On June 15th it was time to leave Florence to start on our Alps driving adventure. I wasn't feeling very well that morning, so I called our apartment owner and asked if it was okay for us to take a couple of extra hours before we left the apartment. She said that was fine, so we did.
The only little hitch was that I also called for a taxi to take us to the airport, and they said to call about 5 minutes before we wanted to leave. So I tried that, but the phone had been turned off. That was a problem because the taxi service recognized the phone number and knew exactly where we were when we called before. So I tried calling from my cell phone, but failed to communicate.
Our solution was to prevail upon the good will of the bar owner next door to call for us. That worked. We had plenty of time to get there, but I was getting a little antsy.
When we checked in for our flight, the person who helped us was an American ex-pat who had lived in Italy for 20 years but still held her US passport. She had been in Florence for about 7 years. That was a surprise, but it was fun to talk to her.
Although many said we wouldn't need them, Trout and I got International Driver Licenses from AAA before we left. As our friend John Larrivee said, Trout has perfected this look and wears it in many pictures, both casual and not. Because of all the white, I call this his "Polar Bear in a Snow Storm" picture.
They caught me talking, naturally.
These were our ticket stubs from Florence to Stuttgart where we got our rental car for the drive.
And this was the kind of plane we flew on. The wheels folded up inside the pods on the side. We flew over the Alps. We were very close to them. I was too fascinated with looking down to dig out the camera. I had the window seat and offered to trade with Trout for part of the flight, but he opted out.
The flight was pretty good until we got close to Stuttgart where it was raining. Then we had some "ride 'em cowboy" moments, but we landed just fine.
We got a taxi to the pick-up point for our car, got the car (an Opel, of course) and found our way to the Autobahn. I did an okay job of navigating and Trout did a fine job of driving and we arrived for our first night in Germany at our hotel in Fussen.
The hotel had free parking and was off a little pedestrian only zone, but we couldn't quite figure out how to get there, so Trout parked and I walked to it. While parked, he noticed this car.
Then as we drove around seeking the best way to get to the parking area, he saw this car's tail lights and wanted me to take a picture.
After another zip around the city, we got to our hotel. We had a decent dinner and spend a quiet night in the room.
The next day we had the typical German breakfast provided by the hotel, went next door and bought a map of Germany that covered where we were going, went down the street to a surprisingly large drug store to get bath gel and shampoo in quantities that would last us the rest of the trip, and got on our way along the Deutsche Alpenstrasse.
We started at #8 on the linked map and finished at the end (#25) in Berchtesgaden. We didn't follow it completely, because we didn't have enough time, but we did hit most of the highlights. The worst part was trying to get through Garmisch-Partenkirchen. It was congested and too crowded with tourists -- even on a Thursday.
I had to take my usual "from the car" pictures along the way. We saw some lakes.
And Trout saw another car photo opportunity.
And there were some mountains, but they weren't quite as high or as dramatic as those we would see later.
Although the scenery was lovely and I could have taken lots of pictures of cows and green fields and mountains, somehow I wasn't inspired. I took lots more pictures in Berchtesgaden and they are in the next posting.
