Firenze 2006-2007: Road Trip 2

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Road Trip 2

This last weekend, six of us set out on a road trip in two cars. This was a popular weekend for road trips as Pepperdine kids rented 3 more cars apart from our two. We all set out on Thursday night, each with different destinations. Natalie, Myles, Sean, Conner, Brenden, and I set out for Basel, a city on the Swiss/German border, and some 7 hours from Florence. We left at about 9 and headed up to Milano before getting on small roads, passing through Como and onto the Swiss border. Once in Switzerland we headed to Basel on the highways, and finally got there at about 3:30am. Most everyone had been sleeping in the car, but Brenden and I really hadn’t so we pulled off and slept until about 9 before heading into the Autogrill that we had stopped at for some breakfast before heading on our way to Germany. Once in Germany we got on an Autobahn briefly and then exited to get on a smaller road that would take us through the country and the black forest. I have to say, the black forest was neither black nor all that impressive. It was mostly dead and just not anything like it seems in the fairytales. Once we got off that country road that was a lot of fun to drive, we were back on the Autobahn for a while, so I got to see how fast a Fiat Punto would go. The answer is 190km/hr. After driving for a while on the Autobahn, we got off in a small town to stop at a grocery store and get some stuff for a picnic lunch. We stopped for our lunch that was sandwiches and chips on a dock that jutted out into Lake Konstanz, a popular place for Germans to take their holidays. It was pretty much empty when we were there which was nice. We had our lunch, fed the ducks and were then on our way. We drove to Austria and then down into Liechtenstein just to have a look around. We got there mid-afternoon and didn’t really know what to do with ourselves there because it was kinda like Andorra- a country with not much to see or do. Brenden and I found some fun mountain road to drive on so we did that and got some great views, and eventually ended up completely in the snow at a ski resort. We parked the cars and got out to walk around for a while, and ended up having a snowball fight. It was a lot of fun and another country visited. When it began to get dark and we realized we were cold, it was back to the car and back to Austria. We stopped for the night in Bregenz, and after Brenden, Natalie, Conner, and Sean found a suitable hotel for the night we went out for a traditional Austrian dinner. We all got Wiener schnitzel, potatoes, and beer. When we finished eating it was about 11 so we decided to go to bed. It was a pretty intense day, Natalie pointed out that we were in four countries that day, and we ate breakfast in Switzerland, lunch in Germany, a snack in Liechtenstein, and dinner in Austria. Myles and I headed back to our parking spot and set up camp there, Myles sleeping in the front seat and me in the back. We actually slept really well, I only woke up once during the night, and we were not disturbed at all by anyone or any outside noise.
We both got up at about 9 on Saturday and headed to a café to get some breakfast while we waited for the people in the hotel to finish up eating and getting ready. We ended up leaving at about ten and heading to Fussen, back in Germany. We drove for a while through Bavaria and some beautiful scenery. Once again, we stopped at a grocery store for picnic stuff and then found a pull off on the road where we could eat. After eating and freezing due to the wind, it was off to Fussen and Neuschwenstein, or the Cinderella castle as it is also called. We drove around the town of Fussen before heading up to the castle. It was the first place on the trip that was obviously very touristy. There were several lots for parking, a small town with tons of souvenir shops, and then, the castle upon the hill. We parked in one of the lots at first but then noticed that there was a road up to the castle, so we drove it. We figured out pretty quickly that the road was not for cars, but people and horse drawn carriages, but no one stopped us, so we drove right up to the front gate of the castle, go out to take some pictures and then headed back down. We parked about 200 feet below the castle, and it was then that someone told us that there wasn’t any parking there and that we had to go back down the hill. It was pretty cool, and while we didn’t go inside the castle, we had some fun there and did all we wanted to there. After leaving the castle, it was back to the town of Fussen where we walked around a bit before getting back on the road and heading back to Italy. We drove through Germany, stopped in Austria for a quick dinner, and then finally got to Italy as it began to rain a bit. We stopped in a town called Brixen (the German name, as both German and Italian and spoken in Trento, the region that borders Austria) for the night. The four found a hotel and Myles and I a parking spot before going to bed. We were just as comfortable as the night before, and once again we didn’t have trouble sleeping.
We got up on Sunday morning pretty early, probably because we went to bed at about 10. We started up the car and went in search of breakfast. We had a hard time finding anything so we headed to the train station where we found an open café. We ate there and then went back to the hotel to wait for the others. The plan for that day was to see some of the scenery of the region, including the Val di Fumes, so we drove around a lot up there before getting on the highway and heading back down to Florence via Modena and Bologna. We ate lunch at an Autogrill and got back to Florence at about 4. For the rest of the day we messed around in the car, taking it around Florence and did some homework in preparation for midterms this week.
It’s just 2 days till we leave for Egypt, so this will be my last post until I get back- March 11th or 12th.. Sometime around there anyway.