German Trip - Day 1 (Travel to Nittel)

Laura and I have finally managed to go on the German trip we've been planning for the past 3 years or so. We left at 10pm last night (Thursday the 11th) and will be returning on Saturday the 20th. Laura's 30th birthday is on the 14th so I'm taking her out to a restaurant in Rothenburg which looks really nice! We will also be spending some time with our friends Rick & Anja.

Laura's birthday cookie

Laura driving us through England

A very empty service station!

Laura attempting to get some sleep while we're on the train.

We drove throughout the night and arrived at the Eurotunnel in Folkestone by about 0440. We were allowed to board an earlier train so we ended up arriving in Calais at 0700 instead of 0800 as originally planned. This wasn't a problem, or so we thought!

Me zooming through France!

We originally planned to drive through France and stay at a hotel near Metz, then head to Zellingen in Germany the next morning. But we found out quite late how expensive the many tolls along the French roads are. We decided last minute to go through Belgium instead, which would also be a quicker journey to Germany in general. Rather than checking out one of the French Parc Naturels on the way, we instead opted for visiting Bruge.

Bruge is a lovely city, but at 0900 in the morning it's also a dead city. There were hardly any people about and it turns out most shops open at 1000 or 1100 in Bruge, so our plan of having some breakfast and a cup of tea was scuppered. At this point we were also incredibly tired as we didn't manage to sleep at all when we were the passenger. Maybe we were too excited to sleep? Whatever the case, the prospect of hanging around Bruge for a few hours in the cold in order to get some breakfast and a cup of tea didn't sound great. We opted for a croissant and a can of cola from a supermarkt instead which wasn't really the same. 

Wandering into Bruge

An old hospital

The old Markt in Bruge

Bruge has a lot of bridges!

I had a look at where we could stay for the night, and decided it might be good to just stay in a hotel in Germany, rather than stay outside some town in Belgium and have longer to travel tomorrow. We found a decent looking hotel called Hotel Zum Mühlengarten in a little town called Nittel. The route it took us wouldn't take too long, and then tomorrow we'll only be 3.5h from Zellingen.

Laura back behind the wheel

The weather in Belgium was bright and sunny and definitely a bit too hot for my tastes

Almost immediately after arriving in Germany a thick, dark fog rolled in and made everything cold and spooky. This is more like it!

As it turns out, the route that Google took us to get to Nittel involved going through Luxembourg very briefly. So we've been to 5 different countries in less than 12h!

We arrived at the hotel at 1500h and almost immediately found out our room's toilet was broken. I tried calling the company but when you click on the 'phone us' button on their site it just tries to call the number '0', which obviously doesn't go anywhere. I was a bit concerned, and there was no reception (it's a key locker place) so I thought we'd be stuck without a working toilet for the night, but thankfully they responded to my e-mail very quickly and within the hour it was fixed.

We celebrated our sanitary victory by getting some Schnitzel & Frites at a restaurant downstairs from the hotel, and practised ordering our food in German. The waitress seemed to understand our broken German so that's another victory in my books!

It's now 1645 and I still haven't slept since I woke up at 0800 yesterday. Laura appears to have fallen asleep behind me so I'm gonna call it a night too. Our plan is to get up at 0900ish tomorrow and pop to the local baker for breakfast, then head straight to Zellingen to see Rick, Anja & their son Felix.

Bis später!