Part one: Felsenmeer, March 2007

I was born in Frankfurt am Main, because my father was a serviceman stationed in Germany at the time. We lived in Darmstadt, not too far from Frankfurt, twice during his military career, leaving when I was 6. I have now lived for almost 4 years less than an hour away from Darmstadt, and my family and I finally made it there to look around in March of this year. Darmstadt is really not that big, and my husband is an ambitious trip-planner, so we visited Darmstadt, Burg Frankenstein, and the Felsenmeer, all in one day.

Since I am slow, I’ll tackle this trip in parts, starting with the last destination. Part one: the Felsenmeer.

It is a very cool rock formation, also known as the "sea of boulders", that was created during an ice age. I had actually been there as a child, but nothing looked the same as I remembered it. It is set in the woods and is very quiet and peaceful. If you look closely, the tiny hot-pink dot is Hannah on a boulder. That is how huge they are.


Here she is again, a little closer up.


It actually goes a long ways down the side of a mountain, but a zigzag path has been built between levels so you can get to the bottom of it without having to climb down hundreds of boulders. If you have a unicycle or bicycle, you could hop down it, like these lunatics.


Up until we had to hike back up the hill to get to our car, Hannah declared it was the Best. Outing. Ever. She got to climb over boulders. She used her walking stick to christen all the more interesting ones, like Big Rock and Whale. She ran out of steam at the end, though. Her last attempt? “I dub thee ‘stupid-I-have-no-name-for-you’.”

Unfortunately, the Felsenmeer is somewhat hard to get to, so I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a car and a good map.



I've put links to the full albums on the right. Enjoy!

Inaugural Post

I heard through the grapevine that yahoo photos was closing up shop, and sure enough, it is going bye-bye this fall so yahoo can concentrate on its new baby, Flickr. I like Flickr, but it is already almost photo-blogging, and I use my account primarily for pictures of my kid. My husband set up our yahoo account so we could point people to our travel albums there, rather than email the million-and-two photos per trip.

While wrestling with the thought of what to do with the 2300+ (!) photos currently in our yahoo account (transfer them to Photobucket—duh!), it occurred to me that rather than let them languish in an online photo album, I should blog them. I have been kicking around the idea of a travel scrapbook for ages and ages, even scoring a CD from my scrapbooking-guru friend for making one digitally (thanks, WesTexGirl!); I even thought about building my own website. But I finally realized that a travel blog is the best solution for me. I can include photos, journaling, links, whatever catches my fancy. And I can finally find a home for the jillions of photos moldering in my closets and on my hard drive.

Caveat: I am not a professional photographer or travel writer, so you will be getting the ultimate first-hand tourist experience. I also thought friends and family might like to see what we’ve been up to in the 4 years we’ve been overseas. I will probably go back and steal stuff from my other blog, which is not primarily a travel blog, so you may see a few repeats, but probably not too many. I will also try not to overdo it with the photos—I know not everyone has a fast Internet connection—so I will still be organizing the bulk of the photos in photo albums, only on Photobucket instead of yahoo. I guess I should think about upgrading my account...

And to show that one doesn’t absolutely *have* to go far to find someplace interesting and beautiful, here is the view from our sunroom.