Crystal's Epic Adventures

After a really good sleep we got up and had some breakfast.  The German campsites all offer a bakery service where you can order your breakfast buns the night before and they arrive at 8:00 am.  The Germans take their bakerai ((bakery) very seriously here.  TWO pieces of cake for lunch We walked about a kilometre to the tram station which we caught into downtown Frankfurt.   Since it was such a big city core, we decided to stop at the Visitor info booth and sign up for an hour walking tour.    Our guide David, originally from London, but has been living in Frankfurt for 35 years now, really had a passion for the city. We enjoyed our tour and learning the history of the culturally and historically rich city.    Originally a Police station and Jail He had brought actual photos of what the central market square looked like before the air raids in 1944 and after.   Absolutely devastating.   Nearl...

The next morning we took our time, had some breakfast and drove the loooong distance to the town of Shonach, which took us about 5 minutes, so we could take a hike in the Black Forest.  Stopping at the visitor info for a map, we chose a route which said it would take us about 2 hours to complete - perfect. That gave us enough time to enjoy the hike and then head to our last destination of the trip before heading home; back to Frankfurt. The hiking trail On the map the route looked like it took a nice round loop from the visitor info centre, up to and through the Schwarzwald and back again.  We were looking forward to being in the forest.  However, 3/4 of the route was actually a road through the Schwarzwald and farmer's fields, ending in what looked like an interpretive area in the woods for school children, before bringing us back out onto the main street.   Wasn't much of the nature trail we hoped for, but it WAS in the Black Forest on a gorge...

Coming to Triberg was a major change in our schedule because we did not make it to the Black Forest on our journey through the area on the way in due to time and weather.  So we changed our route and cut things shorter earlier in the trip so we had an extra day to spend in the Schwarzwald [Black Forest]. From Munich, it was a beautiful scenic drive on small, windy roads that brought us to Triberg, Germany; a quaint tiny town in the middle of the Black Forest touting to be the birthplace of Black Forest Cake, the handmade clock capital and to have the highest waterfalls in Germany.  Wow, those are quite the proclamations, so we were going to have to check out all three. After visiting the Info center to get our bearings and parking the Caravan in their centre lot for the night, we learned that Cafe Schäfer was the original maker of the Black Forest Cake, so that was our first mission for this morning.  SO GOOD! This tiny unassuming cafe showcased som...

As we drove we were welcomed by some of the most gorgeous mountain views we have seen so far on this trip.  I pulled over in a bus stop next to someone's home to take this photo.   I looked over while standing in the middle of the road to see an older couple sitting at their breakfast table staring at us with dumbfounded looks, probably wondering what these crazy tourists are doing.   Don't they know they have a spectacular view for breakfast!?   After arriving at a location of a camper stop in the GPS which was in the city of Munich, we found that nothing remotely camping like was there.  We walked up a small driveway and into an outdoor patio with two older men already having their beer.  We were told that there has not been a camper stop here for over 5 years now and were given directions to another really good one in town.  Thankfully, we were able to find this one in the GPS and with the help of the directions we found a nice litt...