September 13, 2014 (Europe Day 1)

Hi family and friends,

Greetings from Europe.  Dave here.  We want to keep our family blog/journal/photo gallery here on Sarah's blog, so if you are interested in following our adventures for the next few weeks, this is the place!

We took off from Phoenix at 8:30am on Friday morning, September 12th, and arrived in Munich at 7:30am on Saturday.  We tried our best to sleep during the D.C. to Munich flight to start acclimating to Europe time.  It was fitful sleep at best.  But, as Sarah mentioned, they had lots of movies to watch on our own private screens.....how modern!  (Can you tell it's been a while since we flew on a big plane?)  

At the Munich airport, we rented a car, a VW Toureg, and immediately headed northeast toward the town of Rothenburg.  We took some country roads instead of staying on the Autobahn the whole time.  It took a lot longer (about five hours), but we loved seeing the farmland and countryside.  Along the way we saw three different castles on the tops of hills, including the ruins of a very old one that we wished we had time to explore. 

We got to Rothenburg about 1:30pm and had a great time hiking the ancient wall, walking around the Christmas store, and taking photos of this “Medieval meets Disney” town.  The girls were in massive culture shock/awe. 

After Rothenburg, we drove the Autobahn all the way back to our little hotel, the Jagermo Hotel, in the town of Grasbrunn, east of Munich.  We still hadn’t actually seen Munich.  I only got flashed out of the left lane twice!  It was fun driving 160 kph and watching the Audis and BMWs and Mercedes and Porsches (and one little screaming Smart car) go flying by.

We stayed in a little loft room on the top floor of the hotel, with five beds and an angled ceiling.  It was pretty small, but very clean and cozy. 

After loading our bags into the room we went across the street to this quaint restaurant and had an amazing authentic German dinner.  Nobody in the restaurant spoke any English, but they had a couple English menus, so we were able to pick out a few recognizable entrees.  It was delicious, especially after eating airplane meals and snack food for the past 36 hours.

Then we went back to the hotel and crashed.  I was worried we would wake up after a few hours and our bodies would think it was time to get up from a nap, but we all slept through the night and felt well rested and ready for the next day.

The weather has been overcast the whole time, with some rain off and on.  We didn’t get rained on during our Rothenberg hours, but drove in a lot of rain both ways.  We LOVE the weather.  It is in the 70’s all day, and the evening was warm enough to open the windows while we slept.  So pleasant.