Madness At The Malting: European Road Trip Day 2 - Germany (Thursday 31st May 2012)

We had great fun at breakfast in the Hotel Elite - there was a massive buffet with all sorts of food. Lucy and I were very good and had things like pretzels, sauerkraut, and sausages etc! The boys seemed to have lots of cake...

Getting all our stuff loaded back in the car again! (We became expert at this!)

We then drove to Baden-Baden, and stopped off at a Tourist Information Centre (again, very impressed with Germany! Very helpful and straightforward.) We parked in a multi-storey carpark, and went for a walk through Baden-Baden. We wandered alongside a shallow river, which was next to a nice park area, with museums, casinos, hotels, churches and beautiful buildings along it. It was a lovely place!

Jack next to the shallow river.

At one of the art galleries.

Heading back to the car park through Baden-Baden town centre.

We then carried on driving, and took a detour through the Black Forest. We stopped off at quite a few places to enjoy the view, including at this log pile in a lay-by, where we got chatting to a really nice German guy who was on a motorbiking tour.

As we carried on driving through the valley, the houses were amazing - all chalet style, with huge triangular roofs - it was just like I imagine the Alps in summer to be, where Heidi would live, and with lots of perfect fields of mown grass!

Scott also said there was a waterfall (the highest in Germany), on the way to the next hotel, so we stopped off in a funny town nearby, called Triberg, filled with lots of Cuckoo clock shops. (Lucy and I had to go down into the town to find another toilet, plus go into one of the shops, then we caught up with the boys.)

There was quite a steep path, with lots of walk-ways up to the top of the waterfall. It was boiling.

There was also a really good park near the bottom of the waterfall, which we played on for a while.

View over Triberg

We then carried on for about another half an hour's drive before getting to our next hotel - the beautiful chalet Hotel Brend, near Furtwangen - on top of a hill. The views were simply gorgeous - the picture below shows the hotel, and the view out over Switzerland.

There was also a brilliant look-out tower behind the hotel (which we took these pictures from). There were beautiful meadows, with hills and the Black Forest disappearing into the background, and views over to France on our right.

Our part of the hotel was brand new - we had two gorgeous rooms, with balconies, and views over to Switzerland and France (and the Hotel's private play park below!) we were so excited!

We had our evening meal in the hotel restaurant, though we weren't exactly sure what we were ordering! Here's Lucy enjoying her very big meatball soup...