Adenauer's old train in Bonn's German History Museum

Last week, hubby and I treated ourselves (well, Oma and Opa treated us) to a kid-free couple of days - a mini-vacation within our vacation. We decided to visit Bonn, the former capital of Germany, because neither of us had ever visited it, because it was fairly small (we've seen a lot of the big cities before and wanted to have a quieter vacation) and because it was close (in case wee one decided that she wasn't quite ready to spend three days without mommy & daddy).

there's a bird on your head!

Bonn is a lovely little city, with a bright and pretty city center. It's not too big, it's not too small, it's just right. In addition to housing the West German government while Germany was divided, Bonn is also well known for being the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven. You can tour the town house his family lived in when he was born, which is right in a busy little street in the city center. (The Beethoven house has an excellent website including a fabulous page just for kids - check it out!) Or you can find him in front of the big post office building in the middle of one of the town squares. Whichever way we walked in the pedestrian zone, we kept coming back to this square and the big Beethoven statue.

And to funny Chinese restaurants. The names of these two cracked me up!

A family friend who lives in Bonn happened to mention that "there is a yarn store directly across from my apartment." Oh really?!

Wolle Rödel is an excellent chain I've visited before in both Munich and Frankfurt. This one was a little smaller but still chock full of modern yarns and patterns. You know what they had there?

I heart Ron

Opal's Harry Potter yarn! I don't know how I managed not to run into this in stores before now. (We'd even gone to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince the night before in Bonn. In German, of course. Weird listening to those kids with funny German accents instead of funny British accents.) The Wolle Rödel also sold Knitpicks needles! I recognized the harmony needles from all the way across the store. Way to go Knitpicks!

nice spot for a fortress, no?

After sight-seeing and shopping, we took a boat tour down the Rhine. There are dozens of picturesque little towns scattered along the Rhine and almost as many intriguing castles nestled up in the surrounding mountains. This is the Drachenfels (the Dragon cliff) with Roman ruins at the very top. The name of the cliff comes from the old Germanic legend of the Nibelung. This is supposedly the spot where Siegfried battled the dragon. Now that's cool.