Planet Wilder

Our trip to France we visited different area around Verdun that is rich is WW1 history. This is just one of the many photos we took that day.

Think we’re going to do two U.S. trips next year. One to Idaho and another to Texas. I really miss Idaho, the Boise market (especially), the friends, and the northern parts.
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This was our first experience driving in Germany and we were a bit overwhelmed. First of all, we we book our car rental, we booked an economy car. Just like we would here. Usually that’d get us a four door, enough luggage space, bla bla. Well, if you rent a car in Germany, make sure that you have a big enough engine to feel comfortable going with the flow of traffic.

[thumb:1571:l][thumb:1570:l] Our car was a little four door Opel Corsa. Cute little car but it’s only got a 1.2 cc engine. SMALL! Driving around the city, it was great. Parking was awesome but take it to the Autobahn or uphill, man, you’re in for a treat but thank goodness we didn’t experience a lot of the above.

Here’s our mistake before going to Germany. We didn’t really learn enough German and to familiarize ourselves with the road signs. The basics signs are quite easy to follow but there are signs that just has words on them and you just have to guess it and hope you’re right. Also, we weren’t sure if there’s a German version of a 4-way stop since there were many 3 or 4 cross-sections where we weren’t sure who needed to go first.
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Traveling with Emma wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. I was quite stressed out about this. Imagining hours of little girl tantrums and boredom. But Emma was just an angel and we both are so proud of her and having super light toddler travel gears really helped us out a lot.
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[thumb:1417:l] Had a lovely breakfast at our zimmer today. It was the usual bread, cheese, meat, coffee, and such but we had some nice company, Dennis and his wife from Pennsylvania and a German gentleman who was there to hang-glide but just was not in the mood on this fine day. He works for Mercedes and drives a Grand Cherokee. Anyway, we had a nice conversation and breakfast, and after that we were off to the castles: Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau.

Since our zimmer was very close, about 1-2 km, to the castles, it didn’t take us long to get there. It was about 10 a.m. by the time we got to the ticket booth and the line wasn’t too bad, it was at the end of the ticket office, inside the building and probably took 10 minutes to get through. I met up with Dennis again in the line and with the little chit-chats, the line seemed to have gone quicker. Ticket price: €15/pp for the Royal Ticket… aka two castles… and free for Emma (or anybody under 18). At the ticket office, there are LCD screens that tells you what time your tour will start and a map that tells you how far each castles are if you are to hike up to it. The tours (required) are about 35 minutes, so you really have plenty of time after you get your ticket to walk up to Hohenschwangau (it took us less than 10 minutes to walk up there from the ticket office), take some scenic pictures around the castle and of the outside, go to the bathroom, and sit down for a few minutes before your tour starts.
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