Dave
Trip Start
Oct 06, 2005
1
33
35
Trip End
May 31, 2006
Lindau, Germany
Tuesday, May 2, 2006
It was great watching Dave's reaction as he turned down each new street. Ande and I were starting to get a burned out from the constant site seeing, so everything pretty much looked the same to us, but for Dave it was a whole new experience. The next day we jumped in the rental car and headed off to the Alps.-I'm going to cheat right now and quote one of Ande's emails, which describes our experience over the next few days.
"We spent a few days in Switzerland, one of the most beautiful countries in the world! I can't even describe how enormous and beautiful the snow capped mountains are. We spent our first night in Interlaken. It is a small town that is situated in a valley and has a huge lake on either side of it. And surrounding the lakes are... yup you guessed it, huge mountains. We sampled some cheese fondue, Swiss chocolate and local brew. The next day we stayed in the very small town of Gimmelwald. The town has a population of a whopping 120 people. Its elevation is 4485 feet and is only accessible by cable car. As you can image the views were out of this world. We hiked all day and had a snowball fight at the top of one of the peaks. The weather there was very warm (shorts and t-shirts) but there was still plenty of snow. It was quite surreal to stand in a field of yellow flowers and stare up at a mountain covered in snow. That evening we relaxed a huge wooden barrel that had been converted into an outdoor hot-tube. I gotta tell ya life doesn't get much better than that!
After leaving Switzerland and heading to Germany we made a quick pit stop in Lichtenstein. It is a small country, squeezed between Austria and Switzerland. There is no boarder control there and to be honest we couldn't really tell when we had arrived in it or when we had left it exactly. But hey, we can now say we have been there and add it to our growing list of countries visited on this trip. (And we broke a personal record , we drove through 4 countries in one day!)
The next leg of our journey took us to Fussion Germany in the Bavarian region. I couldn't say exactly what was more impressive the castles or the beer, but both are unforgettable. We spent the day touring two castles built by King Ludwig II. Neuschwanstein castle was exactly what you would picture when you think of a fairy tale castle. In fact Disney Land replicated much of it when building its own castle. Inside and out it was lavishly decorated with more gold than Fort Knox.
After Fussion we stayed 2 nights in Salzberg Austria, Mozart's birthplace, and film sight for the Sound of Music. That evening we went to a Mozart dinner concert. Both the music and the food where amazing. The musicians dressed in traditional clothing and hall was extremely lavish with large crystal chandeliers and waiters in tuxedos. Needless to stay we stuck out like sore thumbs, but has the time of our lives none the less. The music itself blew me away. A man and a women also sang along with many of the songs opera style. It has really inspired me to see and actual opera someday.
After we left Salzberg we spent a day walking around Vienna. A large and overwhelming city that was filled with huge beautiful buildings and lots of parks and fountains. We enjoyed it, but one day in the city was enough for all of us. So we headed off to the Czech Republic."
