2020 - Day 10: Dinosaurier Museum Altmühltal

The summation of the day is good things come to those who wait.

So you may have noticed the delay in this blog post going up and that was simply because we were just too tired last night. After a day of driving, dinosaurs and dinner out we decided that an early night was in order especially with the day we had to follow (more on that later).

We started the day loading up the car and departing our holiday apartment in Bayerisch Eisenstein. Now we also should have been saying goodbye to our friends today except they had decided to join us on the first part of our road trip home even though they lived in the opposite direction! The reason for this was our planned trip to Playmobil Park on the Sunday, but before that we had the stop off for today which was actually part of the original Austria route home but luckily wasn’t too much of a diversion to fit it in to today’s journey. With both our kids rapidly becoming paleontologists in training and Matty also a keen dinosaur officiado we felt that Dinosaurier Museum Altmühltal was bound to be a crowd pleaser.

The day started off with the weather looking rather ominous and as we drove through the mountains the rain started and visibility was rather poor. This rain continued for the next hour or so of driving before thankfully starting to clear when we were just half an hour away from our destination. Arriving almost simultaneously with our friends, despite having taken two completely different routes to avoid hold ups on the motorway, we headed in to find the dinosaurs.

No scenic mountain views on today's drive.

The main part of the museum was a walk through the woods with models of prehistoric animals organised chronologically from the Paleozoic to the early-Cenozoic era. Forrest was immediately excited when the first model was his favourite prehistoric fish, Dunkleosteus followed very quickly by the giant dragonfly, Meganeura. Now one thing I was really happy with was that the information boards were displayed in both German and English but as the kids excitedly ran off bouncing between the different prehistoric creatures I didn’t actually get the chance to read much other than to confirm that yes Forrest, that is an “insert hard to pronounce prehistoric creature name here”.

Meganeura.

Allosaurus.

Diplodocus.

Spinosaurus.

Therizinosaurus.

Selfie vs posed.

Velociraptor.

Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Halfway round the route (just after the Jurassic period) is a Wald-Biergarten (beer garden in the forest) and play area and so we stopped here for lunch while the kids played. One thing I love about Germany is their biergartens and the fact that they will always have a good selection of alcohol free beers on offer but this is often tempered by the fact that smoking is still allowed in public areas including while eating and next to play areas!!

The many faces of Paloma... Normal, grumpy, happy, excited, cuddly!

A few of Forrest's many photos!

The chimping photographer.

We then continued our way through the Cretaceous and Cenozoic periods before arriving back at the main pavilion area and the activity hall. We decided against letting our kids loose with geodes and hammers and opted for the tamer activity of fossil and gem hunting in the sand pits. This was an absolute hit with adults (well the girls anyway) and kids and a good hour was spent searching for sharks’ teeth fossils to take home with us. At 1€ for a small bag to fill this was great value for money.

Having fun fossil hunting.

Jana, Matty and Emma stayed hunting longer (having purchased a 5€ treasure chest to fill) while we went to look around the Museum Hall to see the real fossils. The highlights here are a juvenile t-rex named Rocky and an as yet unclassified giant pterosaur named Dracula (it was discovered in Transylvania) but there were loads of other lovely fossils that kept Forrest interested including an archaeopteryx which is the link between dinosaurs and birds and a marine crocodile dakosaurus (a new species for us!).

A selection of Forrest's fossil photos.

"Dracula"

"Rocky"

Dakosaurus.

Thumbs up for Dinosaurier Museum Altmühltal.

We then departed via the gift shop (of course) and completed the final hours drive to Nuremberg. We are staying on the outskirts of Nuremberg in a place called Fürth and I was expecting the hotel to be in your typical out of town location but Fürth itself looks like a nice little town centre and we found ourselves a local Italian pizzeria for a last dinner out together. We were a little surprised when they were literally a pizzeria with no pasta option for Paloma but she was kept happy with garlic bread and meat from the top of our pizzas. As the meal ended and the kids started getting boisterous, to avoid disturbing the other customers, we made a hasty exit back to the hotel. A shower (to wash off all the sand) and bedtime story later, they finally fell asleep and after a busy day rather than writing this blog we decided to join them!

Blogged by Amber.