Coming to an end

It’s our last day of the honeymoon and we’re staying in the city of Wurzburg about an hour from Frankfurt. We’ve had a great time but I think we’re both ready to get back home. The fur babies miss us!

 

We spent two days in the town of Villach in southern Austria, a place I had never heard of but seemed convenient as it was just on the north side of the border. It turned out to be a very nice place and we were treated very well at the guesthouse where we stayed. In fact, I think we were the only guests there at the time and the woman who owns it (can’t remember name) was very nice and very helpful.

 

Grabbing an English map we went for a drive on Tuesday and decided to check out a local alpine drive and check out the views. They were pretty good but as we have hiked many times in the Rockies, it wasn’t overwhelming. After driving up a narrow and windy road for 16km, you reach the top, where the is a parking lot and a bierhaus (of course!). And a 1.5 hour hiking trail to the very top of Dobratch. Since we wanted a relaxing day…

 

We hiked it!

 

So up we went, once again sweating our way along, winding up a well maintained road that led to the top where there was another beer house, a church, and a shrine. All very cool! You certainly don’t see those sort of things in Canada at the top of a mountain, especially a church that is hundreds of years old. And the view was incredible as the altitude was 2167 meters and it was a warm, clear day. Someone once told me that Alps were ‘civilized’ and now I understand. From that point you are looking at three countries as well; Austria, Italy, and Slovenia.

 

We took lots of photos and then high tailed it back down to the car for the drive back to Villach. From there we did some geocaching which led us to more churches, fortresses, and farmer’s fields before calling it a night.

 

Yesterday we headed to the town of Berchtesgaden, which anyone who knows of the 3rd Reich knows that Hitler built the Eagle’s Nest at. And we also encountered the first rain and cool weather we had seen in weeks. Unfortunately by the time we reached the town, it was too socked in and we didn’t bother going up for the view, as it would have only been of clouds. The cooler weather was a nice relief, though, after weeks of very hot and sunny. Too bad my tan is still so uneven.

 

We grabbed a room at a guesthouse suggested by the tourist office and were a little surprised they didn’t have an internet connection. Annoying but not the end of the world. We also discovered this morning, that they also didn’t have hot water. That was more annoying as we both skipped the shower and just hit the road after dinner.

 

That said, we went for an early dinner in Berchtesgaden that was outstanding, albeit about 8000 calories, before taking a walking tour of the town. This was a self-guided tour that the info office provided. Good tour, but a little lacking on the signs and street names on the map. We ended up in some weird neighbourhoods on the outside of town in which I kept waiting for some Nazi hold outs to come running out screaming. But we did get some great views of the area before calling it a night.

 

Most of today was on the road again to get to Wurzburg and we picked up some geocaches along the way. Geocaching in a foreign language can be a real challenge sometimes but most of the time, we can still find them though. Not always; there was one day where we were getting stumped repeatedly.

 

Arriving in Wurzburg was like several other cities along the trip; get to the tourist office, find a room, check out the area. In this case, we quickly found the office, got a room, but spent way too long looking for parking after we got the room. In the end, it felt like we parked 1/2 the city away as we walked our bags to the hotel. But this hotel has internet, and hot showers, so it’s well worth it.

 

All we really did here was go for dinner and we made it one last hurrah of German food before we go home. I pigged out once again on sausages, beer, and sauerkraut and waddled my way around the city for a couple of hours, grabbing some ice cream along the way. I think I may have undone 6 months of hard exercise and dieting with this trip!

 

One neat thing about many European cities is that they often have an ‘old town’, that is usually quite small and can be seen in a relatively small period of time. As Wurzburg has a population of 180,000, it’s easy to walk the old town and see the major sites.

 

And now this is it; tomorrow we complete the drive to Frankfurt and head on home. We’ve travelled through six countries and put 4000km on the car, eaten way too much ice cream and fatty foods, and have had the best honeymoon anyone could want. Amassed hundreds of photos, raced along the Autobahn, puzzled over weird traffic signs and lights, swam in the Adriatic, hiked in the Alps, and just generally bumped around many times without a plan and savoured all of it.

 

Now I have to be careful not to get a speeding ticket back home as I’m used to driving at 160 on the highway!