The Grand Tour

Well, today was the day. Nothing went terribly wrong… But we may have chosen unwisely… nonetheless we survived and saw some beautiful places along the way. Today was probably the longest driving day that we have had or will have for the rest of the trip. Today’s journey included four separate countries, a castle, three crossings of the River Rhine, and a small issue that required an adjustment in our accommodations for the night. 

The day began with a rather delightful breakfast at our hotel in Munich. We had been told that the Germans pride themselves on the breakfast that they serve, and this hotel proved that that was true. All of you who were part of the longtime Softball family will understand when I say… If we could’ve only had breakfasts on the road like that all those years! 

We hopped in our car and happily left Munich behind today. Even though it had slightly redeemed itself last night, we were both hankering for some countryside and mountain views. We decided to drive south to Neuschwanstein Castle. This castle is famous in the US for being the inspiration for Cinderella‘s castle at Disneyland. It’s also famous to history buffs because it was built by crazy King Ludwig. If you want to read an interesting story about the troubles that come with power, check out King Ludwig‘s history.

Our own travel troubles started with this castle. There are a lot of places in Europe that you need to pre-purchase your tickets and be given an assigned entry time in order to visit. Neuschwanstein is one such place. Well, we looked at the tickets online and thought, we don’t know exactly how long it takes take to get there so we will buy them when we arrive! There were no tickets left when we arrived 😂 Luckily, we were able to take a nice horse drawn carriage ride up to the foot of the castle and take some great photos outside.

We then decided that we were so close to Liechtenstein, which happens to be the fifth smallest country in the World that we better drive through today! On the way, we had a lovely picnic in the Austrian countryside at a highway truck-stop. We just had to the drive through Austria for a few miles in order to get to Liechtenstein. 

Liechtenstein is a tiny country… There is one main road that runs through the capital, Vaduz, and two small villages outside of it. The bulk of the country is a set of beautiful Alps that you can’t cross but they provide a really beautiful background for the towns. It’s about the size of a postage stamp. In other words, we pretty much drove through the whole country today. 

In order to reach our ultimate destination for the evening, Freiburg im Brisgau, Germany, we then drove through part of Switzerland. We were fortunate to hit Zürich at 5 PM. As you can imagine the traffic was insane!  Fortunately the drive from Liechtenstein to Zürich was one of the most beautiful drives we have ever done.

We eventually escaped the city and made our way back into Germany. We made it to Freiburg and realized that we had not chosen wisely when booking the night’s accommodations. You all know we are willing to stay just about anywhere and the fact that we looked at the neighborhood and said, “let’s find somewhere else” should tell you a lot. Thank goodness for Priceline: we got online and were quickly able to book a room in a tiny village at a quaint little inn. So, we had a few moments of concern, but luckily we are both flexible and ready for that next adventure. Despite the 12- hour ride today, all is well.  

So, it went:

Germany

Austria

Liechtenstein

Switzerland

Then back to Germany