Road Trip! (Part 1)

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Our original plans for this weekend were to go to Ireland since Matt had a 4-day weekend (Friday and Monday off from work) but, as it turned out, he had to work Friday after all. There was some speculation that he was going to have to work on Saturday (he didn't) so our road trip was kind of thrown together last minute. Matt didn't get home from work until 3am Friday night/Saturday morning so we had a late start on Saturday but by lunch time we were on the road. It was a fun trip...I brought snacks (I made Rice Krispie treats lol) and we played music and chatted.

It's a 4.5 hour drive from Mannheim to Berchtesgaden when there are no traffic jams. However, if you've ever driven on the autobahn in Germany you know that the chances of getting somewhere without construction or an accident are slim to none. Our luck was no better this time and construction added an extra hour onto our trip. Thankfully it wasn't an accident...those have been known to shut down the autobahn for hours. Did I ever tell you about the time I was driving to Kaiserslautern and got stuck in standstill traffic (as in shut-your-car-off-and-get-out-and-talk-to-your-neighbor-traffic) for over an hour because they found an unexploded bomb from WWII somewhere near the highway?

Anyways, back on topic...Matt started out driving but I took over after a while so he could get a little more sleep. Now, my little car doesn't go any faster than 84 miles an hour and that's with me standing on the gas pedal going downhill. That's not an issue in the U.S. but it is in Germany when there's no construction and no accidents because that typically means NO SPEED LIMIT! Matt's new BMW tops out at around 135 and it just so happens we took his car on this trip. Now, I didn't get it up to 135. That would be crazy. I kept it between 100 and 110 lol.

We finally made it to Berchtesgaden around dinner time and stayed in the cutest little hotel. They had the weather report on the desk for the day (it described the weather as "happy"...fitting since it was probably some of the first nice days in Bavaria since last fall) and the lady who checked us in spoke English with the cutest little sing-songy German accent. We also had a room with a view, which almost never happens 😊

We walked around Berchtesgaden and took some pictures...it really is a cute little town. Matt got to use the tripod that I got him for Christmas and took a picture of us together with Berchtesgaden in the background. We found a little German restaurant for dinner and stopped for ice cream on the way home. I have to say, I'm really going to miss the ice cream in Europe when we finally come home. Baskin Robbins has nothing on this stuff!

Sunday morning we ate breakfast and, after asking some questions at the front desk, discover that the bus isn't running up to the Eagle's Nest yet. We're too early in the season (of course). The Eagle's Nest was Hitler's house, built on the top of a mountain. There's almost nothing original left except for the building itself...it's a restaurant now...but it still would have been cool to see it. We asked if there was any other way to get up there. Turns out you can drive part of the way up the mountain and there's a parking lot where we could have parked and then walked the rest of the way up but it had snowed the week before and hadn't melted yet. Remember the "happy" weather I mentioned? It was 60 degrees and sunny out at the base of the mountain. We didn't bring the appropriate clothing to hike through snow. Hmmm...so what do we do now?

We decided to tour the Berchtesgaden Salt Mine which has been in operation for something like 500 years and is still mining salt today. We were really lucky and got in on an English speaking tour so we actually understood the process at the end of the tour 😊 They put us in these jumpsuits before beginning the tour...Matt and I looked SO fashionable lol. No pictures were allowed during the tour, probably because they take pictures of you at different points and want you to spend the money on their photos, which we actually did. You go down this wooden slide at two different points in the tour and we bought the picture of that. I'll get around to scanning it in one of these days and hopefully post it. It's a cute picture 😊

To learn about the rest of our trip you'll have to read Part 2 of the Road Trip blog 😊

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