Today we begin our longest train journey of our vacation, 7 hours. It begins at precisely 8:00am with a three hour trip to Ulm, one hour layover and another three hour ride to Basel. We were up, dressed, packed (remember, we don't open our suitcases) and down for breakfast by 7am. I can't miss a free breakfast so we slam it down in 15 minutes and grab a taxi to the train station. Arriving 15 minutes before departure, we locate the platform and board the ...

We can't pass up our free breakfast here in Augsburg. We are located directly across the street from the HBF so it's easier to judge our time for leaving to catch our train, the 9:42am, which will get us into Salzburg about noon. Our packing in the mornings has been simplified even more by using another technique developed by Mom which you may want to make note of. You already know about the "Throw clothes away to make room for more stuff" method she cam...

We're up early, as usual, even though it doesn't get light until 8am. We have our free breakfast, of course, steal some fruit and yogurt for the train trip and take the taxi to the train. It's a 2:08 hour trip from Regensburg to Augsburg with a train swap in Nurmberg. We've done it many times but this one is only 5 minutes. That might scare the average traveler, but not us. The day before when we went to the Nurmberg Christmas Market, we were wel...

It was nice waking up today without the thought of hauling those suitcases somewhere. We were still up at 6:30 but Karen cleaned and organized while I checked email and loaded photos to the blog. We went downstairs for a complimentary breakfast which was great. After breakfast, we decided to make a side trip to Nuremberg. They have a large Christmas Market there and we have the time so we caught the train around 10:30 for the one hour ride.Grabbing a taxi at the...

We're up by 7 and Mom begins her grueling task of packing. It gets more difficult each day as her Christmas goodies look for a free ride back to the USA. Now she says she's going to leave some of the clothes that she packed for the poor people here in Germany. Ah, that's why we brought all this stuff. I take a few pictures around town now that the crowds are gone. When I return, we have a delicious free breakfast compliments of our hotel. I bring d...