tesla roadtrip – Travels and Trades

Stop #2 – Krakow, Poland

We flew into Vienna, spent 7 days and rented a car and made our way to Krakow, Poland. The rental car place told us we couldn’t go through Czech and possibly Poland (but they had to confirm). I told them don’t worry about it, we weren’t going there anyways lol. We did. Those types of small things give me pleasure.

The drive took I think about 4-5 hours. Krakow was one of my favourite stops this trip. Not what I expected. Everything was super cheap, people were friendly and it felt less touristy then other stops. I’ll be going back. We checked out the salt mines but not Auschwitz (next time). The vodka was like $1euro a shot for premium stuff. Delicious. of course we got Perogies several times. I am half Polish so on Christmas Eve, we eat Perogies and Cabbage rolls as a tradition.

The Salt Mines

Enjoying a big beer on a patio. Good times

The kids hanging out next to some sites

Kingstons face as I tell him about Ron Bertino’s Space Trip Trade

Looking Cool as Fuck

This summers Road Trip – Intro and Stop 1: Vienna

This past summer we did a 7 week road trip that started in Vienna and ended in Salzburg. Might be wondering how we pulled off 7 weeks of road trip and only ended up 3 hrs away, well we did one huge ass loop.

1. Vienna, Austria
2. Krakow, Poland
3. Lower Silesia, Poland
4. Dresden, Germany
5. Hanover, Germany
6. Frankfurt, Germany
7. Heidelberg, Germany
8. Aschaffenburg, Germany
9. Freiburg, Germany
10. Tuttlingen, Germany
11. Como, Italy
12. Ranco, Italy
13. Arona, Italy
14. Turin, Italy
15. Lyon, France
16. Milan, Italy
17. Strasbourg, France
18. Nuremburg, Germany
19. Salzburg, Austria (dropped car off)
20. Munich, Germany (By train rom Salzburg)

We always airbnb it except in one area (Arona) where we stay at an amazing B&B (it’s our 5th time)–>Cascina Incocco–>Which I’d highly recommend to anyone. It’s one of my favourite spots.

Some pics from the first stop on the trip:

On the way there!

Vienna – First Stop! Augustiner Yep.

A painting in Emma’s memory match. We’re ticking them off while we travel. Egon Schiele

On to Krakow!

Jul 29 – Travels

We’re back in Arona, Italy. Where we will spend most of the remaining parts of the road trip. After that we’ll be ending the trip with a Norwegian Fjord cruise and then we’re back in the Cayman Islands.

We’ve put on about 8k km with our Tesla driving all across Europe and we’ve paid zero for gas. It’s a pretty epic road trip especially in an electric car. It hasn’t gotten much attention despite Tesla tweeting about the smallest road trips (I think one was someone going from UK to Amsterdam). Really? That’s like one leg of 30 on my trip. I thought it’d have been interesting taking an electric car from Malta all the way up to Sweden.

Here are some pictures of Arona.

Travel Update

Been a while. We were in Copenhagen for 7 days followed by Stockholm for 8. We’re now making our way to Hamburg with a 2 day stop in Roskilde, Denmark. We decided against driving through Norway and opted for a Norwegian Fjord cruise on Holland America to end this whole thing in August. We booked which what we were told was the last room and it was an obstructed ocean view and somehow got lucky with an upgrade opportunity to the Neptune suite (booking cancellation?). Before that though, we are going to go back to where we started which was the Lake Como/Arona. It’s our favourite region in Europe. We’ll stay there for 9 days and then head up and stay in Strasbourg and then Bruge before going to UK to board our cruise.

The rest of the itinerary looks like this:

Roskilde, Denmark

Hamburg, Germany

Lake Como/Arona, Italy

Strasbourg, France

Bruges, Belgium

All of Norway by cruise

Cayman Islands (Home)

Jul 7 – Travels

We’ve made it to Copenhagen.

Like the city and its vibe quite a bit but its damn expensive. Seriously.

Berlin was a very bizarre city. I really have no idea how to quantify it or my experience there. I really don’t. We happened to stay in a vegan neighbourhood which was awesome! That was a total fluke as well. Glad we stayed in that part of town, it happened to be the best part, super artsy, lively and kid friendly. At first it was intimidating, the characters there are bizarre and it looked like we were in gangland with all the spray paint. After a day, you realize it’s harmless. Overall, I can’t see myself ever returning to Berlin. It was not a favorite.

I had the unfortunate experience of watching a man die. It was really messed up. We were walking to our segway tour and a man was on the ground with a worker outfit getting CPR, his legs were twitching and stopped and they seemed to give up on the CPR with shrugs and looks of hopelessness. Very eery. The thing I remember most is all of the bystanders faces. Just blank. I don’t know what happened but I’d guess maybe electrocution or heart attack.

We toured the Berlin wall, saw the holocaust memorial museum which was the most impactful of its genre. I’ve been to a concentration camp and other sites but this one was next level with its presentations of individual cases/experiences. Very impactful. Highly recommended everyone sees that some day. What an atrocity.

We drove and ferried from Berlin to Copenhagen and arrived in good time.

More to come

Wurzburg -Trip Report (Ash)

Wurzburg

After leaving Rammingen we had about a 2 hour drive to Wurzburg. We rented a house just on the outskirts of the city, about a 10 minute drive out. The house itself was great, especially for the kids. There was a huge playroom that was filled with cars, lego, colouring books, stuffed animals and a huge car carpet with roads and buildings. The kids were in Heaven! This was definitely one of the nicer airbnb’s that we’ve stayed in.

Driving into Wurzuberg from the house was pretty easy. Once you get into the city, there was plenty of parking lots all around with paid parking. We never had a problem finding a place to park. Wurzberg itself is a beautiful city and the history is also pretty amazing. It was small, easy to navigate and had a great vibe.

In April of 1945, 90% of the city was destroyed in 17 seconds from the Allied bombers. 5000 people were killed and the medieval and historical buildings were completely destroyed. It took the Trümmerfrauen (rubble woman) of Wurzberg 20 years to complete the rebuild of the city. It was done mostly by woman as the majority of men perished in the war. Looking at the city now, you would have no idea the state it was in 70 years ago, it truly is a beautiful city.

The food in Wurzburg was pretty awesome. We were excited to see that one of the top 10 places to eat in the city was a vegetarian restaurant called Veggie Bros. Its basically a glorified falafel restaurant with different kinds of wraps, salads, juices and sauces. They make their own vegan mayo as well, which was absolutely amazing on their french fries. A great find for us as we are all vegetarian.

The main site we had in our sights (no pun intended) as the Residenz. Well, it made the entire trip, it was literally one of the best things we’ve seen. It is up there with the Segrada, Vatican and St. Johns church in Valletta. Astounding. Highly recommend as a bucket list “must see”. The next site was the fortress which we decided to visit when we had poor weather. We checked out the museum and walked around. It was anti-climatic compared to the Residenz, however.

Jun 29 – Travels

We’ve arrived in Berlin, our first official “big city” stay. We’ll be here until the 6th at which point we’ll depart for Copenhagen. A week after that will be Stockholm and a week after that will be Helsinki.

I’ve got a shit-ton of updating to do tomorrow on this blog. I’ve been busy with catch-up of all sorts in business that has put a big limiter on free time outside of the obvious traveling/experiencing.

Pictures from Wurzburg and Nuremberg below:

Emma lost a tooth in Nuremberg

Standard pic. Nuremberg

Beach bar (summer in the city) Nuremberg. Super cool and extensive

Just a pic of the three weirdos that I call my family

The lead weirdo

Nuremberg nazi rally grounds

A paddle boat excursion near the rally grounds

A Wurzburg castle stroll

A night out in Wurzburg

A night out in Wurzburg #2

A night out in Wurzburg #3

Fun in the backyard (Wurzburg)

Jun 24 (last full day near Munich)

Yesterday, Ash and I took the Tesla in for servicing and got a loaner P85+ which was interesting to drive. The differences? This one is the + package which includes a different suspension, brakes and 21 inch rims. It also included some auto pilot functions. All in all, just a bit different. We talked to a few car dealerships in UK already about selling our Tesla in August. The going price seems decent, we’ll probably put it with one of the dealers and do a cruise to end the trip (a cruise around either the British Isles or Scandinavia) rather than spend it in Airbnbs. Ideally we can sell the car in August and get one in the US for Cayman.

After dropping off the car, we then made our way into Munich for a little night out and ended up buying a few apple watches. I’ll probably only wear mine during work outs or market hours as a way to keep track of the market/alerts without having to pull my phone out and/or being distracted at my computer. Will be a bit of a game changer for that. I’ve got it setup to display the RUT on my watch face 🙂

After that, we went and found a few beer gardens to enjoy some TapX and also some Augustiner beer (my personal favourite). You can’t export that beer, it’s got no preservatives and is brewed according to the purity law in Munich. Munich beer is just different. I don’t know how to explain it. The Augustiner beer history dates back to 1328 when the Augustinian brotherhood of monks brewed the beer in the Munich (which means monk by the way and so does Monaco).

Today, we will go back to pick up the car and I’ll probably get a haircut and stop at a Vegan restaurant we found. Tomorrow we depart for Wurzburg with a stop in Uln along the way. We spend four days in Wurzburg then will make our way to Berlin for a week followed by Copenhagen for another week. After that, who knows!

Germany (Pictures)

Ravensburg (Where they make those puzzles!)

Landsberg am Lech locks

Landsberg Am Lech during a hike

Andech Monastery beers! Kingston is admiring them.

landsberg Am lech

U-boat revealed

Ravensburg poseMunich (Marienplatz) The start of the beer hall Putsch

U-boat control room

Landsberg Am Lech guard tower

Landsberg am Lech Umbrella crew

Landsberg Am Lech log pose #1

A beer in Turkheim

Trying on hats in Ravensburg museum

Marienplatz, Munich

Ravensburg

There we go. Nice Hat

Deutches Museum, Munich (Awesome!)

Entering Marienplatz

Roar
More U-boat cut outs

Jun 23 – Rammingen (near Munich)

We’ve been in Rammingen for the past 3 days and are staying in a fantastic airbnb that I’d recommend to anyone. The drive took a bit longer than expected (8 hrs) and probably will be our longest of the trip. It was relatively uneventful though fun to drive 160+ on the autobahn. We stopped to charge in Ljubljana, Villach and just outside Munich.

The following day we checked out landberg am Lech and an the Andech monastery for some much looked forward to Monk beer. The day after that we checked out Ravensburg and visited a museum there and bought some memory match games from the Ravensburger museum store. Ravensburg is a small town in Germany where all those puzzles/games you see at book stores are made (IE Camana Bays). The day after that we went into Munich and visited the Deutches museum which was awesome. They had a u-boat cut in half and that alone made the museum worth while to me. The kids loved it.