Baden Baden, Part I

Ahoy! We got home late afternoon yesterday and spent the evening loving on the boys and enjoying a movie on the couch. It was a terrific trip! Chase proved herself to be such a great traveling companion, and now I'm completely at ease taking longer trips with her. Planning a trip around her naps really paid off and we got to see/do everything I hoped for. The weather was at least 15 degrees warmer than Baumholder although it rained on and off the whole time we were there, which would explain why we didn't have many pictures of the kid out and about. This is going to be picture-heavy, so let's get started!

If you ever find yourself needing a Baden-Baden hotel recommendation and enjoy this view,

a small family-run hotel that is very affordable,

where the attendants know that a good warm basket of freshly baked bread and homemade preserves served with your choice of coffee/tea/cappuccino is the very best way to say "Guten Morgan,"

(of course, having it in this room does not hurt either),

then Hotel Am Markt is the one for you!

My only complaint is that the church bell can get a teeny bit excessive on Sunday, but more on that later...

We left Baumholder later than I had planned. Our Garmin decided to take us on a scenic route through the Black Forest, which amazingly didn't add any time to our drive. It was a gorgeous drive but we were pretty tired by the time we got in mid-afternoon. It was raining pretty good, so we decided to head out to an early dinner. Too bad it was too wet and dark to take a good picture of our restaurant, because it sat in the middle of a beautiful vineyard overlooking a valley. I've got one picture I played around with here.

Our dinner was fabulous and a very sweet German grandma even came over to our table and offered to hold a sleepy Chase for us so we could have dinner together in peace.

Have I mentioned that I could have dairy in small amount now? Bring on the stomachache.

We went back to the hotel, I put Chase to bed, and Wil left for his birthday excursion to the casino. My birthday present to him was a small amount of money he was free to lose, and off he went in his handsome suit. As it turned out, he could have walked to the casino from our hotel. We were literally a minute from the spas and maybe five from the casino and the cool shopping area. I forgot to give him the camera to take, so no pics from inside of the place. Wil didn't have a good night but did take away a very cool experience gambling in one of the swankiest casinos in Europe.

The kid is awake from her nap, so I'm going to have to finish the rest of this post later. Peace!