December 31st & January 1st - Paris to Goetteldorf via almost the Netherlands, aka broken GPS

After a super-early breakfast, we made a quick getaway from Paris in the pre-peak hour traffic.  All off to a good start, we made it to Metz, near the Germany border in fantastic time - we even took a little side-trip in the city of Metz (the autoroute bypasses) for some lunch and to seek out a wooden chair promised to Grandma (Jan, Rachel's Mum) for Xmas....and made our way back to the highway without much problem at all...

Then things just went.....well, wrong....

Somehow, we were just outside of Mannheim and what I have worked out is that we were on the right road, but heading in the wrong direction....

Unfortunately, somehow did not realise this for about 2 hours (?????) and we were halfway to the Netherlands (just outside of Koblenz) before I realised that the turnoff we were looking for was just never going to appear!

In my own defence, I will say that the weather was dreadful and I needed all my concentration on driving on the very wet roads (sunset starts soon after about 3pm, and once it started getting dark, I could barely see the lines on the road), and I left the navigation to my passengers, the kids.  They did the best they could, but we didn't arrive in Goetteledorf until about 8.30pm and I must admit I certainly was not all cheery, ready to bring in the New Year with any sort of bang...

Queue: food, shower and bed.

However, sleep was elusive.  Those crazy Germans (I repeat, those crazy Germans) do not have even remotely the safety bans on fireworks that we have in Australia.  A couple of, I believe, rival families had a fire-cracker war....mine's bigger than yours is, na na na na na!

No sleep for you!!!!!

The fireworks show I'm sure would have rivalled Melbourne's and Sydney's, mind you, no heritage buildings caught on fire in the finale, or so I believe...

The next day was very much a recovery day.  A leisurely breakfast and lunch, followed by some band music from a local travelling orchestra in the town square, and lovely naps :-)

At 1pm on New year's Day, we were treated to some light orchestral music in the Goetteldorf town square...

Apparently this local orchestra travels around to all the local towns around ?Ansbach heralding in the new year with some little known (to me) tunes.  The conductor did step up and gave a long and heartfelt speech, but unfortunately my translation remains....'German word, german word, yah, german word...and so forth'

It was lovely to have a restful day, with much of the entertainment coming in the guise of my gorgeous neice and nephew...

Whats not to love....

JJ eating...my favourite was the mash potato mohawk!

Cousin Sequoia was always on hand at meal times! Two beautiful girls!!!!