This was the longest day, ever… but my favorite day of our trip, besides Oktoberfest of course!  We originally planned to wake the next day and spend the day in the airport flying into Berlin only to land in Berlin so late that we wouldn’t get to see the city and we would have had to be at the airport by 9am the next morning. So….. as I was typing up our itinerary, I was rattling my brain on how I would set us up for such failure and a huge gap of time lost that we could have used to explore more of Germany.  I hit the girls up and asked if they were ok with scratching our flight to Berlin and renting a car instead for our entire time in Germany.  That way, we can wake early and road trip up the German country side!  I am SO glad that the girls were ok with losing out on our flight money (which was thankfully cheap) because we were able to see a side of Germany we would have never even knew existed if it weren’t for my google skills!

There is a road trip that the Bavarian countryside has known as “the Romantic Road”, I’ll spare you all of the war stories behind the meaning but it is a stretch of road from Southern Germany all the way to the North east that is riddled with beautiful rolling hills and the prettiest Bavarian towns Germany has to offer!  I mean architecture straight out of our child hood fairy tales! The drive from Munich to Berlin is about 6 hours give or take but with the exploration we had on our agenda, we knew we weren’t going to arrive to Berlin until late.  We scratched about 4 towns off of our list so that we could see the ones we really wanted to see and I WAS IN HEAVEN!  I love traveling and one of my favorite parts of traveling, is the architecture!  Im pretty bitter that we lost so much of our European heritage cause our towns are not nearly as adorable.  Just sayin’.

We woke the morning after Oktoberfest and strangely, no one had a hang over.  Im still not sure how this happened as our memory of the night before was a little sketchy! So we started our early and made our way through that beautiful, clean country side.  Side note,  I was at first a bit skeptical of driving in Germany.  Mainly because the car we were driving in was a super nice Mercedes and I felt like I was ballin’ on a serious budget haha but if you know anything about Germany, they know how to drive!  Im pretty sure every major highway is considered the Autobahn in this gorgeous country.  Pretty much the speed limit is NOT strictly enforced as it is here in the states so people actually DRIVE! Im not much a speeder here in the states because who has time to get a new car, deal with insurance or possibly lose your life due to a car accident but I miss the German way of driving.

If you aren’t going to actually drive, and drive fast that is, drivers actually stay IN the slow lane!  Crazy, right?  The slow lane is pretty much left for the big rigs from all over Europe and any slow driver that can’t handle the middle or fast lane.  I was staying within the middle lane at an easy 130 kmh (only 81mph) and there were car literally FLYING past me.  Going so fast that I would have to hold the wheel steady as the drag off of their cars pushed my car.  It was awesome though! I hopped my booty into the fast lane a time or two.  We were getting to where we needed to be and I wasn’t breaking any laws.  All the drivers on the road were very respectable and they know how to actually MERGE!  It was beautiful! But enough mumbo jumbo, onward to the pretty!  First stop, Landsberg am Lech!  A beautiful medieval town along the Lech river enclosed within walls and full of color and charm! Im glad we made time to stop within this gorgeous town!  The view from the bridge was stunning!  Not to mention, we were driving through the German countryside during FALL! All of the color y’all!

Next stop was the cutest little town called Fuggerei!  The cutest little walled enclave within the town of Augsburg!  We didn’t do much in this town but eat and drink! haha!  We kept the Oktoberfest tradition going!  We ate at this adorable Italian restaurante called  Gallo Nero (google that haha) and had the yummiest lunch!  We then walked to the town center for a quick photo and then moved on the next town.  We also realized while we were eating, that there was no way were going to be able to see every city on the list, so we used this time eating to narrow down the cities we wanted to see!

On to the next STUNNER!  So Bavaria has a thing with enclosed cities and this beautiful city is no different! Medieval walls surround this quaint yet bustling city and the STUNNING gothic St. Georges church is smack dab in the center!  ALL OF THE COLOR! Im not sure why we are so plain jane here in the states.  I am completely envious of the Germans use of wood and colored paint and ceramic tile roofs!  I WANT IT ALL! The ivy, the flower pots.  ALL OF IT!  This was probably my 3rd favorite city we stopped in.  We didn’t do too much here but walk the streets, sit beneath St. Georgie before heading into my FAVORITE city of the entire trip!

We all joked about how clean Germany is.  I mean literally, super clean.  So clean that even their piles of trash are neatly stacked while they wait to be picked up.

My favorite little city!  SO MUCH COLOR! We opted to hang here for alittle bit for a good beer (or tea for Kendall + Whit) and soak in our last beautiful reminder of how incredibly beautiful this world really is.  This town is called Dinkelsbühl! This beauty is historic town that once a free imperial city of the Roman Empire that is, you guess it, enclosed by a medieval wall! This town was the most colorful that we had visited this day!  If it wasn’t for the additional 5 hour drive to Berlin, I could have sat that all day.  I have a new mission to get back out to the German countryside and further explore these beautiful little towns still standing today! 

It was just after 11:30 at night when we finally arrived to our hostel in Berlin.  Im kind of sad we didn’t have more time to explore Berlin because it looked lively and full of energy!  We stayed at an awesome Hostel BOAT called the Eastern Comfort Hostel boat and it was awesome!  I mean, we literally were on the Spree river and our view opposite of the river was the Berlin Wall!   We had epic views all around!  On the outer side of the wall, there were incredible works of art show cased from artists all over the world.  The inner side of the wall layed the stark reminder of the wall past and those who lived within its barriers.

That morning we headed back to Dublin for one last night before heading back home.  My birthday was 3 days away so we decided to celebrate alittle bit in honor of the good ole 28th year!  We snagged a killer hostel literally inside of Temple bar.  Or in other words the city center where there are 200 pubs all right next to each other and you have infinite possibilities at your finger tips!  No need to worry about a cab because our money was being spent on DELICIOUS mex and beer!  I had such a killer time with some of my best friends!  This will definitely be a trip I will never forget!