Note: Please read the previous blogs to catch up on any of the adventures you may have missed!
Saturday, September 9th
So we woke up in our attic with the church bells chiming and headed down to breakfast (bread, jams and coffee) and then caught a tram to the train station. At the train station we got tickets to Alpnachstad, a small village up the road where we would then catch a cog railway up to the top of Mt. Pilatus.
Mt. Pilatus is 7000+ feet up….not too shabby! The cog railway is the steepest cog rail in the world, with more or less a 40% grade the whole way, and it took 40 minutes to reach the top. On the way up, you could not only get a great view of the beautiful countryside, but you could see cows (with the big cow bells on!) and a few random goats just hanging out. I’m kind of surprised they can walk okay. It was really steep!
When we finally reached the top, we had an awesome view of just mountains and towns and lakes (oh my!). It was beautiful and breathtaking. There was a vendor selling snack foods (including brats!), a hotel and restaurant at the top as well. After snapping some pics, we had some hot chocolate, a brat (probably the best one on the whole trip) and some other snacks.
We were a little surprised to see that people were hiking up this mountain like it was the easiest thing they have ever done. People of all ages too! From our view, you could see just little bodies scattered over the mountains crossing over the paths. It was a pretty cool sight.
Once we got to the bottom and back to our hotel, it was close to 3pm. We headed out because we had about a 4 hour drive to Fussen, Germany, and then on to Munich. Sadly, we were done with Switzerland…..
So onward we went, taking in the last few sights of Switzerland, passing into Austria and finally into Germany and toward Fussen. Fussen is known for 2 castles, one of which (the Neuschwanstein) happens to be the one that the Disney World Castle is modeled after. The drive there was awesome with the rolling hills and greenery all around.
We were getting close and then, the unthinkable happened: the B309 turned into the B310 and I missed my turn. Long story short, we went about an hour out of the way. Ugh! Ag and Andrea were fine in the back because we were passing through some really quaint and cute looking ski towns…they loved the sights. Glad they were having fun, because I was kind of stressin'!
Finally we figured out our route and ended up passing through some other awesome mini-towns/villages. We were temped to stop at a few beer gardens on the way but opted not to since it was going on 7pm or so and we still had to get to Munich.
We got to see the castle and of course, everything closed at 5pm. Basically, you had to park your car and then either take a bus up or walk (30-45 minutes) up to the main castle entrance. Our goal was to really just see it and we did…two minutes and it was “Okay, that was great…now everybody back into the car!!” Please let me explain.
So honestly, the castle was really sweet. But I lost interest (and my cool) after talking with our hotel in Munich. Since we were running later than expected, Ag suggested I call the hotel just to let them know we would be there around 9 or 10pm. I place the call and get through to the hotel and was surprised to hear “I have no reservation for you” coming from the girl on the other end. Funny, I was holding the confirmation and such in my hand. WHAT??!
As soon as I heard that, I was on a mission to get to the hotel and thank goodness we found it without any problems. Now it was around 9pm. They only had 1 double room (not 2) left and the girl could not explain why they did not have our reservation. But, she was nice enough to call another hotel up the street and figure out that they had 2 rooms available for us to use. However, one room wasn’t ready yet…we’d have to wait about 45 minutes.
We left and went to the other hotel (Hotel Prinz) to be sure it was okay, and it turned out to be sweet set up. Woo-hoo!! There was also a brew hall right up the street, the Paulaner Haus (Paulaner just so happens to be one of my favorites!), so while the room was being cleaned, we grabbed some dinner and beers. In the words of the great Homer Simpson, “MMMM….beeeeeerrrrr.”
When we got back to the room around 11:30pm, we all fell right into a deep sleep and didn’t wake up till the church bells were chiming the next morn’.
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