Schiltach
After our night in Ravensburg we made our way to our next major destination within the Black Forest region of Germany.
We stayed two nights in Freiberg im Breisgau, but at this point we weren't there yet.
The drive was quite long actually, almost three hours from where we were.
So we decided to break it up with a few stops along the way and sort of just make a day out of it.
The first stop was in the small town of Schiltach, the town in the photos that you have been viewing so far.
The town wasn't touristy at all and I got the impression that it was only for the locals. It was very quiet and there was actually nothing to do there at all other than walk the streets and view the homes. That's not a complaint though, it's literally my favorite thing to do in any small town, wander and look around.
There was one small museum, but we didn't go into it, so I can't comment on how good it is. There were a few restaurants but surprisingly, not a lot of cafe's.
The town itself was super nice though. It had colorful half timbers homes, flower boxes everywhere and a large creek running through its center.
It was basically just a pretty little village. That sums it up nicely I think.
This part of the Black Forest is known for its cuckoo clocks and as we drove to the next stop we began seeing more and more shops selling the clocks on the side of the road.
Many of them were designed to look like clocks themselves, which was a cool little novelty.
It can actually be very difficult to take pictures of the clocks though. Many of the merchants post signs about not taking photographs.
I'm sure it gets pretty annoying having tourists stopping for photos all day when they have no intention of buying anything. Cuckoo clocks are quite expensive so I doubt that they sell them regularly.
The clocks in my photos were actually taken at our hotel in Freiberg.
They had a collection on the wall, so no issues taking pictures.
Triberg
Triberg was our second stop for the day and it was almost the exact opposite of Schiltach. The town was super touristy and was swarming with people and cars, so much so that we could barely find parking. I'm noticing that my photos don't actually portray how busy it was. I think it calmed down after a while because we arrived around lunch time.
We went back and forth on the main road three times though and down several side streets to try and find parking.
Most of the lots were private and the public ones had very short time limits,like 15-30 minutes. It was surprising that such a busy town had so little parking. There must be a large lot somewhere. I probably just couldn't find it.
Eventually we paid for parking at the grocery store, but the limit was only an hour so we had to make a decision on what we wanted to do, eat lunch in town, view the waterfall, or check out the shops.
We ended up just checking out the shops because eating lunch in under an hour in Europe is nearly impossible and I didn't like that you had to pay to see the waterfall.
I also happen to really like cuckoo clocks, so I was curious to check them out in a town thats known for them. There were literally thousands of clocks being sold, some for ridiculous dollar figures. I think 10 thousands euros was the highest priced clock that we saw. The shops sold a lot of hand crafted wooden ornaments as well which was pretty cool.
After a brief visit in town we headed off to Freiberg. We tend to start our days quite early so even with the 3 hour drive and two stop overs, we still got there before 3pm, but that's a post for another day I suppose.