Traveling Adventures

Here’s a link to pictures.  We’ll try to organize and comment them in due time.

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We had read in Rick Steve’s guidebook that Rothenburg was a must see in Germany as it was an old medieval town and not half as touristy as Heidelberg. I think Rick Steve’s book had an effect on this place as it is the most touristy town I’ve been to since Pingyao in China.

Every second shop sold tourist nick nacks. The shops in between sold overpriced food. There were menus in German, English, and Japanese and in at least one restaurant the English and German versions were completely different. Any guesses as to which one had the cheaper prices?

Aside from the tourist nature of the town it was actually kinds nice. The buildings were painted in pastel yellows, oranges, and browns. The park had benches and apparently the two minute walk from the city center was too much for most tourists so I quite enjoyed my quiet sit.

We stayed at a very pleasant bed and breakfast and I took advantage of our time in Rothenberg to sleep off my cold. Now we’re off to Heidelburg to visit Linda’s friend Leilani.

FYI we are aware of the current problems with our blog display and hope to rectify them soon. Bye for now.
(note from Linda: I think I’ve fixed it!)

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Ever since I saw a picture of Neuschwanstein a few years back I knew that this was the castle for me. It was like seeing all the fairytale castles all jumbled into one! When we first started planning the trip to Europe one of the first things I knew the trip had to include was a trip to see this fairytale castle. Thanks to Hugo I also knew to add in the better decorated Linderhof to the trip to get a true feel of the protential of Neuschwanstein had it been finished. Needless to say, king Ludwig II did not disappoint. The castles was every bit as magnificant in real life as I had dreamed about. In fact the splendor of Linderhof was beyond even my wildest dreams.

Our trip to king Ludwig’s castles started out early. The day before we had the nicest weather imaginable and I had quite hoped that it would stay that way. Alas that did not happen, we woke up to a steady drizzle but even the rain could not put a damper on my mood. I was going to see my dream castle and by golly I was going to enjoy it! We meet up with the tour group around 8 at the main train station ( this was very early for us as our regular routine in Munich was to wake up around 10/11am) and after a delay due to traffic we were off. The tour guide started of telling us what we were going to see throughout the trip (10min), then proceed to tell what we were about to see 5 minutes before we were to see it and again when we did see it. After the 7th time he mentioned going to a particular restaurant because it was fast I came to the conclusion that he’d make a great drinking game. Everytime he repeated himself, drink and guaranteed within 30 minutes you’d be off your rocker! When we finally arrived at Linderhof I was quite glad to be off the bus. Linderhof was the first “castle” that King Ludwig II built. A bit of info on King Ludwig II, he was a peaceful king who preferred to he left alone to dream. Never married, he was deemed insane because the politicians didn’t like that he was spending all the money building grand castles. 2 days after he got dethroned he died of mysterious circumstnaces. Personally, I think he was just a dreamer, and way ahead of his time. Afterall the amount of tourists visiting his castles far outshines any other castles we’ve been to. At Linderhof there are 2000 tourists that visit during low season, on a busy day there might be as much as 10 000 tourists! And Linderhof only had 4 rooms! It was built for his exclusive use, where he retreated to in order to be alone. The building itself was rather small, about the size of a million dollar mansion of today. His section of the “castle” consisted of a music room, a bedroom, a mirror room and 2 sitting rooms all interconnected. However what it lacked in space it more than made up for in extravagence. All but one room was accented in gold (a lot of gold!) and the room that wasn’t in gold was covered in silver. Everything in the room was rich and lavish: crystal, porcelain, and ivory chandeliers, priceless vases (in the mirror room there were over 180 vases), gold everywhere, even a “magic” table that lowered down to the servants quarters so he could be served without having servants being in the same room as him! I don’t think words or pictures can do it justice, I really think it is something that needs to be experienced. As Brit had mentioned in a previous post, our tour did not allow us enough time to see the grotto, but knowing that such a thing existed and was worth a visit we ran up a steep hill and made time. Unfortunately that meant we didn’t have time to visit the gardens or give the fountain a proper look and definitely no time for pictures. In the future I would love to come back and give Linderhof the proper visit it deserves.

Next came a small village by the name of Oberamagau (sp?), we stopped by mainly for tourists to buy overpriced nick nacks. We being seasoned tourists went for a nice walk. Oberamagau is also well know for their decadial (once every ten years?) passion play we just missed it by one year.

Finally after another hour long ride we hit Neuschwanstein and boy does this castle look impressive as we were driving up to it. To get to Neuschwanstein required an hour long steep walk from where the bus dropped us of. Having just run down the steep hill at Linderhof and I had no desire to climb up it by foot. So we opted to pay a little extra for a minibus to take us up instead of walking or taking a carriage ride as were our original plan. (Sidenote: the carriage took people only 2/3 ways up, and looked nothing like Cinderella’s carriage so boy a huge loss on my princess fantasy of the place.) the view from above wasn’t as nice as the one on the bottom, mainly because we were at the backside and could see the construction going on. But the front was still impecable! We got there rather early as we ended up picnicing instead of going to the restaurant that was recommended to us. We walked around the grounds, did our little dance and sat down on their benchs. It was rather chilly out that day and I think this is where Brit caught a cold.

Neuschwanstein was rather huge but there were only a few rooms that was completed, people went up by groups. When it was finally our turn to go up we all lined up and started marching up the spirally staircase. We went up and up and up (did I mention that Neuschwanstein was really big?) my thighs were rather unhappy with me at this point. We saw the grand receiving room with the mosaic floor of animals that was lacking a throne, his bedroom with a swan fauset and crazy complicated bed and finally the never used concert hall (ball room). All the rooms had beautiful murals of fairytales too which made it so much better for me. My only regret was that Neuschwanstein was never finished for the tour was way too short for such a huge place. But at least one more thing on my dream list has been fullfilled. That night I had a lovely dream about princesses and castles.

Tags: castles, Linderhof, Neuschwanstein
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Here are some pictures from Munich as promised, post to come later.

Poster quality pic of Linderhoff

Brit eating pig knuckle

Linda drinking beer

A quick note on the Linderhoff picture.  Our tour didn’t allot time to go visit the grotto so Linda and I ran to it and ran back.  We got to see the grotto which was very cool but didn’t get any good pics due to sever time constraints.  So instead we got a picture of a poster in a tourist shop.  Doesn’t it look pretty?

Tags: pictures
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So it seems the main tourist attraction in Munich is beer. We checked out Hofbrauhaus which the guidebook describes as “the walt disneyland of beer houses.” It was great fun. Drinking litre mugs of beer, listening to polka music, and eating pig knuckle and sausages. For some reason Brit seemed to like this place more than Linda.
The other beer-centered attraction we checked out was the beer gardens. We went to the Englischer gardens on a Sunday and the scene reminded me of Sunday on mont royal in Montreal. There were so many people enjoying their hobbies in the sun. We saw surfers, horse back riders, tight rope walkers, badminton players, and a lot of sunbathers. Good place for our picnic. The beer garden itself had a picnic/patio vibe where once again 1 liter mugs of beer were available and on account of it being Norway national day there was polka music.

We did see other things in Munich besides beer. We went to the Residenz palace. I’ve decided I like ceiling art, which is good because it is all over the place here. Two things stuck out at me about the Residenz: 1) There was a jeweled figurine representation of St. George that really grabbed my eye 2) Linda said “this palace is big.” By which she meant too big. Yep, even Linda with her love of castles and palaces is not immune to museum fatigue.

Having a little extra time in Munich we checked out a soccer practice for Bayern Munich. Brit enjoyed watching the soccer and Linda enjoyed checking out the players. Unsurprisingly soccer players are quite fit (in both senses of the word).

I don’t have much to say about our next stop at the first concentration camp at Dachau except that it was extremely sobering. The pictures hit home more strongly in this museum than they did in textbooks.

On a happier note we did get to see the castles Linda wanted to see. I’ll leave Linda to blog about that day.

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For those of you wondering where our posts have been, Munich proved to be internetless, at least where our hotel is concerned. Nevertheless our accommodations in Munich have proven to be quite favorable.  Other than the lack of convenience that hostels provides (such as umbrellas, adaptors, laundry and wireless) our hotel has proven to be quite wonderful. Not only is the room spacious and the bathroom wonderful (we’re really thankful for the great water pressure) but we have a grocery store conveniently right outside of our building.  This has allowed us to have a well needed break from eating out.  Hurray for salades, breads, cheese and 15 cent 1.5L minealwasser!

We are also looking to be posting up more pictures in the near future.  Surprisingly for us, we have been taking our fair share, and look forward to sharing it with all of you. I’m especially excited to share with those people who’ve been bugging me about trying out beers in Munich a special pic just for you.

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I must admit I was pretty excited to site see in Vienna. Included in our list of must sees were cafes, shnitzel, sachertorte and a market. We started with the Nachtmarkt (well no, we started with a bit of a recovery from the bar the night before followed by some pastries). The Nachtmarkt is a market where all sorts of food is sold. Window shopping for snacks and treats is my kind of shopping. We were warned “to be wary of overactive sellers” and having been cajoled into buying WAY more stuff than we wanted, I now understand the warning. It didn’t help that we thought the prices were for ten pieces not ten hectagrams. After the market we went to see the Museum Quarter. We did not stay long enough to appreciate it on account of a tight schedule and a desire to see a palace. (any guesses who had the strongest desire?) The palace was much the same as the one we’d seen the other day but with more plates and less gardens. Then came the highlight of the day: Cafe Central! We were tired from the walking and tired of the rain when we found Cafe Central. This is a grande place ideally suited for hot drinks and cakes which is exactly what we consumed. Next the merry couple headed through minor streets to a recommended shnitzel restaurant. This turned out to be a high point. Apparently Vienna has too many beautiful buildings and monuments to put into guidebooks because we saw lots of cool stuff not on our map. (hopefully pics uploaded soon). The shnitzel was huge and the white wine tasty. We capped our day off by listening to a pianist at the Musikverein. I’d like to thank Jonathan and Daniel for all their tips. Next time we’ll have to stay longer to see the rest of the highlights.

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Like Linda I thouroughly enjoyed Vienna. The park outside the Schonbrun palace is worth the trip by itself. This park is perfect for walking. One important reason for this is that there is no shortage of benches. The best walks contain long breaks for sandwiches and pastries. Every 20 meters or so is another opening with different arrangements of plants. One area might have flowers, the next a fountain, the next a gnarly tree as a centerpiece. The trees are so meticulously trimmed and shaped to make passageways or decorative spheres depending on the area. I hope the pictures we eventually upload do justice to the relaxed soothing nature of the gardens. The gardens right behind the palace are less tranquil but more grande. Lined with a dozen or so statues on either side the palace looks upon several carefully designed flower arrangements leading into a huge fountain designed to impress. Above this is a hill leading to a monument whose name escaped me. The view from said monument allows you to see the majesty of the palace and the colourful rooftops of the surrounding city. Besides the gardens in Schonbrunn we also visted the palace (described in Linda’s post), the greenhouse (nice, but I preferred the regular gardens, and the maze. In the maze are some fun games including a math puzzle and a flying machine. So in summary, go to Vienna, see the Schonbrunn palace and gardens.

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