Gossau, Switzerland to Münstertal, Germany - Saturday October 4, 2015

Unfortunately, today is the day we left the Giger family.  We looked forward to moving on with our journey, but it was sad to leave the Giger’s after having an incredible week with them.  After our delicious breakfast, Ivo and Eliane generously offered to take us to Zurich Airport to pickup our rental car.  We would have gotten a car locally, but the only Europcar office that was open on Sunday was at the airport.  We arrived at the airport about 1 PM and said our goodbyes to Eliane and Ivo. By 2PM we had our car, a silver 2015 Skoda Octavia station wagon with a six speed manual transmission.  I was glad that the car had a diesel engine, since diesel fuel in Europe is traditionally less expensive than regular fuel and gets a lot more miles per gallon than regular fuel (km & liters in Europe).  Once we were on the road, we set up our Garmin GPS (which has European maps), and made sure that highways was turned off. When we travel in Europe we prefer taking the back roads in order to see the countryside, which is almost impossible if traveling on the major highways.  Even with highways turned off, the GPS was taking us on some major roads.  I was not thrilled with this, so Gail took out her iPad, which has Nokia Here, an app preloaded with maps of Europe.  Now we were in business …………. Gail found all the small winding roads through the Black Forest, which took us to our destination of Münstertal, Germany. These small winding roads through the hills and valleys of the Black Forest with picturesque views and roaming animals were breathtaking. Unfortunately, the sky was very overcast and hazy for a good portion of the drive.  We arrived at our hotel at about 5:30 PM.  The hotel was situated in the hills of the Black Forest and was built with in the traditional Black Forest style house (see photo below).  We had an excellent traditional Black Forest dinner at the hotel (Gail had Weiner Schnitzel and I had roast duck - the side dishes were great).  After dinner we relaxed a bit and went to bed early.