Well, we finally got out of Rome (for REAL, this time!) and had a blast of a little mini-vacation. We left on Wednesday and drove to Assisi, where we saw the Duomo that bears St. Francis' name. Very impressive, seeming to hang on the edge of a cliff. We ate in that town, then moved on.
Next stop, Perugia. Our mission (and boy did we accept it!) was to eat chocolate. The Euro Chocolate Fest was going on, and there was more chocolate than I've ever seen before. I'd like to remind you... I've lived through 39 Halloweens, Easters And Valentine's Days, and I've never seen anywhere close to this amount of chocolate. There must have been 250 vendors selling different types of chocolate. Still.... we had to keep moving. We spent a little time on the ground there, then hit the road for...
Verona. 2 little hotel rooms. Halfway decent dinner. American-ish breakfast buffet include in the price of the room. Got on the road immediately post-nosh. Nuff said about Verona. Maybe we'll go back there, but that's it for now.
Next night was going to be in Garmisch, Germany, so we had to keep moving. It was a fairly long day... the drive took about 4-5 hours, up into the Alps, through Austria (we've heard they're picky on speed limits there, so I had to slow down!)... we stopped in Innsbruck. Pretty town, had a sandwich sorta thing at a restaurant in a mall. Nothing spectacular. Scenery all around the town? Exquisite. Town itself? 45 minutes of looking for lunch, 30 minutes eating, 30 minutes back to the car. I think it's got a lot more to offer, but we weren't in the market at that moment. Next stop: Garmisch.
Garmisch. Found the hotel with minimal problems. Room? Fine. Buffet downstairs? Fine (if a bit expensive). Scenery? Awesome. We could see an Alp from our balcony. (As an aside, is it called an Alp if there's only one of them? There were more to the left and right, but STRAIGHT off our balcony was a single perfect, mid-sized mountain. Mid sized, as in 1500+ meters.)
The next day we went to Neuschwanstein Castle. You'll remember that this is the castle that Walt Disney based Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland on. Absolutely magnificent. You'll all see some pictures at some point, even though the pictures won't even come close to doing it justice. The way the whole experience works:
Step 1: Pay for parking at the bottom of the hill.
Step 2: Walk halfway up to the town to purchase tickets for the tour in your choice of languages. Wonder how you're going to get up the rest of the mountain (to the castle itself) since buses aren't running today, due to weather. Start walking up.
Step 3: Walk the remaining quarter of the way up to the town. Follow the smell of freshly squeezed horses to find the horse-drawn carriage pick up point... if you need an additional clue, look for the hordes of people lined up on the side of the road as the smell of used grass gets stronger.
Step 4: Patiently wait your turn to ride an "Authentic Horse Drawn Carriage" up the remaining (probably) 2000 feet of the mountain. Get off the carriage when it stops, still 500 vertical feet down the mountain from the castle.
Step 5: Climb the rest of the mountain... past 3 or 4 souvenir stands.
Step 6: Enjoy the castle. It's a phenomenal tour... our guide was a native German speaker, who was pretty close to fluent in English. He had a very ummmm...... European sense of humor, and his sense of timing on most of his (rather odd) jokes was quite a bit longer than we (as a group) were used to. Entertaining? Absolutely. Informative? Absolutely. A little creepy? Absolutely. If I needed a babysitter? Absolutely NOT!
King Ludwig II was (a) a little bit loony, and (b) a LOTTA bit obsessed with Richard Wagner (one of Germany's best known playwrights and composers from the 1800's). Scenes from all of Wagner's epic stories decorate all of the interior walls of the castle. One of the original rooms in the castle is a cave. A man-made cave, to duplicate the set of one of Wagner's operas. Did I mention that Ludwig II wasn't wrapped too tightly?
Unfortunately, we only had one *really* good day of weather while we were there.... we putzed around a lot, but didn't really *do* anything. We walked around Garmisch, swam in the pool one day... just putzed. Our next trip up there, we want to go to Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany. You can take a cable car up to the top... it was in the original plans, but got scrapped due to weather.
I think I've almost got Becca broken down to let me get a Bavarian Cuckoo clock one of these times we go up there. Wish me luck, everyone.
Nice relaxing vacation. Will post pics in the next couple of days.
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