We had an early start since it was to be one of our long days of driving. What was supposed to be 6 or 7 hours of actual driving time turned out to be 10. More on that later.
Here’s proof that I drove on the Autobahn.
I’ve now driven in 2 foreign countries. Driving here is pretty awesome. Very rarely did I have a speed limit. I wasn’t too crazy though. I only got it up to 92...so far. I felt I had to be somewhat responsible since I’d like Mark and I to get back home…alive.
Our first stop of the day was the Frankfurt temple. Since it was Sunday the parking lot was empty and no one was around. Fortunately, there are no walls or gates surrounding the temple so we were able to walk around it and get some good pictures.
Here we are at the temple sign. It’s been nice having the DeWitt’s with us. We don’t have to ask strangers to take pictures of us.
We found the LDS chapel on the temple grounds and decided that being a member paid off. We knew we could use the bathrooms for free. I probably forgot to mention that we have to pay to use the bathrooms. EVERYWHERE! It’s usually about a $1 every time we want to go.
I’m so glad we decided to stop and see the temple. It was a nice hour spent on a Sunday to remember that I’m happy to be a member of this church.
First, here’s our car. It’s an Opel.
Next stop…Castle Frankenstein.
Yes. It’s actually called Castle Frankenstein. It was the inspiration for the location of Mary Shelley’s book. Unfortunately, it started raining just as we pulled in to the parking lot.
Here we are in front of the tower entrance. Notice the Frankenstein monster’s head hanging in a net above our heads.
Here’s the outer walls of the castle. The castle is in the middle of the woods, on top of a hill overlooking the town of Darmstadt. Mark’s words about the castle: It was cool.
By this time we were all starving so we asked Groovy Nuvi to give us some ideas as to where we should eat. We looked under German food on the GPS and she told us a place called Michelangelo’s in Bensheim. We got to our destination and found a place called Villa Lacus instead. Being hungry, we decided to try it anyway. It was a whole lot fancier (meaning more expensive) than we wanted but it was food.
Mark ordered soup to start out with. I guess he didn’t read the description very well because it ended up being a lamb soup.
I was the brave one and tried the tiny portion of lamp on the side of the bowl. Just so you all know I hated it. Sorry Dad. Lamb is gross. Mark already knew he didn’t like lamb so he skipped eating the other bite. He ordered a pork dish and I ordered a corn-fed chicken breast dish with pasta. Little did I know that I would get almost the entire chicken!
Remember how I would get back to our really long drive…here is how it all went down.
We decided, after lunch to take the southern route to Munich in order to go to the Black Forest. We drove to the city of Baden-Baden in hopes of buying a coo coo clock. After asking around we found nothing. Bummer. We still had 2 1/2 hours of driving left to get to Munich so we headed off. As we left Karlsruhe on highway A8 we hit major traffic. It took 1 1/2 hours to go 2 miles at which point we discovered the highway was closed for construction. As we detoured off the highway we saw a line of cars going into the Black Forest that was miles long. At this point we decided to make our own detour using Groovy Nuvi. After several winding roads through the forest Mark and I needed a potty break which happened to be in the middle of nowhere in the Black Forest. After leaving our “mark” in the woods we continued our detour.
From that point we met up with the rest of the detoured cars and sat in traffic…again. Finally we returned to the A8 just outside of Stuttgart. Unfortunately, the rest of the way to Munich we passed through more construction and some serious accidents. We were amazed at how fast/dumb people were on the wet roads.
11 pm rolled around and we finally arrived at our hotel in Munich. That would be why we did not post yesterday. Overall, the first half of the day was amazing. The latter half…not so much.
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