Bavaria

This past weekend Erin and I spent a long weekend cruising around Bavaria. Erin had to be in Munich for meetings this week, so I went along on Friday afternoon to spend the weekend with her and see a little of southern Germany. It was fantastic...one of the best trips we've had.

We started in Munich on Friday. We wandered around town, ate dinner at a traditional bavarian restaurant. In an effort at being brave I ate pork knuckles. Good, tasted like pork. After that we went to the requisite Hofbrauhaus for enormous beers. Not sure if it was the knuckles or the enormous beer, but it was a bit of a rough night....had to be the knuckles.

On Saturday we rented a car. We drove south on the autobahn to a small town called Bad Tolz. The autobahn was amazing. Our sporty little Fiat shook and rattled along at about 80 mph and we were passed like we were standing still by BMWs, Mercedes, Fords, Porsches...fun to watch. Would have been more fun to be a real car...look for the picture of the little fiat.

Bad Tolz was a very cute little town in the middle of the mountains. Bad means spa and we're never ones to turn down a spa. This one was a little different. The Alpamare spa was really a water park. It featured a few hot pools outside, but also had very fun water slides, a wave pool and a very cool surfing pool. It was fantastic running around like kids with a bunch of kids. Being in the middle of Germany no fear of running into anyone we knew. Fantastic.

The next day we did a day of castles. Both of the castles we saw were built by King Ludwig II who was quite the eccentric. He liked to model everything after Wagner operas. One was the Linderhof built in the middle of knowwhere and modeled on Versailles. The second was Neuschwanstein the model for the Disney Sleeping Beauty castle. It was amazingly nestled in the mountains and it was one castle you really need to work for. There was quite the straight uphill hike to get to it. Seemed even harder after all that work on water slides the day before.

On our way to Neuschwanstein, we got to drive through the tip of Austria, in the alps, as well. It was gorgeous. We've talked about going skiing sometime this winter, and the trip through the alps confirmed that we'll be back in the alps once the snow starts.