Kirmes - Fun Fair

The annual fun fair is in town, being advertised as the largest one on the Rhine River. It can be somewhat trashy at certain times, but we went when it opened on a Monday and had it almost to ourselves. We gave Sophie 10 Euros to spend as she liked. 

 The first fun ride she saw was this race car carousel. Good choice with the Ferrari, I thought. 

At this point it had already started raining again.

 Next she wanted to go on a balloon ride. She was the only one on the carousel. Were we the only crazy ones to venture out in this weather?

 But then she found her favorite. The flying machines carousel. She was a bit jerky at first trying to figure out how to handle the lever. Why is it that they always play such terrible music for the poor waiting parents at the children's carousels?

 Then Andrew had us all go on the ferris wheel. The ride provided some marvelous views of Duesseldorf. Here is the famous Altstadt (Old Town) on the opposite river bank. 

 These are some expensive apartments in Oberkassel with a nice view of the Altstadt, but for 12 days a year the inhabitants have to put up with the noise of the fun fair.

 The Medienhafen.

 Then Sophie decided that another 2 Euros on the helicopter was money well spent.

It was hard to find a ride that only cost 1.50 Euros, but then we saw the kids auto scooter. Hilarious!

One hour later and Sophie 10 Euros lighter, we headed back home to dry off and warm up. Hoping for better weather at next year's Kirmes. 

Sophie's Favorite Day of the Vacation

When we asked Sophie at the end of our vacation what was her favorite part of our trip, she said it was the day at the beach. I can see why. I will let the overload of pictures in this post speak for themselves.

This is the view to which we woke up in the morning.

As the weather forecast was better for a beach day today, we decided to postpone our trip to Skye to the next day and headed to the local beach after breakfast.

Sophie started out in her full outfit of clothes.

I quickly took off her skirt when I saw that she was actually venturing into the water.

The beach used for the movie "Local Hero."

Taking off another layer. Ben, the dog, was enjoying the beach too.

And another layer gone. Looking for shells.

Just looking at this, it could almost be Hawaii, except that we had the beach almost to ourselves.

We just rescued a fish who had got stuck on the rocks.

There was a local agricultural fair behind the beach today. We hiked over the dunes to have a look.

There were girls doing some stunt horseback riding.

Sophie was clearly enthralled.

Yet another face painting.

The Highland cow.

It was like the movie "Babe."

After we had fueled up on ice cream, drinks and snacks, we returned to the beach to slowly stroll back to the car.

This really is Scotland.

Later we cleaned up from the beach and dressed for our very fancy dinner at Arisaig House. This was the view from the back terrace where we had our drinks.

There were only about six tables in the entire restaurant.

My dessert: lavender-scented panna cotta with home-made peach vodka. 

It was terrible!

On our drive home.

Mallaig harbor

Scotland showed itself from its best side. Truly a memorable day.