Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes-Benz

We are about to leave on a new adventure. We will be in Germany and France, two countries that are not new to us, but the places we will visit are. Our choice to go here is an example of how we decide much of our travel. We frequently say, "We have some time available to travel around the beginning of April. What dates and destination offer a really good airfare?" We then search the airline website using the flexible dates option and entering airport codes for places all over the world. If we find an airfare that qualifies as "good", then we say "Let's go there." Typically the cutoff for a "good" airfare is 10 cents per mile. The trip we are about to take was planned using that method. I was finding "bad" airfares to cities all over the US and Europe, when I stumbled on a flight to Stuttgart for 7.7 cents per mile, so that's where we are going.

Stuttgart is in southwest Germany close to the Black Forest area and looks to be an interesting destination itself. It is the home of Porsche and Mercedes-Benz. However, less than 2 hours away is the German/French border and the city of Strasbourg. Strasbourg offers some interesting sightseeing and is in the center of the Alsace region of France, known for the production of some of our favorite kinds of wine. So on this trip we will drive to Strasbourg for some sightseeing and wine touring, returning to Stuttgart the night before we fly home, leaving it as a future touring destination. We never mind leaving with a reason to go back.