The 2010 Adventure - Germany

The European leg of the 2010 Adventure started in Germany. We flew into Frankfurt and stayed one night before picking up our hire car and driving to Bacharach, a small town on the Rhine in Western Germany.

Germany in summer is beautiful. The people are friendly. Flowers are abundant. Everything is well organised, well maintained and easy to understand (even though it is all written in German). We stayed at Pension Im Malerwinkel, which was a lovely half-wooded old house set literally into the village wall. This was our base for three days while we recovered from the hectic few weeks leading up to our trip and explored the surrounding area by car and bike. This stretch of the Rhine is covered with castles (about 65 within a 30 minute drive from where we were staying).

These pictures are of the pension, the gardens near the river in Bacharach, a nearby castle and the local bakery.



















From here we drove to Baden-Baden in South-West of Germany. This was a pretty flash town known for its Roman baths (which are still in operation), casino and horse racing.

We skipped the gambling and headed straight for a relaxing day at the baths. We went to the more modern baths as the "proper" Roman ones were closed for renovations. This was probably just as well because we found the Roman (nude) part of the modern baths quite confronting and hurriedly returned to the modern (clothed) parts. We soaked in 36 degree water, then 38 degree water, then spashed into the 17 degree pool followed by a trip to the 100% humidity room and the brine room. We stood under waterfalls, pulled buckets of "arctic" water on our heads and participated briefly in aqua aerobics. We also both had a massage which was great, if not painful. After all this we were relaxed and exhausted so returned to our hotel for an afternoon rest before going out for a wonderful meal at a hidden local restaurant. Above is a photo of our hotel and below is the view from our hotel window and a picture of the wonderfully moody restaurant we ate in one night.










From Bacharach we took a lovely scenic drive through the absolutely unbelievably beautiful Black Forest down to the bicycle-filled university town of Freiburg. The Black Forest was amazingly dense with trees and the scenery was just divine. If I were an artist this is the place in the world I would chose to paint. Below are two photos of the Black Forest, the second was taken by the car of Tom and me.















Would I go back to Germany? Yes.
Why? The landscape is beautiful, the people are welcoming and the prices are very reasonable compared with other countries in Europe. Germany was amazing and I would return there in an instant.