Hofer's Hotel Harzer Bad Herrenalb

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 ...

... tent up in the dark, and unfortunately, we managed to break one of the poles. (Sorry martin). We made do with the tent pole being a bit shorter, although it wasn't ideal, it was somewhere to crash for a few hours.

The noise of the motor inflating the airbed caused a few people to wonder what was going on, but of course they realised when I switched ...

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 ...

... Display cases with guns and ammo. There was also sitting area where you could watch a film about the Natzi's. There was even a cast iron statue of Hitler buried up to his neck. It was all in German so I couldn't understand much of it. And then I walked through another door and found myself staring at a wooden plank with a hole cut in it - the toilet.

... Baden has long been a playground for the wealthy and surprisingly, the Russians. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and number of Russian princes all played in Baden Baden in its early beginnings. All of the water pumped throughout the Friedrichsbad baths come heated straight out of the ground. Even the saunas and steam rooms are heated naturally from mother earth. Eucalyptus enhanced steams rooms clear your sinuses while you sweat. Dry rooms lull you dangerously ...

Monday morning was spent just doing domestic stuff like laundry, giving the bikes their first wash in three weeks, and generally milling about. In the afternoon we set off for the Black Forest town of Baiersbronn to visit with Isabel's parents, Peter and Regina. We took mainly back roads to get there as it was only an hour and a half ride. Once we got into the Black Forest area, the buildings and houses in the towns took on ...

... with a beautiful ceramic tiled oven and dark German wood accents.

Baden-Baden is famous for its quaint, mountain town and hot baths fed by natural hot springs. It is the haunts of the well to do (Obama was here early in June and the town is still a buzz) so the shopping was high end and not touristy. We went to the Caracalla baths, rather than the other baths in town, which were nude only, and ...

... and ahead I could see the stone clock tower and a bit of blue clock. That was it! The church I was looking for. As I approached it, the buildings turned from the white modern style with brown or red tile roofs to the old, half-timbered style. Very cool! The buildings only got better as I approached the church. The church is on a terraced hill, and looking down from there I saw the cutest streets of half-timbered houses, and a maypole! This was too much! I walked around camera ...

... imagine this is just glorious area of Europe. Because our plane left at 7am and it is a 2 hour drive to Stansted Airport we decided to drive to the airport Thursday night and spend the night a near by hotel and get the shuttle to the airport first thing in the morning. On the way to the airport, just north of the Thames River, is a large shopping area where there are just a plethora of great shops. There was Ikea, Costco, even a Borders Books. In every ...

... tour of the inner castle. The problem is that they stop selling tickets at 5:30, and the tours are free after 6. We walked up at 5:32 and the guy at the ticket counter said it was closed and to go on in. The guy accepting tickets wouldn't let us in because we didn't have a ticket. Pleading logic was something I THOUGHT would work with them, but to no avail. We left and went to old town Heidelberg. The Germans had just won their way into ...