After a day and a half of errands, Tyler treated me with a trip to the Ritter Sport Chocolate Factory. They have a VERY modern art gallery. (Tyler was funny, he kept saying "That's not ART!" I agreed with him on some pieces. I'm not really sure that a piece of graph paper with squares colored in by pencil is art either. If it is art then every geometry student in the world is an artist.) They had some interesting pieces that definitely challenged my mind. In another building is the chocolate. You don't actually get to see the factory. BUT there are neato displays with buttons to push that release chocolate smells. Can some one install one of those in my house? Below the displays is the chocolate store. It's more like an outlet. They sell big bags of discounted Ritter Sport Bars (there is nothing wrong with them) in every shape and size. I'm not going to say how much we spent! : ) After that we hit the Ritter Cafe for a snack. My snack was Apfel Kuchen (apple cake) and Tyler's was a giant bowl of soup (Maltaschen - yummy noodles sausage in it, in chicken broth) and grilled sour dough bread. Both were excellent. The best part were the drinks. Two caramel macchiados. Mmmm. Better and BIGGER than Starbucks! We had such a fun day that day!
The next day I planned out several day trips and Tyler picked one from the list. He chose Wiesbanden, Germany. The guide I have listed several Antique stores, a castle and many restaurants. Our first stop was a Palace built and lived in by the Duke of Nassau (picture below). I like to call is the "Salmon Palace" because of the color.
Unfortunately the Palace was closed for tours and was majorly under construction. Bummer. Tyler and I walked around the ground anyway. We got the impression that winter was not the time to visit.
Isn't this a neat house. It was near the palace.
This an old ruined castle on the palace grounds. Also closed for construction.
After the Palace visit we began our quest for lunch. I consulted my handy guidebook. We drove to two restaurants that didn't exist. After stressful parking, pacing the streets looking for a non-expensive something to eat, we finally settled on a cafe. It was pretty good, but not the something special or really great that we had hoped for. After that we hit and antique store that was neat to look around. We didn't find anything worth buying though. The last stop of the night was IKEA (because it was across the street from the antique store). By the time we finished there is was dark (it gets dark at 4:30 here) and rainy. We ended up getting into 4-5 staus on the way home (traffic jams) and nearly hit several times. Not fun. It took about 4 hours to get home. Yuck. I don't think we'll venture back to Wiesbaden any time soon.
In other news, I have been busy working on my family tree and Tyler's family tree. I know I'm weird, but I have fun doing it. I've found all sorts of interesting things. We are both looking forward to our Thanksgiving trip this week and our trip to the States in December.
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