Hampton and I recently took a much-needed vacation in Europe. (Much-needed for him at least – he hadn’t been off for almost a year.) Hampton was already in Germany finishing up his 6-week TDY.
My journey began with a LONG plane ride from New Orleans through Charlotte to Frankfurt, Germany. Add to that a few train rides to Landstuhl and a little wait for Hampton to pick me up at the train station. I slept most of the afternoon after I got there. We ate at this yummy restaurant in Landstuhl that actually had really good Italian food!
We started our road trip Thursday morning and began to drive south through Germany towards Switzerland.
This map book was my best friend for a few days!
The autobahn – not as cool as you would think. Sure, there were parts where you can drive as fast as you want…but most of it was set up just like any interstate – speed limit of 130 kph.
So, we drove through Switzerland and made our way to Liechtenstien.
We ate at this restaurant in Liechtenstien and then continued on our road trip. We were headed to Schwangau, Germany, where we had a reservation at a small hotel. Unfortunately, it was almost midnight when we got there and…
the hotel was CLOSED. Yep. Closed. Hampton managed to find some of the staff who spoke English and they laughed at him, saying that the hotel owner was asleep and we couldn’t check in that late!
SO…we stayed here instead:
VERY nice hotel in the neighboring town of Fussen and a very nice room and free breakfast!
So, Friday morning we set out for some castle-viewing. Here’s a couple of pictures of Neuschwanstien Castle and Hohenschwangau Castle:
VERY cool to be able to go into these castles…couldn’t take pictures inside, but got some great ones of the outside. By the way, we had to walk up a VERY big hill to get to Neuschwanstien Castle. Whew!
I played around with my new camera (Nikon CoolPix) a lot on this trip, and I loved the color selection option.
Blue selection was really cool looking!
So, our funny story for this leg of the trip is a toss-up between cows being herded down the middle of the road…
…OR attempting to find the town of Schongau which supposedly had an ESSO gas station (for which Hampton had a preloaded gas card). We FINALLY found it and I was so happy I took pictures.
So, that’s the first leg of our European trip! Stay tuned for Prague, Vienna, and our detour to a couple of extra countries!
I leave you with a few pictures that were only possible because of my 18x ZOOM!
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