Hello, Fellow Travelers! I hope everyone is doing well today.
My husband and I took a 5-week road trip this fall from September 10-October 14, mostly in Central Europe. I wanted to post some comments here, along with trip highlights, because this was a different sort of trip for us. The trip was rather spontaneous and that's not like my husband or me. We are both planners. I think, think, and overthink my trips because I want them to be the best they can possibly be. I know that many of you can relate. So imagine my husband and me having coffee one early morning end of July/early August and me saying 'do you want to go somewhere this fall?'. We decided that it would be best to see family but, turned out, they had plans so we took a couple of weeks to consider Greece. Then one night I noticed that we could fly non-stop from ATL to Munich for a record low 34k airmiles. And I had a record low amount of airmiles! Then a former neighbor of ours said to check out ChatGPT to plan our trip and see how that would go. First, let me say that I do not think that AI can replace human wisdom and experience, but my thinking was that it would be a fun experiment to use Chat for this road trip. One other thing...I thought our lodging choices would be way to limited and, perhaps lacking, but we enjoyed every place we stayed. A very pleasant surprise! We used Booking for our stays. So, for a concentrated two weeks, I was on this forum, YouTube, Chat, and Booking, then off we went. I realize you can't do that with just any trip and I'm already planning our next 2 or 3 for the next couple of years, but I'm glad my husband and I just didn't sit on the couch and made the effort to see how a somewhat last minute trip would go. Honestly, there were pros and cons. Mostly pros. The biggest pro is that we saw amazing places on our trip and had a great time. The biggest con may have been having to research day by day while we were there. Usually I have all of that laid out in a Word Doc or spreadsheet already, or entry tickets bought, but Chat was helpful as it turned out.
We landed in Munich and started our trip by driving some of the Romantic Road to Rothenburg for a two night stay. It was a lovely town and we enjoyed it. On the way to Rothenburg we stopped in Dinkelsbühl. It was lovely as well but, looking back, we probably would have gone straight to Rothenburg since it was day one of our trip. When we left Rothenburg we stopped in Nördlingen. It was a fall festival day so we enjoyed the one hour parade and festivities. From there we headed to Fussen to see Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castles. Personally, I'd skip the interior of the Hohenschwangau Castle but the weather wasn't great so we did both plus hiked to nice viewpoints. Then we traveled to Garmisch-Partenkirchen to mostly see the tallest mountain in Germany, the Zugspitze. It was the most expensive thing we did in 5 weeks and the most underwhelming for the cost. We would have been fine hiking around Eibsee Lake and looking at Zugspitze instead of paying the $75pp euros for the lift up. Also, in retrospect, we would have stayed in scenic Mittenwald rather than Garmisch but that's personal preference. Since I'm running out of space, I'll list our other stops and, if you're interested, I'll share more. Other stops after Garmisch: Mayrhofen, Zell am See, St. Wolfgang, Salzburg, Vienna, Wachau Valley, Cesky Krumlov, Prague, and return to Munich. We saw incredible nature and Prague did wow us. I'm so glad we took this trip and I think we'll be more open to a spontaneous trip if a bargain and the opportunity come along...and we're just sitting on the couch. ;-)