by PatBee and Bud
~ Airplane Fare -- $128 ~
Each of us has a Delta Skymiles Platinum Card (AMEX) that pays two FF miles for almost every dollar we spend. They
cost $80 a year, but when we renew, we each get a free companion ticket for anywhere in the USA, so we use those
to visit our daughter in Buffalo. We use our Skymiles cards like debit cards—purchasing almost everything on credit.
I subtract the amount of each purchase from our check register, so when the bills come in, I just write a check
for the total amount and do not subtract the total from our balance, since each item has already been taken away.
By doing this, we accumulate a lot of FF miles, and were able to book two Business Class tickets from Jacksonville
to Frankfurt with only a $64 tax charge for each of us. A great way to fly—and a great way to save. (Free Mimosas
and hot roasted nuts to munch on!)
~ Automobile -- $812 ~
After years of booking rental cars through Kemwel, we switched to Andy Bestor at Gemütlichkeit. For this trip,
we asked for a small car with standard shift and got a brand-new four-door with A/C for $812. We saved a goodly
amount (there’s an extra tax for airport pickups) by picking it up in Kelsterbach. Taxi from Frankfurt airport
to the AVIS pick-up place was €23, including tip.
~ Ferienwohnung Accommodations ~
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Ferienwohnung
im Grünen |
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Gasthaus
Zum Schwanen |
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Bud on the balcony, ready to smoke his pipe. |
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The hallway of FeWo zum Schwanen. Two bedrooms (with baths) are on the left-hand side of the hall, the balcony and kitchen (with adjacent bathtub and third shower) are to the right, and our breakfast table is in the hall. Not elegant, but comfortable and very convenient. |
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Inge und
Karl Rost |
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Our hosts, the retired bakers, who plied us with homemade goodies. We were their first-ever American guests, and they were eager to help us enjoy our stay (which we did!) |
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Dining area and living room were charming, comfortable, and convenient. |
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Haus
Gitta |
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The apartment was very nicely furnished, with Oriental rugs and carpets galore, and our private terrace was surrounded with an abundance of beautiful roses. |
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The view from our kitchen window--a wonderful addition to our breakfast every morning. |
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Ferienwohnung
Albert |
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"Bei Beichert's"
Familie Rüdiger Beichert
Oberstraße 13
35789 Weilmünster-Laubuseschbach
Tel - 6475/8207 ~ Fax - 6475/912577
Mobil - 0171/6815587
Email - M.Nickel-Beichert@t-online.de or Beichert@t-online.de
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Sunny living room with cable TV, CD player, DVD player, AM/FM radio, and a basket full of brochures about local places of interest. |
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Schloss am Maiberg
Dagmar Ohly
Im Hafergarten 48
61239 Ober-Mörlen
Tel - 6002/1400 ~ Fax - 6002/1403
Email - dagmar.ohly@t-online.de
Our last FeWo was the funniest. I really had
to search to find this one, and they don’t really have a web-site, but I sent an email to Dagmar (the owner) and
she emailed me a picture. It is called “Schloss am Maiberg,” the “Castle on May Hill,” and looked pretty grand
in the photos. It sat up on the side of a steep hill, cost €32.50 a day, and was the least attractive of all the
wonderful places we stayed in. However, it was comfortable enough and we enjoyed our nights there. Dagmar seems
to bear the entire responsibility for operating this place, although her husband appeared at our car as we were
unloading our luggage and asked if we could pay him then and there. I did give him the envelope with the "rent
money" we had set aside, and he thanked me, but I must say this is the first time ever that we have been asked
to pay before we even moved inside. Dagmar picked up two of our suitcases and hauled them down the steps to our
FeWo, and the next day she was out there nailing together a kind of jerry-built railing to accommodate us two elderly
folk. She was a hard worker, and her husband might be, too--but she was the one who was hustling luggage and building
stair rails and doing just about everything else.
Our living room in the "Castle on
May Hill." No heat in the radiators, but plenty of warm fleece blankets were available.
Dagmar's hand-built railing, constructed
to keep us from falling down the steps.
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Airport
Hotel Kelsterbach |
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We drove to Kelsterbach the day before our return home, checked into the hotel, which was €65 a night, and turned our car in to AVIS. The AVIS people drove us back to our hotel, which was nearby. It was very nice, and definitely NOT expensive, considering the convenience of being near the airport.
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We had our final German beers and the last Schnitzel dinner at this restaurant, just a few steps across the street from the hotel. |
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~ Things we saw along the way... ~
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The reconstructed Roman Villa Borg in the Saarland. |
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The Mettlach Abby Brewery (where we sat
with a huge gang of hikers) |
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Herrstein, an old German town that has
restored its medieval center. |
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Rothenburg, of course (spent money, bought Christmas presents) and you all know where and what Käthe Wohlfahrt's wonderful Christmas shops (and museum) are, so I won't belabor the point. |
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Also, the Toy Museum in the Old Castle
Sugenheim |
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Freudenstadt, a garden city in the Black Forest |
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Bad Kissingen, a very nice spa town |
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The National Pig Museum, with more than
14,000 items of pig memorabilia |
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Our tour with German soldiers at the Deutsches Bundeswehr Infantrie Museum |
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J. S. Bach’s birthplace and childhood home in Eisenach |
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The house where Martin Luther lived while attending school |
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Minia-Thür, a park filled with wonderful
scale models of buildings in Thüringia |
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The Garden Elf Park in Trusetal |
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Reconstructed Roman Fort along the Limes,
a line of fortifications across Germany |
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Museum of Radio and Television History
in Schloss Brunn |
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Hessisches Doll Museum in Hanau |
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Schloss Phillipsruhe in Hanau, with the
German Papier Theatre Museum, and a special exhibit of “Guest Workers” recruited from eastern countries during
WWII, and the displaced persons camp in Hanau which existed after the war. |
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~ Food and Drink
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We did not eat out every night. We slept late, made German breakfasts every morning (juice, boiled
egg, Brötchen, wursts, cheeses, jam) and weren’t very hungry in the evenings. Sometimes when we did have dinner
in a restaurant, the servings were so huge that we took half of our dinners home and heated the leftovers for the
next day.
We also cooked simple meals in our fully equipped kitchens, and found lots of goodies in the Supermarkets to make
dinnertime easy. Instead of paying $15 for a Schweinhaxen (as we did in Munich a couple of years ago) we picked
up a crispy roasted one for €3.99 at the deli counter in a Kaufladen supermarket in Bad Nauheim.
Bakery and Metzgerei shopping is always fun, and the Germans have a variety of pretty darned good soup mix packets
and easy-to-make pasta dishes, etc. We picked up BIG bottles of Beck’s Bier for 80 Euro cents and just had a good
time seeking out goodies to take home.
~ The Final Tally ~
Our expenses, excluding the car rental, came to $73.74 a day. That includes our taxi fare, Ferienwohnungs, food,
drink, museum entrances, and gas for the car. And when you consider that if we had been at home in Jacksonville,
we would have been shopping at the supermarket, using electricity, putting gas in the car, etc., for a month—you
might almost figure that our trip hardly cost us anything at all! Anyone can do it—all you need to plan a cheap
trip like ours is a good German atlas, a computer, and a little patience in searching out great finds!
Tschüß!
