Dürkheimer Wurstmarkt

Bad Dürkheim

The biggest wine festival in the world is held in Bad Dürkheim, and ironically it's called the Dürkheimer Wurstmarkt, which means Dürkheim sausage market. This has to do with the history of the festival, which over the years has less to do with sausage and more to do with wine. We went last year at night, which is when the festival grounds turn into one gigantic party. Last year Shelby partied a little too much left some party favors behind in one of the tents, ewww. This year we would be taking Colin with us so we headed out Friday, opening day and got there extra early. We ended up getting there about noon and thought it was to open at 11 that day. Our info turned out to be wrong and it didn't officially open until 5pm that night. This actually worked out quite well though because there were no crowds, just a handful of people wandering the booths and grounds. Vendor booths weren't crowded with people and Colin was able to run all over the place taking in the sights.

We found an open food booth and had some excellent food for lunch, of course we had to sample some wine too...you can't come to the wine festival and not drink wine! After lunch we walked around the grounds some more before heading into the city park which backs up to one side of the festival. The park grounds were beautiful and made for some nice photo ops. Colin found the playground and was able to burn off some energy there before we had to get back in the car to head home.

We had such a good time we decided to come back again the next day. We wanted Colin to get to ride on some of the rides he missed out on yesterday when we were there too early. Day 2 at the festival was even better. Colin went on a bunch of rides and had so much fun. He even rode the huge (and famous) ferris wheel with us! It is 50 meters high (164 feet!)and didn't scare Colin a bit. He was pointing and telling it to go back up when we would start to descend. We ate more delicious food and had more wine, rode a few last rides and then headed back home to watch football. Shelby graduated just in time, he'd have been in BIG trouble if he had to decide between football and school work!