Hannah and Würzburg

A very exciting day for us! Last night, Hannah, our new au pair, drove from her home town of Saarbrücken, over near the German/French border, to stay with us for a couple of nights, so we could meet her before she arrives in Australia at the end of next week. She brought some lovely gifts including some honey from her Uncle's hive and some homemade grape marmalade made with grapes from their place.

Finn did his best to grill her with all sorts of hard-hitting questions such as "Do you like plums?", "Do you like cake?" and "Do you like plum cake?". He loves making plum cake, so a winner its a winner if you like plums, cake and plum cake!

We went to visit Würzburg today, starting with a visit through the the 18th-century Residenz palace. This featured lavish baroque and rococo architecture, with particularly ornate rooms. There was a huge fresco by a Venetian artist (Tiepolo) over the main entry staircase which had us all fascinated as it also included some of the figures in the painting coming out in 3D (plaster?). It was a great effect and we spent ages staring at the ceiling in this and another room with similar room.

We also visited the garden where I was able to spot our first German eichhörnchen (which is a very groovy way of saying squirrel). The kids had already negotiated that the first person to see one and say eichhörnchen for 1 Euro cent. I had spotted one in Austria but couldn't remember the name to say. The added bonus for this squirrel was he was a reddy-brown and had an acorn in its mouth as it disappeared into the hedge. Cute as.

We had lunch in the main square and then went down to the river which is obviously where all the cool kids were hanging out. The river was very wide and was split at one side with a commercial lock. Two large barges pulled up as we were watching, so we waited for them to navigate through.

Back home, we played a bit of Uno and introduced Hannah to the game of Cheat. She is now probably thinking "what sort of family encourages their children to cheat in a card game!"Læs mere