Our Scenic Tour: Konigsee and the Eagle's Nest

Today was possibly the most scenic and beautiful day we've had yet on our trip.  It started right away with a beautiful drive through the Alps; 75 degrees, sunny and enjoying the convertible was a beautiful way to wake up. (We also ran into much less construction, so Patrick was finally able to really enjoy driving on the autobahn and windy mountain roads.

At Konigsee, we took a boat ride across the lake to the little abbey and national park that was there. Take a look at the photos-this is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. We took a little hike in the national forest, but unfortunately we didn't have the time for the long hikes up to the ice caves or other sights.

After spending a few hours exploring, we took the boat back across the lake, hopped back in the car and drove straight up the mountain (minus a quick stop for a herd of cows being led down the mountain by a police officer) to the Eagle's Nest. I hadn't realized that you aren't really able to see inside the building at all, so this was a quick trip, but another one with a beautiful view-this time down at the lake and everything we'd just been driving through.

Munich Beer Tour - Weltenburg Abbey

Germany - and specifically Munich - was Patrick's favorite part of the trip, as you may see in the trips for the next few days as we go on a "beer tour" around Munich. Weltenburg Abbey was one stop on our tour, and it has the reputation of potentially being the oldest monastery brewery in the world. (We intended to go to the other monastery brewery that contests this, but spent too long drinking at Weltenburg to make it...)

This was also our first day with our rental car (Patrick's new favorite thing: a beautiful 4-series BMW convertible) driving on the autobahn. Unfortunately the driving itself wasn't so much fun today: the entire distance we needed to go was under construction and took us a LONG time. Weltenburg was a pretty place, though, and we enjoyed the walk around the abbey. I'm told the beer was good, although not quite as good as Andechs the day before. Also, a tip we learned here for anyone who may be making a similar trip: "raddlers" are currently in style here. It's not an obscure style of beer like we thought it was; it's a beer mixed with Coke, Sprite or some other soda. Its very strange.

We also spent a little bit of time wandering around in Munich, and saw the famous Glockenspiel.

Munch day 1: lion, tigers and bears oh my

We've spent most of our time so far in big cities, with our "adventures" being contained mostly to things like trying to speak French or accidentally stumbling into the nudist park. Our first day in Munich, we ventured a little further into the woods.

After a long train ride and immediately running into Steven in the street right outside the train station, we decided to take the train out to Kloister Andechs, a monastery and brewery about an hour train ride outside of Munich. We planned on taking the train to the nearby town that afternoon, walking the pilgrimage route up to the monastery, enjoying the food and beer for a few hours and taking the bus back. It was an excellent plan that didn't work in the slightest.

We bought our train tickets right away...and then spent the next 45 minutes trying to figure out the train situation, which seemed to be that our train had derailed. They eventually restored train service and we arrived just in time to take the last bus up to the Kloister, rather than walking both ways. We successfully made it up, enjoyed the food and beer and beautiful view, and decided to start back down the pilgrimage route a little bit before sundown.

That's when we learned that most of the pilgrimage route is through the woods. We decided to follow the road rather than the thin little trail through the woods to make sure we didn't get lost, but the windy road still went through the dark woods-for about 7 km rather than the 2 or 3 we had thought. We were fortified with plenty of good German beer, but there's something about walking through the woods in Germany at night that couldn't help but remind me of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales-or, as Patrick occasionally started yelling when things started moving in the woods, "Lions and tigers and bears!" On the other hand, you saw more stars in the sky than I've seen in years.

We made it back safe, without twisted ankles and even walked up to the station just as a train pulled up-but I think next time we might try our pilgrimage a bit earlier!

Leipzig: Zoo day 2

Leipzig ended up being our real slow day, as Patrick's flu was the worst on this day. As our only day in Leipzig, we weren't prepared to skip the entire day, and so went to Leipzig's zoo!

This zoo was very different from Berlin, but was still a lot of fun. It was huge, and in the process of changing from being an old time zoo with smaller wire cages to a new, fancy one, complete with several biodomes and some huge animal enclosures. At our slower pace the zoo was all we fit in, but we still enjoyed our day!

Berlin day 2: slowing down

We've been gone a total of nine days, and tonight our pace of walking 5-12 miles a day and not sleeping well finally caught up with us; Patrick's sleepiness morphed into a bit of the flu. We leave for Leipzig tomorrow, but will be cramming in less than planned and slowing things down until Patrick is feeling better.

For most of today, however, we fit in one of Patrick's favorite days: zoo day! The Berlin zoo is beautiful and huge, with some of the best laid out exhibits we've seen at zoos. It's full of huge old trees (one of which randomly fell right behind us as we were walking)! It was also within a huge, beautiful park, which we very much enjoyed walking through (although we were definitely surprised when we accidentally wandered through a part of the park that was apparently adopted by nudists...).

Berlin: Museum Day

I do believe that this is the first post I've written while partway under the table - but free wifi is surprisingly hard to come by in Berlin, and the bar we're in offers it!

We arrived in Berlin late last night to a long, long walk to our hotel - but since we spent most of the walk in the dark looking at things that we were excited to learn more about in the morning, it was a quick and fun jaunt. Once we arrived I had a wake-up call about how old I'm getting: we received a room upgrade from a basic room to a beautiful suite, and I was (and still am) absolutely beside myself because we get a washer and dryer!!! We now officially only have to live for 3 weeks with laundry done only in the sink! Oh - and we have a beautiful suite with a living room, balcony and the most comfortable bed we've slept in yet here. I like that, too.

After sleeping far too late because of the wonderful bed and enjoying some wonderful German breakfast/lunch, we took off for Museum Island to start our explorations. Most of the museums in Berlin are on a small island in the middle of the river, connected by bridges. This turned out to be our most museum-focused day so far, as we toured the Berlin Cathedral, Neus Museum and Pergamon Museum. (Spelling might be off here - I'm on vacation!)

The Berlin Cathedral was lovely - beautiful architecture and decoration, but the real selling point was the view of Berlin from the top of the dome. For a last minute addition to our plans, I'm certainly glad we did this!

The Neus Museum, while we went believing it was solely Egyptology, is in fact a huge museum filled with very early history items. Egypt is a large amount of the museum, but there were also many rooms full of artifacts from other cultures.

The Pergamon Museum was an interesting and strange place. There was a VERY long line to get in, and the museum inside was less than half built. Many exhibits were missing or incomplete, and only half the building was even accessible. After a lot of walking both to Museum and inside the museums themselves, we finished up our first night in Germany enjoying happy hour with German beer/wine and dinner in a fantastic German beer hall, where Patrick assured me that their beer was every bit as good as the amazing food.

Oktoberfest in Munich

Dear friends,

One day you may come to Munich for Oktoberfest (unless you are claustrophobic; then I would not recommend it). It is a lot of fun and you will probably have a wonderful time and meet some amazing people from all over the world. It is absolutely worth the trip.

But do not try to keep up with the Scots in beer drinking. No matter how much fun it may be, you will regret your decision soon.

Other than those poor decisions, all is well and we will try to post photos soon! Guten nicht, all!

Our "Layover" in Amsterdam

At least, it sure felt like a layover! We added Amsterdam to the itinerary on a whim to break up the distance between Paris and Berlin, which we otherwise wouldn't have seen. Neither of us knew much about the city, although we'd been told it was a great place to visit.

After Paris, Amsterdam was a great breath of fresh air (figuratively and - mostly - literally; at least the smells here were different and less frequent). The city itself is clean, unique and beautiful; in addition to the canals, the streets are wide and everywhere we saw was lined with greenery. I wasn't prepared for the hordes of bikers, either: this is the only city I've ever seen with a multi-story parking ramp solely for bicycles. All in all, the city and everyone we've met have been very friendly and welcoming.

We spent most of our time here exploring the city streets and overlooking the canals. There's some fantastic people watching here if you camp out at a cafe, and our hotel was in a perfect location to do just that. I would love to come back here one day to do some more in depth exploring. We ended up here, entirely by accident, the day before "Monument Days," a festival when all historic monuments and most museums are open to the public for free. We thought this was going to be a great opportunity for us, but in fact it just meant that when we went out to go sightseeing this morning, the streets outside our hotel's quiet little neighborhood were packed with so many people it was hard to move. All in all this has been one of my favorite cities that we've visited so far, for all that we didn't end up doing much sightseeing, and as our train leaves for Berlin I'm a little sad to see the canals fading off behind us.

Versailles our last day in Paris

Although the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and Notre Dame were nice, it was really Versailles that interested me most about Paris. It's a little ways out of the city (about an hour on the train, and a very welcome hour of sitting after the 12 or so miles we walked both in our first day in Paris and our day in Versailles) but well worth the trip.

In fact, there's not a lot to SAY about Versailles besides that its very beautiful and remarkably huge - its the photos that are the important part, so enjoy!

Otherwise, this was our last night in Paris before a very early train out. While I'm glad we came, I can't say that I'll be terribly sorry to leave. A lot of the stereotypes about Paris have seemed to be true in our short time here: the city in places is incredibly beautiful, but in other places is horribly dirty and smells like smoke and pee. Some people have been very friendly and exuded the "joie de vivre" that I've heard mentioned so much about France, while others were stereotypically rude and angry. It was a fun city to visit, but all in all I think we are ready to move on.