Dankeschön, am I right?

Thursday, May 23 was the start of our group trip, bright and early at 7:45 in the AM. We took a bus from Maastricht into Germany, with our first stop 2.5 hours later at the Koblenz where the Rhine river meets the Moselle River. 

Photo Credit: Taylor Brock

We moved on to St. Goar to board a ship for our lunch cruise on the Rhine. It was raining, so all our pictures had to come from inside, but the town along the river was still fun to see.

Photo Credit: Taylor Brock

Photo Credit: Taylor Brock

Our next stop was this castle in Würzburg, the significance of which I'm still not entirely sure. But it was beautiful! The most interesting room had a combination of paintings and Stuco art all over the room. Another room was made entirely out of mirrors, all of which were destroyed by World War II bombings and redone in the 70s. Our last stop was in the garden, which was beautifully green, even on such a gloomy day. 

Photo Credit: Taylor Brock

Photo Credit: Taylor Brock

We drove 45 minutes further to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, our stop for the night. This was the town I was most looking forward to, and the precious buildings didn't disappoint. Our hotel was adorable, complete with a rubber duck, and we had dinner at a cute German restaurant just up the street. We had our first gelato of the trip after dinner then went on a hunt for wifi. We gave up briefly and played games in the hotel lobby before leaving again to find wifi in a basement-level bar.

I wish we'd had more time here to really enjoy the shops, and Christmas-obsessed as I am, I would love to come back to see the Christmas museum. 

Photo Credit: Taylor Brock

Schneeballs, a Rothenburg specialty

Friday morning we got to sleep in a little for breakfast (Brie, bread, and bell peppers-yum!) at 9:15 then walked down the street to have a Schneeball from one of the many little bakeries.
Before getting back on the bus we stopped in the torture museum, complete with gallows in the front. 

We boarded the bus and drove a couple hours to a rest stop for lunch where I had the first fruit I'd seen all week. We drove 30 more minutes to a monastery in Ottobeuren, beautifully decorated and someone was apparently practicing the organ. 

Video Credit: Taylor Brock

Our next stop was supposed to be Neuschwenstein, the castle after which Cinderella's castle is modeled, but due to snow (yep, this was on May 24) and traffic we had to cancel and instead drove straight to our hotel in Lindau, Germany. 

This hotel was even prettier than the first, and complete with a sauna and wifi. We checked in, got dinner at a pizza place up the street, then collectively trashed the sauna, much to the staff's pleasure, I'm sure. 

We freshened up and met back downstairs, which turned into a 4 hour group heart-to-heart. I don't think I really went into this trip expecting or even wanting to make a bunch of new friends, but just 5 days in that's already been the best part. Friday wasn't even full of very many interesting sights, but the people made it plenty worth it.

Saturday morning we left this beautiful town and drove a couple hours to Liechtenstein where we paid €2.50 for a passport stamp- highly exciting. We met a precious native old man who talked to us about the tornado in Moore, and somehow tried to tell us that they don't have tornadoes because their prince has a back road to his castle. Makes perfect sense.

Our next stop was lunch in Lucerne, Switzerland, which is another city I'd love to go back to. We ate at the Grand Hotel Europe then made a quick stop at the lake for pictures. By this point the weather had started to clear up, so getting out of the bus wasn't quite so freezing.

4 hours later we reached our destination for the night, Montreaux.  We checked in and ate the dinner we had picked up at a rest stop (which also featured a see saw):

Video Credit: Taylor Brock

We walked around Lake Geneva, which was by far my favorite view. I could stare at this forever and it would never get old. 

Photo Credit: Taylor Brock

We met up with the rest of the group to watch the championship fútbol game...couldn't tell ya who won, but it was definitely the best night thus far, complete with massage train. 

The beds at our hotel deserve their own paragraph. I will probably never encounter a comforter as perfect as that one, and getting out of bed Sunday morning was among the biggest challenges I've ever faced. We considered staying in the perfect beds in the perfect mountains and letting them leave us behind, but we had a cheese factory to see...wouldn't want to miss that.

Our day started at Chateau de Chillon, a castle about 5 minutes from our hotel on which Lord Byron's famous "Prisoner of Chillon" is based. We had a precious little tour guide lady who taught us about the castle and showed us the room where Shania Twain once gave a concert. Highly historical, and we all left with "Man, I Feel Like a Woman" stuck in our heads. 

Next up: the cheese factory. This was a substitute activity for the Lake Geneva cruise that was cancelled due to snow, sleet, freezing rain, etc. We got a 15 minute lesson on how cheese is made from Cherry the cow via individual ear piece tour guides, then moved outside for a game of frisbee before boarding the bus to the Rhine Falls. 

Our Sunday night hotel in Frieburg, Germany was the least exciting of the 4, but there was a Mexican food restaurant, so I can't complain. It was extremely cold and still raining, so we spent the evening inside again except for this quick outing: 

Video Credit: Taylor Brock

Our last morning started EARLY, departing at 7:30am. Today was a great nap day with lots of time on the bus, but it was finally sunny! We crossed into France where we got to enjoy the sunshine in Verdun for lunch and a tour of the battle field from WWI. 

Our next stop was Bastogne, Belgium to see the site of the Battle of the Bulge.

Friedle (the bus driver) drove the last stretch back to Maastricht where we scrambled to unpack and repack before bolting off on the next adventure, this one with a little less supervision and fewer plans. But those stories are for the next post...

While it may not have gone exactly as "planned", the group trip was more about getting to know the people on this trip. I had plenty of preconceived ideas about almost everyone, and after this week I don't think a single one of them was right. Everyone is so easy going and fun to be around, and while I'll miss traveling as one big, obnoxious American group, I can't wait for the adventures to come with each person.