Our Date at Ludwigsburg Palace

My baby don't take me to no McDonald's on our dates, he takes me to swanky places like this:



Actually, we saw a couple of swanky places. See, here I am in front of the little palace across the street:






Hans worked the dreaded night shift on Monday and Tuesday, so he now has a few days off. Josiah and Annika both happened to be going to the daycare center today from 8-2:00. Yesterday, I was suddenly seized with a fantastic idea: Hans was off, I was off (so to speak) for a few hours: we could have a DATE!

We ended up going to Ludwigsburg Palace in...(drumroll)...Ludwigsburg, duh. That's probably pretty obvious. What can I tell you about this place? It was built in 1704 and is one of Europe's largest preserved Baroque palaces. It was home to the nobility of Wurttemberg (the German state that we live in). Obviously, they don't live there anymore. The heating bills would be tremendous!

I'm pretty sure there was one other couple in the entire place while we were there. It felt like Hans and I had it to ourselves, and boy, was it ever nice not to have to worry about Josiah and Annika getting bored or testing out the acoustics by screaming in different rooms of the palace (of which there were about 329). They would have tired of this pretty quickly. And besides, the German matrons in charge pretty much followed on our heels, watching like hawks to make sure we didn't touch anything or fool around in the Duke's budoir. I would have been sweating bullets with the kids around.

I had flashbacks to the crabby old lady who used to follow us around Ben Franklin in the 5th grade. She really took the joy out of spending my lunch money on penny candy...

Back to present-day Germany: so, we toured all around Ludwigsburg Palace, which boasts a bevy of museums: ceramics (now we know where to take Donna), baroque paintings, baroque textiles. We were pretty much museumed out after we left, but we managed to stroll across the road for a quick look at the Favorite Palace. That's the one that I'm standing in front of...a bit more modest (the palace, not me)!

OK, I lied about McDonald's. My date did take me to McDonald's for lunch, then we swung through and picked up Josiah and Annika at the daycare center. It was warm today, around 50 degrees and sunny...an all around pleasant day. I'm so glad that Hans and I got our date together in the nick of time.

Next date: Tuesday. Stay tuned.


Comments

Brian said…
Fun date! Great pictures!
Anonymous said…
You two deserve dates! Take advantage! Enjoy! And I will stay tuned for Hans' and Rachel's next great adventure...
Anonymous said…
It is good that the two of you can hang out together at times. Someday in the future it will be just the two of you. I can tell you from experience that hanging out with your best friend in the world is fun. Now if we only didn't have to worry about the children that are always on our minds. But then it is always something isn't it?
Badger said…
It looks like a fake background. Like that picture of the three of us when we were kids with that mountain-lodge-ski-chalet thing going on in the background. Remember that one? I'm pretty sure the flash set off a nice glow from your bucks.
DD4 said…
I'm happy you had a good time together. That's important.

Yes, I'm interested in seeing dishes and a wood carver's products. I'm anxious for May to come!!
MamaD4 said…
Yeah, Dad, I can't wait for it to just be me and Gen. Ahhh, those will be great times. OHHH, you mean HANS and me. Well, I guess that would still be OK. Yes, I hope that 30 years from now we can spend our weekends parking in cornfields and drinking beer while cruising the backroads of South Dakota!

Gen--to what picture do you refer? I'm not denying that there are many, many pictures that include my bucks. Heck, the picture from yesterday displays them nicely. But--I don't recall a ski chalet background.
Anonymous said…
I beg your pardon. We do not park in corn fields!
MamaD4 said…
Dad, that's not what Mom says...

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