Day 33 (July 11th)

Woke up and went to our usual corner bakery and I brought the kids back breakfast. This seems to be our standard routine since the kids don't want to motivate out of bed in the morning. I knew today was going to be nice outside so I had planned a road trip to a castle. I had a listing of castles in the area and this one looked pretty good so I figured we give it a try. The kids were not very excited about going to a castle because "they don't want to see anything old". We left around 9:30 AM and drove for about 25 minutes north of Dusseldorf to a city called Krefeld. Arrived to the destination with no problems thanks to the Nav system. After we parked, we walked about 50 feet and came upon a fun park with the Castle (see middle picture; note kids by entrance when you click on the picture) in the background. It was a nice setting. Now the kids were excited. There were a few other kids there and we played for a couple of hours. I finally was able to motivate the kids to walk over to the Castle. Of course the kids had to go to the restroom so I found them a bathroom (without having to pay). We walked around the castle and Hannah "played" the tour guide. There were many different types of flowers all around and Zach was picking some of them and Hannah would explain what type of flowers they were. We took a bunch of pictures trying to get a good one of a bee on the flower (see top picture). We finished up at the Castle and started walking around the rest of the town. We came upon a small cafe and stopped to have a drink. The town was very quiet with not many people walking around. From the map it seemed as though the town was an old medieval town surrounded by a wall. It was around lunch time and tried to find a restaurant but nothing was open. We finally came upon a small pizzeria that was perfect for the kids and went in and sat down. The inside walls of the restaurant were very cool (see bottom right picture). They were decorated art deco with little mirrors, rocks and other materials all around. We ordered a couple of pizzas, sodas and ice cream for dessert. The kids loved it. Luckily, 10 minutes after we went inside it started raining and by the time we finished lunch the rain cleared. Perfect timing. After lunch we continued our journey and stopped at an interesting fountain to take some pictures. We then found a path that meandered by ponds and fields with horses. Hannah has this passion for horses lately and every time she saw a horse in a field she would say "when I get older I want a big open field and a bunch of horses so I can ride them all the time". The path continued for a while and we made it back to the playground. The kids wanted to play some more so we hung out there for a while. Then, we all heard some "playful music" that we knew was THE ICE CREAM MAN. The kids had eaten ice cream not long ago and they wanted another cone each. Hannah had offered not to have sweets for 5 days if she could have ice cream. Zach was cringing at the idea. After further negotiations, we settled on 3 days of no sweets. This was good for them since they were drinking a lot of soda and eating a lot of chocolate/ice cream. They savored every lick of their gelato ice cream. We played for a little longer and then went to the car and drove home. We had not even got home before they said they wanted to go back to the park tomorrow. They had a very long and fun day.
We met Al at home and went out to the Lebanese restaurant for Basam's departure. Basim is one of Al's colleagues from Citibank who is Syrian but lives in London. Besides Basim, YH and Rajina joined us. We ordered the prix fixe menu just like the last time we came but this time it was only for 4 people. It didn't matter, we started with about 8 or so different appetizers and then two meat dishes. We were all stuffed and then they brought out the main meat entree with chicken and lamb. There was a collective chuckle when it came out since everybody was already full. Of course this didn't stop us from eating more. Then the desserts came out and we were sucking wind. We packed up a doggy bag and Rajina had a full meal for the next couple of days. Hannah liked the food but of course Zach didn't. He ended up taking a nap during dinner and then I took the kids home early since they were both exhausted from running around all day. Al came back soon after and we all relaxed together and watched Gilmore Girls. Went to bed around 12:00 AM.