The Great European Roadtrip

Oh.my.goodness. Can you believe I’ve left the blog go for this long?! This year has flown by and it seems like May was just last week. To be honest, after our big European roadtrip, we pretty much stayed put in Cologne and were extremely busy at work. In Germany, the school break is only six weeks in the summer. Therefore, a lot of parents will take the same time off of work – which means the other employees have to substitute them. On top of that, there was some reorganization in my department and we all got some different responsibilities and a new boss. Busy, busy, busy!

So let’s regroup and go back to May and recap our fabulous 15 day road rip through western Europe!

We started our journey on Friday afternoon after work. Since it was a long, holiday weekend, were worried about a lot of traffic and so we planned to just make it into southern Germany and overnight in Freiburg. Traffic ended up not being so bad and even after a quick detour into France, we made it to our hotel in just a few hours. Although we’d heard that Freiburg is a very pretty town, we did not do any sight-seeing, rather just enjoyed some typical German food and beer.

Dinner in Freiburg

The next day, we set off on the second leg: Freiburg – Lake Como, Italy via Lucerne, Switzerland. Since Switzerland is extremely expensive, we had decided not to spend a night there, but were still interested in having a pit stop to do some sight-seeing. We had researched a few options and decided to chance the weather (it was a bit rainy/cloudy) and ride a cable car to the top of Mount Pilatus, in the Alps. We had pretty good luck because the rain cleared and we had great views on the 20 minute cable car ride to the top. Although it was pretty foggy at the top,  it was still beautiful to see the jagged, still snow-capped mountain. It was still quite chilly, so we had a hearty, alpine lunch of potatoes and beer at the hotel at the peak (how cool would it be to stay there!?).

Lucerne, Switzerland

Mount Pilatus

The rain started back up on our ride down the mountain and we hit some traffic on the way out of Switzerland because some of the roads were still closed from winter and the only way through the Alps are through tunnels (think the Fort Pitt tunnel x 100).

Around dinnertime, we finally arrived at our Airbnb apartment in Argegno on Lake Como. The area was gorgeous and this was probably one of our best Airbnb experiences to date. Our hosts were so kind and personable and the apartment had a beautiful view of the lake and surrounding mountains. We had 2 nights and 1 day to spend there and the most popular activity is taking the ferry across the lake to the different towns. We stopped at a few, but unfortunately did not pass through George Clooney’s neighborhood.

After our time in Italy, we had a fairly short drive to our next stop, Nice, France. It’s expensive in Nice itself, so we were a bit on the outskirts and stayed at a Airbnb in a beautiful house belonging to an older couple. There was a public transportation strike in France, but we were able to catch a train into Monaco one day. Monaco was amazing! The views of the coast (and yachts) were beautiful, as well as the royal palace and famous Monte Carlo casino. What we weren’t expecting was the amount of walking we would do! Although the country is so tiny, it’s built into cliffs, with the main attractions being at the top of different peaks. To get from one to the other, you have to walk downhill and then back uphill (or try to figure out the complex system of public elevators). My fitness tracker logged 30,000 steps that day!

Monte Carlo Casino

Royal Palace

Catehdral

Grace Kelly's Memorial

After 2 days in the Côte d’Azur, we drove the rest of the way through France (read: vineyards) and finally arrived at our main destination – Barcelona.

Beach in Nice

Nice