Easter egg festival - Mannheim

I've been wanting to check out an Easter egg festival for the past month, but it seemed we were always busy or there wasn't one close by. This past weekend it turned out there was one at a Mannheim park (about an hour away) and Sunday was a gorgeous day. We got there around noon and there was already a line to pay to get into the park. The park was incredible with a river running through it with boat rides, a penguin exhibit, tons of different bird cages, one bird cage that you could go in and get right up next to the biggest parrots I've ever seen, flamingos and other different birds roaming the grounds. And just like the zoos here, safety and potential lawsuits don't seem to be of concern because most of the time you could get right up to the cages and put your hand through to try and touch the animals if you were a very ornery 2-year-old. Every so often you would come up on an outdoor restaurant or beer/wine stand. The spring bulbs were in full bloom, which were beautiful, but I still haven't quite recovered from my allergies. Last summer was the worst I've ever remembered and it's shaping up to be a very sneezy spring for me. We didn't make it through the whole park, but we'll definitely go back.

There were birds sitting on nests literally everywhere you looked. The boys loved checking out this one that they could get up close to.

There was a big owl exhibit and this was one of the more exotic ones I've seen. They seem so intense.

We spent lots and lots and lots of time smelling the flowers.

Eating lunch outside over looking the river and boats.

And the whole reason we went to the festival.....eggs! I guess the art of blowing and decorating eggs is really big in Europe and especially in Eastern Europe. I thought they were beautiful and couldn't believe all the different ways people decorated them. There were painted ones, decoupaged ones, ones with lace tatted over them, carved ones, glass blown ones, calligraphy eggs, anything you could imagine. And they used all different species of eggs. I ended up getting three. The top ones are from a swan and goose. I'm not sure what the bottom one is. The top left one is the swan egg and the underlying green color is the natural color of the egg. I'm going to use them as Christmas ornaments....when the boys get older.