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Published: September 22nd 2018
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This morning, after a better than usual night's sleep, we got up later than normal and headed to the base at Ramstein to check things out. We wanted up-to-date info on upcoming flights home, how to turn in our rental car, and see if we could browse the base exchange. We'd found out on their webpage that there were two flights to the states on Sunday. At the moment, there is a flight to Andrews AFB in Maryland and one to Dover AFB in Delaware. Neither is ideal, but with no better alternatives in the current future, we will probably go for either one of those tomorrow. We also found out that although Hertz isn't open on Sunday, we can park our rental car in a lot near the terminal and just drop our keys in a box inside. That way, if our names are called, I can just drop the keys there, and if they aren't, we just go back out to our car that we have rented for another day and a half... hoping to stay in our current apartment another night or two. We did find out that contrary to what I'd read somewhere online, retired military can
use the Post Exchange at Ramstein. We shopped around there some and bought a couple of gifts. The car's navigation system got use close enough to the base, using just Ramstein-Miesenbach as a city that we just followed the "Air Base" signs the rest of the way.
We returned to Kaiserslautern to do some sightseeing and eat lunch. The town is actually a pretty good sized city with mostly modern buildings, but with a few interesting older ones mixed in. We found out that they had a Japanese Garden and what was called a Dinopark, so we set out. The car is parked for the day and night in a long-term lot for 5 Euros. We found the Japanese Gardens but they wanted 5 Euros to get in, so we passed and continued on to the Dinopark. After a wrong turn, that was my fault, we were oriented correctly by a local and found the upper entrance to the park. They wanted 5 Euros here too, but we figured we'd enjoy the walk and could take some photos that my grandsons Kai and Ryan would enjoy seeing and identifying. Well, after 20 minutes of wandering around without seeing anything
but gardens, we were thinking maybe we'd been taken or mistaken about the dino part of Dinopark. We did finally find a sign directing us down below to the dinosaurs, and found not only a lot of life-size dinosaur statues, in order of occurrence in history, but also a pretty cool park with mini-golf, a skatepark, and a lot of other cool things for families and kids. It was definitely one of the best parks I've ever seen.
It was getting late and we still hadn't had dinner or found a new supermarket for Manoli to buy the last of our gifts, so we headed out. After inquiring about a REWE supermarket from several locals, we finally found it. We bought some stuff for dinner and a bunch more stuff for gifts and headed back to the apartment for the night. Tomorrow, if all goes well, we'll be on one of the two flights home. If so, I've already discovered that there are no Hertz agencies near either base that are open on Sunday and getting to a nearby major airport would be a bit costly, and strangely enough both airports show no vehicles of any size available! I
think its either because we want to do a one-way rental. I was able to find availability at a nearby Hertz HLE near either base, so we'll stay Sunday night at a hotel and get the car the next morning. If we don't catch either flight, we'll have to try to extend our apartment rental another day or more (and probably can), and extend our rental car the same (which we probably can, but a bit expensive).
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