Wittlich Pig Festival

Last weekend we went to the Wittlich Pig Festival. It's held every year in the village of Wittlich in Germany. 

According to a legend, the town of Wittlich was a walled fortress. One night the guard lost the pin to secure the gate to the city. When he couldn't find it, he locked the door with a carrot. During the night a pig came along and ate the carrot, the gate opened and an army came in and ransacked the city. The angry townspeople herded together the pigs and roasted them. Since then, the town of Wittlich has been known as the town of the pig burners and every year they have a festival. 

Ariana wasn't so sure about seeing a whole pig being roasted over the spit. 

While we were waiting in line for our pork sandwiches we enjoyed the live band on stage in the marktplatz.

 Our tickets for our sandwiches and Ariana and Daddy waiting in line. She wasn't thrilled about waiting.

Finally our delicious sandwiches with amazing German mustard! Eating under a tent with pretty lights and glass bottles of coke, yum!

We stumbled upon a street performer who was making giant bubbles and he called Ariana up to help. She did a great job until she saw how big the bubbles were getting and then she just wanted to chase them around and pop them!

Enjoying riding the carnival rides!

Our little animal lover, adored the pony ride!

Nutella and strawberry crepes for Mommy and Daddy and cotton candy for Ariana.

More fun rides. Bumper cars are her favorite!

With her prizes. Play makeup and a punkrocker mohawk wig. 

I also hit my 37 week mark that day. It was such a fun day and such a great carnival especially great for kids with lots of games and rides! The food was yummy too! Love those pig burners!

Monkey Park Daytrip

A week ago, we took a day trip to France to a La Montagne des Singes. It's a monkey park where you can get up close and personal with some monkeys! You can even feed them if you want to!

When I found out about it I knew I wanted to go. Summer was the perfect time. It was a good drive, about 2.5 hours from our house in Germany, and if we had planned it better we would have stayed the night and done some more things locally in that area. Maybe next time. We had such a great time though and it was exciting getting to be a few feet away from these chilled out, free roaming Barbary Macaques.

I especially loved the babies!

Like seriously look at that baby monkey face! Don't you just want to say "awww"

This mama monkey (or dad, not sure we saw a few dads carrying the babies around) was proud to show off this new baby. The workers often shooed the babies away from the visitors to keep the babies safe and to keep the parent monkeys from suddenly freaking out on us. But, we were lucky and  got a few minutes of uninterrupted up close and personal time with this little guy. And let me tell you he was even more precious in person!

They gave you each a handful of popcorn at the entrance so that you could feed the monkeys. The first one Ariana fed she could barely contain her excitement. In the picture below she was covering her mouth trying to stifle her giggles.

Most of the monkeys were lazing around. It was a very hot day. The temp in our car when we got back in read 103! 

 

We got to see some of the younger monkeys playing and a few of them were hanging out together and grooming each other.

But seriously, it was the babies that everyone loved. They were just too cute. This little one was brave and explored the world around him a little. Check out those ears!

We had a great time even though it was almost unbearably hot. The shaded trails were nice and it was worth it to see those babies!