Hi travelers, I’m glad you’ve found us! I was bitten by the travel bug early on, when I was in high school my parents said if we could find airfare to Europe for $600 or less that we could go for spring break. SAY NO MORE! I then made it my mission…… I was going to find us a bargain and be able to go with my family on our first European adventure.
My first step was finding the bargain….. we lived in Lexington, KY at the time so the only airline that offered full-sized aircraft flying in and out of BlueGrass Field was Delta, so I called Delta Airlines and got pricing for dozens of destinations. I was gutted that most were far exceeding our budget, but then looking at my map I asked the booking agent about Zurich. Zurich it turned out was a new city that Delta was just beginning to service. The price? Less than our per person budget. I ran into my parent’s bedroom and woke them up (it was late at night) and told them of the deal I’d found. The booking agent was kind enough to hold three tickets and give us overnight to discuss it (knowing, of course, the price could change). And our first trip was born. (Side note, I am sure I drove that ticketing agent batty, a 15-year-old asking her to price out a million different flights and options but thank goodness she persevered and helped. I know the feeling all too well now that I book travel for people but when you find the bargain you need to help a client, it’s exhilarating!)
So then came the really exciting part….. planning the trip. We knew we were flying in and out of Zurich so if we got a rental car, where could we go. We ended up being able to go from Zurich to Dijon, France; Paris, France; Metz, France; Baden-Baden, Germany; Munich, Germany; Garmisch-Partinkirchen, Germany; Innsbruck, Austria; and back to Zurich.
I was so excited I didn’t sleep on the plane. So I was zonked out in the car when my parents woke me up frantic because we had picked up the rental car in Zurich and driven straight away toward Dijon and we had crossed into France and we stopped at a booth and someone was speaking to them in French. They thought we had to show our passports and were trying to understand what the attendant was telling them, so they woke me up since I had studied French since elementary school. Turns out it was a toll booth. 😂
Dijon was really just a stopping point for us we didn’t really see much on Day 1, I remember being very tired and hungry and eating vegetable soup in the hotel’s restaurant for dinner. But the next day…. the next day we went to Fontainbleau, Louis VII’s hunting retreat, then on into Paris. We stayed in a suburb of Paris to make parking easier, in Velizy-Villacoublay where our hotel would transfer us to the metro station on an as-needed basis.
We took the metro from the hotel to Trocadero station and came up out of the underground and there she was. La Tour Eiffel! We literally walked up out of the station and saw one of the most iconic of all Parisian landmarks. We ate pain au chocolat on the Champs-Elysees and walked around just soaking up all that is Paris.
Metz then was a stopping point on the way to Germany. It was a strange experience as there was no parking despite the hotel telling us when we booked that they had it. Their solution? Park on the sidewalk. I’m not even joking. And the hotel was in an old building, in downtown Metz. We had a nasty greasy hamburger for dinner and just were ready to get the heck out of dodge the next morning. But while drying her hair, my Mom managed to blow a circuit breaker at the hotel plunging the entire floor into darkness. Needless to say, we just left and dealt with the wet hair situation.
So off to Germany. (You may be thinking, why on earth did we do such an aggressive road trip for our first time in Europe? Well, the answer is we thought if this was our one and only visit, we wanted to hit the highlights. Basically each of our bucket list items. Obviously, we couldn’t hit every bucket list place, but we could do our best). We went to Baden Baden and stayed at a lovely spa hotel in downtown. However, navigating to the hotel was hard. The map showed we just stayed on the road we were on, drive straight and get there. So as we’re following a bus through the center of town a policeman knocks on our car window. He said we were on a “no drive” street. A no-drive street? What the heck is that? Well, it turns out much of Europe has pedestrian-friendly zones where cars are limited or prohibited and this was one of them. The bus, however, was able to continue. 🤦♀️
It was spring break time, so mid-March and crisp cool weather. The hotel in Baden Baden had the windows open in the hallway and I still remember the “frishe luft” or fresh air coming in from outside and excellent breakfast. We then made our way to Munich. We saw the Glockenspiel in the Marienplatz, ate a bratwurst at the Viktualienmarkt and toured the former concentration camp at Dachau. Sadly we couldn’t say in Munich this trip, as there was a massive construction convention in town. Best Western had told us their closest hotel was in a town south of Munich called Garmisch-Partenkirchen. What we didn’t know at the time was that would be kismet!
Turns out Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a lovely town nestled in the foothills of the Alps. Iconic Bavarian scenery with friendly people and great food. Home of the tallest mountain in Germany the Zugspitze and a stone’s throw from the fairy tale castle that Disney based his on, Neuschwanstein.
Neuschwanstein Castle is one of two perched high above the mountaintops in Germany. Hohenschwangau is the childhood home of King Ludwig II who built Neuschwanstein in his adulthood. Neuschwanstein was never completed. It’s open to visitors and you can walk or take a horse drawn carriage up the steep hill to the top.
From there we drove to Innsbruck, Austria the picturesque town that hosted the Winter Olympics in both 1964 and 1976. We stayed in a hotel in the middle of downtown where in the middle of the night I was awoken by someone singing Rock-Around-The-Clock in half German and half English.
We then drove back to Zurich and toured the Swiss banking capital and flew home. It was a grand adventure especially for the first time we ever traveled to Europe.
This is my first time visit at here and i am genuinely happy to read everthing at one place. Anselma Donalt Ho