Bremen, Germany!

It's been two weeks since our trip to Germany - already! - and I am finally getting around to posting some pictures. Life has been busy as it always is this time of year (we have had a tree for a week and it's still not decorated!)

We had a wonderful time getting away and exploring a new place again. That travel bug sure is a hard one to lose!! Bremen, in case you don't know, is located west and a little north of Berlin and southwest of Hamburg; it is also on the Weser River. Bremen was very badly damaged during World War II so a lot of the buildings have been rebuilt.

In this picture you can see our beautiful sleeping baby in the stroller we borrowed from friends - what a life saver to have that!! Also, in the background, is a statue of Sir Roland.

Of course one of the reasons we chose to come to Germany at this time of year was to take part in a Christmas Market. We chose Bremen because EasyJet flew there and the description sounded good.

In this photo you can see the town square where the market was set up. The Town Hall is in the top left and in the top right is a church. The market was much larger than it appears in the photo, it was spread out over two other neighboring squares.
For those who like perspective, the first photo was taken from in front of the Town Hall.

Here's another pic of the Christmas market. Lots of lights, lots of people, lots of food: crepes, bratwurst, pork steaks (they were soo good!) and much more but I don't know the names for half of it. We had 2 of our meals just from the market! It had the Christmas atmosphere we were looking for but of course there were also lots of people making it hard to navigate with a stroller. But that was ok, we just did the market during the less busy times.

There's a fary tale by the Brothers Grimm called 'The Bremen Town Musician' - who knew? In the story, the musicians (an old donkey, dog, cat and rooster) don't actually make it to Bremen but the town has a statue of them and people hold the donkeys' feet to make a wish come true.

One evening, after dinner, we went to an ice cream shop for dessert and they gave Ryan a plain cone to eat. Most of the fun was holding, banging and crushing the cone, eventually some made it into his mouth!