The Travel Geeks

Tuesday, September 30, 2014 (Day 7)

Itinerary:
– 8am wake up, breakfast in hotel
– 10a leave hotel, visit landromat
– noon, Zepplin Museum
– Lunch at Centrale Pizze in Friedrichshafen
– 4p Lindau (Official start of the Alpine Route)
– 5:30p short walk after a very twisty turny section of road
– 6p grocery stop in Wertach
– 7p arrive at Hotel Weinbauer
– dinner at hotel

Odometer:
Starting km: 917km
Lindau: 952km, 4:00p
Oberstaufen: 990km, 4:45p
Immenstadt: 1005km, 5:00p
Sonthofen: 1016km, 5:20p
Bad Hindelang: 1023km, 5:25p
Wertach: 1043km, 6:00p (food stop)
Nesselwang: 1052km, 6:36p
Fussen: 1078km, 6:58p
Ending km: 1083km

Weather:
The day started off cloudy, gray, and 57 degrees.  Rain started mid-morning.  Weather warmed to 64 degrees at one point, but stayed gray and misty/rainy all day.

Journal:
We slept in a little this morning, and then opted to eat breakfast at the hotel even though it was an extra cost and not included with our room rate.  The Comfort Hotel was a very nice place to stay.  It is the same brand as the Comfort Inns in the US, but this was a 3 or 4 start hotel.  It was super clean and new and modern and comfortable.  The breakfast was good and filled us up for the day ahead.

Our first stop was our one and only laundry stop.  We are so used to know laundry about every 3-4 days on our usual vacations, that having so many shirts has been wonderful.  We only have one laundry stop this trip.  The hotel was able to located a coin-operated laundromat for us and we spent just under 2 hours there getting the laundry done.

Next, we drove the 2km to the Friedrichshafen shoreline where the much-anticipated Zepplin museum was located.  I really didn’t know that much about zepplins before today, and this was a magnificent museum!  Probably the best part was a full-sized model of the interior of the inner cabins on the Hindenburg.  The model took 5 years to build and sits on the second level of the museum.  We could walk through and see the dining rooms, the cabins, the windows, and several other small rooms.  The Hindenburg really and truely was a massive machine!  I had no idea there was room on it for cabins.  But it makes sense since the trips from Germany to New Jersey took about 2 days to make. 

The Hindenburg made 63 trips in about a years time with about 50 passengers, and 50-60 crew members each time.  It even had a smoking salon on it!  Imagine that.  The museum was almost 35-50% devoted to the Hindenburg, it’s construction and the fatal crash on May 6, 1937.  It is still unknown how the crash was caused and there is quite a conspiracy surrounding the conditions of the crash.  Was it the passenger who went to check on his dog?  Did he ignite a gas cell?  Was it an issue with the technology of the flammable siding?  Or did a chicken farmer take a bullet and shoot it down?  Pick your favorite conspiracy.  =)

We had lunch in Friedrichshafen (there are people here during the day!), and also walked up a tower overlooking the lake.  It was super gray and misty out, though, so not many photos.  Then, finally it was late and we started our road trip for the day and the start of our Alpine Route.  We were really disappointed about the gray and rainy weather, though.

We stopped between Lindau and Oberstaufen to take a photo of the car’s first rain, and then again we stopped after a particularly twisty portion of the road so Joanna’s stomach could become untangled.  From now on, it will be a Dramamine a day for me!  But, for the most part, we just drove through the rain and the gray.  At 6p, we made a grocery run in Wertach.  We were actually hoping to dinner here, but we couldn’t find a spot open, so we grabbed some bread, cheese, and such from a grocery store and headed on our way.  I wasn’t sure what would be open near the hotel when we arrived.

Our final stop at Hotel Weinbauer was just past Füssen (the end of the Romantic Road), and at the base of the path up to the famous castles Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau.  We could barely see the lit castles through the rain.  Our hotel parking lot was completely full, too, and we had to park in a lot further away.  Plus, with the rain, we had to make two trips to get everything to the hotel as one of our hands had to be holding an umbrella.  It was an interesting stuff-shuffling maneuver to get everything inside, but it all worked out. 

Reception at Hotel Weinbauer was super friendly and the restaurant at the hotel was still open for us.  So, we abandoned the grocery items and ate at the hotel.  We were in a much better mood after the friendly greeting and good Bavarian food.  Tomorrow is supposed to be pretty rainy, so we are disappointed, but we will still go tour the castles and have a good time doing so.