A few days without internet...

...so I'm way behind in posting, which is too bad -- I'm doing this as much so for my sake as I am for anyone else's.

I'll mention here that, on day 4, we had a round of problems. The debit card stopped working (great!). And the mouse of the computer went berserk. We figured out the problem though -- you can't use the mouse while the computer is plugged in (wonderful -- good thing we just replaced the battery on this 5 year old monstrosity).

Day 5

I'm really glad we decided to head to Strausburg and not Normandy. Monday was not a great day to be a tourist, as it was a national holiday. Strausburg was GORGEOUS and I loved it, but almost everything was closed. The grocery stores, the shopping stores and most of the bakeries and restaurants. There were things open here and there, but a lot was shut down -- including all the public restrooms! It would have been a waste of a lot of time to get to Normandy and have everything (or almost everything) be closed.

Strausburg has a gorgeous little old town area, complete with canals. The people were SIGNIFICANTLY nicer in Strausburg -- they didn't seem to be offended by my small french vocabulary. I'd love to go back sometime when everything is actually open.

After our brief morning tour of Strausburg, we headed over the border into Germany. Our first stop was in Baden-Baden. If you ever get a chance to go to Europe YOU NEED TO GO TO BADEN-BADEN! And if you go to Baden-Baden, you MUST go to the spas. We spent most of the afternoon at a spa called Carcalla (the only spa of several that required swimsuits) and it was HEAVENLY. After more than a week of travelling, this is exactly what we needed. The spa was comprised of a series of mineral bathes ranging in temperature from ice cold to hot-hot-hot! All the pools had water features -- reclining beds, jets, waterfalls, lazy rivers, etc. There were also several options for saunas. It was absolutely WONDERFUL and we all felt like gumby when we left (but were very happy)! I think I've been spoiled and will never appreciate another pool again, because none can possibly compare to the pools of Baden-Baden!

After Baden-Baden we headed to our next stop: Garmisch. We decided to spend the night at the Armed Forces resort located there -- Hannah & I were in need of a break from all the foreignness. On the way, though, we decided to just stop by Lake Constance. Lake Constance is gorgeous, however, it isn't really a stop on the way to Garmisch from Baden-Baden. I'm glad we went and saw it, but the trip was a little stressful. Le Garcon tried to send us on a ferry (I don't do ferries) and then we got on a new highway that he didn't know about (that you couldn't get off of for something like 10 miles). Did I mention that these problems were exasperated by the fact that we were trying to avoid driving into Austria or Switzerland? We were all glad to get to Garmisch to the American resort where they spoke English, had ICE (yay!), queen size beds and washing machines that didn't cost $10 to run.

And now my battery is going to die, which means my mouse is going to stop working when I plug the computer in, so for now "tschuss" (which is "chow" in German)!