Hallstatt to Ruette

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Sunday and Monday,

Beautiful weather and great location makes for a happy couple. This blog covers two very fun days.

After lots of rain in Vienna and Hallstatt, we got lucky. We drove from Hallstatt to Reutte in about three hours. The drive itself was wonderful. The scenary is out of a storybook or movie. We arrived about 1pm to our nice hotel in the center of this little town. As an aside, we discovered that our great rocket scientist, Werner von Braun, joined America at the end of WWII in this town.

We loved the hotel and its owner, Hans. After a short rest we went out to see what we could do on our first afternoon here. The owner recommended that we ride a local cable car to the top of a nearby mountain to a beautiful alpine garden. He also booked us into an early check-in on Monday for the two nearby Mad King Ludwig castles, Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein (the model for Cinderella's at Disney).

We took about a 15 minute drive to the base of the recommended ride. It was fast and exciting. Jackie was afraid to stand up. In the winter, this is a ski slope. Once we arrived we took about a 30 minute walk through the area at the top of the lift. The views were good and the flowers impressive. We thought the views were good. But, tomorrow the views we would see will put these views in a different light.

We returned and found a nice nearby restuarant for dinner. We love the food here but Jackie is having a hard time keeping up with her new veggie diet.

We got up early on Monday for the 30 minute drive up to the famous castles near Fussen Germany. We decided to skip all the busses or carriages and walk. We had seen this location once on the Amazing Race and decided if they could do it, we could.

We arrived early enough to get great parking and tickets. In fact, we got passes to start 15 minutes earlier than our booking. The tours were fun and photogentic. We always get a kick when we visit a site that we have seen on TV. We've seen this site a couple of times.

After touring both castles and getting all the photos, we next drove to the sky lift to the top of Germany's highest peak, Zugspitze. We chose, at Rick Steve's recommendation, to drive down and take the Austrian lift. When we arrived at about 2:30pm, no one was at the site. We parked about 30 meters from the lift and got on the large lift. It had a capacity of 110 people and carried about 10 on our lift.

This was one of the most exciting things that I have ever done. The top was over 9000 ft and had stunning views. The weather held for us but at this elevation there are always some clouds. The border of Germany and Austria are at the peak and we walked across to have a beer in the Germany side before returning for the ride down.

We have had lots of fun days over the years of traveling but this ranks right up there as one of my all time favorites!!

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