Kissingen

We made it to Bad Kissingen. Operation Elder Birthday is now in full swing.

I hope you all have the pleasure someday of having your almost 90 year old Auntie try to wrestle your suitcase from you when you come to visit. She wanted to carry it up the stairs. (No, I did not let her. She did get to carry the computer bag. You have to pick your battles with this woman.)

We had a nice visit last night and some dinner and have checked into our hotel. She’s already got us on a bus tour this afternoon.

My German Aunties just love shipping us off to a bus tour. I thought it would be nice to hang out at her place and read our books and drink lemonade but nope, we’re going to tour around the area – which is lovely right now. We’ve been so lucky on weather. It’s sunny but cool and you can see the trees starting to change. There’s a big tree outside the window of our hotel that has bright red leaves at the top.

The train journey went smoothly. We had this family with about 10 people and 15 ginormous suitcases, 2 whiny children and some noisy electronics in the car with us on the first leg. I was thrilled to switch trains in Brussels but they were in the same car on the leg to Frankfurt, too. To their credit, they tried to keep the kids entertained but they were only marginally successful.

We left them in Frankfurt.

A couple snafus: there was a problem with my credit card at the hotel yesterday – their machine was on the fritz and I think the multiple attempts must have triggered something on the bank’s end because they were unable to process the charge once the machine was working. Bob is going to get it sorted out. Then within a 12 hour period I had 4 phone calls from unknown numbers. That’s more incoming calls than I normally get in a month.

I put the phone on Do Not Disturb and am trying not to worry that this is some sort of scam that will turn up on my bill later. No time for problem solving right now.

We were able to wash some clothes last night and the shower in this hotel is wonderful so I’m refreshed and ready for my bus tour. The last hotel had a terrible shower: barely lukewarm mist so this was a great treat. Not sure if I’ll check in again. Maybe if I get some good shots from the bus tour.

(Aside to Kenman: we were on a DB train yesterday that was 10 minutes late!!)