Ryan was the bold sir Tristan, a knight he liked based on his ability to get some extra free moves. Ryan likes the guys who can go fast...
I was brave King Arthur. I took him as I was the person who had read the rules and had to teach the game while playing for the first time. King Arthur was a character best suited to sit quite still and support the other knights while they are out on quests. I thought that would be easiest for me to handle. Also, King Arthur is red and I wore a red T-shit special that day.
We got off to a great start, winning the quest for Excalibur on the second turn, we made sure that Ryan finished off that one and had the sword so he could use his speedy knight to zip around the board and help out the others with fights as needed.
Here is where we ran into trouble, it seemed very hard to get quests to move ahead for better or worse now, and the catapults were starting to add up. It was starting to look grim, but then thanks to a great move by Claudia, we managed to win the game in the last moments. With Ryan beating the Black Knight to fill up the round table with the 11h and 12th needed swords.
Happy days in Camelot, there was my rejoicing and feasting. Well, cookies and tea anyway.
As you can see here, Liam jumped right in and had a great time. We could not get him to leave actually. I even offered him ice cream and he rejected it in favour of more ball pit time.
Claudia then spotted something next to the pit that was even more enticing... a big digger you could actually operate. Diggers (Baggers) are Liam's greatest love in the world. He was transfixed by this and we let him have a go sitting on my lap.
One more ride popped up for Liam and Claudia, one of those carousel rides with chairs hanging on swings. They gave that one a go.
The last thing that I thought was awesome was an ice cream vending machine. It looked like a polar bear, and you put in a euro and were then treated to the excitement of machine prepared soft ice cream.
I liked this so much I made a little film of it. I was singing this little ice cream song to myself for a long time afterwards.
Right next to these ones were even smaller cars that Liam was able to ride by himself. He liked those a lot too.
Next up was a ride that looked like a hot air balloon. That was another one for Claudia to ride with him. When the ride stopped, he jumped off and ran away in some fit of excitement and the girl operating the ride needed to send him back in the right direction to us...
Interestingly, I thought that this ride seemed to lack some of the safety features I was used to from North American fun parks. The pod we were sitting in had no safety restraints of any kind, it was totally open to the air and you could even spin it around with a wheel in the middle. I am sure that in North America some fool would have jumped out then sued.
We had the inevitable train ride that Liam insisted on riding. This was a pretty boring ride, very short and did not really see much. However it is a train so we had to ride it about 4 times.
From here we found something similar to the train but a little more exciting. A tiny roller coaster. Liam did not know what to make of it at first, but once we told him it was a caterpillar train, he was all for it. It just went in a circle, but was moderately fast and quite exciting for a tiny person.
Right next door to that was a slightly bigger roller coaster, he got to ride that one with mummy.
There you go... a summary of the rides. There were a few more there but I think I have painted a pretty good picture of what Traumland had to offer. I had a good time and I think it is safe to say that it was a success with Liam.
The first part of the park is a "fairy tale forest" which is a place where there are displays and sound/puppet shows about some of the more famous fairy tales. We have been to similar places in the past and Liam always likes to look at the munchkins.
The first display was for Snow white, there was a little cottage that Liam found very interesting. It is unusual for him to find a building that is the right size for someone like him.
Right next door to the cottage was the cave where the 7 Dwarfs were mining. I love a good garden gnome and the ones they used for the dwarfs were pretty darn good. It was again Liam-sized, so I had to squish myself down pretty small to fit in there.
Next up was the story of the 7 little goats. not one I had heard of, but Liam really liked seeing some goats doing people things in a little house.
Just down the path from the goats was the Hansel and Gretel gingerbread house. 
There were a few more dispalys; The Frog Prince, Rapunzel, and some more that I don't recall. All in all, the fairy tale forest was a pretty good one, lots of variety and all the kids seemed to really like looking at the munchkins.
The ride up lasted a few minutes, but let us have a nice view of the valley and town. It was not the best weather that day and the top of Mont Blanc was sadly covered in clouds. Here is a shot from the start of the hike looking back down on Chamonix.
We set off on the path, with the "Lac Blanc" glacial lake as our destination. It was a "medium" difficulty hike with moderate height change and a fair bit of bumpy ground. I certainly would not have been able to do it with Liam on my back.
After a ways, we saw the first splash of water. This was just some run off that accumulated in an indent, but I thought it was nice. It was quite a few degrees cooler up there than down on the ground.
We had been walking up for about 30-45 minutes when we stopped for our first break. Time for a drink and a realization that we should have brought some snacks.... our lunch of (yummy) soup suddenly seemed like it could have used some extra supplemental snacks.
After the rest, we continued on, saw more rocks and lichen, but not much else. There were surprisingly few other people hiking the trail. I think most people were taking the lift up to the second higher station then hiking down, as the manly men we are, we got off at the bottom and hiked up. After some more time, we arrived at this sign, telling us we made it.
Just beyond this sign, was a very impressive, broken down disused shack.
Beyond the shack was a bridge across some run off to the expected coffee and cake restaurant. It seems all hikers in Europe love cake. It is always there, no matter where you go.
The actual lake is split into two parts, a smaller "Lower" lake, seen here with the amazing shack.
Then just above it is the larger, "upper" lake, seen here with a certain very handsome hiker. The water is really an interesting shade of milky white-blue. I think this is because there is still quite a bit of ice at the bottom. It looks really great though and Ryan and I can confirm that it was much much to cold to consider swimming.
After relaxing at the lake a little while, we continued on for another hour or two (I forget) to hike up to the "Index" chair lift. We were going to consider extending the hike farther at that spot, but just as we reached the lift, it started to rain. Since we were tired out of shape hikers, that was a great excuse to hop on the lift and head back down to town for a well deserved snack.
Overall a very fine hike that Ryan and I enjoyed very much. We used to go hiking quite a lot when the Joneses were living in Rosenheim, which was both near the mountains and closer to us for visits. Once Liam is old enough to join in the fun I hope we can start up some hiking once again. For the moment, I think it is still something that is more enjoyable with just the adults.
