Photography of our two week Germany trip
Photography from our two week trip through Germany has been posted. We made a U-shaped trip this October (view our approximate route on Google Maps). We made sure it was after Ocktoberfest. Drunken tourists were the last thing we wanted to see on our trip. For most of the more than a 1000-mile trip, we drove a 2009 Mercedes Benz C-Class car, since the rental company did not have a compact car with automatic transmission. In Berlin and Munich, we took public transportation. There were many beautiful sights in Germany although the naked and rugged western shore of Ireland will still be dearest to my heart.
An overview of our journey
We begin with the cathedrals in Cologne and Aachen. We chose Cologne for its size and Aachen for its historical importance as Charlemagne capital of the Holy Roman Empire. We then spent two days in riesling county on the Moselle River (Mosel) visiting castles including Burg Eltz with parts that date back to the 12th century. The area around Burnkastel-Kues has some of the highest quality reisling in the world. There is a museum with an open wine cellar. We stayed in the medieval town of Bielstein with a small castle overlooking the river.
We continued our castle sightseeing along the Rhine River (having to cross by ferry twice) and spent the night in a remodeled castle in Bacharach. We then visited Romanesque church in Speyer and the university town of Heidelberg with its ruined Renaissance palace. We spent the night in Frankfurt and attended a performance of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio.
After Frankfurt we headed in to France for a few hours. Strasbourg is in the Alsace-Lorraine region. We ate at a crepe café and had a dark chocolate covered crepe and Roquefort filled crepe. We spent the night near the resort town of Baden-Baden and took the famous three-hour German spa at the Friedrichsbad (sorry, we don’t have any pictures from that).
The next day, we journeyed farther into the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) and to the town of Triberg that is the cuckoo clock capital of the world. We slept just south of Triberg at a bed and breakfast ran by a British couple.
The next day we traveled east and fumbled our way into Switzerland and to the Rhine Falls (Rheinfall) that is not at large as Niagara, but in many ways is more beautiful. We spent the night on Lake Constance (Obersee) in Meersburg before going heading into the Bavarian Alps. We visited the famous “Cinderella Castle” of Neuschwanstein and the builder’s boyhood home of Hohenschwangau Castle. Just east of the famous Garmisch Partenkirchen region we slept in the ski town of Mittenwald.
We left the rural German for its two largest cities and their art museums. Rachel visited museums in Munich while I toured through the concentration camp that all other camps were based on, Dachau. We then took a high-speed train (ICE) to Berlin for three days. We viewed museum art for the first day and then split up to see different sights on the second day. On the third day, we flew out of Berlin and back to the States.
Day 01 – Cologne Cathedral and Aachen Cathedral
Day 02 & Day 03 – Moselle Valley Castles, Bielstein, and Bernkastel-Kues
Day 04 – Rhine River Castles, Rhinefel Castle and Bacharach
Day 05 – Speyer and Heidelberg
Day 06 – Strasbourg and around Baden Baden
Day 07 – Black Forest Menzenschwand and St. Blasien
Day 08 – Rhine Falls and Meersburg
Day 09 – Neuschwanstein Hohenschwangau Castles and the Alps
Day 10 – Dachau Concentration Camp
Day 11 – Berlin
Day 12 – Berlin Art Museums
Day 13 – Berlin
Photography from Rachel’s stay in the Netherlands will be posted soon
