Heliopark Hotel Quellenhof Baden-Baden

Featured Excursion: Strasbourg canal cruise
Optional Tour: Haute Königsburg

"See Strasbourg the way it has been seen through the centuries—on a canal cruise. In addition to viewing the town's covered bridges, medieval watchtowers and modern building that houses the European Parliament, you will see "Petite France," a picturesque district that seems as if it has been lifted from the pages of a fairy tale"

(To be continued)

This place was incredible! There was just too much that I loved to talk about, but one thing that was really cool was a hotel that they have called "The Little Prince"...after the book and movie The Little Prince. My parents and I LOVED this book when I was little and we used to read it and watch the movie quite a bit. It's a pretty strange story but really neat. One the side of ...

Last leg of the European jaunt and we've decided to try out the Black Forest...the bad weather was the final nail in the coffin and after 3 days of dripping foggy weather, we decided to jack in the caravan and head to Octoberfest, but more of that later.

So a quick trip to a 500 yr old stud farm started by King Wilhelm the 1st, where they breed beautiful Black Forest horses and Arabs then, Baden Baden to take in the sights of this thermal spa town and ...

... house, sort of semi-bored, looking at how hard life was for the German farmer, I discovered life on the farm also involved Natzi's. When I climbed up to the second floor, I found the entire space was dedicated to the Natzi presence in Schwarzwalder. It was laid out like a museum. White walls with photographs of Natzi's and letters hanging on them. Display cases ...

... the woman standing next to you is too. This isn't more apparent then when you walk out of your changing room with just your locker key wrapped around your wrist. It's all very sterile on the inside as you walk down a white hallway wondering if you're heading in the right direction. My thought was "those creams in the glass casing up ahead better not be the gift shop." At the first stage you're greeted by an attendant, who is dressed all in white, for a ...

... place we booked for our trip thus far and to not be able to use the facilities or even be notified of the situation was unacceptable. At first he wanted to send us a bottle of champagne to our room, but we had just spent the previous days drinking in Champagne, so no, thank you. I think what made Marisa livid is that he refused to acknowledge that this situation was out of the ordinary and that he was in the wrong by not notifying us ...

I had planned to visit Strasbourg on three separate dates in the past, all with the same friend. Each time we had to postpone it for one reason or another. Today our plan finally came together. We got in a car with our men and drove out to Strasbourg. My friend is even more organized than me and had everyone download audio guides from Zevisit in our own native language beforehand. Once we got to the city we started our audio tour in ...

... a bit of the lake and it's beautiful surroundings before the sun set completely, thank goodness, because this was another stop we purposefully detoured to see. Now, speaking of detours. When Europeans say detour, be very afraid. By this time, it was about 10pm, dark, pitch black outside (because we are having to drive through the Alps) and we are solely relying on GPS. At one point in our very "interesting" night adventure, the GPS decided to tell us that it couldn't locate us. WE'RE IN ...

... Oppenau, about 1/2 hour away. Upon arriving in Oppenau we found another town with nothing happening! There were a few hotels and restaurants, but it was so quiet that we drove another 1/2 hour to Offenburg, where we found a nice hotel and a cafe that was still open (it was about 9:30pm by now) to get a bite to eat. Offenburg The next morning, we discovered that Offenburg has a terrific market! There were lots of breads and pastries ...

After Santiago (last letter, right?) I went to Carcassone, France. It's the biggest walled medieval city in Europe.

The hostel was great, actually in the old city, but it was swimming with French pre-teens on a school trip. I rented a bike and rode 30 km down the Canal du Midi which connect the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. The, my butt was sore for days.

Next I went to Avignon, another walled city. I hung out with a friendly ...