we have the rental contract for the car...

We have a paid for rental contract, through Gemut.com, for the trip now. And a hotel reservation for the night of arrival in Frankfurt. Pickup the car the next morning and off we go. Still not sure where, leaning more towards south, perhaps the Stuttgart area? We do have now in our possession a set of apartment keys to Scott's apartment in Spangdahlem, so will probably stick to our original plans (in that regard anyway) and use Scott's place as a base for day trips once we are back from Switzerland. We also have his spare cell phone which will work for us while we're there. Scott must have been in a hurry to send it though - the "padding" was extra customs forms from the post office wadded up in the box.... We have a lot of other stuff on our plate so trip plans have been simmering on the back burner for now. Steve decided to sell his BMW, and we put it on eBay with the offer that we would deliver within 600 miles for free. Hmmm....anyway the buyer lives in New York state. He is going to meet us in Buffalo a week from Saturday. So road trip....keep your fingers crossed that the Montana will make it that far (we're trailering the bike.) Tonight, we will be moving Steve's dad to a nearby nursing home. This has been an excruciatingly hard decision for Steve to make, but he finally sees that it's just not safe for Dad to be home alone any more, even with Steve making daily visits to check on things. I think that this will free Steve to have time to just enjoy being with his dad as opposed to the stresses of being his caregiver. Hard for him to become, in essence, the parent and his dad the child.