On the road (1) – Six countries, nine days COMPLETED About This Page:

[Principessa_di_Fata]

Great update, as usual!

[disney_duke]

Those historic buildings are just beautiful. One right after another!
That border crossing sure was interesting - you bet Swiss chocolate!!!!!
An Austrian cow.

[emmalovesdisney]

Originally Posted by chezp

By the way, don't worry if you don't see an update from me in the morning. I'm working all night at our election count tonight, so I may not be on the boards tomorrow until much later in the day.

WOW, I would be really interested to know how you get into doing that...will you be doing the counting?

[Kenny]

Beautiful towns and buildings!!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by emmalovesdisney

WOW, I would be really interested to know how you get into doing that...will you be doing the counting?

I get into it because I work for a local council and a lot of the people at the count are local council officers. I'm not doing the counting, I'm looking after all the journalists who'll be attending the count, so I'll have my hands full with that.

[honeybee723]

Another great update with beautiful photos

[KMB733]

What a beautiful town!

[Cam22]

I got a few days behind, but I'm so glad I had a chance to catch up today. The flowers are wonderful! And the historical buildings -- very, very beautiful. The border crossing was definitely interesting, too.

[luvnwdwgal]

Thanks for another great update Cheryl!

[sc507]

all the pictures of cows of differing nationalities

[chezp]

Thursday 25 March – part six: what should we do about this pass?

We continued a little further around the lake, stopping at Meersburg, much of which is pedestrianised, so getting close to anything was a nightmare. I suspect we may have gone down a couple of roads that we shouldn’t have to get these shots...







From there, we continued round Lake Bodensee:



Now it was all the way up to Stuttgart, which I knew would take a fair while to get there. Fortunately, much of it would be on the Autobahns of Germany, where we’d heard there was no speed limit. Funny comment of the day from Mark? “Tim isn’t giving me any speed limits for on here” . Me: “That’s because there aren’t any!”

Unfortunately, to get there, we had a lot of navigating to do on single lane carriageways and a lot of trucks in between us and the Autobahn. Let’s just say that when we finally got a piece of dual carriageway, Mark really put his foot down, as he was determined to get past those pesky lorries....



Finally, we were on the Autobahn and it was like firing the starting pistol at some giant race. I’ll just say that our car went faster than she’s ever gone before and, my goodness, at that sort of speed, she vibrates a fair bit. I don’t think she likes speed too much...

Even at those sort of speeds, we were still seeing lots of cars and some motorbikes whizzing past us. These guys must’ve been doing at least 120mph, if not even more than that. It was just unbelievable. As Mark said, you spent the whole drive with one eye just glued to the wing mirror to see what was about to come zooming up past you...

There wasn’t much scenery here. I guess that had something to do with the fact that we were driving through the Swabian Jura area and much of my guidebook had down the notable sights as being natural ones. We passed through some natural parks, but all we saw of them was trees...



I did like the signs that they did for each and everyone of their bridges and I finally managed to get a shot of one, after missing loads of them:



Before long, we were starting to come into Stuttgart, as you can see from the traffic on the other carriageway:



I’ll admit that I was beginning to panic by now. I’d noticed last night on the directions to the hotel that every car in Stuttgart is expected to have an environmental pass and it gave you the website to go to. The only problem was that was the first time I’d read the directions to the hotel in depth. Ok, mental note for future trips, read the directions thoroughly before leaving home, in case there are any such issues in the future.

I had no idea what the environmental pass was and whether it was like the London congestion charge and controlled by cameras. In fairness, we saw no warnings at all about it as we drove in and no information. We charged Tim with finding a petrol station, as the receptionist at our hotel this morning had confidently told us that we could get one at any petrol station. That was all very well, except we couldn’t now find a petrol station anywhere and we were getting closer and closer to the city centre.

We went through a maze of tunnels and I mean a maze. These tunnels were so big that they actually had junctions in them, controlled by traffic lights. It was quite a sight!



When we came out, we passed by some of the city’s historic buildings, including the city’s art gallery and what we assumed was the Mercedes-Benz factory, going by the symbol on top of it. We would later discover, upon closer inspection of our guidebook, that it was actually the station.



It was at around this point that I spotted tourist information and suggested we just go in there to ask about the pass. Tim told us that we weren’t far from a petrol station, so we kept following him, but couldn’t find out where he claimed it was. Ironically enough, we actually found our hotel instead, which looked very nice:



We headed back towards tourist information and Mark pulled into the entrance of a hotel and I leapt out to go and try and sort it out. I got a really nice girl to help me, who told me you should do it before you leave home (yes, I know that NOW! ) and went on the website. She told me it was very complicated and that her advice was to just take the risk in not having one. Apparently, if the worst came to the worst, it was only a €40 ($55) fine and she also said that the authorities weren’t checking foreign cars that carefully, so we took her advice and decided to do that.

At least that was one weight off our minds. Well, we knew where the hotel was, but the next challenge was finding the entrance. We turned down the road that we thought was the entrance, but it soon became clear that it wasn’t. I tried to find my way and found the car park. If only I’d known and kept going, the entrance was at the end of the car park, but I couldn’t see it from where I was. So it was back down the steps and round the front of the hotel, where I found the bar and, fortunately, reception was just upstairs. It was certainly more steps than I’d have liked to have done though.

All checked in, it was back to the car and we parked up and headed up to our allocated room. I’d been asked at check in whether I wanted a smoking or no-smoking room and I very firmly said no smoking. The second we walked into the room, we both thought there was an odd and horribly familiar smell. Someone had been smoking in there.

I told Mark that we were going straight back down to reception to ask for another room and it’s just as well I did, as that really got on to my chest and I was having a violent coughing fit by the time I was seen to. Unsurprisingly, faced with someone who sounded like they were dying we got another room, directly beneath the last one. We headed up there, gingerly entered the room and it smelt so much better. Phew!

I grabbed a few photos of the room and then set about battling with the laptop with the CDs again, although with much more success than last night.


A nice, if slightly odd, touch...

This building was opposite our hotel:



Eventually, we decided that we were hungry, having consumed a very large packet of crisps (chips to you guys) on the drive up to Stuttgart and headed down to the hotel restaurant. On the way, I couldn’t resist getting some photos of the carpets outside, as they highlighted world travel, and the unique system they had for knowing if a room was occupied. Like many hotel rooms, you had to insert your room key to switch the lights on and, when you did, the sign outside turned from red to green:



The pattern on the ceiling in the elevator was also pretty neat:



The reception and bar area:



The restaurant looked very nice and there was only one other couple in there when we arrived.



We looked through the menu and made our choices, ordering much less than we’d originally planned, as the menu we’d seen in our room for room service, which we assumed would be replicated down here wasn’t and there were a number of dishes missing. Oh well, it made for a much cheaper dinner for us and, in truth, we didn’t need appetisers or desserts with the beautifully light bread and soft cheese they served up for us. We devoured a plate full of that and made a good indent in a second plate as well.

I went for the salmon, which came with spinach potatoes and a mustard foam. It wasn’t bad and the food was all well cooked, but somehow the flavours just didn’t blend together correctly for me.



Mark had the pork in bacon (pig in Piglet as I called it! ) and he had nothing but praise for his.



With only enough wine for us to have a glass each of Riesling, the bill came to €46.60 ($62), which wasn’t too bad. It had satisfied us for the night.

Restaurant Weissenhof:

Entree 7 9
Service 8 8
Atmosphere 8 7½
Value for money 8 8

Average score: 7.94

From there, we headed back to the room and it was off to bed not long afterwards.

Today we drove 200 miles.
The weather today was warm and sunny with temperatures in the high 60s.
The best thing today was Mindau Island.
The worst thing today was the painfully slow roads we endured around Lake Bodensee.
The funniest thing today was being stopped at the Swiss border.
Today we tried driving around Lake Bodensee
And the result was it took a long time, the roads weren’t great, but we did see some nice places on the way.
The most magical moment today was walking into the greenhouses with all the orchids in and smelling the scent in the air.

Next: entering Mercedes-Benz land

[ccmom]

Love all your pictures, as usual. I'm curious about the bed coverings at your hotel. Was that a comforter that unfolded? Or were there more blankets or covers somewhere else?

[Colexis Mom]

Great update! Your hotel looks very nice! I've been on the Autobahn, and it can be very inimidating! Especially all those cars zooming past you! More please!

[KMB733]

Great update!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by ccmom

Love all your pictures, as usual. I'm curious about the bed coverings at your hotel. Was that a comforter that unfolded? Or were there more blankets or covers somewhere else?

: There were no other blankets or covers in any of the rooms - that's quite often how we found the beds. I think it was a comforter (we call them duvets and I'm not sure if that's the same thing?) and yes, it did unfold.