Not Baden-Baden

So after a tiring day of museum hopping in Paris, we're back in our apartment in Montmartre. I'm just chilling out reveling in my tiredness and listening to some wonderful music from the '60s which always puts me in a fantastic mood so I thought I would write a few blog posts so everyone can keep up to date on my comings and goings. First off we're going to take a little trip back in time to March 22 when I was whisked off to Germany to spend a long weekend with my step-mom Julie (Hi Julie!). Warning, this and the following posts are going to be long, and I apologize if I seem a bit winded.

So I actually flew Ryanair on the way in and was a little skeptical since I've heard my fair share of horror stories  about shoddy service on this airline. I was pleasantly surprised. I mean all the extra fees and fares can get you (it's like 70 bucks if you forget to print your boarding ticket before you get to the airport!) and makes it seem like any other airline instead of a "cheap" way of flying. To get on the plane was the same cluster-mess as say easy-jet, but once I got my window seat I began to inspect my surroundings. All of the seats were leather the plane felt newly detailed. I had plenty of leg room which is a huge must for me being an apparent giant at 5'8" tall. We took off and landed on time which hasn't happened to me in forever. I simply walked off the plane in Baden-Baden, got my checked bag, and got into Julie's car. Simple. My only complaint is that if you wanted to sleep, you really couldn't since there was a constant stream of Ryanair advertisements about what you could buy from the crew while you were flying thousands of feet above land. It was kind of ridiculous, but I was reading my book and just went with it.

Julie and I then went out to dinner where we shared some weiner schnitzel and this delicious type of German flat-bread called flammkuchen. It was basically just thick chunks of bacon, onions, and sour cream. Probably my dream food. We then drove back to the apartment her company rents out and basically crashed. The flat was just so cute! It felt like a German, beach house, cabin, from the 70s. There was wood everywhere as well as pretty kitchy sofas and needlepoint artwork. Kinda loved it.

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The next day we went to the Carcalla baths right outside of the town of Baden-Baden for about three hours of awesome fun times. They were just these series of pools that were all set at a really nice temperature. There were these giant jets everywhere and it just made it for a very relaxing day. I know Julie loved the work the water did on her back. There was also these two pools where one was about hot tub temperature and next to it was a pool that was like 60 degrees. The idea was to submerge yourself in the cold water as a form of shock therapy before running (of course not running, we were at a pool!) to the warmer water before you froze. It's suppose to be a way of getting your body internally jump started, and I'm going to be honest: it felt great. There was also a steam room which I'd never tried before. It just felt so nice on my skin and felt like it opened me all up. At first it scared me a bit since the steam seemed (say that fast) to be too thick to breathe in and I couldn't comfortably open my eyes. I then relaxed and just let it pass over me. Delightful.

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After our three hours were up, we went back to the flat to get ready for dinner. Julie originally wanted to take me to this castle (or schloss in German) on the top of the hill. So we drove the whole way up there to find it very crowded and just plain confusing to figure out where we could go to eat a nice dinner. So we quickly ran our American booties out of there. We decided to stop by a Greek restaurant she'd been to before. The food was so good, but we might have had too many appetizers and didn't have much room for our actual dinner so I took it home with us. We finished the night off with some great conversation and a shot of ouzo, which again, I'd never had. I didn't quite care for it since it just tasted like liquefied licorice and I'm not a big supporter of the stuff. It was just nice to finish off a Greek meal with a Greek drink.

The next day was going to be our busy day since we would also have to travel to Frankfurt before the day was through. We decided to first go into Baden-Baden and just walk around which seems simple enough right? Wrong. Even with the gps's "help" it took us about thirty minutes to finally get into the city-center. We kept going in and out of these wooded black forest areas and passing signs that just said Baden-Baden with a cross through it signaling that we were in fact not in Baden-Baden. It was almost to hilarious to be frustrated in. Finally, by some luck, we wound up in a parking garage and were able to get out and walk around. It was such a quaint little town and I couldn't help but sing a lot of Beauty and the Beast while walking around (and yes I realize that BnB takes place in France, but everything was just so quaint!). We stopped in some shoppes (yeah Olde English) and waltzed around the park with our ice cream before deciding that we best be heading off since our plan was to get to Hidelberg before nightfall so that we could go up and see the Schloss there. We thought we could just leave the city and get onto the highway without any of the trouble we had before. Wrong again. It took us another thirty minutes through the same backroads until we finally found the highway. We passed more and more Not Baden-Baden signs. They pretty much looked like this...

But with a red line through them. They kept cracking Julie and I up as we slowly slipped into insanity. Anyway, we were on the highway and off to Hidelberg. Yeah Autobahns! It was such a blast to just be sailing along so quickly and still having people speed past you like you were nothing. We eventually got to Hidelberg with good timing and parked at the bottom of the Schloss. It was just so great to be around that much history. I know I'm a bit of a dork, but there's something about being around a building that's older than the establishment of my home country that just sends chills up my spine. We don't have anything like these castles back home. Which is kind of a bummer. Maybe we should. Monarchy anyone? No? Well we'll discuss it later I guess. Back to the Schloss (which might be the best word in the German language).

It was a pretty grueling task to climb the whole way to the top, but I'm so glad we did. It was beautiful! We also went into the castle to see the little Museum of Pharmacy they had set up for some unknown reason. We then decided we were hungry and climbed back down to grab a bite to eat. This was what I ordered that night.

How glorious is that. It's called schweinhaxe. Now I'm going to get a little graphic here, but it is quite literally a pig's knuckle. I've had it before on a trip to Lyon, France and I've missed it. The meat is so tender and so flavorful. I'm a bit of what you would call an adventurous eater (except for peppers) and this meal was right up my alley. This is what my plate looked like after I finished.

We then drove the rest of the way to Frankfurt since we decided to stay at the hotel at the airport since our flights were fairly early the next morning and we really didn't want to have to drive that early. Julie took a few of my clothes and things back home to help with my packing at the end of the semester and then we called it a night. The next morning we had to switch our clocks one hour ahead (since day light saving's time is at a different time in Europe), but that went fairly smoothly and Julie boarded her plane back to the States as I returned to London. It was such a wonderful little excursion. I was actually just thinking that we haven't had to much one-on-one time and it was nice to have an entire weekend for girl time.

Ok. Germany done. If you're my friend on facebook, you've probably already seen these pictures and I apologize for showing some repeats, but you know how it goes. Stay tune for more of Carly's Travels: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice, HOME!!!!! Phew! That was a lot, I should listen to the 60s more often since I seem to be in the productive mood.