and one that we gave them many years ago.  We each won at least two games--very friendly.  And we went to bed by 10:30.

Wednesday, October 2, 2014

Today was our first foggy start in the two weeks we've been here.  We all had a more relaxed day and prepared for leaving on our bus tour tomorrow.  Later in the day, as Gabi continued to sort and pack, Robby took us to the NABU (Nature Conservancy) pond nearby because there was supposed to be a bird there which is not normally here.  We saw what we thought was a scaup, but when Robby later called the local birder, he wasn't familiar with that bird having been seen.  We had another couple of games of Rummykub and got to bed by 9 PM.   A first for us in packing, we have all our clothes for the four-day trip in one suitcase!!