Bass Family Blog

Today we visited the Alps! Whoa it was beautiful! Kevin & Katja found us a nice compromise of hiking with a view and ease for a slow pregnant lady. We visited Wendelstein, riding up in a Cog-wheel train.

The train takes you close to the top, where they have a restaurant, small church (which had just held services 40 minutes before we arrived), and look out point.

(above: church
below: lookout)

Then through a series of steep switchbacks, we hiked to the summit

On the hike back down, we saw lovely alpine flowers and caught a view of the train we had ridden up on.

We also explored a cave at the top of the mountain!

We then had lunch on the patio, overlooking the mountains- GORGEOUS!

And that was only Part 1 of our day.
Kevin & Katja then took us to Chiemsee, a lovely lake where we took a ferry to an island (Herren Insel), where one of crazy Ludwig II's castles can be toured.

The castle was designed to be bigger and better than Versailles, which we visited when we were in Europe in 2008 so it was interesting to compare.

Fountains copied from Spain

You couldn't take photos in the castle, but really it was just full of gaudy gold leaf, rich fabrics, excess, and even had a hall of mirrors.
After our tour, we took the ferry back- what a full day of fun!

We ended with a typical Bavarian meal in the garden of a restaurant down the street from K&K. The food was delicious!

Dessert!

What a jam-packed day of adventure! We are still feeling a little jet-lagged and have been surprised by our stamina! Luckily tomorrow we will take a more relaxed approach before we pack up and head for Italia on Monday!