Our time in Italy came to an end and we took a few days to see some new places and move to our new homebase. We visited the lakes of Italy, zipped across Switzerland, stopped in the Black Forest, and took a trip up Germany’s Romantic Road. We have landed in the city of Mainz, just west of Frankfurt and on the mighty Rhine River. We will be here for six more weeks.

On Monday, we chose to spend our last day in Italy at Lago Orta and Lago Maggiore. The Italian lakes are so absolutely gorgeous! The weather has been (predictably) unpredictable, with some wild swings in temperature and days of warm sunshine followed by freezing rain. We got a nice, sunny day on Monday, so we took a daytrip to see the mountains and the little lake towns before we said goodbye to Italia. Lake Orta is a smaller lake than the famous lakes of Como, Garda, and Lugano. We stopped at the town of Orta San Giulio, which sits on a rocky peninsula on the east side of the lake. We walked up to the church there and then walked the perimeter of the peninsula. That lake was supposed to be our only destination for the day, but on examination of the map, we saw that Lake Maggiore was really close, so we headed through the tunnel to the town of Baveno. We hopped on the ferry boat and rode out to Isola dei Pescatori and Isola Bella. Both islands are very touristy. Isola dei Pescatori had a fishing community, but the year-round population is dwindling. Isola Bella holds a fancy palazzo built by the Borromeo family. After returning to Baveno, we drove south a bit to the town of Stresa. We had to find a good place to have our last Italian dinner and enjoy sitting on a bustling piazza. We enjoyed our pasta and drove back to Torino satisfied that we saw all we had planned to see for this trip.

We were bound for Germany on Tuesday. We had thrown around all kinds of options for how to get to our new place. But the weather forecast in the Alps did not seem especially favorable for sightseeing, so we had planned just to buzz on through Switzerland with a brief stop in Luzern. Well, in actuality the weather wasn’t too bad and we had a very science drive past Lago Como and Lago Lugano. That’s the portion of Switzerland that is Italian-speaking and we had never really been down there much. It’s stunning! We stopped to walk around Luzern and have a bite for lunch. The skies were blue, it was a warm day, and Luzern is maybe our new favorite Swiss town. It was nice to return to our favorite breads and chocolate! We then made a beeline for the border and our next stop: the Black Forest.

We stayed in the small town of Bad Krozingen and enjoyed a walk around neighboring Staufen. The next day, we started a very fun and full day by driving north to the spa town of Baden-Baden. This is the area where Germany comes to relax. German doctors even “prescribe” a trip to the Black Forest for people who are stressed out and ill so that they can drink the restorative water, recuperate at a “bad” (bath), and receive a “kur” (cure). We didn’t do any of that, but we did enjoy our walk around town. Then we headed to the Black Forest National Park. There is a road that follows along the highest part of the park. If you’ve ever driven through Shenandoah National Park in the U.S., it was a lot like that…only German. We stopped at the beginning of the road at a market/restaurant/beer garden. It was May 1st, May Day, and in Germany, Labor Day. Lots of people were out having a fun lunch in the beautiful weather. We had a pretty good hamburger and, since we were back in the land of wursts, sausages. Our drive was just lovely, through the pine forest and up and down through the switchbacks and little towns. We stopped in Wolfach and then again in St. Märgen where we took a scenic hike through the grassy hills.

We spent a morning wandering around Freiburg im Breisgau. What a beautiful little city! In this southwestern corner of Germany, many of the towns were spared from bombing until the last few months of World War II, but then they were really bombed heavily. Freiburg was almost completely destroyed. But they rebuilt many of the historic buildings and added some new ones, too. It’s a nice mix of old and new and it is charming. The temperature had taken another nosedive, so we stopped on the market square for a warm drink. We enjoyed chatting with the guys at the stall–one from Costa Rica and one from Boise, Idaho. From Freiburg, we decided that we would take the southern route to our next destination: the “Romantic Road”. In the words of Rick Steves, “The Romantic Road takes you through Bavaria’s medieval heartland, a route strewn with picturesque villages, farmhouses, onion-domed churches, Baroque palaces, and walled cities.” We drove east, close to the Swiss and Austrian borders toward Füssen. The big ticket sight in that neighborhood is Schloss Neuschwanstein. We had absolutely no desire to immerse ourselves in the tourist purgatory that goes along with a place like that, but we did pull over to the side of the road and snapped a couple of photos. Can you see the teeny weeny widdle castle?

While we were still in the Alps, we stopped at Nathan’s nirvana: a cheese shop. They had so many good mountain cheeses and we tried (and bought) quite a few. The views of the mountains were stunning and we really enjoyed our last glimpses of glaciers and granite for awhile. We headed north along the Romantic Road. There isn’t really just one route through the little scenic towns, so we sort of muddled our way along, driving through some here, missing others there. Some roads were closed, so we detoured a few times. We enjoyed the sights of the medieval, half-timbered houses against the fields of green and bright yellow (rapeseed plants in bloom). We ended up in cute, walled Nördlingen, which is located in a huge meteor impact crater. We walked along the old wall, through the town, and found some dinner, beating the thunderstorm that was threatening. We stayed at a chain hotel that likes to decorate their hotels according to the local attractions, so our had meteor-patterned carpet and room numbers.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber is the quintessential medieval town. It is so well-preserved because it basically fell off the radar of everyone for about 300 years. Since they didn’t have any money to replace the old buildings, they just remained and then tourists found it and they are a prospering city again. It was definitely full of tourists when we visited and some places (Marktplatz and the famous “Plönlein” photo spot), but we walked off the beaten path by just a block and it felt like we had the place to ourselves. We paused for breakfast at a bakery. We ordered a fairly typical German breakfast, with meat, cheese, egg, and a roll. But the best part was their bread buffet. You could choose from a nice array of their lovely breads to fill your basket. Often, bakeries here will also provide a little “to-go” bag with your bread basket, in case you can’t finish all the yummy stuff. Our tour through town was delightful.
We continued from there to Würzburg, where there is a giant palace (the Residenz) and some cool old churches. We bopped around town following our walking tour. The city was put on the “pilgrim circuit” due to the beheading of three Irish monks in the 7th century. We didn’t visit the Residenz, but we did walk through the very fine gardens. From there, it was a quick couple of hours to our new “homebase” of Mainz.

Mainz has many claims to fame, but the biggest is that it was here that Johannes Gutenberg used movable type to print around the year 1450. We have a little studio-ish apartment on the outskirts of town not far from the Rhine. The flat is in a neighborhood that has a very “village” feel to it, even though we are not far from a big industrial area and a largish city. We have started to explore the area, walking into the city to see some sights and have a bite to eat. We also only have our car for a few more days, so we took a drive through the Mosel Valley to a castle called Burg Eltz. We took a really lovely (if muddy) hike up to the castle, then took a tour. It has been in the same family since 1157 and is so lovingly cared for. We then drove the rest of the valley to Koblenz, where the Mosel meets the Rhine. After a yummy lunch at a Turkish grill, we drove the winding road through the beautiful Rhine valley, gawking at the pretty towns and amazing number of castles. We didn’t really stop anywhere along the Rhine because we plan to return soon to do more exploring.

We are settling in just fine since Germany was “home” for six months and we have a pretty good feel for how this country works. The vibe is a bit different here on the west side of the country; people are a bit less reserved and a bit more friendly. But it’s still a lot the same and we feel good about being here till next month. Have a great week!