Black Forest Trip

I don’t know exactly what I want this blog to be. But one of the things I know I want to do is write about our travels.I always want to know what other people did when I hear they went on a trip. So if this helps just one person plan their trip, it will be worth it.

 

For some reason I always put off planning our trips. But this time wasn’t entirely my fault. Halfway through last week, Chris came home and told me that he didn’t have to work Monday or Tuesday. My first thought – “Ohh a four day! What country can we travel to?”. However, we had plans and I gave Chris my cold. So we compromised on a two day, one night trip.

We stayed at the Hotel Garni Schweizerhaus using Booking.com. It was a nice, clean, and comfy place – I would definitely recommend it to anyone traveling to Triberg. It is about 10 minutes from Triberg, but it is cheaper and convenient. The only issue is that when you first get there, you have to call a number for the owner to come check you in and they speak minimal English. Otherwise, the staff were very friendly.

Our first night we walked around the Triberg waterfalls. It costs nine Euros for two of us. And we were able to take our dog. There are multiple places to park, but I would suggest driving into Triberg and parking in the parking structure and then it is a quick two minute walk to the waterfalls. That way, you can hike up first and then down on the way back. Or there is a Waterfall Express that you can ride once you hike to one end of the waterfall.

For dinner, we ate at a restaurant that I cannot remember the name of – but it wasn’t that great. It was right at the bottom of the waterfalls and above a grocery store. The company was great though – we talked with two other couples that were there – both American, ex-Army. The staff was very friendly, but the food was not good.

For lunch we ate at the Gaststätte Tresor. I would highly recommend this place. The food was great and so was the staff. They even had an English menu. I got the minced beef rolls with fries and Chris got the cheese stuffed potato sticks and the chicken empanada. All of it was very good.

We then drove to Burg Hohenbaden, ancient castle ruins in Baden-Baden. Its about an hour and a half drive from Triberg. You can park right there, there’s a bathroom (free-important in Europe), and the castle is free! We really enjoyed wandering around there. I would recommend it to anyone.

Then we headed to Merkur Mountain – which actually has two pages on Trip Advisor, here’s the other one. There is a lot to do there. If you hike, you can spend a whole day there. Or you can simply take a cable car up to a viewing tower (I don’t know what else to call it). The cable car runs every six minutes and costs about 4 euros. I wish we had spent more time here. There is a small restaurant by the viewing tower.

And the last place we tried to go to was the Treetop Walk. I say tried because we had our dog with us and they don’t allow dogs. It’s about a little over a kilometer walk. There’s more info in the photos below of the brochure. It looked cool, except the funnel part – there weren’t a whole lot of trees surrounding that part. But maybe it was just from my view.

Lastly, we had dinner at Auerhahn. The food and atmosphere were both good. We both got beef. I didn’t care for the spätzle, but the beef was good. The service was also good. It was a nice place to relax and eat.

Random tips – when parking definitely read the signs by the lot to see how long you can park there. A lot of restaurants are closed in Germany on Sunday’s and Monday’s. But we were able to find places to eat Monday night in Triberg.