Day 9!

Day nine has turned out to be (hopefully) our last full day here in Europe!

We started off by (somewhat reluctantly) heading out of Rothenburg, towards Wurzburg. Wurzburg was another city I wished we had allotted more time for. We spent a couple of hours touring the Residenz and its gardens. The Residenz was the palace for the Wurzburg bishops and was absolutely breathtaking. I liked it much better than Versailles (though, admittedly, that could have something to do with the fact that there were only a handful of other people in the massive building when we toured it). As usual, though, my favorite part of the palace was the gardens. These gardens were very very formal and manicured, outlined with precisely trimmed rows of square topped hedges. There were some sort of pine trees meticulously trimmed to look like a cone -- the sort of thing you see in abstract Christmas decorations and not real life. I could have sat in the gardens all day, if Jeremy would have let me.

After Wurzburg, we started heading towards the Ramstein area. We didn't have a hotel reservation (which is not to my liking), so we needed to get here and find one and also check the flight information. On the way, we stopped in Speyer, simply because we were going by it and I needed one more gift (for Lucy) and the guidebook said it had a nice shopping area. Speyer wasn't on our itinerary and I'd never heard of it before I started thumbing through the guidebook looking for a town to stop in yesterday morning. It turned out to be a very nice stop. There was a massive cathedral called the Kaiserdom there, which was made of a pink colored stone. It seemed like the size of it had to rival with Notre Dame in Paris. The interior was amazing, because the combination of the stained glass windows and the pink stone made for a very bright interior. The shopping was good there, too, and we even found something for our sweet tooth. It turned out to be an unexpected delight to stop in Speyer!

We rolled into Ramstein around 5:00 and headed straight for the airport (and yes, there is really an airport -- one much nicer than most of the commercial airports I've flown through) and then headed across the street to see if they had a room at the lodging facility there. Of course they didn't, because that would have been too easy. Then we went looking for Avis (with only 20 minutes to spare until closing), to make sure we understand how to return the car after hours (and a day early). We got to the car return location and there was a sign on the door that they had moved. Seriously -- wouldn't you give the person who has your car the correct stinking address for where they should return it?!?! I was totally ticked off, because while they had left a crude map on the door, they didn't provide the address, so the GPS was of no help in finding the new location. The good news is, though, that Hertz & another car company had combined -- the car company that already has a location right across the street from the airport. So, this means that we can drop the car there, which is much easier than Jeremy dropping the car off in town and getting a taxi. So, I suppose Avis is forgiven!

Then we started our odyssey of finding lodging. The Ramstein lodging didn't have rooms, but told us US Army installation nearby might. So, off we went looking for this place with our crude instructions. It took forever and when we finally found it, they didn't have anything, but sent us off to another AF installation with the hopes of maybe getting a barrack (not the best sleeping accommodation, but we wanted to be somewhere with a DSN line so we could call the airport). I was thoroughly ticked as we were driving around (because I would have rather had made a reservation before we started the day out), but my mood improved considerably when we ate. We let Hannah choose last night -- McDonald's, of course, was her choice! So goes our last dinner in Germany, I guess! We got lucky, though -- the AF lodging found us a room in the temporary family quarters (where families are housed when they arrive at the installation until they can find a permanent home). The room is fabulous -- bedroom, kitchen and living and probably as big as all our other hotel rooms here combined (or at least it feels that way)! So, now here we sit, waiting for our flight home!