Rockin' On Top Of The World

Dear Grace,

Oh so so much to write and oh so so so little willpower to write much about it, as my brain has decided to shut down for the rest of this trip it seems.

So here you go.

We checked into the absolute cutest little hotel in Garmish, Germany which I can sum up for you in three photos:

The place had a flipping piano in it. I can’t tell you how nice it was to just sit and play and sing for a little bit while we stayed there.

The morning after we checked in, we got up early and set out for a long day of castle touring. First, we started with Hohenschwangau Castle, where Crazy King Ludwig was born (Ludwig is famous for the amazing castles he built in his lifetime).

It was such a beautiful castle, and very different from other palaces I’ve toured in the past, which was refreshing. Next, we saw the one and only Neushwanstein.

I have to say, Neushwanstein was without a doubt my favorite castle! All my life I’ve gazed longingly at pictures of this fairytale castle perched on a hilltop in the mountains, white towers glowing brightly against the forest, but I could never have imagined that one day I would get to see it in person – let alone walk the halls of this beautiful treasure. I felt like I had stepped straight into Beauty and the Beast the moment I set foot on the castle grounds, and as we toured the inside the whole time I kept thinking, “I can’t believe I’m really here…”

The view from the balconies was just as stunning as the castle itself. I think it’s such a shame that this castle was never completed and that no one really ever lived here. I felt like the stories of those who could have made this their home were the only things missing.

The last stop of the day was Linderhof. The smallest of all the palaces I’ve seen, but perhaps the most beautifully landscaped.

After seeing all of his castles and the grounds of this last castle, I suddenly realized what all of Looney Ludy’s palaces seemed to cry for: escape. Although every surface of the palace was lavishly decorated and painted and gilded, I suddenly realized that each place Ludwig built was like a page from a storybook. Neuswanstein was dedicated to bringing the works of Richard Wagner’s operas to life. Herenchiemsee was like stepping straight into 17^th century France.

At Linderhof the inside of his tea house was like stepping into an Arabian lounge straight out of Aladdin or something. Ludwig even had a special underground cave with a lighted lake and sea-shell boat constructed at Linderhof simply for the purpose of imagining himself into one of Wagner’s operas. The man literally had servants row him around in the shell-boat in his opera-hole.

You can’t get much crazier than that.

The next morning we got up and rode the funicular up to the top o the alps, where we were greeted by this sight:

 

Admittedly, it was a bit discouraging when we couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of us for a while, and we worried for a bit that we wouldn’t get to see anything while we were up there. Fortunately the cloud cover changes as quickly as the sea at that altitude, and soon enough our patience was rewarded with this:

Snowboarding Mecca, I’m telling you. So that was awesome to get a view of the Alps and the valley from all the way up at the tallest point in Germany. After that we went to check out the town of Oberammergau, which has a lot of awesome wall paintings on the buildings. My two favorites were the story of Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel.

We visited another town called Mittenwald, which we liked better than Oberammergau because it was waaaay less touristy and a lot cooler because the town was originally established because of a violin factory or something. A town founded because of music? Say no more. It’s awesome.

The next day we got up and headed out on the long drive down into Switzerland to see the valley of waterfalls: Lauterbrunnen. We checked into our awesome hotel room in Interlaken (just down the road from Lauterbrunnen), which I’ll give you a video tour of:

For dinner, we stopped into a hotel restaurant and had a lovely little dinner of cheese fondue.

Served with bread that was divided up like a chocolate bar:

Which was delicious, but I don’t recommend making cheese fondue with alcohol (which the chef apparently did); it gives it a very bitter taste that nearly drowns out the cheese flavor.

The following morning we woke up to the most beautiful thing ever: sunshine.

I couldn’t get enough of the tinkling of the bells on the sheep and cows there – it was absolutely charming! Thanks to the mostly-clear skies, we took the funicular up to the tallest peak. Apparently one of the James Bond movies was filmed up at the restaurant/lookout point at the top, and the minute the tram car started to move, to my delight, the James Bond theme started playing. It made the experience ten times more epic for me :)

On our way to the top, we passed through a discouraging blanket of fog and clouds that hid everything from view, but at last we broke through the clouds and saw this:

Once again, snowboarding Mecca.

Another plus I hadn’t counted on was the James Bond interactive museum that was up there. So we had quite a good time getting pictures with Mr. Bond and playing with the video and photo machines there.

Last stop for the day: Trummelbach Waterfall. It is literally a waterfall inside of the mountain. We took a lift up most of the way into the mountain, and then we walked up into the tunnels the rest of the way. You seriously walk through tunnels inside the mountain to follow the path of the waterfall through solid rock.

When we got out of the waterfall, we decided to take the trail down instead of the lift, where I finally got the view of Lauterbrunnen’s breathtaking valley.

Switzerland is everything I ever hoped it would be. I always looked at the pictures and postcards of this view and thought there was no way it could really look like that in real life – but it really and truly does.

Well that’s all I’ve got energy for today, but here is my latest video. Cheers!