Carolyn's and Tom's Trips to France from 2009 to 2015

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Misadventures on the way to France

Here it is Friday night, and we're in Alsace.  But, as usual, things didn't go quite according to plan.

We left Munich on a cloudy day and headed toward Strasburg, but via Garmisch, at the foot of the Alps.  This was more by chance than anything else, but the trip was spectacular.  The Alps were snow covered and in sunshine, against the grey sky.  Leonardo would have known what to do with this scene.  We then went to Neuschwanstein, Mad Ludwig's castle, which looked fabulous from a distance, and truly awful up close, with thousands of tourists (mostly kids on school holidays) mobbing the streets below it.  We enjoyed the view and headed on to France.  This was the end of the good part of the day.

Your intrepet travelers had no map of Germany -- we decided to let the lady in the GPS guide us for this minor part of the trip.  Problem was, she figured out that the best way to get to Strasburg was via the autobahn that went about 60 miles out of the way.  That might have been fine if we were cruising at 100 mph, but we got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams near Stutgart and spent what seemed like hours stopped or moving an a snail's pace.  That was bad enough, since we were both pretty crotchety when we arrived (around 7 pm) in Strasburg.  But when we got to the B&B, no one was there.  We banged on the door, telephoned them, etc.  But no response. 

So, we called the place in the little wine village we were planning to go to after two nights in Strasburg and asked them if they had a room, which they did.  An hour later, we checked into this truly wonderful inn in a town that looks like something from Grimm's fairy tales.  Had dinner and passed out.  Next morning (this morning) we woke up at 10 am -- a tribute, I guess to the amount of wine we consumed the previous night and our mental state after the drive the day before.  

The final misadventure -- Carolyn discovered that she had left a boatload of stuff in the Munich hotel -- including her toilet kit, jeans, a couple of sweaters, etc.  They're sending the stuff on, but a hassle for all concerned in the meantime.

It rained off and on today.  We tried a walk in the vineyards and got rained out.  But we had a great dinner and are expecting better weather tomorrow.  And, perhaps, fewer screwups.  

Oh, and the car is fabulous.  

No comments:

Post a Comment

Followers