Wednesday & Thursday - Arriving in Germany
We're off on another trip to Germany... This is our fourth trip. I can hardly believe it. Taking off from Miami International Airport, we're very excited. I get a little nervous, because this flight is about 9 hours over the Atlantic Ocean. After a long flight and no sleep, we arrive in Frankfort on Thursday morning. One more hour long flight from Frankfort to Munich and we would be starting this vacation.
We arrived in Munich about 9:30 a.m, picked up our luggage and went to look for the Hertz car rental counter to pick up our car. I reserved an automatic car, so they gave us a Ford Voyager to drive. It's the biggest car we've ever driven in Germany...... "Land of the tiny car and even smaller parking spaces." This car is brand new..... Only 58 kms on the odometer! It is a great full-size van which seats 7, with A/C, CD player, 2 side doors that open automatically with a button, an automatic rear hatch, cruise control and lot of other fun buttons. They gave us this bigger car, because the one we reserved was gone, so they upgraded us. Wow, what luck.
After getting directions from Hertz, we got in our Van and headed towards Garmisch-Partenkirchen on the Autobahn. As we got closer to our destination, the road turned from a flat, straight highway to rolling hills and beautiful countryside. Then all of a sudden, we saw huge mountains in the distance. What a fantastic sight!
As we got closer, the mountains grew bigger and bigger. Covered with lush green trees, we saw more mountains in the background with snow-covered caps. Finally, we drove thru a tunnel that went under the very mountain that we had been approaching. Now beautiful mountains surrounded us and we had arrived in the town of Garmisch.
It was lunchtime, so we stopped at the Ristorante Venezia and ate a wonderful Italian lunch. We asked the waiter for some directions to our hotel, and found out we were only minutes away.
Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
We found the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten at Bahnhofstraße (train house street) 23. Our hotel was a beautiful, older building with a restaurant on the premises. Our room was on the 2nd floor, so we took the elevator up to our room. This elevator was very small, with a bench in it to sit on. When the door opened, there was another door that didn’t open. We tried to slide the door open, but it wouldn’t budge. Oh, no…. stuck in an elevator… and laughing our heads off! We finally realized you had to “push” the outer door to open it. We found out, things in Germany work just a little different than back home.
Our room was very nice….. small TV, large windows overlooking the front street, bathroom, small sofa and table and a closet-type cabinet. After briefly unpacking and settling into our room, we decided to take a walk so we could take pictures. We wanted to see more of this very charming town, so we set off walking.
Every block was full of surprises. The mountains in the distance were unbelievable. (You must remember, we are from flat Florida at sea level!) John took photos with the digital camera and I took the video movie.... typical crazy American tourists. We had so much fun.
Each corner that we turned presented us with more cute stores and beautiful buildings. It looks like a town out of the Swiss Alps with all the carved wood on the balconies and wooden trim work. Most buildings have beautiful paintings on the fronts or sides. And of course we had to go into about every third store.
We even found an Internet cafe called the Computerhaus. For a mere 1,33 Euros, we used their internet to send an e-mail back home informing our family and friends that we were well and having fun.
Two hours later..... after some shopping, too much walking and lots of “ooooing and ahhhhing”, we returned to our room for a little time to relax before dinner. Being very tired, we decided to eat at the hotel's restaurant downstairs. What a good choice! Their food was excellent and served with beautiful garnishment. It looked like a work of art and tasted even better.
By this time, we had been awake for about 32 hours, so we were very tired. All we could think about was sleep....