A beautiful day - great weather, magnificent drive through Bavaria and great Bavarian dinner to finish off our drive down the "Romantic road"
Better give you a brief outline of our dinner last night - got directions to an authentic Bavarian Restaurant but sadly the centre of town was closed off so had to park the car and ask for directions. Walked for ages in the cold drizzle and evenually gave up, returned to a bar in the old part of Friedberg and ordered pizza. Bartender took pity on two soaked Aussies, put on English music so we spent the night eating pizza, drinking red wine and singing No No Nanette, Mama Mia, ABeautiful noise, Proud mary, Seasons in the sun etc etc. Not culturally appropriate but heaps of fun.
Another beautiful breakfast and set off for the last leg of the Romantic Road. No false directions, no road closures, no false signs- just a beautiful drive through magnificent scenery. We now know how correct the term "Black Forest" is and why Hansel and Gretel got lost!! - the Bavarian forests are magnificent but SO thick and huge trees - beautiful.
Stopped in Landsberg - the most beautiful and authentic of all the towns/villages we've been through on this trip. Incredibly got chatting to a Red Cross volunteer who has just returned from Brisbane where he was hopefully selling 1400 defribulators to Queensland Health!! 24 hours in the plane for a 2 hour meeting! He deserves the contract we reckon.
Gorgeous town. Bought fish\prawn rolls at the market to have for lunch.
Driving into the Bavarian Alps was just the most stunningly beautiful drive - magnificent fertile farming land with the Alps as the background- unforgettable. Arrived in Fussen and after coffee at Maccas (sorry - its consistently good) we booked in to the Hotel Fantasia (manager is Denise Wilschut's twin sister) and then we headed for the famous Schloss Neuschwanstein castle. Walked up the road instead of bus or horse carriage and did the 5.30 tour - fascinating place.
Got directions to authentic Bavarian restaurant again but this time FOUND the right one - Elizabeth had porkwith saukraut and I had baked beef with onion and potatoe and it really was very good. We shared an apple strudle - again VERY good. Bavarian food is very good but wine is ordinary.
Finished the Romantic Road - off to Passau tomorrow morning to start the Danube bike ride. Dodgy wi-fi on the boat apparently so may be off the air some days.
Trivia: Neuschwanstein was commenced by King Ludwig 11 but never finished due to his mysterious death in 1880's - it is still owned by his descendents.
Cap status: one week down and still in tact!!
cheers all
Saturday, 13 September 2014
Friday, 12 September 2014
2014 - Day 6 (Rothenburg-Friedberg)
No two days are the same and travel includes amazing moments as well as the unpredictable and challenging - that sums up today.
A couple more bits re the beautiful Schwarzes Lamm hotel where we stayed last night (there will be a picture of it on facebook) - it served as the local miltary headquarters during the 30 years war in 1634 - the church across the road was consecrated in 968 - and note they rang the bells 3 times at 6.00am and full ring at 7.00am this morning! What must happen on Sunday???
Beautiful breakfast included the best minni-sausages I've ever tasted.. However, the day was bleak and raining quite steadily and we headed south using the sat-nav but it wanted to take us via the autobahn instead of the Romantc Road so we turned her off and relied on the signage which turned out to be a bit of a problem - there were roads closed everywhere (not sure why, think it was wet roadworks) and the Germans refuse to show detour signs so just had to guess directions and hopefully re-find a "Romantische Strase" sign.
Stopped at a beautiful little bakery in Schillingsfurst - absolutely beautiful tarts and great coffee for 7 Euro - that's $10 (only get two cups of coffee for that at Sexie Coffe). Took a while (see road closures above) to get to Nordlingen which is another fully walled medieval city. Raining quite steadily so checked out the shops (beautiiful again) and found a cafe which turned out to be a training centre for kids with disabilities - amazing guy in charge and they looked aftter us with hot chocolate and bagles for lunch - very happy and special group and we really enjoyed having lunch with them.
Paradoxically the next stop was a town called Rain which was also beautiful. All these towns and villages are quite similar. The architecture is typically German of course but they are all perfectly maintained, painted in bright colours. The countryside reminds us of France - lots of different crops here (corn, sunflower, lucern, canola) but no grapevines as yet. Being in Bavaria, we've also been going through numerous beautiful forests - always very green of course. Cyclists please note - this would be a fabulous area to cycle - country is undulating and there are cycle tracks everywhere. Strangely none of the cyclists we saw today looked all that cheerul!!
Although wet all day today, it didn't really matter as we were either in the car or just wandering from shop to shop (or cafe) and we'd prefer rain this week rather than next and the forecast for next week is good with the rain supposedly finishing tomorrow (Saturday) Just to cap off the "road challenged" day, the sat-nav would not recognise the address of the "Park Ambiente" hotel where we are staying tonight and then roads in the town of Friedberg are closed for today until Sunday for a huge marathon - the information centre was closed (????) - found girl in a shop who happily gave us directions and eventually arrived. Rewarded with the biggest "suite" we've been in, beautifully decoated and appointed. Bliss.
Off to a Bavarian Restaurant recommended by the very pleasant owner here so hopefully it will be good.
Absolutely everyone we've met today in bakery, cafes, shops etc have been absolutely delightful - people made the day!
Trivia: The "Romantic Road" was a concept created after WW11 to provide a trip away for the American and British toops occupying Germany when on leave.
Cap report; still good but fairly wet tonight!
cheers all
A couple more bits re the beautiful Schwarzes Lamm hotel where we stayed last night (there will be a picture of it on facebook) - it served as the local miltary headquarters during the 30 years war in 1634 - the church across the road was consecrated in 968 - and note they rang the bells 3 times at 6.00am and full ring at 7.00am this morning! What must happen on Sunday???
Beautiful breakfast included the best minni-sausages I've ever tasted.. However, the day was bleak and raining quite steadily and we headed south using the sat-nav but it wanted to take us via the autobahn instead of the Romantc Road so we turned her off and relied on the signage which turned out to be a bit of a problem - there were roads closed everywhere (not sure why, think it was wet roadworks) and the Germans refuse to show detour signs so just had to guess directions and hopefully re-find a "Romantische Strase" sign.
Stopped at a beautiful little bakery in Schillingsfurst - absolutely beautiful tarts and great coffee for 7 Euro - that's $10 (only get two cups of coffee for that at Sexie Coffe). Took a while (see road closures above) to get to Nordlingen which is another fully walled medieval city. Raining quite steadily so checked out the shops (beautiiful again) and found a cafe which turned out to be a training centre for kids with disabilities - amazing guy in charge and they looked aftter us with hot chocolate and bagles for lunch - very happy and special group and we really enjoyed having lunch with them.
Paradoxically the next stop was a town called Rain which was also beautiful. All these towns and villages are quite similar. The architecture is typically German of course but they are all perfectly maintained, painted in bright colours. The countryside reminds us of France - lots of different crops here (corn, sunflower, lucern, canola) but no grapevines as yet. Being in Bavaria, we've also been going through numerous beautiful forests - always very green of course. Cyclists please note - this would be a fabulous area to cycle - country is undulating and there are cycle tracks everywhere. Strangely none of the cyclists we saw today looked all that cheerul!!
Although wet all day today, it didn't really matter as we were either in the car or just wandering from shop to shop (or cafe) and we'd prefer rain this week rather than next and the forecast for next week is good with the rain supposedly finishing tomorrow (Saturday) Just to cap off the "road challenged" day, the sat-nav would not recognise the address of the "Park Ambiente" hotel where we are staying tonight and then roads in the town of Friedberg are closed for today until Sunday for a huge marathon - the information centre was closed (????) - found girl in a shop who happily gave us directions and eventually arrived. Rewarded with the biggest "suite" we've been in, beautifully decoated and appointed. Bliss.
Off to a Bavarian Restaurant recommended by the very pleasant owner here so hopefully it will be good.
Absolutely everyone we've met today in bakery, cafes, shops etc have been absolutely delightful - people made the day!
Trivia: The "Romantic Road" was a concept created after WW11 to provide a trip away for the American and British toops occupying Germany when on leave.
Cap report; still good but fairly wet tonight!
cheers all
Thursday, 11 September 2014
2014 - Day5 (Stuttgart to Rothenburg)
Driving in Germany is interesting - more on that later.
Picked up the hire-car from the airport after a beautiful breakfast at the hotel. Following the directions to the car (an Opel Senator which is a bit like our Passat) was the first big challenge and then had to have the sat-nav changed to English at the workshop. Headed for the north of Stuttgart to visit the Porsche factory and museum. Incredible building in its own right and the displays of every Porshe model plus other inventions of Ferdinand Porsche (including VW) is brilliantly presented. As a good Grandfather, I bought Tommy a Porsche.
Traffic through Stuttgart was terrible - volume is mind-blowing and thank goodness we have the sat-nav as the road system is terribly complex. Headed off for Rothenburg and trip was spent going from one auto-bahn to the next. Mostly 120kph limit but I think I was the slowest car on the roads today in spite of 120kph on cruise control. Most amazing impession was that the right hand lane is a nose-to-tail line of trucks - only a few B-doubles but we've just never seen soo many trucks!
About half way here we struck a huge storm on the auto-bahn - had to pull off in a slip lane with other vehicles for a while. Got here about 3 and after booking in to our hotel which is just beautiful and just 2 mins out of Rothenburg. Rothenburg is almost too typical German village to be true - all just beautiful with georgeous shops - their bear shop is incredible along with craft shops and myriads of bars and restaurants. Middle Ages city wall surrounds it all and we walked around part of it.
Another amazing day. Our hotel (Schwarzes Lamm) has been in the same family since the 1700's and their food tonight was just beautful - Pork for me, trout for Elizabeth and Apple strudel for sweets - apple trudel is nothing like we've ever had before!
Another day on the "romatic road" to look forward to tomorrow!!
Tivia: Ferdinand Porsche invented the first motorised fire engine as well as the first 4-wheel drive system.
Cap Report - still OK which is sad because a new Porsche cap would be cool!
Picked up the hire-car from the airport after a beautiful breakfast at the hotel. Following the directions to the car (an Opel Senator which is a bit like our Passat) was the first big challenge and then had to have the sat-nav changed to English at the workshop. Headed for the north of Stuttgart to visit the Porsche factory and museum. Incredible building in its own right and the displays of every Porshe model plus other inventions of Ferdinand Porsche (including VW) is brilliantly presented. As a good Grandfather, I bought Tommy a Porsche.
Traffic through Stuttgart was terrible - volume is mind-blowing and thank goodness we have the sat-nav as the road system is terribly complex. Headed off for Rothenburg and trip was spent going from one auto-bahn to the next. Mostly 120kph limit but I think I was the slowest car on the roads today in spite of 120kph on cruise control. Most amazing impession was that the right hand lane is a nose-to-tail line of trucks - only a few B-doubles but we've just never seen soo many trucks!
About half way here we struck a huge storm on the auto-bahn - had to pull off in a slip lane with other vehicles for a while. Got here about 3 and after booking in to our hotel which is just beautiful and just 2 mins out of Rothenburg. Rothenburg is almost too typical German village to be true - all just beautiful with georgeous shops - their bear shop is incredible along with craft shops and myriads of bars and restaurants. Middle Ages city wall surrounds it all and we walked around part of it.
Another amazing day. Our hotel (Schwarzes Lamm) has been in the same family since the 1700's and their food tonight was just beautful - Pork for me, trout for Elizabeth and Apple strudel for sweets - apple trudel is nothing like we've ever had before!
Another day on the "romatic road" to look forward to tomorrow!!
Tivia: Ferdinand Porsche invented the first motorised fire engine as well as the first 4-wheel drive system.
Cap Report - still OK which is sad because a new Porsche cap would be cool!
2014-day 4 (Milan to Stuttgart)
HUGE walking day today - saw some incredible things and finished off by flying over the Alps to Germany.
After booking out of the Genius hotel we headed to the centre of Milan and checked out the oldest shopping mall in the world - an amazing building housing such retailers as Prada, YSL, LV. At 10.30 we met nearby to start the city walking tour (NOT free) which took us back into the mall then to the Duomo - one of the most amazing buildings in the world - built entirely of marbel inside and out. Huge stained glass windows add to the beauty of the all-marbel interior - absolutely stunning.
Past La Scala and then on to the castle on which the Kremlin was based. Last visit was to see Leonardo Da Vinci's "The last Supper" - an amazing work painted on the entire end wall of what was a monastry's refectory so what you see in reproducions does just not prepare you for the reality. Also stunning!!
After a "recovery" lunch we headed back to La Scala to tour the interior - absolutely beautiful recently rebuilt following a fire. Interesting museum with exhibits such as List's piano.
Back to collect our luggage from the hotel, then to the train station to catch the Milpensa Express out to the airport. Small concern when the electricity cut out at departure time and we were about 20 mins late getting away. This added too the delays/bad orgaisation at Malpensa Airport meant we had a short wait for the flight to Suttgart.
Flew with "German Wings" which was fine but quite hilarious - the pre-flight safety briefing by the hostesses was so typically "Germanic" it would have warranted a Monty Python sketch. Typically German though, we landed on time at 9.20 and then just had a two minute walk to the hotel. Reason this log is a day late is that the hotel wanted 15 Euro for wi-fi just for one night - even the receptionist was embarrased!
Crashed after huge day!
Trivia: Prada paid circa 4 million Eros rent for the annual lease in the Milan mall
Cap report: still in tact!
Cheers all
After booking out of the Genius hotel we headed to the centre of Milan and checked out the oldest shopping mall in the world - an amazing building housing such retailers as Prada, YSL, LV. At 10.30 we met nearby to start the city walking tour (NOT free) which took us back into the mall then to the Duomo - one of the most amazing buildings in the world - built entirely of marbel inside and out. Huge stained glass windows add to the beauty of the all-marbel interior - absolutely stunning.
Past La Scala and then on to the castle on which the Kremlin was based. Last visit was to see Leonardo Da Vinci's "The last Supper" - an amazing work painted on the entire end wall of what was a monastry's refectory so what you see in reproducions does just not prepare you for the reality. Also stunning!!
After a "recovery" lunch we headed back to La Scala to tour the interior - absolutely beautiful recently rebuilt following a fire. Interesting museum with exhibits such as List's piano.
Back to collect our luggage from the hotel, then to the train station to catch the Milpensa Express out to the airport. Small concern when the electricity cut out at departure time and we were about 20 mins late getting away. This added too the delays/bad orgaisation at Malpensa Airport meant we had a short wait for the flight to Suttgart.
Flew with "German Wings" which was fine but quite hilarious - the pre-flight safety briefing by the hostesses was so typically "Germanic" it would have warranted a Monty Python sketch. Typically German though, we landed on time at 9.20 and then just had a two minute walk to the hotel. Reason this log is a day late is that the hotel wanted 15 Euro for wi-fi just for one night - even the receptionist was embarrased!
Crashed after huge day!
Trivia: Prada paid circa 4 million Eros rent for the annual lease in the Milan mall
Cap report: still in tact!
Cheers all
Tuesday, 9 September 2014
2014 - Day 3 (Milan-Como)
Some days are special - and today was one of those. Didn't know what to expect really but we'd booked a day tour to Como/Lake Como/Bellagio so headed for the bus to leave at 8.30.
Drove up the highway to Como and had time to wander around there for a while. Very old (Roman) town with beautiful Duomo (Cathedral) in the centre of town. Lousy service at the cafe in town square so left and had ice-cream instead and gathered at the water-front to catch the tour boat.
The lake is just spectacular with massive mountains surounding and magnificent villas lining the shore seemingly all aroung the lake. Like nothing seen before! Owned by poor people such as Versace, Berliscone, George Clooney. Magnificent gardens to go with them.
Arrived at Bellagio, a village at the tip of the land at the junction of the two arms of the lake and had a couple of hours to have lunch and go shopping. Bellagio is probably the prettiest village we've visited. Set on the steep hillside on the lake's edge, the shops were beautiful and we enjoyed a really good lunch. Elizabeth purchased an Italian leather hand-bag that was on her "must get" list for the trip so that has been done - very nice too. A few presents and by then time too head back for a short ferry ride back to Cardenabbia where the bus met us for the return trip down an incredibly narrow, twisting road along the lake's edge before joining the highway back to Milan's traffic jams.
Beautiful day finished with a great (HUGE) dinner at "Andry's" the restaurant recommended by the hotel manager and as usally happens, the recommendation was spot-on.
Bit of rain on the way home but nothing tonight. Doing walking tour of Milan including visiting "The Last Supper" so hope it stays fine!
Trivia: Como is the birthplace of Volta - the inventor of the battery. Museums to him everywhere.
Cap report: all good
Pictures of Como, Villas, Bellagio on facebook!
Drove up the highway to Como and had time to wander around there for a while. Very old (Roman) town with beautiful Duomo (Cathedral) in the centre of town. Lousy service at the cafe in town square so left and had ice-cream instead and gathered at the water-front to catch the tour boat.
The lake is just spectacular with massive mountains surounding and magnificent villas lining the shore seemingly all aroung the lake. Like nothing seen before! Owned by poor people such as Versace, Berliscone, George Clooney. Magnificent gardens to go with them.
Arrived at Bellagio, a village at the tip of the land at the junction of the two arms of the lake and had a couple of hours to have lunch and go shopping. Bellagio is probably the prettiest village we've visited. Set on the steep hillside on the lake's edge, the shops were beautiful and we enjoyed a really good lunch. Elizabeth purchased an Italian leather hand-bag that was on her "must get" list for the trip so that has been done - very nice too. A few presents and by then time too head back for a short ferry ride back to Cardenabbia where the bus met us for the return trip down an incredibly narrow, twisting road along the lake's edge before joining the highway back to Milan's traffic jams.
Beautiful day finished with a great (HUGE) dinner at "Andry's" the restaurant recommended by the hotel manager and as usally happens, the recommendation was spot-on.
Bit of rain on the way home but nothing tonight. Doing walking tour of Milan including visiting "The Last Supper" so hope it stays fine!
Trivia: Como is the birthplace of Volta - the inventor of the battery. Museums to him everywhere.
Cap report: all good
Pictures of Como, Villas, Bellagio on facebook!
Monday, 8 September 2014
2014-day2
Elizabeth's summary of day 2 - an awful lot of sitting and and awful lot off walking! Explanation:-
If 8 and a half hours in the plane sounded like a lot on Sunday - try 12 and a half from Hong Kong to Milan! HK airport never ceases to amaze with the immense size and numbers of people. We pre-booked the lounge at the airport as we had 6 hours stop-over so enjoyed a shower, beer, dinner etc for a few hours before the plane left at 1.00AM. I actually slept for 7 hours which was great but Elizabeth didn't do quite so well but not too bad. Knee and tooth OK!! 12.5 hours sitting is still a lot thus part of the summary above. Flying into Milan is one of the most beautiful sights when flying and it was further enhanced by clouds with the snow-covered Alps emerging above the cloud cover. Beautiful and spectacular.
The "walking" part of the above summary came next. Train easly caught from Malpensa into Milan (26 minutes) with "10 minute walk" to the Genius Hotel - except we had two incorrect directions from locals and spent an hour and a half with our luggage "exploring" bits of Milan we didn't really want to. Finally found/off-loaded lugggage and then (exhausted) set off for our usual "hop-on-hop-off" tour to get an overview of the place.
Impressions of Milan? - magnificent buildings and monuments and hopeless traffic. Growing on us. Didn't realise that the Monza GP was on this past weekend. Papers are full of it and apparently Ferrari didn't do so well - following appeared in local paper:
"Crisi Ferrari - Un disastro completo, inammisibile, delorosso" - get the picture??
The buildings are really beautiful - the Duomo quite magnificent and HUGE with beautiful parks and gardens everywhere. Going for the walking tour on Wednesday so will see more then.
Tonight lovely local cafe for fish/salad tea with local Chianti - beautiful./ Early night to get back into "equilibrium" - we hope. Off to Lake Como and Bellagio tomorrow for day tour.
Some pictures onto facebook I hope - learning that one.
Trivia: The "Castello Sforzesco" in the centre of Milan looks VERY similar to the Kremlin - no accident as the architect of the Kremlin actually copied it!
Ian's Cap count: still in tact but was returned by waiter from "Cafe Dante" as we were leaving without it!
Cheers all - hopefully some photos on facebook!
If 8 and a half hours in the plane sounded like a lot on Sunday - try 12 and a half from Hong Kong to Milan! HK airport never ceases to amaze with the immense size and numbers of people. We pre-booked the lounge at the airport as we had 6 hours stop-over so enjoyed a shower, beer, dinner etc for a few hours before the plane left at 1.00AM. I actually slept for 7 hours which was great but Elizabeth didn't do quite so well but not too bad. Knee and tooth OK!! 12.5 hours sitting is still a lot thus part of the summary above. Flying into Milan is one of the most beautiful sights when flying and it was further enhanced by clouds with the snow-covered Alps emerging above the cloud cover. Beautiful and spectacular.
The "walking" part of the above summary came next. Train easly caught from Malpensa into Milan (26 minutes) with "10 minute walk" to the Genius Hotel - except we had two incorrect directions from locals and spent an hour and a half with our luggage "exploring" bits of Milan we didn't really want to. Finally found/off-loaded lugggage and then (exhausted) set off for our usual "hop-on-hop-off" tour to get an overview of the place.
Impressions of Milan? - magnificent buildings and monuments and hopeless traffic. Growing on us. Didn't realise that the Monza GP was on this past weekend. Papers are full of it and apparently Ferrari didn't do so well - following appeared in local paper:
"Crisi Ferrari - Un disastro completo, inammisibile, delorosso" - get the picture??
The buildings are really beautiful - the Duomo quite magnificent and HUGE with beautiful parks and gardens everywhere. Going for the walking tour on Wednesday so will see more then.
Tonight lovely local cafe for fish/salad tea with local Chianti - beautiful./ Early night to get back into "equilibrium" - we hope. Off to Lake Como and Bellagio tomorrow for day tour.
Some pictures onto facebook I hope - learning that one.
Trivia: The "Castello Sforzesco" in the centre of Milan looks VERY similar to the Kremlin - no accident as the architect of the Kremlin actually copied it!
Ian's Cap count: still in tact but was returned by waiter from "Cafe Dante" as we were leaving without it!
Cheers all - hopefully some photos on facebook!
Sunday, 7 September 2014
2014-DAY 1
How do you make an 8.5 hour plane flight with a stopover in Cairns sound the least bit exciting? You can't really. very nice, comfortable flight though with Cathay - regular attention with food, drinks etc and saw a couple of good movies - I watched The railway man and The other woman - very different but enjoyable and Elizabeth watched the Pianist which apparently wasn't all that thrilling.
Started off early with taxi ride to the airport and after the usual "hanging around"time we left exactly on time. Got to Cairns where we had hoped to meet Elizabeth's sister Ruth but we weren't allowed out of the departure area so we spoke bby mobile phone looking through the duty-free window! Also spoke with Claire, Jessie and Tom as they were still asleep when we left this morning.
HK airport is as overwhelming as ever - we are in the "Plaza" lounge which is a good place to spend the 6 hour stopover - booked in for showers at 9.00 so should be refreshed for the long overnight haul to Milan - next blog will be from there tomorrow ight. Not much planned for there tomorrow as recovery will have priority.
No "Trivia" in this blog - will start that tomorrow. Another regular update this trip will be "Ian's cap status" as each trip includes rgular loss of caps and the need for replacements! Today's Status report- all in tact but almost lost one at the coffeee stop on the way down yesterday.
Cheers all - no facebook pictures yet - nothing to show as yet.
Started off early with taxi ride to the airport and after the usual "hanging around"time we left exactly on time. Got to Cairns where we had hoped to meet Elizabeth's sister Ruth but we weren't allowed out of the departure area so we spoke bby mobile phone looking through the duty-free window! Also spoke with Claire, Jessie and Tom as they were still asleep when we left this morning.
HK airport is as overwhelming as ever - we are in the "Plaza" lounge which is a good place to spend the 6 hour stopover - booked in for showers at 9.00 so should be refreshed for the long overnight haul to Milan - next blog will be from there tomorrow ight. Not much planned for there tomorrow as recovery will have priority.
No "Trivia" in this blog - will start that tomorrow. Another regular update this trip will be "Ian's cap status" as each trip includes rgular loss of caps and the need for replacements! Today's Status report- all in tact but almost lost one at the coffeee stop on the way down yesterday.
Cheers all - no facebook pictures yet - nothing to show as yet.
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