The small town of Baden-Baden is on the northern edge of the Black Forrest. ‘Baden’ literally translates as ‘Bathing’, and just like Bath in the UK, it has natural springs that have been used as a spa since Roman times.
There are several spas in the town that pipe in the thermal spring water. Joolz convinced me that it’d be something different to try. We went to Caracalla Therme. We did the hot pools, freezing cold pools, bubbly things, whirlpools, water jet things and steam rooms. However, I drew the line at the sauna as that was additional money… and nude!
After a couple of hours, we were extremely pruney. It was turning into the warmest day we’d had for a week, so we took a walk around the town. The town is very pretty with lots of nice architecture, statues and public art. Joolz enjoyed the shopping and I enjoyed the fresh air and sunshine.
Before we retreated back to The Van, we decided to get a bite to eat. As we were in Germany, I suggested a beer garden and managed to convince Joolz.
We went to the Löwenbräu. Baden-Baden is fairly up market, so we knew the food was going to be good. It was really good. Fairly traditional and very tasty.
The only issue with Baden-Baden is that it’s too posh to have car parks spoiling the ambience. All the car parks are underground and their height restrictions are way too low for campervans.
We ended up parking The Van at the top of one of the hills, away from centre and in the forest. It did mean that we got a really peaceful and quiet night all on our own… except for the risk of wild boar. There were lots of warning signs in the car park and the Black Forest is known to have a very high population. We still thought they’d be rare, but when we went for an evening walk to do some geocaching, we saw plenty of tell-tale dug up dirt piles in amongst the trees from their foraging. Thankfully we didn’t have any encounters as apparently they are fairly aggressive and charge at 30mph!