Day 32 Freiburg

We awoke this morning to a strange and foreign sound, the sound of thunder and rain. It was the first rain we’d seen in almost three weeks! It was quite peaceful laying in bed listening to the thunder echo off the mountains surrounding us. After getting up and around we hit the road and very soon after that we said "arrivedirce" to Italy and entered Switzerland. Huge mountains and turquoise lakes make for gorgeous scenery on the autobahn. We stopped in the beautiful town of Luzern for Starbucks and lunch. We’d visited Luzern last year and it is absolutely gorgeous. Compared to Italy the weather was so nice too, finally not so hot and humid. The city is very clean and there are no street vendors harassing you and following you trying to get you to buy their junk. It’s funny how two countries right next to one another can be so totally different. Switzerland is very expensive though, we knew that from the last time we visited. We ended up eating lunch at McDonald’s (oh how life changes once you have kids!) so Colin could run and play on the playground while we ate. It was the most expensive meal I’ve ever had at McD’s for sure. Two value meals and a happy meal cost us 34 Swiss Francs, roughly FORTY USD!! Yep we spent $40 on lunch at McDonald’s! I guess it’s a good thing we had Colin with us to keep us from going to a nicer place that would have cost a small fortune for lunch. We arrived in Freiburg, about 5pm and got checked into our gästehaus/hotel. It was a nice little family run place and we were greeted by the owner and given our room key. The hotel had a little grassy area for Colin to play and a few little bikes and scooter toys for visiting kids to ride out front. At the restaurant near the garden tables there was a big sand box full of toys for the kids too. The hospitality in Germany is much different than Italy, it’s so nice to be back in familiar territory…and I can understand and talk to people here, yay! Once we brought our things in we went for a walk and Colin got to ride his bike. We walked to the bike path nearby and it went along a nice little river that was crystal clear and flowing over big river rocks.



(Yes he is pretending to be a dog and drink the water, sigh.)
Colin couldn’t wait to get into the river and throw rocks. It was cold but he and Shelby stood in just by the bank and gathered rocks up to throw and then they built a dam out of rocks while I soaked my feet and watched. A little later we walked back to the gästehaus and ate at the restaurant there and relaxed before heading up to bed.