I can now officially call myself a "Ringer"

We knew going in that today would be a marathon driving day. Vienna, Austria to Nurburg, Germany for a couple laps on the famed Nurburgring Nordschleife. It started off badly; I could have gotten run over by a Vienna tram by turning the wrong way down a one-way street trying to leave our hotel parking garage. Then, it took us almost an hour to get out of town and onto the autobahn. Then, once into Germany, we could never really get into a driving rhythm since there was one construction project or another seemingly every 10 miles. We finally got to our hotel in Nurburg around 6pm.

The 'Ring was scheduled to be open for tourist driving until 7:30, so we had plenty of time to unload the car and get a 4 lap ticket. Fortunately for us, there were no track closures this afternoon, and the traffic seemed fairly light. There were tons of motorcycles, but generally if you pick a line and stay on it, they can maneuver around you. We wound up each doing 2 laps and on my second lap I was almost the last car out on track. It was great being able to go around with very little traffic. Hopefully I'll be able to find a picture of me going round posted by one of the folks that does it as a semi-profession.

We ate dinner at the "Pistenklause" restaurant in our hotel. It's pretty popular among the "regular" crowd at the 'Ring, and it was very fun. Angela and I ordered rather pedestrian pizza and pasta (since the place purports to be an Italian restaurant), but after we got our plates, we noticed almost everyone (and almost all of them Brits) getting these raw steaks being served on hot stones. Apparently this is their specialty. Well, we got to chatting with these two Brits who are also staying here, and time went on and we got hungry again (after our pizza and pasta and sharing an apple strudel) so we ordered one of the steaks. Oh my lord was it good.

Tomorrow, we're going for a helicopter tour over the 'Ring and then heading to Bruges by way of the WWII battlefield sites in Bastogne. I can't wait to try some Belgian Chocolate and Belgian Beer.