Six Cities in Seven Days

Because we were lucky enough to have both the 1st and 2nd of November as holidays, we decided to take the other three days off and take a road trip to visit my sister in Stuttgart. During our week off we managed to visit six cities in Germany, France and Luxembourg covering about 2000km in the car.

Cologne

The main attraction of Cologne is of course the Cathedral. We parked at the main station which is conveniently right next to the Cathedral and the city centre. When you are standing at the front entrance and you look up at the looming spires you can’t help but be in awe. The inside is equally impressive – the length as well as the height.

Aside from the cathedral the boardwalk along the river is also quite nice, with typical German style architecture and great view of the Rhine. Here you can also catch boat trips to Dusseldorf. The city centre isn’t too large and you can definitely see it in a day (we only spent the afternoon). If you want to see some of the museums, the zoo etc. more days would be needed. Tourist information is right in front of the Cathedral .

Baden-Baden

Our next stop was a day trip to the small town of Baden-Baden on the edge of the Black Forest. The Forest itself is quite beautiful, especially in autumn, I would highly recommend  a longer car journey though the forest to truly appreciate its beauty. The route can be a bit trickier – we were struggling even with a GPS, but is totally worth it.

The town of Baden-Baden isn’t as small as I thought it was going to be – there were still plenty of streets for shopping, eating etc. However, most of the people who come/live here are older and the town is dead after about 8pm. For the same reason most of the shops are also quite expensive. There is also a casino, a church and several parks to check out.

The main attraction of the town is of course the Roman Baths based around the thermal water in the town. There are two spas in the town, Friedrichsbad, the more luxurious traditional nudist bath and the more modern half-nudist Caracalla spa. We opted for less nudity and less expense in the Caracalla Spa. Here you pay for a block of time (2,3, or 4 hours) and then are free to move around the facility. There are pools of various temperatures ranging from cold to quite hot. There is also hydro massage and special aroma stream rooms that are quite cool. Upstairs is the nudist part – the saunas. If you aren’t afraid to strut your stuff, this part comes highly recommended. Here there are also rooms of varying temperatures, some with special aromas and special lights. We spent about 2 1/2 hours inside and felt completely relaxed!

This brought us to the last part of our day trip – dinner. I had researched recommended restaurants before going and we decided to go to the Rathausglockel – only a few minutes away from the spas. Here they give quite a fancy experience for reasonable prices. The menu is also interesting because it features historical dishes from the middle ages in addition to modern German cuisine. Everything was super delicious, but be aware of the rather large portions! The service was also quite efficient and helpful. Definitely gets our recommendation!

Stuttgart

For most people Stuttgart is not on their list of cities to see, there’s not much of a historical centre compared to other European cities and there are no super famous art museums either, however I’d go anywhere for my sister. So, I spent two days checking out Stuttgart.

For me the best part of Stuttgart was the Mercedes Benz Museum. I’m no car fanatic, but this museum is cool whether you like cars or not and you could easily spend the whole day here. It is definitely worth the entrance price of 8 euros – you get a free audio guide (offered in several languages), interactive displays, lots of cool cars and of course a free Mercedes Museum lanyard.

We also visited two other museums during our stay – the State Gallery of Stuttgart and the Wurttemberg State Museum. The State Gallery, which is free on Wednesdays and Saturdays, has a surprisingly large collection of masterpieces for a small city. The Wurttemberg Museum is inside the Old Castle of Stuttgart, which is free all the time, has cool things to look at like the Wurttemberg crown jewels, a clock museum and a large pottery collection.

There is not much left of Stuttgart’s historic city centre, aside from a few churches and restored buildings, but it is still nice to walk around. Be sure to check out the Schlossplatz where the new castle and gardens are. Koenigstrasse is good if you want to get some shopping done. At the end of this street near the main train station is the really good tourist info place where you can get free maps, info on the city and the Wurttemberg region.

Munich

Because of an awesome contact in Munich we were able to squeeze in a overnight trip from Stuttgart. After discovering that parking is really expensive in the centre of Munich we used the Daytrips in Germany guidebook to do a walking tour of the city centre. We started near the Residenz – this massive old palace that had a nice park behind it. Then we wandered around Englischer Garten and took lots of pictures of the beautiful autumn weather – the park was massive, bigger than Central Park in NYC.

Next we headed to Königsplatz. This was cool for me because of the history of the square. This is where the 1938 Munich Agreement was signed and was one of the main squares used for large gatherings of National Socialists during the reign of the Nazi Party. The buildings still remain today, but their purposes have changed – mostly museums. There are a lot of museums in Munich, like the large science and technology museum – the Deutsches Museum – which apparently one of the best in Germany, but because we were short on time we didn’t any museums while we were there.

By the time we got to Marienplatz (the main square) it was already dark and we decided to go for dinner at the nearby Paulaner im Tal to have traditional German food and beers. Then we went for more beer at famous Hofbräuhaus this massive beer hall that seats 1000+ and serves beer in 1 liter beer steins (which are available for purchase in the gift store). Very touristy with traditional German music and pretzels and everything, but after this I feel like I don’t need to to Oktoberfest anymore!

On our second day were saw three very cool, very different churches. The first was the cathedral of the city and was very plain, but large. The second was a church in the Italian style with lots of white marble and gold trim. The last church is not to be missed – it’s an overkill of the rococo style – absolute must see!

Then we hit up a couple of markets including the large outdoor market Viktualienmarkt. Here there is a good combination of cheap eats and expensive delicacies and of course a few beer gardens! On our way back to our car in the evening we passed through the botanical gardens which looked worthwhile to visit in detail again during the day. I would definitely like to go back to Munich again, as there is so many things to see and do!

Strasbourg

After spending the day here I wanted to move here! It was such a nice town to eat, to drink, to walk around and with lots of things to do for the day. One first stop was the main square and the cathedral, which wasn’t as big as Cologne, but was impressive nonetheless. There was a service going on, so we didn’t spend much too much time inside. Instead we wandered down to the riverside to have a sandwich lunch- the historic centre is nicely surrounded by a river on all sides.

After that we went to Palais Rohan, a small palace from the 18th century, and luckily entrance to the three museums were free! On the ground floor there is the Museum of decorative arts, which had a few rooms set out with period furniture and a few rooms full of display cases with porcelain plates, glassware, cookware etc. On the first floor, the was a separate museum housing art. From religious frescos to European masters to sculpture this museum covered quite a lot in only a few rooms. The last museum, which was by far the biggest, was the archaeological museum in the basement. This covered all of human history in Strasbourg, beginning during the Roman times. It was quite interesting to learn about the development of people in this region, but we didn’t have time to see all of the exhibits.

We decided we had to try the local cuisine, so we headed to Flam’s a small eatery recommended by a friend that served the local speciality flans. Flans look similar to a pizza, but the crust is thinner and has a different taste. They serve these flans with a variety of toppings we tried the traditional one with mushrooms, ham and cheese and also one of the dessert one with apples flambéed in Calvados. Mmmmm! Once our bellies were full we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and take a cruise around Strasbourg on a river boat.

The boat trip was quite a nice introduction to the town, a bit of history and it even takes you to places away from the historic city centre. Prices aren’t bad either. The only disadvantage was that we were in a glass-covered boat and so the quality of the picture we took wasn’t that great.

After we got of the boat we decided to eat – again! This time we went to a local brasserie where they brew their own beer on location and have a massive vat in the middle of the bar to prove it. Here they also served flans but they weren’t as good as Flam’s and the service was pretty bad. But you can’t beat their happy hour prices!

We concluded our day in Strasbourg with a walk the town at night (it was still beautiful) and then we were off to our last stop – Luxembourg.

Luxembourg

After spending most of the day in Strasbourg, we only arrived in Luxembourg at about 10pm. After filling up the car with really cheap diesel (in comparison to France), we decided to have whirlwind tour of the town centre at night. From what we could tell it is a very beautiful city with a big cathedral, a nice main square and what looked like a big castle. What we really noticed was how hilly the city was with the city centre on one of the hills and some sort of wall around it . It was also a very quiet town centre – all the streets were deserted and only a few establishments were open. Our first impression was certainly a good one and we definitely want to come back during the daytime to see what Luxembourg is really like! Needless to say after our intense travelling we arrived back in Brussels a little tired, but it was definitely worth it! A very successful first road trip!

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