The last leg of our road trip was to be centered in Nuremberg at an Airbnb apartment, where we were scheduled to stay for three nights. During our drive from Munch, I checked the Airbnb site and noticed that there was a recent negative review of this place — mostly that it was unclean. Well, I thought that sounded like something that would be addressed immediately and I hoped for the best. I had received instructions from the owner about how to find the hidden keys in the yard, which seemed a bit unusual but not a big deal. We arrived kind of late around 10pm and the place seemed okay — not perfectly clean, but not filthy. Kathryn realized right away that the wifi wasn't working. We entered and re-entered the password and restarted the router, but the internet was unavailable. Since it was late, I waited until the next morning to contact the owner. We slept pretty well that night, but got a better look at the bathroom in the morning and it wasn't very clean. There was mildew, grungy bath rugs and the towels were old and thin. I tried calling two phone numbers listed in the owners profile and neither connected (got a German operator). Not a good sign. I emailed a message and hoped to get an immediate response.

We decided to go to Bamberg in the morning anticipating that we could cover the sights there in a few hours. It turned out that we really loved it there and could have stayed the whole day. What a beautiful town! The weather turned favorable and it was great to see the wonderful architecture and gardens in the sunshine. We sat at a café near the landmark bridge for awhile and tried some smoked beer (because of the local uniqueness of it). It doesn't sound good, right? It tastes like beer initially and then a smoky aftertaste hits — kind of like an ashtray might taste — ick.

We tore ourselves away from Bamberg and drove back to Nuremberg. As we were walking around, we noticed that there were a lot of buskers on the streets. Some were really good and some were mediocre. It took us awhile to notice posters advertising a world music festival for that weekend. Cool! We walked around most of the fortified wall and then hiked up to the fortress (they are ALWAYS on a hill!). There were more musicians to listen to along the way. After we took in the view for awhile, we found a Czech/German restaurant close by. We all chose schnitzel this time. The guy waiting on us was really nice and even let Dick leave the restaurant without the full bill being paid so he could get more cash to settle up.

There were several large stages for bands set up throughout the city and we stopped to listen to a couple of them. We really enjoyed the French band, La Gapette. Very entertaining! There was also a German band that had a lot of instruments and a great lead singer. It was a lot of fun to hear music everywhere we went!

Since I didn't get any response from the Airbnb host, I decided to cancel our last night and booked a hotel room further west instead. I'm glad we did because the second night the neighbors camped outside our bedroom window to have a smoke at 1am. Ugh! We were glad to leave this place behind on Saturday. [Note: The host responded with a defensive message three days later. Airbnb was very cooperative and honored my refund request.]

Rothenburg ob der Tauber is a lovely place that typically shows up on lists of quintessential must see German towns. Hitler apparently thought it was quintessential also and it was a Nazi stronghold. Anyway, we started our last day there with schneeballen and coffee. We browsed the shops, including the original Käthe Wohlfahrt Christmas store. Then we walked up to the fortress for another nice view. The gardens there were very nice. Lunch was flammkuchen for each of us, which were bigger than we expected. So much for a lite lunch! After that we walked on part of the fortified wall to get back to our car.

Our last stop on this Bavarian journey was Würzburg. Our time was getting short so we drove right to the Imperial Palace and parked there. It was a beautiful warm day and we enjoyed walking through the extensive gardens at the palace. They were gorgeous! We walked into the old city from there stopping for gelato along the way. This city was bombed during WWII and is therefore not as well preserved as Bamberg or Rothenburg. People like to hang out and drink wine or beer on the old bridge, which has been restored. I don't think I've ever seen people sipping wine on a city bridge before. We were dehydrated and very thirsty, so we stopped into a grocery store for our drinks. It was another climb up to the fortress, but we didn't get quite to the top. There was a nice look out part way up. A few hours were all we needed in this city.

Our last night was spent in a cozy old hotel just west of Wurzburg. While we were there, we joined a video conference with Jasmine & Matt and other family members as they opened a sealed envelope to reveal that they are having a baby GIRL! It was so much fun to be with them for this happy moment. Thank God there is wifi everywhere and we can stay connected wherever we go! We're also grateful that we can now use our cellphone data anywhere in the EU without extra fees.

We travelled over 2000 kilometers on our Bavaria roadtrip, visited 10 cities in two countries, five hotels, one castle, one concert hall, six palaces, five fortresses, two cloisters, seven (or eight?) churches, three beer halls, two funiculars, two cable cars, ate a lot of German food, walked a lot of miles and created priceless memories!

Our stay in Munich was also brief – just 24 hrs. The hotel I selected was a little on the outskirts and it had a teeny tiny parking garage that Dick managed to squeeze our car into. Then it was yet another walk in the rain to get to dinner. We had some amazing German food at the Paulaner Brauhaus. Have I mentioned that we love German food?

Thursday morning we drove out to the Daucau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. When we planned our itinerary, Kathryn didn't want to go to Daucau. But Dick and I felt it was too important to pass it by. We spent about three hours there following an audio tour of the grounds and then browsing through the museum. It was very compelling, but not overwhelming. The crematorium and mass grave sites for unidentified victims hit me the hardest. Tough stuff to fully comprehend, but we left with a better understanding of this horrific time and place.

Back to Munich for the afternoon and the first stop was a late lunch at Hofbrauhaus. This a landmark beer garden, a lively place with German music and staff in traditional dress. It's actually a family friendly place (when it's not Oktoberfest?) with good food and beer. I was happy to have some bratwurst and sauerkraut for the second time in a week. 🙂 We finished our meal just in time to make it to the Rathaus to see and hear the glockenspiel at 5 pm.

Kathryn and I had some shopping to do (we found a "dank" pair of jeans for her) and then we all walked to the Royal Residenz. We decided we were maxed out on museums and audio tours, so we only looked at the outside of the palace. We took a longer way back that went through a park and past some nice architecture.

Upper Bavaria is next!

Twenty-seven hours in Salzburg made up the second leg of our trip and let's estimate that eight of those waking hours were rainy. When we arrived on Tuesday afternoon, our first mission was to pick up concert tickets. I chose "will call" instead of paying the shipping fee. The problem with this choice was that the tickets had to be picked up before 3pm and I realized after we parked near the venue, that the ticket office was across town. 😛 Oh well, we made it there in time and got to see part of the old city including the birthplace of Mozart (right in the middle of a shopping street) on the way.

Since there was a bit of sun, we headed to Mirabell Gardens to get some good pics. Before we left on this trip, we watched The Sound of Music to refresh our memory of the scenes in Salzburg and made a list of those we wanted to see. We had just enough time to stroll through the gardens and get some gelato before we had to get ready for the concert. When we realized the Salzburger Festspiele was going on during our stay, we took advantage of the opportunity to hear some good classical music. The Camerata Salzburg performed the night we had available. It was an Ouverture Spirituelle that included pieces by Schubert, Martin and Bruckner. Once we had silenced complaints of walking in high heels from a certain teenager (I think she needs more practice), we were able to enjoy the concert and it was absolutely brilliant. 🎼 It was a little long, though, with two 15 min. pauses.

We were pretty hungry after the concert ended around 9pm. I spec out restaurants with good reviews in advance and tag them on Google maps (there's a good tip for you). This worked really well for this trip with one exception. I chose a beer hall for dinner after the concert – not a great idea – and when we got there, we realized there was a lot of beer drinking and no eating going on. We did some quick searching on Google and TripAdvisor in the car and managed to find a good pizzeria where the service was unusually fast. Whew!

Wednesday was another wet day, but we made the best of it. Kathryn and I splashed in the horse fountain in the Residenzplatz. The fountain is kind of high and I wonder how Maria got up there! We toured the Residenz palace, which we discovered turned into a tour through the balcony of the Dom and St. Peter's museum. We skimmed through the museum since religious iconography and art are not so interesting to us. A shopping and lunch break were needed after that. We found some food vendors in the market and got some wurst and really good pretzels. We also got some Mozartkugeln for snacks and gifts. We hiked up to the Fortress to work off some calories and did yet another audio tour. This tour also extended into multiple museums. There is a great view of the city from up there. Our entrance ticket included a ride down the funicular, which ended right next to St Peters cemetery. Dick and Kathryn were determined to figure out which crypt the von Trapp family hid behind, but concluded that none of them were big enough. Dramatic license? We walked to the Nonnberg Convent next to see the outside – especially the gate. It's still a working convent and isn't open for tourists (we didn't see any nuns). The rain was lighter by then and we had a nice walk through side streets back to our car.

Time to move on to Munich!

Our summer vacation this year was a 10 day trip through Bavaria. We drove as far as Heidelberg the first day, since I had to work a half day and we only wanted to drive a few hours. A three hour drive turned into five hours because of traffic slowdowns on German highways. 😝 After we checked into a guest house in Mannheim, we drove into Heidelberg for dinner. A restaurant known for it's schnitzel was highly recommended and we found it easily. We were given a spot in the back at a shared table with a Polish guy and an Italian couple who were communicating in English. The schnitzel lived up to it's reputation and we left very satisfied. Heidelberg is very picturesque and since it's a college town, it's pretty lively. We were able to walk around the old city for awhile before it got dark. A band was playing on the terrace of a restaurant near the river, which added to the ambience as we snapped pictures on the old bridge.

Day one in Bavaria was planned to start around 1pm after a four hour drive from Heidelberg to Oberau, but it took an extra two hours of drive time. Summer is road construction season everywhere! Our home base for part one of our trip was a guest house in Oberau. When we arrived, there was an envelope with my name on it taped to the door. Inside were our keys and some instructions about our room. So, we unlocked the door and located our room — the self service seemed a little strange! After a quick dump of our stuff, we drove to our first planned activity — a hike to Hell Valley Gorge in Grainau. I had read several blog posts and TripAdvisor reviews of this hike, but we still didn't know exactly what to expect. Parking was our first hurdle. The pay machine wouldn't take any of our cards and we didn't have the correct change. Dick ended up driving further to a free 2 hr spot with fingers crossed that we'd make it back in time. A lot of people passed us coming out as we were walking into the trail. I started to think that maybe we were too late (4pm start time), but I thought if the gorge was closed when we got there we still would have had a nice hike. The hike into the gorge was an invigorating uphill challenge that took about an hour. I should note here that we haven't seen mountains upclose for over a year and the most incline we've hiked recently was a relatively short, but steep hill in France. Seeing the Alps took our breath away! We had to pass through a pay gate to get into the gorge (yes, it was still open!), which consists of waterfalls (many of them), aqua blue pools of water, scenic views of mountains & valleys, tunnels and bridges. The trail is wet and SLIPPERY, but absolutely worth the effort. Awesome! We found some pretty decent Mexican food in Oberammergau that night and Kathryn tried her first Radler.

The second day we met our hostess at breakfast and she was super nice. We drove to Innsbruck, Austria where the mountains get bigger! We took the Hungerburg funicular, cable car, another cable car and then a short hike to get to the top of the Nordkette. It was such a cool trip up the mountain! It was a partly cloudy day with a chance of rain later in the day; we watched the clouds move around and by the time we left it was mostly cloud covered at the top. Even with some cloud cover, the views were amazing! On the descent, we stopped for drinks at the bottom of the first cable car and then got off the funicular at the Alpen Zoo. We gave ourselves about 40 min to browse through the zoo and that was about the right amount of time to see deer, moose, buffalo, lynx, golden eagles and other alpine animals. Next up was a late lunch at a strudel cafe in town. We each had a savory strudel and then shared an apple strudel. They were delicious! The Hofburg Palace and The Golden Roof were stops on our list. The Hofburg Palace was pretty boring. It doesn't contain much furniture and the history of this section of the Habsburg family just isn't that interesting to me. The Golden Roof was also not that exciting. Dick got engrossed in the story of Maximillian II, though. Thunderstorms rolled through while we were in the museums and the rest of our visit was wet. A climb to the top of the town hall tower was rewarded with a view of a beautiful rainbow. 

Day three was wet, wet, wet — steady rain all day. I wasn't able to reserve tickets for Neuschwanstein Castle online so we had to wait in line at the ticket office to get what was available. The rain reduced the crowds, which we had to take as a postitive. We were able to get into a audio tour with a start time that gave us time to hike up the hill and go to the overlook bridge to get photos. I should get real here and admit that I had a little hissy fit during the walk to the castle. Traveling with my dear husband can stretch my patience. He has a different pace and he often misses things that I say because I'm not willing to be the loud American. Communication can be a challenge. Most of the time, I take some deep breaths, complain silently to my self and carry on. This time I just lost it and unfortunately Kathryn was witness to my little rant. But that's life and Dick and I always resolve our conflicts asap. At the top of the hill, we had a conference with apologies and problem solving. Kiss and make up. Okay, now back to the good stuff. 😬 Neuschwanstein lived up to it's reputation and the exterior view of it, even in the rain, is jaw dropping. The interior is also pretty impressive; it's just too bad that it was never occupied or served a function beyond a tourist attraction. Even with rain coats and umbrellas, we were water logged by the time we got back to the car. Wet feet are apparently a crisis for teenagers. We decided to go back to our hotel for dry shoes before going on to Linderhof Palace. We grabbed lunch from a bakery on the way. Linderhof is off the charts and is like a small version of Versailles. The gardens and grounds are beautiful and I imagine they are spectacular in sunshine. The interior is Baroque/Rococo to the extreme and I've never seen so much Meissen porcelain! There was even a chandelier made of Meissen. Our last stop for the day was Ettal Abbey (Kloster Ettal). Dick was interested to see it because Dietrich Bonhoeffer stayed here for a few months during the WWII. Since it was late in the day, we were only able to see the basilica and the store. We browsed the shops in Oberammergau after that and then came back to have dinner in one of the Kloster restaurants — more good German food and the Kloster beer. 

Despite the rain and a little angst, we really enjoyed being in the Bavarian Alps. On to Salzburg, Austria!