GixxerJasen's father/son big summer road trip, on four wheels.

[gixxerjasen]

Just got back from a big trip with my son and thought I'd share some of it with you all. It was a pretty good road trip, but despite trying to do it on two wheels, we ended up in a rental car instead. Long story coming, not a lot of motorcycle content, but what content I do have, is pretty cool.

We'll start off with this one shot.

[gixxerjasen]

Background info.

My parents lived in the Netherlands for a few years while my dad was stationed there in the USAF. While there, they had a kid (me) but unfortunately, before my first birthday, my grandmother's cancer took a turn for the worse and they were relocated back to Tampa Florida. She passed not too long after.

I've always wanted to see my birth country, but money/time never allowed it to happen. My wife decided that since I turned 50 this year, we were going to make it happen. My son has been obsessed with Germany, maps, and flags, so we began to form a plan for a whirlwind father/son European road trip. Not the best way to see Europe, but there's a chance we'll only get one shot at this, so this is how it was going to be. What follows is over 2000 miles and 8 countries visited.

[gixxerjasen]

Thursday, June 27, 2024
Ducked out of work a little early and my wife and Father In Law took us to the airport. Quick flight to Minneapolis and then caught our overnight flight to Amsterdam. Neither of us was able to get much sleep. I had a couple of cat naps and my son didn't sleep at all. With the time change we arrived around lunchtime on Friday all pretty smoothly.

It's at this point that our trip started off a bit rocky. I'd reserved an economy rental car because it's cheaper to rent, and we have big miles (km's) to do and gas is running around $8-9 per gallon equivalent in Europe. The first car they tried to bring to us we never even saw. It had a TPMS alert on it when they tried to bring it to us. They apologized and gave us an upgraded car, a pretty well-equipped Ford Focus. I got behind the wheel very nervous about driving in Europe but we found our way out of the airport and onto the highway and things were good. Well, until I started fiddling with the A/C and it wasn't producing cold air. I've got an Expedition at home and the dash layout controls are identical, so I know how to operate this and it's not working. Back to the rental agency we go.

They apologize again and they give us another car with an upgrade. We get a sweet VW Golf R. This thing has zip and consumes roundabouts like it's on rails. This is going to be a fun car to have.



Our initial plans aren't in Amsterdam, but further east, so we headed out. I had a nice route around the northern area that took us across one of the dikes that hold back the North Sea. I'd planned a stop so we could look out onto the North Sea, but the whole area was under construction and my planned stopping place was closed. We proceeded to my rental apartment that I'd set up in the Dutch farm country and wow was it amazing. The hosts were fantastic, and the place was beautiful. I could have spent our entire time here and would stay again, but instead we only have two nights here.









The apartment had this fantastic (expensive) coffee machine and I made sure to spend the next morning enjoying my coffee in the gardens and looking out over the fields enjoying the chilly weather. It's pushing 100F at home, but we will only see temps in the 80's for two days with a high of 83F the whole time. It's in the 50's while I sip my coffee outside.

[Intech]

Nice! Subscribed.

[gixxerjasen]

Rocky start to the trip #2. On getting to the apartment, I went to put away my prescription sunglasses and put on my regular eyeglasses, and my eyeglass case was empty. Not sure if my eyeglasses were left on the plane or in the car with the broken A/C. I submitted to both the rental car company and the airline, and they never turned up. Not good for day 2 of the trip.

We hit a local pancake restaurant for some traditional Dutch pancakes. Sitting outdoors eating dinner being slightly chilly when it's almost July is quite a treat for these folks from Texas.

My pancake with apples.



Jakob and his pancake with Nutella.



Day 2 in the Netherlands we had some things to do. Needed to go into town to hit a grocery store to get some provisions. Grocery stores are fun to peruse in other countries to see what is different. Lots of stuff there, but we did notice that due to some food coloring being banned, cereals like Fruit Loops are missing a lot of colors. We did fall in love with the Dutch Stroopwafels while there and it became something we kept on hand throughout the trip and even brought quite a few home. It's a pair of slightly chewy crispy thin waffels with a thin layer of caramel holding them together.



We also saw our first traditional Dutch windmill in the town across the street from the supermarket.



That night it was off to a beautiful touristy area for dinner. Lots to look at including some very traditional Dutch houses. Jakob got to see and learn about thatched roofs which were really cool to see still in use.







One thing that got annoying very quickly was paying for fancy water at all the restaurants. We both don't drink sugary drinks so no sodas or anything like that. Getting just tap water is almost impossible so paying $4.50 each for a bottle of water hit hard.



We ordered two plates to split and share. Ribs, along with fish and chips. Everything was amazing.





Jakob is not impressed with eating fries with Mayo. That said, pretty much every bit of fries we got over there were all amazingly cooked.

Leaving the restaurant parking lot and heading back into town, I got a TPMS light on the dash. Nowhere to pull over (narrow Dutch country roads) I went the short distance into town and pulled right over. This is not good.



No spare, and as I was told later, most vehicles sold there no longer come with spares. Flat tires are fairly uncommon (just my luck) and they usually go the life of the car never used and become an environmental impact for something not used. I call Enterprise roadside assistance and get the process started. And what a process it is.

Enterprise contracts through the manufacturers there for roadside assistance, so a guy from VW came out as soon as he was done helping someone else. Took about 2 hours. Once he got there, he quickly determined that the tire was not able to be fixed. Bad news, they don't have places open on the weekend to get the tire fixed. An option was for him to source a spare that could be loaned to me and I get the tire replaced on Monday and return the spare. Returning the spare quickly was a requirement for this option. Another option was to tow it somewhere and I go without a car for Sunday and get the car back on Monday. After discussing our plans, which included leaving the country on Monday, and a very important event on Sunday, we realized we had a difficult situation at hand.

I gotta hand it to this guy from VW. He knew immediately how important it was for us to be mobile and get this situation fixed. He spent over a solid hour on the phone with all sorts of folks getting things line up for us pulling strings and working processes. Finally he shook my hand and departed knowing that he'd done all he could and all he could was going to keep us rolling. Less than an hour later we had a wrecker to pick up the car.



We rode with the wrecker driver who didn't speak much English. When we got to the yard to deposit the VW, it had been about 5 hours since we left the restaurant and I'd needed to pee for the better part of 4 of those hours. I tried to ask him where the restroom was but we just resulted in confusion. Finally I mimed like I was peeing and he burst out laughing and showed me where it was.

Thankfully, also waiting in that lot was a Kia Niro that was to be our fourth rental car. Nice little hybrid that got really good mileage with the expensive gas. Not as fun as the Golf R, but we were happy with anything at this point and the Niro filled our need quite well. I calculated that driving it around Europe was about as expensive as driving my Ford Expedition around Texas. Not too bad.

We rolled back into our rental apartment at 2AM, needing to be up early and ready to go. On the way I explained to my son the difference between a trip and an adventure, and so far, we were having an adventure.

[bigjohnsd]

Trip of a lifetime!

[gixxerjasen]

Alright, so I promised some motorcycle content, so it's high time I deliver on that promise. How does MotoGP at the Assen TT, Cathedral of Speed sound? Heck yes! This has been one of those bucket list items, seeing a MotoGP race in Europe, and I was dedicated to see the event in my birth country. Even though the dates are pretty much the same every year, the planning of this trip hinged entirely on this event, and I waited until the dates were officially published to pull the trigger on the plane tickets.

I'd done some research on where to sit and it seems that the Geert Timmer tribune was pretty well recommended. I put my hat in for weekend tickets for that section and waited on the notification to come that tickets were on sale. Sadly, that email went into my spam folder and I didn't find out until two weeks later. Once I found it, I tried to get tickets and found that section was sold out. I did manage to score a set of Sunday tickets between turns 2 and 3 right in front of the long lap penalty section though so I was happy with that. Funny thing, several weeks later I received an email from MotoGP telling me that they were still waiting on payment for my tickets and if I didn't pay that my tickets would be forfeit. I'd paid and thought this was a scam, double check my credit card and yep, I paid. I went onto the site to find out what was going on and low and behold, they'd reserved my original ticket request. Sigh, I sadly let the Geert Timmer tickets forfeit and kept the seats I'd paid for, which was still a great place to sit.

I did make the mistake of following Google to the track. It took me down a road packed with pedestrians, bicycles and motorcycles. LOTS of folks camp and walk in for this race. At the end of the road we were turned around by an official because this road was closed to cars for this weekend. Thanks Google. We made our way back and into the real traffic.

Let's say that the LOOOOOONG experience of holding this event here showed. Austin has gotten better over the years but they are still a long way off. We flowed right into the parking lot with no issues. Also, get this, parking is free! Seriously, free!



Here's our Kia Niro. I'll comment after the photo about the parking situation.



Ok, so I took this photo so it'd help us find the car later, but seriously, at Austin I'm used to paying the bicycle taxis to take us to the entrance because it's so freaking far away. In this photo, the entrance is just around the corner of that "Expo" building. Crazy close free parking. Also, once through the entrance, our seating section was simply two stands to the left. I've never walked so little at a MotoGP event.

Some of the team trucks. Trucks are different there too. Two axles on the truck and three on the trailer.





I'd purposely brought earplugs for this event, and then I went and left them in the car. Didn't feel like dealing with lines, so this mistake cost me 20 euros, but hey, they are official MotoGP logo'd earplugs, so that's cool, right?



At long last, we'd arrived.



We grabbed some various snacks while there, everything was surprisingly affordable compared to our events here in the USA. Next to our stands was a place selling waffles and churros. The waffles were tiny so we opted for a family sized bag of churros. There were so many we ended up throwing some away after the race.



Quick parachute demonstration landing right in front of us.





And then it was off to the races. The races themselves were a lot of fun. It was great to see a crowd actually knowing riders and cheering for them in Moto3. I guess it helped that one of the riders fighting for the win was Dutch. During warmups and sighting laps, many riders practiced the Long Lap Penalty. It was clear that more riders needed to practice it because they got caught out by it and more than a couple went off the track or crashed there. I think we ended up seeing more action there than if we'd gotten our original seats.















What a great day, so happy the events of the previous night didn't keep us from experiencing it. After the race we hung out in the car and let the crowds clear, which happened smoothly and quickly. We got out and pointed South, and before we knew it we were cruising the German Autobahn. I have to say that leaving a MotoGP race there and hitting the Autobahn is a lot like hitting 130 after the races in Austin with it's 85mph speed limit. We made our way a couple hours south to Dusseldorf and grabbed a quick pizza to end the day.

[gixxerjasen]

The following day we pushed on to Munich. It takes a little bit to get used to the insane passing speed of some of the traffic on the Autobahn. I stayed right in the little Kia and we minded our own business while we were passed by more Mercedes, BMW and Audi's (in that order) than I've ever seen. It started raining, heavy at some points, and that didn't slow them down any. Well, it slowed one guy down a lot. It was interesting to see something I've only seen in pictures and could never happen here. When there's a traffic accident, they move their cars away from the left centerline to let emergency vehicles through. Try that here and there'd be a dozen people using it as their way through the traffic but not there.

We'd developed a system to save money on the incredibly expensive task of eating in Europe. At the grocery store we bought breakfast bars and cereal, and we'd maintain some stuff for lunch so that we could go out for a hot dinner in the evening. This night we ate at the nice restaurant at the hotel. Both of us had the turkey cordon bleu.





The following day it was time for some history study. We utilized the park and ride to grab a train into town.



We ran into Munich and stopped at this sporting good store to grab some cheap ponchos for the weather we had coming up later in the week. Nice indoor kayak test area.



Marienplatz town square was only a few blocks away so we walked over there looking at all the buildings and were blown away when we arrived.



The Euro 2024 football competition was going on and the square was filled and divided with fans from Netherlands and Romania as the game was in Munch that evening. Fun environment to be around. Netherlands would win that game.

A little more walking around.



While a lot of these buildings look very old, we'd learn later in the week that about 80% of the buildings in Munch had 80% or more damage from the bombing during WWII. The building above lost it's entire ceiling, one of the towers and the other tower was damaged. The city painstakingly rebuilt as many buildings as possible to original specifications. Pretty amazing.

Then we were off for a more somber afternoon. I'd originally planned this event for July 4 to appreciate our own freedoms, but we had to move things around for what I was able to get tickets for, so here we were, visiting the Dachau concentration camp.

This was one of the first concentration camps and was the model for all others built. The warden figured out how to deal with the prisoners and keep them in control and thus other wardens were sent to him for training, thus his brutal style was taught and spread to the other camps. This particular camp was a work camp and not a death camp like many others. There was a lot of work for the prisoners to do and many were worked to death. Others died of disease. Many were tested on for various things. Some were given Malaria so that they could test potential treatments to see which ones worked and which ones didn't Tests for pilots were done on prisoners including putting them in a full flight suit and putting them in freezing water to see how long a pilot could survive before he died. Special chambers that alter the air pressure to test how long it'd take a pilot to die at altitude. While a gas shower was built it was never used, but the pistol range was used plenty to exterminate specific groups of prisoners.

This was the entrance where they'd enter from the railway cars that would deposit them here.



Entrance gate: Work will set you free.



The square where the daily roll call would be held, approximately 40K prisoners would fill the square.



Each of these rectangles was a housing block like the ones in the background.







Prisoner sleeping arrangements. They'd be crammed into these bunks sleeping side by side.



The gas chamber that was thankfully never used. I was worried how I'd feel in this room but as it was unused, it was easier to handle.



This place was very heavily used and weighed heavily on me to look upon it.





That particular set of ovens couldn't keep up with the attrition, nor the gas chamber plans, so these were built and thankfully never used for the capacity planned.





A walk around back finds the pistol range. Used enough that they had to dig a "Blood ditch."



Pretty heavy day learning about history, but still we need to be reminded of these things. There's a fitting statue for the prisoners there that is as haunting as the rest of the place.

[0face]

Love the trip. Feels strange to like a post with Dachau in it. If you have any doubt about Man’s ability to be inhumane, just realize these were death and disposal factories. Absolutely astounding and horrifying that thought was put into making it more efficient.

[gixxerjasen]

We left and headed back into Munich and had dinner on the square. We are in Germany, it's tine for some schnitzel. We'd checked out the big tourist trap restaurant there but there wasn't much going on and we decided it was nicer on the square.







The next morning, we hopped into the car to go add another country to Jakob's list as we popped over to Salzburg. Quick coffee and we hopped on our tour bus to The Eagles Nest. This was a gift to Hitler but he rarely used it because rumor had it that he didn't like heights. Still quite impressive to see and to realize that the entire thing was built in 13 months including hauling all the materials up there.

This is the entrance to the 150m long tunnel that takes you to the 150m high elevator.



Inside the tunnel.



Selfie inside Hitler's gold plated elevator.



Once up there we headed out on a little hike on the trails around the building. The clouds partially obscured the views but added to the overall feel of the place.



Now, at this moment, I'd like to point out that when you are packing for a trip and it's 100F outside, it's really hard to remember to pack a jacket. Most mornings were in the 50's so a light jacket would have been helpful. Up here, it was much colder. Apparently, the day before it had been in the 30's but I think it was 40's this day. Nothing like hiking to warm up the body though.

That said, teenagers these days are dumb and wear light jackets and hoodies year-round. Look who ended up being the smart one on this trip.



Obligatory picture to make my mother angry with me.



While Hitler wasn't fond of the place, Eva Braun loved it and used this room to entertain the ladies with tea time while the men did "Important Work" in the room next to it.



This was the main room, it's now a restaurant.



This was the fireplace in the room. The marble was a gift from Mussolini.



Apparently, it was quite beautiful when installed. When the American soldiers arrived, they took to it with hammers to take bits of it home as souvenirs. Ahh yes, the time honored tradition of the American serviceman tearing stuff up. We are lucky it was only the Army that arrived, had it have been Marines, the entire building might not be there anymore.



Our tour stopped off for lunch in Berchtesgaden. We sat at a nice restaurant and enjoyed another pizza.





And I felt that Berchtesgaden Germany was a good place for Jakob to have his first beer. He's allowed there since he's with a parent so they served him. This is from one of the local breweries recommended by our waiter.



You can tell from the look on his face, that I also got to have a beer in Berchtesgaden. It was delicious.

Then it was back to Salzburg and off to see something else in the area.

I did promise you more motorcycle content, so how bout a visit to the home of KTM.

[danh600]

Jasen epic trip report MC content or not.

You are making memories that will last a lifetime for both of you.

[gixxerjasen]

KTM Motohall is a museum sitting right next to the massive factory complex and is a must visit. My photo above was taken by getting my son to squeeze as much of the sign in as possible without getting the two BMW's parked on either side, right in front of the sign. I was hoping they were just rental bikes and the riders were wishing they had their much better KTM's for the ride, but whatever.

First up we hit the special display downstairs with all the Dakar bikes. Very interesting to see the design progression through the years.







Then there was a Brabus on display. Overpriced and apparently not everyone's favorite bike, but cool to see none the less.



Some nice displays showing the design changes through the years.





My son really liked this one once we looked into it and realized what he was seeing. This is showing the progression of how they mock up the clay models during design. On the far left they hand mold clay into the basic shapes. The next section shows how the computer mills the clay into the designed shape. Next it's smoothed out by hand and then it receives paint and decals. Son was surprised that wasn't factory plastic but paint and decals on clay. We spent some time enjoying this one and looking at the various details.



The awesome LC8 engine.



And...exploded. From the looks of things, when I was working on it this past year, I was pretty well into mine.



A well done display showing all the electronics and sensors on the modern bikes.



The 2024 KTM Super Duke R on display







Photodump!

























Jakob has been a fan of Pol for a while now, so he wanted a picture with his display.



Despite having limited time behind the wheel of a car since getting his learners permit, he wanted to take this one out on the track.



Some interesting older prototype bikes on display.



A nice trophy collection.



And then there's the gift shop. We managed to restrain ourselves and only spend a tiny fortune in here rather than allowing myself to go bankrupt, which would be easy.



After that, we headed back to our hotel in Munich and had some traditional German meatloaf. We weren't sure what to expect and it was a little strange, but both of us loved it and gobbled it right down.

[FJRPittsburgh]

Fantastic travel report Jasen! Thanks for taking us along for the ride.

[gixxerjasen]

Spent our last night in Munich and in the morning we headed to the Park and Ride to catch a train into town for more history.



We were a bit early, so I decided to grab some coffee nearby. I had my choices of Starbucks, McDonalds, California Bean, or some other local coffee shop. I chose the local coffee shop. When we got there, it was clearly closed and abandoned, so we went to California Bean. I chuckled when we walked in and they announced "Welcome to California!" The coffee was good and passed the time.



Today we were doing the "Third Reich Walking Tour" in downtown Munich. Lots of folks think you'd need to go to Berlin for this, but Hitler's rise to power happened in Munich. This was a tour of former beer halls, march locations, and hard to find memorials of those trampled by the progress of what all happened. I didn't get a lot of pictures as we were on the move and our tour guide was feeding us information from a fire hose. Definitely informative and interesting to see how things happened. Also a lot of talk about how Germans feel about this black spot in their history, certainly an interesting perspective.







After that, we had some chores to attend to. Not the fun part of vacations but necessary when you are traveling light and staying long.



Then it was a couple hour drive to our next hotel. The view from our balcony was not so shabby.



We grabbed dinner at a local restaurant. We'd been craving some Spätzle but most restaurants had been serving most excellent fries, but here we found what we'd been looking for. I cannot tell you how delicious that gravy was on my roast beef plate, but I soaked as much of it up with the Spätzle and then used a tremendous amount of willpower to keep from licking the plate.

[FJRPittsburgh]

Looks like a flat white was involved......

[0face]

Now this is a trip report!

[wheatonFJR]

Jasen, all I can say is wow! What a gift for you and your son. May it bring the best dividends in his life...and may you always be able to look back and cherish that time.

[gixxerjasen]

Woke up and hit the breakfast at the little B&B we were staying at, then popped around the corner and parked the car in the official parking lot and walked up to the horse carriages. Aside from the horse farts, this is way better than walking up there, and faster.



Faster is important when you have a ticket for a specific entry time, of which we were pushing then envelope arriving 2 minutes before our entry time.



Despite riding the carriage up, we still had a bit of climbing to do, and then we went straight inside the castle and started climbing stairs. My son was not thrilled with all of this. That said, the inside of Neuschwanstein Castle was worth it all. It's pretty spectacular and I'd share it with you but there's no photography allowed inside.

We did get this shot from the balcony. In the distance there is Hohenschwangau Castle, which we'll be touring next.





On the way down we passed this guy selling fried dough balls with , kind of like a really big donut hole. Seems like they might be called Quarkbällchen but I'm not sure. Either way, they were so good.



We dug in so fast I forgot to take a photo, here's what one looks like, two have already been consumed.



Looking back up.



And where we are headed.









No photography allowed inside that castle either, Boo! Not as fancy as the other one but this one saw more use as an actual castle people lived in.

We hit one of the food carts selling German sausages. Definitely not Ballpark Bun Length buns, but it worked.



After we left there, we headed to our next hotel in western Austria. Downstairs was a Mexican Restaurant, and after walking through and smelling it and not really wanting to go anywhere, we ate there. Jakob had Nachos and I had the delight of an Austrian girl telling this guy from Texas how to eat Birria Tacos. She was quite proud and adamant about how it was done so I let her do her thing. They were pretty good and all hit the spot.

[escapefjrtist]

Most excellent report and pics Jasen. Trip to remember for you and your son. Thanks for sharing the adventure with us!

~G

[gixxerjasen]

Oops, forgot to post the picture of the view out our hotel window the previous night.



Ok, so yes, we are technically spending the night in Austria, but we are barely over the border but it's time to say goodbye to the Germany/Austria region and start working our way back toward the Netherlands. We aren't going directly there though, because we can take a slightly longer route and see more cool stuff. Stuff like Switzerland.



Now, some might say it's a crime to spend only one day in Switzerland, but I'd also argue that it would have been a crime for us to miss it altogether.



Not enough time in the day to hit all the passes and do a few other things, pick one. Klausen Pass was most on the way and my wife was at home looking at pictures and suggested it, and a good suggestion it was. On the way up, my son saw a pull off and suggested we stop there for a snack, so I pulled in. I kept trying to get a photo of the motorcycles coming around this corner but missed them.



While we are standing there snacking, I notice a sign that says "Wasserfall - 10 min" pointing off to our left. We got 20 minutes to spare for a round trip hike, so off we go. We were well rewarded.



We continued up the pass and the views kept getting better and better.





We finally reached the top and there were quite a few motorcycles to look at up there.







On the one hand, I was really wishing we were on a bike. On the other hand, the roads were narrow enough in a lot of places, there were a lot of cars, there were a lot of blind corners, and there were a lot of bicycles. I had to drive with a ton of caution to keep from running over bicyclists and just saying safe that I don't actually think you could really get the full fun out of a motorcycle on these roads. Better to slow it down and just enjoy the view, save that kind of riding for Arkansas.

Anytime a Texan can see snow in July, it must be appreciated.



Then we made our way down the pass and on to our destination stop along the way.







Making it to our destination I saw one of the smartest things ever. My wife laughed at me for taking these pictures but she hates hates hates to use a PortaPottie. She'll just magically suck it up and hold it rather than use one. However, this was a genius concept.



Inside is a bin of wood shavings. After you do your business, you scoop some shavings on top. Later they'll compost it into a soil conditioner and return it all to the earth. Now, aside from all the happy happy feel good environmental stuff, I have to say that when I entered, there was clearly a large pile of other people's "Business" in there, and I could smell nothing but the pleasant smell of the wood shavings. I've never been in a PortaPottie that didn't smell bad, let alone one that actually smelled good. I could get on board with these things.



Read more here if you are interested - https://www.kompotoi.ch/

Anyway, tickets for our ride secured, I played around on the suspension bridge. Jakob wasn't having any of it so he stayed behind and sneaked pictures of me.







Then it was time for the ride. We had booked a ride up the mountain on the Gelmerbahn, which is a train pulled up by a cable via a very steep incline. Here's a youtube video (not mine) if you want to see more. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv5zqwIP-Lk

Right before we got on, the skies opened up and started dumping on us. It rained the whole way up, I was worried the views up there would be spoiled.







About the time we got to the top, the rain stopped and we even got enough sun to dry out the ponchos so we could put them away.



Our system for cheap picnic lunches involved Jakob picking out the bread of the day while I secured the smallest packs of cheese and meat we could find. Without access to a refrigerator, we just split the meat and cheese and made monster sandwiches. Yummy! Awesome place for a picnic lunch.









I was telling Jakob that on warmer sunnier days, people will actually swim in this water. As we were taking the above photos, this man disrobed to his underwear and went for a dip. I mean, you can see the snow in the background that is melting into this lake. I could feel my feet cramping up just thinking about getting in there.



Then it was time to head back down. The rain held off until we got back in line, then it opened up on us again and drenched us all the way down.



It pretty much rained off and on the rest of the day but we enjoyed the views. I drove the Kia hanging with the locals thorugh the wet twisty roads way faster than I was comfortable with but we all zipped through with no issues. We made it to Besançon, France, and pulled the easy card out again and stopped for Pizza.



Side note: The thing I didn't anticipate as being hard on this trip was finding food. First of all, my son is a picky eater for a lot of reasons. Second, it seemed like all the restaurants boiled down to a few categories. Europeans are like us and like a variety of stuff, so you can find lots of not local regional food like Chinese or Mexican. Second, there's Italian restaurants, but they all are pretty much exclusively Pizza restaurants. Everything else available all seems to be trying to get their Michelin star by giving you a huge plate with a tiny bit of food for a huge price. Too fancy for my tastes. I had evenings where I was absolutely exhausted with trying to find something for us to eat, so yes, we pulled the pizza card more often than I'd planned to on this trip, but I gotta keep the boy fed. And all the pizza was really good.