Our final main destination was Konstanz, a medieval city on the shore of Lake Konstanz (Bodensee) and right on the border with Switzerland, featuring a historic old town with winding streets. Our original plan featured a long drive of 380km from Zell am See in Austria but on closer inspection, Google Maps had routed us through Austria and Switzerland to get there. On further investigation, Austria requires the purchase of a 'vignette' to travel on their autobahns (but not on standard roads) and Switzerland requires a road tax permit at a cost of about £40. As Austria's speed cameras felt particularly aggressive as well, we decided avoid this administrative complexity and return to Germany via the shortest route, but then take the longer route to Konstanz through Germany. The total distance from Zell am See ended up being about 480km which with rest stops, road works around Munich and charging time, took 9 hours.
Whilst Lake Konstanz and the surrounding area however is very pretty, our accommodation was a little difficult to find. An address of '14K' seemed odd and indeed it turned out to be a unit in the middle of an industrial estate. This unit in fact was an office and shop for a wine and spirits distributor with the guest and owner apartments above it! This reminded us that the area is a significant wine growing region in the Rhine valley, producing Müller-Thurgau and Pinot Noir varieties amongst others. A bottle of the owner's branded white wine 'Wolf Weiss' (named after the owner, after Hellmut Wolf) helped to reduce the shock on arrival.
The top things to do in Konstanz are a visit to the historic and pretty old town, a day trip on the lake, stopping off at some of the equally pretty towns along its shoreline and particularly the island of Mainau which is a botanic garden set up and managed by the aristocratic Bernadotte family, complete with its own palace and ornate church.
To keep matters orderly, Konstanz images as divided into 3 galleries (links are in the titles):