Days gone by

Started this in Luxembourg, ran out of time to finish. Very first part of the trip.

Austria is already just a memory.

It seems like a lifetime ago when we arrived in Europe. We have been here about two weeks and fortunately have nearly another one. I am trying not to think about going home because I don't want to go home. It feels more like home in Europe, anyway.

When we landed in Paris, we hadn't slept much on the plane. I hadn't made hotel reservations for that night because we weren't sure if we would stay in Paris or head straight to Luxembourg, where we would pick up the car in the morning, and we wanted the flexibility to see how we felt with the jet lag and the lack of sleep. I had really wanted to get the two hour train ride over with and to get an early start on the driving, but on the ground in Paris all I wanted to do was sleep, and we looked for a place to crash. A fashion show changed that. There wasn't a hotel under $500 a night in Paris, so Luxembourg it was.

Building in Paris

Gare du l'est, site of a future almost taxi scam

St. Laurent

A different kind of melon

The glorious cheese aisle at a Parisian grocery store

Mississippi Wisconsin?

I wish my Harris Teeter had these, and damn it, I forgot to bring some back.

Two jet lagged people who just needed a seat

St. Martin Canal, kind of a hidden little treasure

I enjoyed watching the locks work

We took the high speed TGV to Lux after spending half a day in Paris, mostly just sitting at a cafe like zombies and staring at people as they walked by. We wandered over to the Canal St. Martin and watched the locks operate before speeding away in a taxi to catch our train. Neither of us were awake for most of the trip. We lugged our bags to the hotel, laid down, and were out immediately.

Breakfast in Lux

In the morning, I very much enjoyed my breakfast of endless bread and cheese and various sausages before walking to the car rental place - about 15 minutes which I stretched out into a half hour or so, just wandering around the streets of Luxembourg wondering what this trip was going to be like. I had never driven in continental Europe; last year driving in Ireland was the first time I had ever driven a car in another country. Based on that experience, I figured the continent would be cake, given that they drive on the correct side of the road and their roads are better.  I picked up the car and we were off. The destination for the night was Rothenburg, a medieval town in Bavaria, but we planned to stop plenty along the way. We crossed the Mosel Valley from Luxembourg to Germany somewhere around noon, maybe closer to one. Throughout the trip, we always seemed to be an hour behind where we wanted to be, sometimes more.

The rolling hills of the Mosel Valley were covered with vineyards that produce Riesling, Elbling, and a few pinot wines, and, as I later learned, a sparkling wine called Cremant. I thought the whole drive to Rothenburg would be like that, but there were some stretches of motorway that were just boring highways with nothing to see but traffic.

Gottelborn menu

We had lunch in a town called Gottelborn, where we ate a buffet full of heavy meats and potatoes, our first real meal of the trip. We just needed to stop, and there weren't exits and entrances with roadside eateries like there are by US highways. We were on a stretch of highway that was somewhat desolate from the looks of it, but I guess there were little towns that we just kept missing because they weren't directly off exits. Anyway, when we pulled into Gottelborn, we just parked on a sidewalk like Europeans tend to do and Chris went into a bank and asked if there were a restaurant nearby. The guy in the bank told him to go down the hill, and that the bank staff would be going there themselves in ten minutes or so.

We stuffed ourselves. Everything was pretty good and it was a great value. I wanted to eat more, but jet lag messes with my stomach as much as it does my head.

Then it was off to Rothenburg. But at some point we hit an accident on the highway, so the GPS routed us around it. It must have been a bad accident; a helicopter landed on the road. Unfortunate for the victims, but a bit fortunate for us, because it got us off the highway and a detour through some little towns.

Now, I haven't spent too much time in Germany in my life, so this was all rather new for me. I had been to Berlin, a large, cosmopolitan city, Munich, Trier, and Gottingen, but that was it. I was thrilled to go to these little towns that looked like what I thought Germany should look like. We ended up in Dirmstein, which looked like this:

Our car

Then we set out for Rothenburg. We had a checkin time we needed to make, and we would be cutting it close.

To be continued...