Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Hohenschwangau Bavaria

Neuschwanstein Germany!! Or should I say the Sleeping Beauty Castle aka place that was built by Crazy Ludwig (Second of the name but First of the crazy, or maybe not)! No offend intended we all have some of those members in our family, and if you think you don’t they are probably buried in a long lost closet somewhere in a deep forest!!
Anyway, since it is one of the most visited castle in Germany we thought that
it was something we needed to do. So since we were in Bavaria, we decided to go there. Well what I didn’t know is that his parents had a little “vacation castle” next door!! LOL
So when we arrived and saw how long the line was to get to the Neuschwanstein Castle we decided to go ahead and go visit the “Parents” residence “Hohenschwangau” and then after eating lunch go to the White castle up the hill!! Well this decision was made BEFORE the cloud came and ruined everything for us!!
As you can see in the pictures it was a pretty sunny day to begin with… unfortunately
it change to rain storm pouring down on us as we were exiting the guided tour of the castle.
However we had some fun (as fun as a 30mn tour in a rush with a Guide who
spoke with a very thick German accent, and doesn’t let you take ANY pictures inside!!)
So we decided that we will come back another day when the tourist season isn’t at its peak
and hopefully we will be able to go to the Sleeping Beauty Castle to find out if
Ludwig was that crazy or only a Genius to want to live in such a paradise of a place!!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Garmish vs Fussen

Garmish is a place where many of our neighbors speak about. Anytime there is a vacation destination in the Alps, Garmish comes up!! So when in Bavaria we thought we will see what the BIG DEAL it was about Garmish!! Well call me a total weirdo (which I KNOW I am) but other than the beautiful GORGEOUS view of the mountain I didn’t find the hotel amazing.
OK I didn’t go and see the room, we only saw the lobby, gift shop, bar, and restaurant
(which wasn’t THAT good either, the restaurant that is) So I do understand that the place the hotel is located, is incredibly beautiful! And that I bet that you can do a lot of activities in the Garmish area!! But I still believed that we didn’t have to be staying in the hotel that most of our neighbors stayed in!!
So I went online a few weeks earlier and found a “what looked like” a perfect family place!
When we pulled in the hotel we thought... Oh oh!! As of Oh man maybe we found the perfect WRONG place to stay!! Matt was very much not really happy at the sight of the hotel!
Got the key, entered our room, and as I took in the room and the view I HAD to run in the windowless hallway to prepare Matt. I got him to believe that it was going to be AWFULL and then he enter the room and saw that:
The room that we got was a small apartment, 2 bedrooms, and small kitchen/ living/dining area with a sofa bed. We fell in love with the hotel. Pretty cheap for a 5 persons hotel room in Europe! About the same price as the cheapest room at the “other” hotel! AND look at the view!! We stayed up watching those mountain until it was completely dark! AND I had to set my alarm to the first light so that I could come up and take pictures of our gorgeous view with the sun rise!!
So here it is: I am wrong or what? Don’t you think it is beautiful!!
We are going back for sure... Maybe when snow is on the ground so that we can see how beautiful it would be!!!