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Published: August 10th 2008
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Peter on the Luge Aug 6, 2008
The day starts off with beautiful sunshine as we head south. We leave the rolling hills and farm land and find more mountains and cows with dairy farming. Our destination is the Austrian border and Neuschwanstein Castle in Fussen. This is the castle that Disney has used for Cinderella and of course at Disneyland. Before we stop there we head over to an area close by where they have luge runs, rides to the mountain top, and hang gliding and base jumping. We decided on the luge as we have a tour through the castle at 145pm. The luge run you can go as fast or slow as you want while sitting on a plastic sled with a handle in the middle to control the speed. Needless to say, the last time I saw Hannah was at the top of the run. We head to the castle which is definitely a tourist area. The castle was built by King Ludwig II who did everything over the top. The castle was never finished as he was admitted to a mental institution where he died shortly thereafter - suicide, natural causes, no one knows but he was quite young.
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Neuschwanstein Once we leave, we drive into Austria which takes no more that 10 minutes. We don’t take the autobahn but a secondary road where we climb up high and the temperature drops. We are in the alps in no time and it is absolutely gorgeous. The tiny towns high up on the side of the mountain, the typical houses of flowers and shutters at each window and animals way up on the side of the hill. We spend the night in Steeg at Gasthaus Grissman which is beautiful. If you want to hike there are many different trails to take. The owners are very nice and the husband has spent time in Canada learning/teaching fly fishing. We have a wonderful dinner outside at a restaurant and just relax. We wish we could stay here longer. We see many motorcycles on this road travelling in groups and hardly any tour buses. The buses that we see stop for a break and then seem to continue on.
Aug 7, 2008
Great sleep and beautiful sunshine again. Today we head towards Switzerland and the Bodensee, but first through Austria and the high mountains. We turn south again and head towards Lech
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Gasthaus in Steeg - Austria which is a tourist town for skiing in the winter and walking and hiking in the summer. We take a gondola ride up the Rufikopf Mtn elev. 2350m the kids find snow to play in and the alpine flowers are out in masses. We can see for miles because of such a clear day and the air is so fresh. From here we heading to the Bodensee or Lake Konstanz. As we drive down the mountain the road is so skinny in places you wonder if two cars can pass. The tunnels are very long, up to 2 km, except for the one which was closer to 3 km. At the bottom the temperature has increased again. We find a grocery store and buy lunch, we cross into Liechtenstein, and drive a bit longer to find a rest area, we have found one but now are in Switzerland. So far we have been in 7 countries and no stamps in our passports. The Bodensee is 8 miles across and 46 miles long. We stumble across a park in Romanshore and go swimming - the water is warm but very refreshing after a hot day. The landscape is gorgeous with many
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View from the top of Rufikopf Mtn. - Austria orchards and vineyards. Once finding a place to stay we search for dinner, but not long as a thunder and lightning storm is upon us so we duck into the first place that serves food. Pastas and pizzas run by an Italian family - it was so tasty - but expensive, oh well. It was relaxing and by the time we were done the heavy rain stopped.
Aug 8/9, 2008
We leave Switzerland and head north into Germany again along the autobahn to spend a night at Pete’s aunt and uncle. Before stopping there we stop at the Ritter Sport Chocolate factory and off to Tubingen which is a university town. The town is very pretty with lots of young people as most of them are studying here. We wander around the old town which has a market in it and just window shop. We find the Neckar River which has oodles of big fish in it and many little boats. Some of the boats look like gondolas in Venice as they use the same poles to move them around. We head to Petes relatives and spend the night. The next morning we head into Stuttgart which is
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Driving through a tunnel that was cut out of the side of the mountain a very large city and very modern. Our book says it has 550,000 people but the book is a few years old and don’t think correct. Our goal is Baden-Baden to soak in the hot springs. The road we take is through the Black Forest and it is raining very hard - first time we travel in rain, and there are many little roads leading off into the yonder. We find a place, Caracalla, to swim and relax. It costs $13 Euros for 3 hours which includes, all the pools of many different temperatures (32-38C), inside and out, the hot tubs, steam rooms, tanning area, restaurant, sun lamp area, and of course a nudist area with little saunas in the woods. We had a great time and spent almost two hours before we decided to head out and find a place to spend the night. We cross over the Rhine River at Strasbourg and are now in France at a tiny town of Mutzig, right in the heart of the Alsace wine region.
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