Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival

After living here for three years I finally made it to the pumpkin festival.  I found out about this festival in 2008 after moving to Germany and I have wanted to go each year we have been here but it never worked out.  Yesterday we woke to clouds and rain but I was determined to go because it was my last chance!  Lucky for us, after 2 1/2 hours driving the rain cleared up and we had cold but clear weather for our walk around the gardens.

The pumpkin festival is held in the gardens of the Ludwigsburg Schloss (or palace).

There was a restored carousel that the boys enjoyed.  The horses were life size and they had real horse hair manes and tails with real riding saddles.  The only sad part was there was no music...what is a carousel with no music?

The park had a "fairy tale" path.  The path led you through the forest with little houses displaying different fairy tales.  Here are the boys looking out of Rapunzels tower.

Julian makes a cute little woodland nymph sitting on his toadstool.

This was the Little Red Riding Hood display.  You could push a button and the characters would tell their story and move around a bit...the boys loved it!

There was a little train you could pay to ride.  Julian was in heaven, he loves trains.  As soon as we got off he asked to go again.  For the rest of the time we were in the park he kept asking to go on the train again:)

There was a display of different varieties of pumpkins.  The boys loved looking at these.  They each had a tag with the name of the pumpkin and the country they came from.

The pumpkin festival has a different theme each year, this year it was dinosaurs.  Each dinosaur was decorated with pumpkins.

I couldn't resist a photo of these cute pumpkin creatures.

Julian was so proud of the pumpkin he picked out, he wanted to hold it on his lap even though it weighed about as much as he did!

I told Townsend that if he kissed the dinosaur it would bring him good luck, too cute!

A shot of our delicious dinner.  They had pumpkin soup, rice with sliced pumpkin and pumpkin spice cake.  

One last family photo in front of "kurbi-sauris"

A shot of the gardens as we were walking back to the car.  

I am so happy that we went to the festival.  It was worth the long drive and we had fun despite the cold weather.  I love when we can find fun things to do with the kids to make memories of our time here in Germany.