Germany, Austria and Switzerland, 2015
Tour Day 3: Baden-Baden
We woke up to a beautiful day, said fairwell to Trier and headed for the glamorous spa town of Baden-Baden!
We departed after breakfast for Baden-Baden. It was a fairly short day on the bus, so we made it there quickly, only needing to stop for one break on the way. Even the quick, leg-stretching breaks were interesting and educational on this tour! We found that the convenience stores in this part of Europe were beautifully maintained and stocked with all sorts of fresh produce and other whole food items to snack on. I have never seen anything like this in the States. Just after taking this photo to the right I got scolded by the store clerk, as apparently photos are not permitted. Oops! After our quick break, we landed in Baden-Baden.
Baden-Baden is famous for its uber ritzy casino, as well as for the traditional baths available in town (Baden-Baden means bath-bath, quite literally). We got the opportunity to tour the casino first. It was a masterpiece! We felt like we were walking through the set of a James Bond movie the entire time. We were given the option of returning to the casino at night during normal operating times if we wanted to see it in full glamour mode, but we did not pack any clothes for that! We were happy to have the opportunity to see the inside!
Before breaking from the group to spend our restful day exploring the town, we checked into our stunning hotel right in the center of town, and then gathered to play the name game. I had heard that some people dread this game, but we thought it quite helpful, as we knew everyone's names after that. And Hans did a great job of making it fun and humorous and we all helped each other out.
We enjoyed our group members so much that we often spent our free meals with some of them as well. In Baden-Baden we joined a few other couples for lunch at a quaint cafe where we enjoyed some spargle (asparagus) soup. White asparagus was in season while we were in Germany, so we enjoyed it many times. It was delicious!
Free afternoon
After lunch, David and I took off on our own. Several of our tour mates decided to try the famous baths, a few even tried the traditional nude baths (and reported back that they were wonderful!). Because the weather was so beautiful and the next several days were predicting rain, we decided to head up to Merkur mountain for a view of the edges of the Black Forest instead. We waited for a while where we thought the bus was supposed to pick us up to take us to the tram, but it never came. Up for an adventure, we decided to hike through the residential streets to the tram stop instead. What a workout! It was so fun to walk through the streets and look at the impressive homes. At the top of the mountain we stopped for a snack at the coffee shop to enjoy the magnificent view of the rolling hills and forests as we basked in the comfortably cool weather and soaked in some sunshine. It was picture perfect!
After returning to the town, we had a quick dinner in a streetside cafe. One of the funniest things we noticed is that in the countries we saw on the tour all the drinks are served in glasses with specific markings to denote the size. The size you are ordering is listed in the menu and the glass is filled precisely to this mark. This was true for the beer, wine and soda. We had to snap a picture of a glass so we could remember this peculiarity. After dinner we enjoyed the riverside walkway called Lichtentaler Allee. It was a perfect, relaxing day with no specific agenda - just what we needed to recoup from our hectic sightseeing so far! We very much enjoyed our time in Baden-Baden and were looking forward to our next stop: Switzerland!