For this year’s holiday we booked a place in Bavaria. We were planning to fly to Munich and pick up a hire car, but due to there not being any flights from our local airport and finding that it would require travelling to one of the London airports, we changed our plans and decided to drive. This turned out to be a great idea. We were able to take more home comforts, as well as seeing more of Germany.
Our first stop was in the Holiday Inn at Aachen, which is not in a bad location for the AutoBann, and it was possible to walk into the centre. The reception made us feel very welcome and the room was comfortable. This was my wife’s first visit to Germany; she had difficulty getting used to the pillows which are much softer than English ones. The breakfast was a typical buffet with plenty of choice for what my wife calls “picky eaters” (that’s me).
Our second night in Germany was in a hotel near Ludwigsburg, this was not an ICH property. It was in the grounds of an old German Stately home (see the picture below) and had a golf course if you are into that sort of thing.
The next day we drove on into the Bavarian Alps where we stayed in a small village next to Oberstaufen. We stayed in a lovely apartment for two weeks and completed a number of walks around the area, including a few walks up some mountains with wonderful views of mountains still with snow on the peaks, on one of these we followed a sign to a water fall at Eibele (picture below), when we walked back to the path we realised we had just crossed the border into Austria. The weather was very changeable but we did not let this ruin the holiday.
On the way back we stayed in Boppard which is a small historic town on the Rhein around 20km south of Koblenz, again this was not an ICH property but another I had found on the Internet. The hotel was right next to the Rhien, and when I booked they were offering a river view room for an extra £20 per night, we did not take this offer up, and were not expecting a Rhien view, but when we entered the room we found not only did we have a Rhien view but we also had a balcony. The sun set on the first night was fantastic (picture below taken from our hotel balcony) but the next day was solid rain. Still we took a boat trip down the river on the Sunday morning, a short drive to Koblenz in the afternoon and had a coffee and cake in a lovely town centre café.
Driving on the continent seems so much more civilised; people are much more respectful to others and seem to take more care when driving in rain.
Altogether, I think this holiday was probably more enjoyable than one where you are treated like sheep at airports - getting the third degree from people over the content of your bags - their weight and size.
All in all, this was the first time we had taken a trip like this and would definitely give it ago in the future.
Happy travelling.
