After leaving Chamonix we made a quick visit to Lucerne in Switzerland to meet some friends from Stockholm. Unfortunately, we were only able to spend a few hours there. We still had a lot of distance to cover before finishing this amazing summer road trip back in Sweden. Switzerland is definitely somewhere I'd love to go back to, it was so pretty. Lucerne in particular. I kept thinking that I'd walked into a town straight out of a fairytale.
After a great time catching up with our friends it was time to get back in the car. Our only plan for the afternoon was to drive towards Germany and find somewhere to spend the night. We took the scenic road via Liechtenstein and Austria so we could add a few more countries to our tally. Even with a few stops along the way we made really good time to Germany. We didn't have any accommodation booked and were feeling pretty good so we decided to keep driving towards the Czech Republic. We kept driving until we got tired and then booked a hotel online. This turned out to be our second biggest day in the car, and by 10pm we had made it to the Czech Republic and were settling into a hotel in a town called Pilsen. Which is where Pilsner beer is from.
Our new guide grew up in Berlin when the wall was still up and had moved away with his family, before returning many years later after the wall had come down. His sister was with him on this day and it was her first time back to Berlin. So he asked if we were willing to stay with him for an extra couple of hours so that he could show his sister around. Half the group decided to leave, but we decided to stay. It ended up being an amazing day. Hearing about the local history from someone who had grown up through it was amazing and I ended up in tears a few of times throughout the day.
In fact, we were having such a good time in Berlin that we decided to stay an extra night. We had one extra night up our sleeves, just in case we got delayed anywhere along the way. At this point we were so close to the end that we decided to use it now. So we could spend some more time in this amazing city. The next day we revisited a few of our favourite places from the day before and a few new ones. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to get to everything we wanted to whilst we were in Berlin. So I guess that means I'll just have to head back again one day.But for now, it was time to get back in the car for the last part of our summer. Stay tuned for the last instalment of this crazy adventure :)Cheers, Jess