Day 11 to Fussen
We had a later night in Salzburg than planned because a group of young people decided to have a party or shouting contest or something out on the streets near us. It didn’t keep us up long, but was still unpleasant. We were all at breakfast nice and early and enjoyed another wonderful breakfast. The taxi arrived and took us to the Bahnhof quickly and efficiently. We toured the water shop and the water closet and waited on the train to Munich for about an hour, but it was a nice time to be out in the sun.
We had a very nice train ride on a very modern train with screens that told our location, our current speed and showed a map of our progress. We even had a food/coffee cart that came by. We have seen many, many, many solar panels on houses, businesses, and just plain farms of them along with numerous wind turbines and stacks of firewood waiting for the winter weather. These indicate how much Germany has developed alternative power sources and I think it’s wonderful. I wish the USA would do the same thing. When we arrived back in Munich, it almost seemed like coming home. Our taxi driver made getting to the hotel seem so easy. Of course with the weather being sunny, the streets being empty (since it was a Sunday morning) and the driver knowing right where to go, it should have seemed easier. The folks at the hotel recognized us (seems like all the hotel folk have heard our story of getting to the hotel and parking from the other night) and after using the restroom, we loaded the van. One of the doormen, not the same one from the first night, helped carry our luggage out and was so very, very good at giving me driving directions that getting out of the parking garage was easy. On the very last section that was extremely uphill, the van could not make it until I went back down all the way and really built up steam – believe me, I roared up that incline and the fella got out of the way. It was really steep. We were on our way.
We just drove, not knowing where at first. We knew that being in the center of the city, any way would take us out and to an autobahn and it worked. We soon began to see signs for A96 toward Switzerland and we followed those signs though lots of construction. After a while, we were speeding right along and only had to spend about an hour on the autobahn before turning south onto the Romantic Road toward Fussen. At first, the land was completely flat and then we could see mountains in the distance and those mountains quickly started getting closer and larger. We went through quite a few small towns and villages and turned off the road for short detours in order to see more detail. One of the cities had a beautiful man made waterfall that Sue took good photos of for us. Another time, we stopped for snacks and diesel. And at another village, we found a beautiful church that we investigated by walking around, climbing under a fence (Linda sort of went to her knees under the fence and her camera sort of went into a cow patty! But they are both okay now.) and then entering to take photos. It was a beautiful little church. We could tell that the temperature had gone way down or it seemed that way because it was a little windy.
A little farther on, we saw cows in a pasture beside the road and a beautiful little chapel on the hill behind them, so of course we detoured to get closer. The cows had bells on and the music those bells made was beautiful. Sue has posted a video of that concert on her FaceBook status. We drove closer to the chapel, but we would have had to walk a very steep path to it, so we took photos (or rather Sue did) from the bottom of the hill. The next time we stopped was to take photos (again, thanks Sue) of the Fairy Tale King’s castle (Neuschwanstein) and then we drove on into Fussen. We found the hotel quite easily since it is on the main entrance street. We unloaded ALL our luggage in order to organize it since we only took part of it to Salzburg. The room draw told us, after a little manipulation, that Linda will have the single room while Sarah and Sue are sharing and Paula and I are sharing. The manipulation involved the fact that only Paula and Linda have not had a single room yet on the trip so one of them had to have it here and the other will have the single room in Appenzell.
Upon arriving at the hotel, which has changed its name since we made reservations, we toured the underground parking garage and decided that it would be simpler and cheaper to park a very short distance away in an outdoor lot. This section of the hotel is practically new and is very modern and nice. We all spent some time in our rooms resting and then decided to go to the hotel restaurant that serves traditional German fare instead of the one that serves Italian food. All of us really enjoyed that choice and we had cheese noodles, roast pork with dumplings and purple cabbage, pasta with ham, and fried pork sausages with roasted potatoes. Everything tasted wonderful and then we shared a wonderful dish of crepes with ice cream and chocolate sauce. We are all quite tired and look forward to a good night’s sleep.
We plan to meet for breakfast about 9 and then head for Garmish to go to the top of the Zugspritze (the highest point in Germany that separates Austria from Germany) and then head to Oberammergua and other interesting places in the area. We will visit THE castle the day after tomorrow. Lots to see and experience in this area.
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