We had an earlier than normal start today as our Lonely Planet guide warned us that tickets to tour Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein castle sell out by 8.30am at the peak of summer. Anyway after driving from Oberstdorf to Fussen, a bit of traffic and a trip to the information centre, we made it to the ticket office by 11am. The good news was that the tickets hadn't sold out. The bad news was that the earliest we could get to tour was 5pm and the queue for such...

Today was our Black Forest day. We set off from Gunzberg (packed up in the drizzle as usual) to the south west corner of Germany. The black forest isn't really black ... just a pine shade of dark green but pretty nevertheless. Our first stop was another gorgeous wee town, Schiltach, with more traditional German houses, many dating from the 1700's. Apart from a Greek food festival happening on the river side it was a very quiet place. I don't know whether the ri...

Wahoo - the day has arrived ... we're off to Legoland! A quick stop at the V Baumart to get a new airbed (cos Brett's kept going down) and a car pump (cos I'm too lazy to pump up the beds by hand) first thing then we arrived at Legoland. German efficiency was at it's peak as there was someone to direct which carpark to go to and another 2 people (and some traffic cones) to tell you which lane to park in. We were pleasantly surprised at the short queues to get ...

About 10km into the drive towards Ulm, we remembered that today was the day to drive down the Romantic Road. Out came our Lonely Planet guide and the maps as we tried to work out which pieces of the Romantic Road we wanted to go down. We learnt that the Romantic Road was just a general route that included as many quaint German towns from western Bavaria as possible, so we set Gertie to take us to Rothenberg ob der Tauber avoiding the autobahn. [Rebecca] There ...

Today we woke up and packed in what must have been a speed record as it started to drizzle. Everything 'basically' fit into the boot and we set off to see the sights of Kassel (we figured you can't stay in a place and not visit it at all). When we checked in the receptionist gave us pieces of paper outlining how to get to the main sights via public transport (we also got free public transport passes too). As good Christchurchers, we took our car and headed up t...