Legoland Deutschland

After 25 nights of good bedtime behavior, we held up our end of the bargain and took the boys to Legoland in Günzburg, Germany. The rain that accompanied us on our early 3.5 hour drive up and around the Black Forest subsided by the time we arrived, and we enjoyed a fun, full day at the park.

Ben and I found the park to be a little dated and underwhelming, but Eli and Ethan loved seeing the Lego sculptures in Miniland, building their own Lego cars in the test center and riding the handful of rides, especially the "water roller coaster" (log flume). We watched a Clutch Powers 4D movie (in German), learned how Legos were made (in German) and Eli, Ethan and I had a good laugh watching Ben get tossed around on the adult Hero Factory ride at the most aggressive level (because the instructions were...in German!).

After picking out souvenirs from the huge Lego store, we finished off the day with a nice family dinner at an unnecessarily fancy restaurant in a small town near the park. We then settled into our "cozy" family room at the Hotel Zettler, all four of us asleep within minutes.

Having spent quite a lot of money on park tickets, dinner and the hotel, we decided to head back to Basel early Sunday morning and forgo our plans to stop at the Neuschwanstein Castle in Hohenschwangau, Germany. Little did we know that the price of this little sticker chart reward would increase by another 150 euros, until we got pulled over at a checkpoint in Austria and fined for failing to have an annual Austrian highway "vignette" (windshield sticker) for the ten minutes of highway we were on. Unfortunately, the stupid American act got us nowhere, we were forced to shell over the money on the spot, and we spent the remainder of the drive brooding.

So, in the end, this Legoland adventure could have been recapped like one of those MasterCard ads...while the credit card sting will last awhile, the family time and memories (and 25 nights of easy bedtimes) are priceless.