Lucern to Wengen September 7th

Mary, Margaret, Leanne, Susan & Doug had a quick coffee at the hostel, dropped off our backpacks at the train station and started on a walking tour of Luzern. We checked out both the lovely wooden bridges (Mill Bridge and Chapel Bridge). There were some great sights to see with interesting paintings on the buildings and neat squares. It was a quick walk to Lowenplatz to see the crying lion, but we skipped all the museums. And surprise we ran into Sarah & Ken! again, after only 5 text messages...

Sarah and  Ken left Zurich early to spend the day in Luzern on the way toWengen.  In addition to the walking tour they took an afternoon paddleboat cruise on Lake Luzern - very romantic.

We all continued on to Wengen on different trains and arrived to be greeted by Carol & Larry who had arrived earlier from Paris. They had a lovely time in Paris and really enjoyed the treats at Angelina's so much they had to visit it twice. Before Paris they had been in London for five days where Carol managed to ditch Larry for two hours for a Harrod's shopping spree. They visited the main museums and had some fabulous dinners. Carol particularly enjoyed the Hop-on-Hop-off tour where the driver managed to lurch the bus on a curb and fling her to the floor...  luckily no serious injury, but made for a good story.

First order of business was laundry, then groceries and wine. We threw together a quick pasta and salad meal that was really tasty and enjoyed our first meal all together. After dinner we checked out Wengen at night and found a local pub with a late 2 for 1 happy hour. We stopped for a glass of wine for the girls and coffee for the boys. Then headed back to our lovely chalet and a good night.

On to Lucerne

Posting on iPhone today so no photos.

Today we left Saltzburg behind and moved on to Lucerne. We had a beautiful train ride through Austria, Germany, Austria and Switzerland to Zurich. we stowed our bags for a brief walking tour of Zurich and low and behold we managed to run into Sarah and Ken at Lindenhoff Park!!!
They had had an entire day in Zurich and were going to be doing a brief tour of Lucerne tomorrow.
We did the whirlwind tour of Zurich, admired the Chagall windows at fraumunster church and then went and marveled at all of the swans on Lake Zurich the jumped back on the train and continued to Lucerne.

We are staying at the quite nice and rather funky Backpackers Hostel, we had a lovely dinner next door and we are just getting ready to tuck Leanne into her floating bunk bed (photo's to follow)

Salzburg in the rain

Miserable rainy day in Salzburg so we opted to tour Old town rather than touring the countryside.

We wandered along the river, then we waited in the square in the rain to listen to Salzburg's Glockenspiel.  We toured several churches, enjoyed the sights and then we had to take an intermission from the rain to enjoy wonderful pastries and chocolates from Demel (Leanne, Margaret and Mary enjoyed coffee and a Mozart liqueur).

On to Salzburg

Goodbye to Munich, we're off to Salzburg.

We had a lovely senice train ride to Salzburg (1.5 hrs), we arrived at 11 and wandered off to find our hotel.  It was too early for check in so we dropped off our bags and made our way to the gorgeous Mirabel Gardens to view some of the sights.

We had a lovely picnic in the Garden and then the gals headed off on the Sound of Music Tour, Doug declined to accompany us and made his own way to the old Town and up to Hohensalzburg Fortress to take panoramic pictures of Salzburg.

The Sound of Music tour was lovely, we stopped to take pictures of Schloss Leopoldskron, Schloss Frohnburg and the Glass Gazebo.  We had a passing glimpse of the Convent of Nonnberg (if you happened to be sitting on the right side of the bus.).  After those sights we had a longish drive out to the lake country to enjoy views and photo opportunities overlooking the lovely lakes.

We had a nice stop in Mondsee to view the church where Maria and the Captain were wed (in the movie), this was a lovely town on one of the lakes.

A run through the English Gardens

As usual we started the day with a great breakfast in our hotel where we stocked up Susan's bag with sandwiches and fruit for lunch. We headed to Marienplatz for the 11am showing at the Glockenspiel. Then we hoped on the subway to the Englischer Garten.  Mary and Susan went for a 5km run while the rest of us wandered though the trails and met up with them at the Chinese Turm beer garden. After a great picnic lunch we went to watch the surfers in the river. We all wished we had our bathing suits so we could float down the river as it was very sunny and hot.  We went back to the hotel for a quick rest then decided to get good use of our day transit pass and went to Schloss Nymphenburg to get some pictures in the sun. We stopped at our second beer garden of the day for dinner. The Augustine Keller, where the locals hang out, which Doug, Susan and Margaret discovered on their first night. We're having our Baileys night cap now, packing up our bags and updating our blog before moving on to Salzburg in the morning. Auf Weidersein

Three Castles of Mad King Ludwig (9/2/2011)

After a few senic detours we made our way in our rented BMW (not really made for 3 adults in the backseat) to the Neuschwanstein castle.  We took the bus up to Mary's bridge for some fantastic views of the castle which was the inspiration for the Walt Disney castle. We decided to skip the interior and head to the Hohenschwangau castle for a tour as this is where King Ludwig spent most of his life growing up and as he built the other castle. Then we went to Linderhof which was the highlight of the trip - very ornate inside with gorgous gardens outside.  Leanne left her mark in a few of the bushes along the way as she was battling a case of 24 hour flu. We finished off the evening in Oberammergau with a walk around town and a lovely meal on a patio.  Leanne had beef broth and gingerale while the rest had a 3 course gourmet meal. Good news, Leanne was feeling much better after and everything stayed down for the trip back to town. Thanks to Doug for the patient driving and opportunistic u-turns.

5 in Munich

So five of us have made to Munich and we went directly to see the main highlight of Munich - HofBrauHaus - Bratwurst, Beer and pretzels.  Got down to the oom pah pah band.

Susan, Doug and Margaret had an extra day and went to see the Olympic Stadium and some other highlights in the rain.