Parlez-vous français? ... me either!!

I never really thought about going to France ... but we did yesterday. We drove over the Rhine river into the Alsace region of France. That makes 5 countries on this trip for Carolyn and I 4 of them are "new". We drove into a really cool village that is somewhat of a tourist destination much like Kerrville but really cool. Along the way we stopped and watched a boat pass through the locks on the Rhine ...

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

In the village ...

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

In another village we walked through we saw several stork nests ...

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

Over the Alps and into the Black Forest

Today was our longest travel day ... about 5 hours of windshield time. We drove thru a good deal of Austria down out of the Alps took a short detour into Lichtenstein so we could say we have been there and then down into the Black Forest area of Germany. Down out of the Alps ...

From Germany2012Album

Through MANY tunnels ... one over 10 miles long ...

From Germany2012Album

By some stunning waterfalls ...

From Germany2012Album

We stopped at a restaurant that has an archery museum attached ... some of these targets date to before 1700 ...

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

Through a bit of weather ...

From Germany2012Album

and into the Black Forest ...

From Germany2012Album

A woodcarver, a fiddle maker, a castle and a church ... and a LATE lunch

So ... having survived the bike tour in Munich and happily NOT having to get up early on Saturday morning we had breakfast and headed to Mittenwald. This is the seat of a very famous and very very long historied violin making school and also now museum. We stopped along the way at one of the many woodcarver shops in this Bavarian area ...

From Germany2012Album

We were fortunate to meet the woodcarver himself and he allowed me to take a few pictures of his very small but well tooled shop ...

From Germany2012Album

... makes me feel guilty about "needing" more space for my own shop! No pictures of the inside but there MAY be some Christmas surprises ... We made our way to Mittenwald ... I really expected this to be a tiny tiny sleepy little town ... it was actually very busy with tourists! The museum was "for me" a wonderful experience ... seeing how the craft of violin making has both evolved and stayed much the same in the area since the mid 1600's was fascinating. My fellow travelers were very generous and let me linger longer than I am sure they had an interest ... a few pics from the museum...

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

Not surprisingly there are MANY more pictures from the museum in the gallery! The village of Mittenwald was very cool ...

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

Today (Sunday 6/10/2012) we visited Mad Ludwig's castle Nueschwanstein ..

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

It's the one Walt Disney used as a model for Sleeping Beauty's castle ...

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It's "pretty" but since it was never finished ... it's really more like a movie set than anything ... I thought many of the castles we visited in England and Ireland put this one to shame.

From Germany2012Album

The countryside is beautiful ...

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Finally today we visited this church out in the middle of nowhere ...

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Doesn't look like much from the outside but the inside is stunning ... I wasn't able to take pictures of the inside but I believe this link will show you what the inside looks like another link to images of Wieskirche ... it's worth a look!! Finally we stopped at a small lakeside crafts fair and had a very late (3PM) lunch ...

From Germany2012Album

The table side view was pretty nice ...

From Germany2012Album

Tomorrow we have a day of travel to Denzlingen, Germany where we will stay for most of the remainder of our trip ... using it as a home base for travel to various sites ...

Biking thru Munich

We got up about 5am Friday morning, drove about 30 minutes to Fussen, Germany and boarded a train into Munich (Munchen in German we learned). The train ride was about 2 hours long and we paid 48 Euros for the privilege for each couple to make the one way ride ... we discovered upon our return but after tickets were bought there is some way to make that much more affordable but being totally ignorant of the train system ... we spent significantly more than necessary ... oh well it's only money ... We waited a bit for our tour operator but they did in fact show up as scheduled and we were off ... the tour was about 4.5 hours long, we stopped for an hour for lunch at a fairly large Beer Garden ... we were VERY fortunate ... about 30 minutes after our bike tour ended the rain started pretty steady and COLD ... we made our way back to the train station, waited about an hour and a half for the train and found our way back to the Guest House ... we stopped for fuel and bought sandwich makings and ate in the room ... 4 very tired Americans. I'll post several pictures I took along the ride but no real comments ... I'll try and caption the photos later.

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

Willie!!!

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

Surf's Up!!

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

It's Thursday ... this must be Austria!!!

We drove from Dinkelsbuhl, Germany to Reutte, Austria today ... the scenery along the way was very pretty.

From Germany2012Album

Before we settled in at the Guest House we took a ride UP a cable car to about 11,000 feet in the Austrian Alps ... it was DAMN COLD (7C) and Windy ... but the view was spectacular!

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From Germany2012Album

From the bottom looking UP to where we were ...

From Germany2012Album

Then we motored to our lodgings for the next 4 nights ...

From Germany2012Album

Had dinner ...

From Germany2012Album

and came back for a short nights sleep ... we arise at 5AM tomorrow morning to make our way via car and train to Munich where we have a 5 hour bike tour of the city scheduled ... we are HOPING for better weather than is predicted ...