Sometimes 160 just ain’t fast enough

Here we are in Nuremburg after spending the first night in Frankfurt. It’s 8am now and I’m actually feeling a little alive today unlike yesterday when we dragged ourselves around in a jet lagged daze. But I have to say; Europeans know how to do breakfast. We’re in a pension, which is sort of like a bed & breakfast, and they always seem to include the most amazing breakfasts. Cheeses, meats, eggs, cereals, a variety of bread, and pretty well every kind of spread that one could want are provided to guests and you can’t help but to smile when starting a day off with a meal like that.

I have a new first for a trip; renting and driving a car in Europe. I can’t deny there was a first white knuckle moments but I managed to negotiate our way out of Frankfurt (the wrong direction) and make it to Nuremburg in one piece.

As the parking garage was underground, we had no GPS when we left the rental agency and that resulted in us heading south of Frankfurt, which was the wrong direction. But this being Germany, there is a ‘rasthaus’ it seems every 10 km so we pulled over, punched in where we were going, and headed on our way, after a few wrongs turns and a little bit of anger getting of the freeway and turning ourselves around. And we started on the autobahn. Now that is quite the road to drive. The recommended speed limit is 130 but unless you’re doing 200+, you had better stay out of the fast lane and more than once, while I would be doing 140 or more, cars would go ripping by. It was kind of crazy with the amount of traffic but everyone seems to know what they were doing. One neat thing about driving here is that there are rest stops and parking areas quite frequently along the way so it’s always easy to stop for a break if one wants.

While on the highway, we decided to grab a geocache along the way which led us off the road to a wooded area where we wandered around in the forest for 1/2 hour trying to locate the cache. There was a man relaxing by his car whom I think thought we were crazy near the cache. Especially as we waded through thorns in shorts getting scratched up. I felt obligated to chat with him and explain but I still think he thought we were slightly nuts! And he asked ‘you came to Germany for this!’ as he shook his head. Hahaha.

Nuremburg was my first real city driving experience and it was a little hairy. Fortunately I didn’t make any wrong turns but there was a close call in which I almost turned into oncoming traffic! I’m still learning the lines and sometimes they seem a little vague. Not to mention the road signs that we haven’t figured out yet!

We did manage to get to the tourist office and inquire about a pension which led us to windy road thru narrow little city streets like you see in the movies to an amazingly modern parking garage. Fortunately, you don’t need to know the language to figure out how to park. From there it was a short walk to our room where we crashed out for a few more hours.

We didn’t have a lot of time to look around but we wandered on over to the Haptmarkt and did manage to sample some of the local gingerbread, which is one of the things that Nuremburg is known for. Along with Nazi war crime trials, that is. And finger sausages. LOL.

As we had eaten plenty of meat and potatoes, we decided that Thai would be a nice break for dinner and I punched that into my GPS and found a nearby restaurant. I must say, the place was amazing! It was one of those hole in the wall places in which there was only about 6 tables and most were reserved. Luckily the waiter spoke relatively good English and we muddled our way into ordering beer, appies, and dinner. Truly, it was some of the best Thai food I’ve ever had and it shows that sometimes you just gotta walk into a place and take a chance. After dinner we wandered around for a bit, partially lost, until we found our room and called it a night.

We’re planning on driving to Prague today as we have a room booked for three nights but we’re going to go tour the local castle first before we head on our way. Prague’s about 250 km so we expect we’ll be there sometime this afternoon. Tomorrow the real siteseeing begins as we have a lot to see there.