A German Canadian Adventure: Winter Wonderland

We're back from our winter vacation. We had so much fun, the place and weather were just perfect. The first thing Finn said to the owner of the hotel was: "I've got a winter wonderland too, from Playmobil!".
.

We stayed at the Lindenhof in Oberlöchlers/Rettenbach (http://www.lindenhof.com/). We rented an apartment so we could prepare some of our meals, but we also ate at the restaurant there. Besides playing in the snow the kids enjoyed the playground, playroom, animals, TV room/library and the food! Oberlöchlers is a lovely little place with about 10 houses/farms where the road ends and the forest begins. The family who owns the hotel made us feel very welcome, they love children and even gave Neil a book from their library that he didn't manage to finish while we were there.

The sledding hill right behind the hotel was a big hit, at least going down. Making Finn and Lily walk back up only worked about half of the time. Neil got some good workouts. :) We tried about all the different sleds, bobsleds and inner tubes they had there. The good old wood sleds are still our favourites. Finn had an amazing ride with one of the plastic bobs that you can supposedly steer with a little steering wheel, he went criss cross all over the hill and managed to hit the little ski jump that somebody had built. It was only 2 feet wide so what are the odds of that!? He went airborne and came down hard, first him, then the sled. Luckily he only had a couple bruises.

The playground was great, too. Imagine, sand box toys work just as well with snow as they do with sand.

Neil and the kids built a snow fort on a snowy day which later got decorated with icicles and sported a tunnel for crawling inside and steps and a slide for coming out. I took some pictures from our balcony while preparing lunch. Lily, by the way, loved all the "Christmas trees" she could see from our window.

The horses and cows belong to the farm next door.

Exploring in the forest:

The forest there is beautiful, hilly, and, judging by the tracks, teeming with wildlife. There were rabbit tracks ALL OVER, lots of deer tracks, foxes too. On one of our walks we found a big piece of what looked like deer hide with the bloody skin still on, all frozen of course. I wanted to take it home, but Neil wouldn't let me. :) We met a hunter once and talked to him a bit and of course bragged about Grandpa who is also a hunter :). Finn was impressed by the rifle.

Oberlöchlers

On our last day we went for a sleigh ride. It was cold, but fun! The sleigh had both wheels and skids, and the driver used both depending on the surface, although sometimes he didn't get the system to work quite right. Still, the horses had no problem pulling a screeching sled over a snow free road with salt on top.

Lily kept shouting "Giddy up!" at the horses, which actually made them perk up a bit. Finn, just to be different, kept telling them "whoa!", but those Haflingers obviously didn't speak cowboy.