Barefoot Park

 

On Monday, we invited a bunch of families to come to barefoot park with us.  Germany is full of barefoot parks.  In these parks you are required to take off your shoes & socks & store them in lockers while you complete the hike.  The entire hike is done barefoot & has a variety of fun textures for your feet to experience.

We had a great turnout.  I swear we've got the best "family away from family" in the world.

We started out on bark.  I thought bark would be soft, but it totally wasn't.  It was hard & splintery.

But then you immediately hit the mud portion of the walk which is everyone's favorite.  However, this time the water was beyond FREEZING (my toes were going numb) & there were tiny rocks lining the bottom of the canal which made the whole experience feel like you were walking on lego.  It hurt SO bad.  Yet, we still had a blast.

Then we got to experience some soft stones, grass, & other textures.

I was excited to come to the water so we could wash off the crusty bits of dried mud.  This water felt like ICE.  It was SO cold, but the stones were soft which was super nice.

We walked a little further & then crossed the Glan River which is always the "favorite" part of the walk.  The water comes up to about your waist (if you're short like me.) & luckily it wasn't cold at all.  It was perfect on a sunny day.  It was SO nice.

The rest of the path led us across all sorts of fun textures & toys.  There was cork, small stones, more bark, grass, & tons of bridges & see saws to play on.

There was even a playground, barefoot maze, & trampoline.  We enjoyed every second of it.

At the very end you cross a bridge or you can ferry yourself across the river via boat.  I opted for the bridge this time.  Bladen was obsessed with the boat & played on it for HOURS.

After completely the course, we just hung out with our friends & ate ice cream for a few hours.  It was the perfect day.

Petersburg Rodelbahn Fun

So our van broke down right before our planned road trip to Venice & Croatia (our "retry" after Canyon's accident).  But, it was not meant to be.  So instead, we got a group of friends together to go to the Petersburg Rodelbahn not far from our house.  Most of them had never been there & I absolutely LOVE sharing my hidden gems with others.

Petersburg is awesome.  It's a big rodelbahn that takes about 2 minutes to get down (which is long for a rodelbahn), a huge playground, a restaurant, & 3 metal slides that are a blast.  This place is great for kids, teens, & adults.  We had a blast.

We got enough tickets for each family member to ride the rodelbahn 3 times each.  Normally this place is completely empty, but for some reason we managed to come on a German holiday so it was packed.  We had to wait 30 minutes to get on the slide each time we wanted to go.  It was still a blast.

Plus waiting in line is SO MUCH FUN with friends.

I got to ride with a little friend of mine.  I'm going to miss all these "bonus kids" of mine here.  I love our friends & their kids.  They are like my own & I'm going to miss them terribly.

The kids had a blast at the playground.  They got all their energy out & played all sorts of games together.

But the favorite part of Petersburg is always the metal slides.  They are hilariously fun.  One is a wavy slide, one is a tube slide, & the middle one is a death drop of 8 meters where your soul leaves your body as you freefall straight down.  It's my favorite for OBVIOUS reasons.

We all had way too much fun.

Afterward we got a cool drone shot of everyone together.  I love these friends of ours.

After playing for 4 hours, we dropped the kiddos off at home & went to dinner with some friends at a Biergarten in Kaiserslautern up by the Rapunzel Tower.  We had some yummy German food & great conversation for 3 hours.  I love free nights like these.  They are my favorite.