Travelling is a funny sort of thing. Especially big trips like this one. You build it up in your mind and try to keep the anticipation in check. Then the trip arrives and it's a flurry of traveling and getting settled into the trip. The first few days always seem to go at a nice steady pace, and then by the time you are halfway through, it seems like the afterburners kick in and before you know it, you're on a plane again, heading home. This trip was no different...

For our last full day in Germany, the Neckar Castle Cruise was a perfect way to wind up Heidelberg. We grabbed a cab to the boat and headed out on our 3 hour tour. This tour was to take us from Heidelberg, through 2 locks, past the towns of Ziegelhausen, Neckargemünd, ..... all the way to Neckarsteinach...... And back. The trip up was nice and relaxing. As we cruised, a narrative of the town and castles was played. It was really quite nice to just sit back a...

I don't even know how to begin to describe Baden-Baden, let alone Baden-Baden on a cool September morning. Magical is one word that comes to mind. Fairy tale like? All I know is there are only a handful of times in life where I truly wanted to stop time ..... and this was one of them. It was around 9:55 am. I was standing by the fountain in the center of town, church bells from the cathedral were ringing. The air was cool and crisp. That perfect temperature and s...

The Novotel Karlsruhe kept the tradition of insanely awesome breakfast. In spite of walking 8-10 miles a day and not sitting in front of the TV once all week, I swear I'm gaining weight. After breakfast we headed out on foot to the Schloß. The Karlsruhe Schloß is one of my favorite castles of that era. It is truly a magnificent site to behold. Once again .. Walking down Karl-Friedrich Straße was a bit depressing. I so wanted to show Heather, Tim, a...

Spelling counts. Spelling counts, especially when you are in a foreign land, using a GPS. We found this out this morning. Thankfully, we discovered it early. After another relaxing breakfast, we packed up our VW Touran and headed out. Destination - Freiburg. For this trip, we have basically been putting in the city center of the next destination and then tweaking it once we dig out the address. This is more because we are so immersed in this trip that we don't t...