Germany Part 4 - The Black Forest, Triberg

Our day in Triberg was probably one of my favorite days of the trip.  We woke up, packed up the car, ate a complimentary breakfast at our hotel, and then bundled up for a mini-hike to see the tallest waterfall in Germany!   The waterfall was tall and noisy and sprayed so much water that the entire area surrounding it was lush and green.  It was great to get some fresh air and see such a pretty natural site.

There were a couple of bridges/platforms that crossed the waterfall.  K and I stuck with the middle and bottom ones, but S insisted on running up to the top one as well.  From between the trees, we could catch glimpses of the nearby hazy mountains and trees of the Black Forest, it was quite beautiful.

After getting our fill of the waterfall and surrounding forest we headed back into town to hit up some cuckoo clock shops!!!  The one big purchase I had saved up for on this trip was my very own, authentic German cuckoo clock and I was SO excited to finally get one!!! (A side note - the cuckoo clocks are sold everywhere in southern Germany, we'd seen them at all of our major stops.  However, I really wanted to wait and buy one in the Black Forest, as this is where they are actually made)

The clock shops were incredible, filled wall-to-wall with exquisite clocks.  The top picture above is the first (and it turns out, best) shop that we went to.  The second picture was my favorite clock from another shop.  It was so detailed and amazing and the price reflected that.  What I had thought was a generous budget for a clock did indeed get me a very nice clock, but it was alsoin the "lower" price bracket of the available clocks we saw.  So which one did I get???

I got this little green beauty shown right here!  S had the requirement that the clock wasn't just all one color of wood because he thought it was too difficult to see all of that expensive wood-carved detail and I wanted something that showed some beautiful craftsmanship. This one was the perfect compromise.  I received it in the mail about a month later and promptly hung it in my house!

After I made my cuckoo clock purchase, we hit the road again and drove to the nearby town of Furtwangen to check out the German Clock Museum!  It was a clock sort of day.  We spent a couple of hours perusing the history of clocks.  My favorite exhibit was the history of clocks in the Black Forest region, the clockmakers really were incredibly talented.

S also found his all time favorite cuckoo clock:

Yes, that's a race car!  After we were all clocked out, we hit the road again, headed for our next hotel in Schwangau.  We took our time and admired the beautiful scenery in the Black Forest. 

We'd been hitting some fun stretches of Autobahn along the way as well and S finally got a chance to really push it here.  He got our rental BMW diesel up to 235 km/hr! (146 mph!!!!!) 

It's a blurry picture, I know, but the light was fading and we were in a car, ok?  His previous "record" on the autobahn had only been 200 km/hr (124mph), so he was pretty psyched!  This is the fastest he wound up getting during the course of the trip.  We got in to Schwangau sort of late, so we quickly checked into our hotel and then ran out for a bite to eat.  On our way back we caught a sneak peek of the next day's adventure....

Next installment, will our day of touring the most unreal castles I've ever seen.....