Friday June 23
Up early and off to Stuttgart by train from Nuremberg. On double checking our supposedly direct train it seemed to end at a suburb of Stuttgart with an S-Bahn connection to the Hbf (main station) - a total mystery. This all worked out OK - the S-Bahn came within minutes and was only 3 stops to the main station. It was then a short walk to our hotel - the Steigenberger - same one as our Covid catastrophe last year. We were all checked-in before 1pm so headed to a pub for a light lunch.
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around and doing a bit of shopping - Dieter snagged a new pair of runners.
We had dinner at the hotel restaurant, Zeppilons, which was pretty good. Then off to bed early.
Saturday June 24
After our in room self-catered brekkie (berries and yoghurt) - we lazed about before departing by U-Bahn to meet Helnut and Mechtilde (aka Maggie) for lunch at a restaurant near their home.
We had a nice lunch then spent the rest of the afternoon at their apartment - relaxing on their deck and finishing off with cake. Maggie kindly offered to drive us all the way back to Stuttgart (about a 30 minute drive) so we did not really need our day train ticket.
It was already 5pm so we bought some bread and wine (and berries etc for breakfast as everything is closed on Sundays in Germany). We walked around checking out bistros etc then went back to our hotel for some bread, cheese and prosciutto in lieu of dinner.
Sunday June 25
We actually had a bit of a sleep in - first of our trip - only getting up at 7:45am. We had our usual in room breakfast then showered before heading off to meet Lori for lunch. We took the S-Bahn then a bus to get to the old age home where Lori now resides (it’s in the same area as her house). We then had the home call a taxi to take us to the restaurant Dieter had booked - 5K’s away but 20 EUR by taxi. The lunch was excellent but their credit card system would not take either our VISA or AmEx so we had to pay in cash - fortunately we had enough.
We had the restaurant call another taxi to get Lori back to her old age home - but we had missed the bus to the S-Bahn station (it only runs once per hour on Sunday) so we had the taxi take us back to the S-Bahn station. We had just enough cash left to pay the 30 EUR on the meter but the driver wanted another 10 EUR (since he had to come from out of area ??!!) - there was an ATM at the station but alas it did not accept our cards so we gave the driver everything we had 35.?? EUR and he had to “eat it” - not sure how unhappy he was.
We got back to our hotel and after resting we walked around the city and stopped at a pub for a drink and a shared salad.
Monday June 26
Off to Freiburg today - we jumped on our train (re-rescheduled) which was running 10 minutes late - it was actually the train to Paris but we only needed to get to Karlsrhul some 40 minutes away - after a very chaotic boarding with no space for our luggage they announced the train would be delayed another 20 minutes due to a technical issue - then after 20 minutes they announced the issue was not fixed and they did not even know if the train would leave at all - some people disembarked - we figured there was another train to Karsruhl in about an hour so we waited on the train - it finally left about an hour late. Of course we missed our connection in Karsruhl but got another train and finally arrived in Freiburg just over an hour late. We took a taxi to Sixt (30 EUR) to collect our hire car - we had been upgraded to an Audi Quattro. We headed to our apartment and arrived right on 3pm - the official check-in time. The owner(s) whose office is in the same building were there to meet us and show us around - first negative surprise - it was not air-conditioned - but otherwise was pretty much as advertised - perhaps the “luxury” was a bit overstated but it was great with an amazing kitchen - 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms.
We then went and did some essential shopping for dinner (cold cuts and cheese), wine and beer and berries and yoghurt for breakfast.
We were totally pooped so it was an early night.