Holidays - Part 1

Hello, well, since my last blog things have gotten a little better for me. No, Andy hasn’t changed his mind and I’m not living in hope that he will. At the end of the day I just have to accept it and move on.
Anyway, so, after I posted my blog I decided that I needed a holiday. I had been saving up to go away with Andy to Australia, but since that wasn’t going to happen and I was feeling down I decided there’s no time like the present. So I started looking around to see what I fancied. I went through lots of different ideas (I won’t bore you with all the different iterations) but eventually decided I wanted a driving holiday around Europe. For years I’ve always wanted to visit the different motor museums in Germany (did I tell you I was a car geek?) so now I had the money, the time and a pretty fast car to shuttle me around Germany. So this is the plan for the holiday -

Week 1

Drive to Wolfsburg and visit the VW AutoStadt
Then move on to Stuttgart and visit the Mercedes-Benz and Porsche museums
Visit the Audi museum in Ingolstadt and then on to Munich and visit the BMW Welt
Finally drive up to Davos and then do the “best driving roads in Europe” as recommended by Top Gear, on my way to a villa in Tuscany where I’ll lie around a pool for a week.

Week 2

Stay at the villa, just outside Florence, and bake for a week. Maybe go and do a day or two’s sightseeing, but mainly lie by the pool, eat food and drink wine.

It sounded a good plan to me so I book the train (Eurotunnel), the hotels and the villa and here I am, day 2 of my holidays!
It’s been interesting so far.
Drove over on yesterday (Saturday), which was an 8 hour drive altogether. Only just made the train (literally, by two minutes) but when I got through the other end all was good, just drove off and drove on to Wolfsburg. Only stopped twice which was good going for me. What made me laugh was filling up with fuel. All the way from home, through France, Belgium and the Netherlands I was pretty much averaging about 80mph and because of that I got about 360 miles to a tank of petrol. As soon as I got into Germany I filled up with fuel (it’s cheaper to fill up there than in the Netherlands) and hoofed it across a lot of the country. And when I say hoofed, probably about 120mph was my average (excluding roadwork sections), although I did get Big Tom (my Golf GTI) up to 158mph at one point. And no, before you start asking, I wasn’t going down hill at the time. Anyway, because of the speed I was doing I got 205 miles out of a tank. So, the moral of the story there is, if you drive fast you spend more money.
One thing I found annoying about the Germany leg on was the amount of roadworks. I’m assuming there’s so many because the German govt brought forward a lot of infrastructure projects to keep the economy stimulated, but it’s ruddy annoying. And on top of that there are now so many sections of the Autobahns that are restricted to 120 kph it gets very boring very quickly. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the sections where it was unlimited and I could play chase with the big BMW’s and Porsches, but hit a 120 kph zone and the Germans turn into driving wankers. They all stick to the speed limit and sit in the fast lane so no one who wants to risk their license can go faster.
I got to the hotel quite late, about 9.20 and had to order in a pizza because the kitchens had shut. I wasn’t impressed. Then I found out I had no a/c and it was hot last night. Went to go for a swim this morning and I was told I had to pay to use the pool, so that idea went out the window.
I’ll do a separate blog about all the hotels, but suffice to say I wasn’t a happy bunny and will be making my feelings felt on Hotels.com

Today was mainly a day at the AutoStadt. Very interesting place, although not as many old cars as I was hoping for. They have a building for each brand, plus the museum for the old cars and explaining how VW have changed over the years. The brand buildings were nothing more than glorified showrooms, except the VW one which had no cars in it, but rather a cinema screen on the ceiling of an orb. You sat in chairs that leaned back 45 degrees and watched the mini movies. All a bit rubbish, but an experience, non-the-less. I suppose if they were refitting now they’d throw in 3D cinematography instead.

I had a bit of a drive Wolfsburg afterwards, but it’s nothing special. It’s like any other small town in Germany, just with a HUGE VW plant in the centre.

Right, time for dinner. I’m going to brave the hotel restaurant tonight. Will let you know how it goes.