20 Weeks - first family trip, aka Sächsische Schweiz

Over the previous weekend I took a day off work and we decided to try our luck in our first "family" holiday.

We headed off to the Sächsische Schweiz from Thursday to Sunday evening.

To help with our journey, and as a matter of convenience just getting around the place we bought Tim a car seat. We've had trouble getting taxis with car seats (either they don't turn up or they don't know how to use the car seat they have) so this is a good solution if we need to go anywhere else within Berlin or decide to take a car holiday at some point too. Here's Tim's first fitting - I don't think he's too sure about it.

The train ride there was in the evening, when Tim is usually his most grumpy self - this as it turns out was a logistical planning mistake, in future we'll try travelling in the morning, when he's less tired even if it means taking more leave or having a shorter holiday. We did manage to keep him entertained on the train trip, but it was a lot of effort - at this age he's also very interested in everything so it's much harder for him to fall asleep somewhere new.

The evening in the hotel were a bit of a struggle too, as the new surroundings were quite interesting, so it was harder to help Tim off to sleep, not having a separate room for him meant our bedtimes were brought forward a bit too - although with the walking that wasn't too much of a problem.

We've also bought a baby carrier - to enable us to do some more vigorous / stepped / steep / walking - Tim doesn't mind this too much, but after a few hours I think he's just stick of staring at my chest (understandably). He also provides a great layer of insulation, which means if we're walking together - he and I both end up quite sweaty, so we took a few changes of clothes for us during the day. He did manage to get some sleep while we were walking, but it was a lot less than his normal allocation, so he was a bit more grouchy in the evenings.

The first day we decided to do a walk that we've done before to the Lichtenhainer Wasserfall (a somewhat dodgy automated with German folk music waterfall), but we didn't take into account the flooding earlier this year. We did manage to make it a fair way, even through part of the path that was "closed" with a piece of tape, but eventually ended up at a point where we would have had to either levitate or swim to proceed - at which point we decided it was time for a hot chocolate and a cake, so we legged it back into town.

Breastfeeding a baby on a hiking track also presented it's interesting challenges, the seating was not always comfortable, and there were too many interesting things for Tim to look at, which meant he wasn't so concerned with actually eating. Luckily there weren't as many tourists around as on other years, so it was easier to find a bit of a quiet spot on the cliffs above the river...

In one of the cute little "cottage garden" settlements we found a weather station that proves that Germans have some, even if it's a little bit skewed, sense of humour.

It's a rock on a chain, the sign reads "Weather Station"

• Stone casts a shadow - Sunny
• Stone wet - Rain
• Stone white - Snow
• Stone swinging - Windy
• Stone missing - Stollen
• Stone stationary - Not Windy
  

Tim's also been very grabby this past week, as I found much to the peril of my lower lip - he also has a good strong grip

The weather was cloudy and cool, not so bad for walking, with a few showers, but that did mean we got a nice rainbow.

Random Pics

Overall - it was good to get out of Berlin for a while, Tim did very well on the walks considering he was in the carrier for fairly long stretches at a time, but at this age travel was not so well received (or was too interesting) so I think we might be waiting a bit longer before we go our next trip.

Luggage wise there's a bit more to carry too - about 3 times the weight of child - and that's just for him ;-)

You can see some more photos here.