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Ben is finally back from SLC and we spent the first weekend cleaning the house (not that you can tell when you look at it today) and catching up on sleep. I just couldn't bear sitting around the house for another weekend, so we decided to go to Luisenpark in Mannheim. This is our first outing as a family in a couple months. At first we were planning to go to the Schwetzingen Garden, but when we drove past it there was a very large crowd in formal attire standing around the front, so we diverted to Mannheim.
We put Luisenpark in the GPS and drove around a little bit before we finally found the entrance. Carson fell asleep during the drive and Maddox ate a full pound of goldfish (more like 3/4 of a pound because 1/4 pound was found in his seat after he got out of the car.)
Luisenpark is a municipal park maintained by the city of Mannheim and revered as one of the most beautiful parks in Europe. It's is 41 hectares in size. A hectare is about 2.25 football fields, so it is huge. It was built between 1892 - 1903 in memory of scientist and professor Dr. Carl William Casimir Fox, who left 20,000 Duetsche Marks to the city of Mannheim to build it (of course, that was only enough to start the project). It is named after princess Luise Marie Elizabeth of Prussia. Each year 1.2 million people visit this park to enjoy the flowering shrubs, strolling along the pathways, taking boat rides along the river, and visiting the Chinese tea house and garden.
We saw several different types of birds, including baby geese. They had very little fear of humans and would waddle right past you or even up to you to wait for food. They boys had fun throwing some pretzel crumbs to the birds when we stopped for lunch. Shortly after, we noticed the sign asking visitors to not feed the birds....oops.
After walking through some beautiful flowering paths and petting the the giant fish in the river, we found the farm area. Carson was scared by a loud duck quacking at him, but Ben eventually shoo-ed it away. Maddox enjoyed watching the pigs, a couple horses with a baby foal, and a herd of sheep and goats with babies as well. Carson, however, spent most of his time mooing at the cows. On our way out we passed a large playground area and the Chinese Tea house and garden. We didn't go in because, after 2.5 hours of wandering around the park, the boys were tired, but it looked very interesting from the outside.
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