Germany & Austria

Snow we wanted and snow we got!

Although I must let you know for 4 weeks we had perfect weather. The sun shone 99% of the time. I'm pretty sure Ceal was pulling alot of strings.

But back to the travels.

We had a couple of days in Munich before heading off down to Graseck. The first afternoon there we all split up as Kell, Cait and I were not up for a trip to Dachau.
The girls and I took a small map with us, got lost and managed to see so much!
That night we headed off to a geniune beer house, ate alot of pork, drank alot of beer & schnapps! We had to leave because we couldn't cope with the smoky atmosphere - my how we have changed! We all had a ball and some of us woke up with a more severe headache than others!
The next morning Christopher took charge of the hired car and we headed off down to Garmisch.
We stopped at Ludwig's castle - once again beautiful blue skies, gorgeous white snow and the most stunning views. We arrived in Garmisch later that evening, tired and ready for food! The hotel that Graham had booked us in was very quaint - the only access was in a small rickety cable car!!!!

We had a few days there but no rest for the wicked. The next day we hopped back into the car and drove to Salzburg to go on a pre booked "Sound of Music Tour"! We all loved Salzburg and we saw some beautiful sights, although perhaps a more "historical" tour would have been more informative! But it was once again a beautiful day and we saw some very very beautiful sights.
The tour ended in a little village called Mondsee, the church that features in the Sound of Music is in this village. We managed to light a candle for Mum as it was her birthday.
We arrived back at our hotel much later that night and did not want to even think about travelling anywhere! We had a day off where we literally did nothing!

Garmisch held the winter olympics in 1936! A very beautiful town with some serious ski fields. Needless to say we didn't ski at all! But we did stroll around the town and on our last day (thank goodness Graham & Chris convinced us) we walked through a magnificent frozen gorge from the hotel down to the car park. All in all a very memorable time.

Then onto the last leg of our holiday - Off to Venice!!!