Europe Trip: Day 1 (Flight and Rothenburg ob der Tauber)

Before I get into the details of the trip and the many (MANY) pictures, let's discuss the nitty gritty and the whys. Eric's parents are serving a mission at the LDS Temple in Freiberg, Germany. We went with Eric's younger brother, Andrew, to visit them and to visit other places in Europe. Eric did a six-week study abroad in Ukraine before we met, and then he traveled a bit with his parents for a few days after the study abroad ended. Andrew had been to Europe twice before, both times because his dad was leading a study-abroad, but the last time Andrew had been was 13 years ago when he was about 13. I was a newbie to Europe.

We flew in and out of Seattle because Eric's sister and her family live in Seattle and she very graciously (foolishly?) offered to take our kids for us while we were away. We drove to Seattle on a Tuesday and flew to Germany the next day.

We all thought we would sleep on the plane and arrive in Frankfurt feeling somewhat refreshed and ready to be amazing tourists. Andrew and I even wore glasses because we don't like sleeping with contacts in. Here we were, thinking this was going to be an amazing flight.

We were idiots. We sat on the very last row, and Eric got so ill that he had to use his barf bag. Getting our rental car took much longer than we expected, but we finally got on the road. Eric was the only one allowed to drive, but even as the driver he became car sick and had to pull over for a vomiting and sleeping break. Andrew and I didn't want to be around him, so we wandered on this dirt road near where we had pulled over, and we found a cherry tree and ate cherries.

After Eric had a little nap, we hit the road again headed for Rothenburg ob der Tauber. It's a medieval town that is still in really good condition, and it has a wall all around it and such things. We took pictures at the adorable house that's on two streets. We marveled at the narrow streets and the speeds the cars took on the narrow streets. We looked at little shops, checked out a church, walked along the old town walls and the other defensive buildings for the city. We watched the machine-man drink the giant beer in the clock tower, and we climbed to the top of the tower to get great views. We ate lunch and learned that we would end up spending a ridiculous amount of money on water over the course of our trip. (Do Europeans never drink tap water? This is a legitimate question.)

We were pretty tired at this point and needed to drive a couple of hours to our AirBNB in Nuremberg. Eric had mapped out a slightly longer drive that was more scenic, so we told the GPS to send us on that route, which she did. It ended up being a terrible idea because we were all so tired and didn't even care about the scenery and just wanted to go to bed as quickly as possible. We made it to our AirBNB and learned it was on the 7th floor, so then we had to lug all our stuff up there. So that was fun. I would rank that AirBNB the lowest of all the ones we stayed in during our trip, but it was still nice and we slept hard and woke up early the next day, ready to check out Nuremberg.