A visit to the Holy Land

Originally published 17 March 2012

Zur Loreley, The Rhine

​We arose this morning in our cute as a button Rhineland hotel, had a nice breakfast and cruised on down the Rhine. It was very pretty, and we saw several other castles, crossed on the ferry again, and headed towards Stuttgart for the Porsche museum. We were zipping along on the autobahn and saw a sign for a museum with planes and cars. I thought....it might me nice.....and Laurie said if you want to go, let's stop. I hemmed and hawed....until we actually came within sight of the museum. YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT WE'RE GOING!!!!!!!!!! They had a Concord jet and about 8 other huge aircraft ON THE ROOF!

The Condord, Auto  Technik Museum, Sensheim, Germany

On the roof,  Auto Technik Museum

​We pulled in and I had already realized that this was gonna be a screaming with your arms in the air and running with your hair on fire kinda day! Man....what a museum! They had several jet aircraft on the roof, and you went to the roof and accessed these aircraft by spiral stairs. They had hundreds of cars, motorcycles, tanks, airplanes, artillery pieces.............anything you can think of......WHAT A FANTASTIC MUSEUM! Then......I went in the second building.

Museum interior, Sensheim

One of six ever made, Tyrrell P34.  I'm a bit excited.....

The second building had a huge number of things in it.....but the most amazing to me was the worlds largest single collection of Formula One cars. We were browsing through things......and then I saw it. And I made a bee line for it, like a fat kid for an ice cream truck. It was a Tyrrell P34 six wheel F1 car! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! There were only 6 of these made! I never expected to see one in person in my lifetime. I've read about them, studied them, was amazed by them...but never expected to actually see one in person! To say I was excited was a bit of an understatement.

Formula one collection

Inside the Concord in the above photo, several stories in the air

​We checked out the rest of the collection of F1 cars which was amazing unto itself...and the rest of the museum. I was just shell shocked by what I saw! So much history! We had a picnic in the parking lot and headed towards the Porsche museum in Stuttgart.

Porsche Museum,  Stuttgart

Le Mans winning Porsche

​We arrived and parked in the parking garage. This was the cleanest parking garage I have ever been in. It had epoxy floors! And then there was the museum. Simply amazing. The building itself is worth the stop. And then.....there are the cars. Cars that Porsche only built one of. World famous racing cars. All the street cars they ever made. In the Porsche museum. At the Porsche factory. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Porsche, serial number 001

Not a good thing to see in your mirrors.

​We finished up at the Porsche museum and picked a destination off the map. We were looking for a town somewhere south of where we were and out of large cities to avoid rush hour the next day. We wound up in Ulm.  Not a lot here.......nice people, good dinner (that's 3 in a row), the second tallest silo in the world, the tallest church steeple, and the birthplace of Einstein. We stopped at the Comfort Inn as it was getting late. We got a room that was a few euros more than we budgeted for....and found out the reason why. It's a full apartment! Kitchen, Bedroom with office area, bath, etc. Yep. This'll do.

Tomorrow, we are off to Berchtesgaden in the Alps.

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