We've reached our Christmas Home

December 22nd--

We awoke in our quaint Erfurt hotel and enjoyed a really nice breakfast before heading back to the Christmas market for more shopping, food and beverage.

We had a 400 km ride ahead of us, but first we needed to find the key to Cody & Cayden's hotel room which mysteriously disappeared between leaving the Breakfast room and loading luggage in the vans.  Being an older hotel, we actually had real metal keys. Each opened a room and the exterior doors to the hotel. So losing one would mean paying to have that room and all the outside doors re-keyed.  According to Jessie, Germans take keys very seriously.  Losing a key to her apartment had a fine larger than a month's rent.  After pulling luggage back out of the car for more searching, the key finally turned up in Cayden's backpack with his homework. No one knows how it got in there, but all were delighted at it being found.

We almost made it out of Erfurt without another incident, but we did need to help Jennie out of the WC when she managed to lock herself inside.

We then somehow managed to drive four-plus hours without incident, arriving at our Airbnb home in the countryside near Kroning.

Our hosts, Gerd and Silvia welcomed us and showed us to our accommodations.  We are in a large building on a farm.  There are three entrances:  the one on the left is a bedroom wing with five single rooms, two pairs with jack-and-jill baths and one with a private bath.  The middle entrance (into the former pig pen) has a large kitchen and dining seating for at least 20.  It kind of looks like a small restaurant with four large tables and bench seating around the perimeter.

The right hand door leads to the upper level, where there are two double rooms, each with their own bath, and another single room with private bath.  There is also a large public room (the former hay loft).  Another set of stairs leads to the final double room in a loft.

Our hosts have been fantastic to date. They had a neighbor cut down a Christmas tree for us and they left us cookies and beer.  By the time we arrived, we only had about 30 minutes to grocery shop -- essentially for tonight's dinner. Tomorrow we will go to a larger store and stock up, as there will be NO grocery stores open Sunday, Monday or Tuesday.

So tomorrow is grocery stock-up day; pick up Debbie at the Munich airport; and then then Munich Christmas market and an early dinner at a Munich brewery.