We survived our "vacation" tour of Europe. Sunday we were supposed to fly into Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden and take public transit to Strasbourg, France. Ryan Air, the "on time" airline kept us in Dublin an extra two hours so we missed our bus. So much for the $30 spent on "priority" boarding passes so we could jump to the front of the line. Once we got back to Germany, we realized it was futile to take a bus to the train station, three trains to Strasbourg, and a shuttle from the airport to the hotel, taking nearly five hours and arriving around 9 PM assuming we hit every leg properly.
We rented a car and made it in 45 minutes, got in the room by 7 PM.
They gave us a Mercedes Benz B class. If they sold the Mercedes A class, B class, or mini van in the states, Mercedes would no longer be seen as a luxury car manufacturer. The A and B class are little hatchback commuters. Not bad, but not fancy either. We fit in it just fine, so no complaints.
We made it to Strasbourg and saw one of the tallest cathedrals in the world. On Monday, we managed to pick up our car! A brand-new Peugeot mini-mini van, the Peugeot Partner. It has lots of room, gets 50 MPG diesel (cheaper than gas here) and has lots of space in the back.
So we have completed our first extended vacation. It was really more of a tour. The kids were amazing, traveling pretty well on all stages of the trip and sleeping well in hotels. My wife did a great job organizing everything and pretty much nothing broke down and fell to pieces. We did have one issue.
We had been using a USB data stick to connect our laptops to Vodaphone in Germany. Before this trip, we switched over to the European unlimited plan. However, there is no unlimited plan. They cut us off at 3,000 Euros, about $5,000. The last we heard from them, they were going to cancel that charge... You would think they might text you every time you had a few hundred bucks in overage charges?
No beer since Guinness, but I should definitely be back on the horse tonight.
