CHAPTER 13. ROMANTIC ROAD, GERMANY CONT.

From Baden Baden we take a secondary scenic road into the black forest to Freudenstadt and to the Adler Hotel in Hornberg. The highways are good thru the fir forested mountains, and the trunks of the trees are really black! The food at the Adler Hotel is very good, especially their fresh trout which we have one time with capers, and another with hazel nuts. We stay three nights, and they offer a discount to stay longer, but we need to keep moving to arrive in Frankfurt for our return flight reservations.

One day we drive up to Triberg and along with many other tourists climb part way up to see the falls. We go on towards Furtwangen in high country that is partly cleared and farmed. There are many ski lifts and even ski jumps, and lupin blooming. We return to Hornberg via Donauquelle and Oberprechtal seeing some very pretty houses as we go up and down hills, thru valleys and forests. The remaining time we rest in Hornberg, enjoying the scenic little town, reorganizing suitcases, and solving crossword puzzles.

From Hornberg we drive north to Freudenstadt then take a scenic, but fast, secondary road thru dense forest country to Pforzheim. We stop at Bretton for gas and an automatic car wash, then have a good lunch at the Golden Lamm Restaurant in Bruchal. We go by the train station in Heidelberg to get today’s Herald Tribune, and stop at the Hotel Karpfen again in Eberbach.

From Eberbach we continue north, then take a tertiary scenic road west to Darmstadt, which is one of our mail pickup stations, then to Darmstadt-Eberstadt where we had stayed the first night after arrival in Frankfurt. Our prior hotel there is closed for the day, so we check into the Stadt Heidelberg Hotel. We call TWA and change our return reservations to July 7th, then call our daughter Karen in Sacramento to inform her of the change.

There is one last area we want to see, a bit of the Rhine Valley. We take the freeway thru Wiesbaden and then drive along the Rhine bank downstream to Lorelei The water is flowing very fast; there are many barges and river cruise boats; hills are on both sides of the river; there are castles up in the hills, and in the middle of the river.

We drive up to Lorelei but the fields are full with cars and camping young people; perhaps a concert is going on? We go back to Peterville and have a good lunch at a restaurant looking way down at the Rhine. Afterwards we go via back roads to Bad Schwalbach and stay at the Park Ville Hotel.

On the way to the Frankfurt Airport we stop in Wiesbaden and walk around the Kurhaus area, seeing nice gardens and fountains. Glenn doesn’t recognize anything there from his brief 1945 visit. We drive on to the Steingenberger Hotel at the airport where we check in then park the car with the odometer reading 5966 miles, an average of just over 66 miles per day for the three months, a comfortable slow pace that suits our conception of pleasant independent travel in Europe. We take a transfer bus to the airport and pay TWA the $200 penalty for changing our return date and have a good chicken dinner at the Italian restaurant there. Back at the hotel we rest and read and repack our suitcases. We have the good salad bar for supper.

We have a good and ample buffet breakfast at the Steingenberger, then we turn in the car folder to the bell captain. It seems a pretty informal way to leave a car to be shipped, with no receipt or anything, but it shows up in good shape a while later at our Sacramento VW dealership.

We wait in the hotel until noon before going to the airport; the transfer bus drops us right in front of TWA. At the time, frequent flyers could get free upgrades for national flights on a space available basis, so we always ask for upgrades even for international flights. The agent says we aren’t eligible, but he is going to upgrade us anyway because they are overbooked in coach. What a good break to fly Ambassador class the ten hours to St. Louis!

It is back to coach with the rest of the peons for the flight on to San Francisco. We rent a car and drive home to Sacramento, arriving some 26 hours since we last slept, and three months since we left home.