Europe Trip Plans

In just over three months, we'll begin our 11-day, 10-night visit to Europe, and the final plans are coming together.

We arrive in Frankfurt early on Saturday morning and plan to take a morning ICE train to Berlin, arriving mid-afternoon.  This will be our first experience on a true high-speed train.  We're staying in the Mitte area of Berlin, near the Unter den Linden and Checkpoint Charlie and the German History Museum, all of which should be interesting to everyone Saturday night and all day Sunday.  Then Monday midday we take another ICE train to Dortmund, and begin a couple of days of seeing three places the Kleppinger family hails from.

We're visiting Dortmund and Soest on Tuesday, then Wednesday we leave Dortmund and visit the town of Pfungstadt, whence Johann Georg Kloppinger set out in 1732 to come to America.  After lunch and looking around the village, we'll drive past Stuttgart and on to Ulm, so David can see where Albert Einstein was born.

Thursday, we haven't settled finally on, but it could be a very busy day.  Just up the road from where we're staying is Legoland Deutschland, a smallish theme park that the kids, with their (a) love of Legos, and (b) love of theme parks, will probably love.  But we might spend half a day there (hey, you can tell it's a small place when it's only open 10a-6p in summer) before driving down to see Neuschwanstein, the famous fairy-tale "Mad King Ludwig" castle in Bavaria, en route to Munich and our last night in Germany.

Friday would be a day to take the train from Munich to Paris, to recharge a bit and relax.  We might be able to take ICE to the French TGV service, making two high-speed rail systems the kids would get to ride--and I remember David, aged three, being able to pronounce the latter properly--tey zhey vey--as the son of a Francophile should.

The weekend and Monday would be for Paris and its environs.  We'll be staying just across the bridge from Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame, a couple of blocks from the Louvre.  We have not yet decided whether to take a day trip out to the beaches of Normandy, but I am leaning towards trying to; we've not been there, and it would be a great thing for the kids to see.  But if not, there's certainly plenty to see and do closer to Paris.

Of this, our Munich hotel, the train reservations (can only do those 90 days out), and the car rental remain to be done--but first we need to talk through that potentially very busy Thursday in south-central Germany.  But with just over three months left, we're definitely making progress in getting ready for the kids' first transatlantic trip!