Best of Europe BOE240A

So ... everything has to start somewhere. And we started there: At our multinational Hotel in Erding with the Welcome Briefing, Handover of the Motorcycles and a charming Meet&Greet Dinner under the gentle eyes of Austrias Empress Sisi. And guess what: it really made us hungry of the oncoming!!!
Our first day of riding takes us through the Hallertau, the largest contiguous hop-growing region in the world, followed by the Altmühl, known for its beautiful valley, in which castles, monasteries and half-timbered villages are strung together like pearls on a string. Later in the day, we cross the Limes, the former border of the Roman Empire. And then we are already on the Romantic Road, where we visit the beautiful town of Dinkelsbühl before finally reaching the fairytale town of Rothenburg. We spend the night in an 800-year-old hotel behind the old town walls and enjoy a hearty Franconian dinner before ending the day on the town hall square with a guided tour by Rothenburg's night watchman.
9:00 o'clock in the morning: Time to say "Good bye, Rothenburg!" and clutch out direction Heidelberg, the old university town with 35thousand young students! But step by step or even better: curve by curve! Rothenburg was - so to speak - the entrance to a trip through a medevial paradise along the marvellous rivers Jagst and Neckar. We had a visit to Langenburg Castle, came to wooden Archenbrücke dating back to 1821 and still in use today - amazing - next stop at the impressive Schöntal Monastery and from there a tiny road led us to Götz von Berlichingen's castle Hornberg - The LMA-Castle:-))) a running gag from there on!!!! Afterwards we followed the river Neckar to Heidelberg and there up the mountain the Hotel Königstuhl, which offers one of the most beautyful panoramic views over the city of Heidelberg. In the evening with the old railgondola we rattled into town and had a nice dinner and inspiring talks in an old Brauhaus and some delicious drinks at the Hotelbar. The perfect end of a remarkable day!
Today our route leads us through the Black Forest and across the Rhine Valley into France. We leave Heidelberg an ride to Ettlingen at the Black Forest. We climb up along the Albtal valley to Bad Herrenalb witch lies at an intersection of seven valleys in the northern part of Black Forest. Then we cross the Murgtal, ride on small winding roads and spend some awesome miles on the Black Forest High Road. Later we reach the valley of the Rhine and cross the border into France. At the end of our day, we arrive at Riveauvillé, which is a typical French town at the edge of the Vosges mountains, where we will spend the next two days.
The neat little town of Ribeauvillé has so many interesting treasure to explore. Nearly the whole group decided to go motorcycle riding first to have the possibility to visit the outstanding medevial castle Haute Koenigsbourg and to ride back than to Ribeauvillé for shopping and tasting the superb wines of the town - especially the wonderful Pinot Noir and the Ladies Darling Le Cremant d'Alsace, a fresh sparkling one. And in the evening all met again for a dinner in one of the old inns. And nobody will forget the huge portions of everything, especially the monstrous but delicious Cordon Bleu's!
In the morning we left the charming city of Ribeauvillé and the Alsace, visited the WWII memorial at Jebsheim and then went back to the huge Blackforest in Germany, where we first "climbed" up the famous Kandel-Road in heavy rain and win - you all did great under these challenging conditions!!! A bit of a hunger led us to famous Hexenlochmühle - the "Witchholemill" - a nice Schwarwälderkirschtorte, coffee, tons of ham, sausages and the CuckooClocks wanted our full attention. In better weather and on nice winding roads we reached our stop near Göschweiler, where two real Chefs - #bestchefsthereis - awaited us for a delicious lunch break in a gorgeous surrounding. Powered by new energy we headed over to Switzerland and the Waterfalls of the Rhine river in Schaffhausen - due to the heavy rain of the last weeks in this region, the falls where even more spectacular than under usual weather conditions. Superb day - 3 countries and thousands of news impressions - and we all know now, how the cuckooclocks say "cuckoo"!!!
Today we ride into the Alps mountains and enjoy magnificent views and a few superb mountain roads. First, we ride along the Rhine and the wide view over Lake Constance before we turn right to the swiss mountains. We were lucky that it was dry all day and if it hadn't been a bit cloudy we would have been able to see the snow-covered Swiss Alps Säntis mountain. But even so it was very impressive. After this excursion into the high mountains, we cross the tiny country of Liechtenstein an we are already in Austria and head back up into the mountains. We follow narrow and very curvy road to the Furkajoch is probably the most challenging part of the whole tour! At the End of the day we reach our destination in Warth.
We follow the river Lech down into the Lech valley to the Plansee, a turquoise-blue, crystal clear mountain lake. We come to Bavaria and to Linderhof Castle, the former hunting and summer residence of the Bavarian fairy-tale king Ludwig II. We drive a short distance back towards Plansee where Felix surprises us with a really nice picnic. We enjoy it with a wonderful view of the quiet lake. The we go ahead passing Ettal to get to the highway that connects the Alps with the city of Munich. Then we are back in Erdingen, have a nice evening together and talk about the many experiences of the tour. This definitely won't be the last. We'll definitely see each other again soon.