We drove from Salzburg, Austria to Oberammergau, Germany on Dec. 29th. We arrived at our B&B in the beautiful little town of Oberammergau in the early afternoon. Our B&B was out in the country with views of the mountains right outside our window. We checked in and figured out our plan for the rest of the day. They left packages of gummy bears on our pillows instead of chocolate! We had planned to go to the top of Zugspitze, the tallest peak in Germany, but it was a very cloudy day and we wouldn't have been able to see anything from the top. We decided to drive into Garmisch-Partenkirchen anyway and check out Partnach Gorge, a deep gorge that has been formed by a mountain stream. We were told to park at the Olympic Stadium in Garmisch and we'd see signs. Thanks again to GPS, we found the stadium easily and parked. We put money in the meter and were on our way...except there were no signs to follow. I spotted a security guard and asked him where to go, he directed us to go through the stadium and just keep going straight and we'll run into it. Let me take a minute here to describe the stadium. The Olympics were held in Garmisch in 1936, but a new ski jump was put up in 2008 and is used for ski jump competitions including a New Year's competition that they were preparing for while we were there. It's a fairly small stadium, but the ski jump is huge! Ok, now we found out that if you walk through the stadium, out the opposite side and keep going straight you would walk into a river...we could go either right or left. We chose right and we were wrong, after about 15 minutes walking in the wrong direction we realized that this couldn't be the right way. We asked some locals walking on the same path where the Partnach Gorge was and they looked at us like we were crazy, since they don't speak any English. I start miming here to try and describe a gorge...try that once just for fun! Finally, the guy was able to figure out what I was talking about and pointed us in the right direction...we should have gone left:) A half hour later we were on our way to the gorge. As we start our wintery trek to the gorge we find that our choice in footwear (tennis shoes) is not the greatest for this walk. We walk about 20 more minutes through the woods and along a river to the base of the gorge where you would take a cable car to the top and walk down. After slipping frequently and several near butt splitting experiences we decided that we should skip this outing...for now. We fully intend on coming back to this area of the world at some point in our life and will take it on then with the appropriate shoes!
We decided it would be fun to go to a ski lodge for a hot tottie by the fire and watch the skiers coming down the hill. We searched for one in our trusty Garmin and there was one a mile away. We arrived to the ski hill around 3pm and as many of the skiers are leaving. We park and start walking towards the hill only to realize their lodge is slightly different than what we were expecting...it's outside. Jon made his way to the bar and ordered a couple of drinks and we found a spot out in the freezing cold to drink our ice cold beer! We drank them very quickly so we could get out of that cold as fast as possible. It was pretty fun to watch all the kids coming down the hill. There were some really tiny kids just zipping down the hill!
We headed back to Oberammergau to find a place for dinner. Oberammergau is a picture perfect, little German mountain town nestled among the mountains. We went to a restaurant recommended by our B&B (it was also the only restaurant with people in it and we figured this was a good sign). We had a great meal and headed back to our B&B to rest up for the adventures of the next day.
We woke up in the morning to a snow covered world with snow still pouring down. It was so beautiful and made the morning perfect. We walked to a monument near our B&B that was given to the town of Oberammergau by King Lewis in 1871 for dedicating the Passion Play to him. It is a really beautiful monument and walking to it with large snowflakes falling down around us made it even better.
After breakfast, we loaded up the car and set off for the day of touring castles or schloss's as they refer to them. Our first stop was supposed to be about 15 minutes away, but with the snow it was closer to 30 was Linderhof Palace. It's the smallest of three castles built by King Ludwig II. We toured the snow covered grounds here, but did not go into the castle as we thought the next two would be enough castle touring for one day. It was much smaller than I expected, but for my first true castle it was a good initiation. Then we drove about 2 hours on windy, snow covered roads to reach Hohenschwangau Schloss and Neuschwanstein Schloss. These were also built by King Ludwig II, but he died before Neuschwanstein was completed and so to this day it remains the way it was when he died. The castles were beautiful, interesting, full of history and surprisingly different from each other. They both had spectacular views. Neuschwanstein in the castle that Disney's Magic Kingdom is modeled after.
We left the castles and made our way to Munich where we finish our Alps adventure by ringing in the New Year.
Here's the link for more pictures:(if you click to sort them alphabetically they will be in order)
http://www2.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=7947160007/a=53561785_53561785/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/
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