Road Trip through Bavaria & Austria

We just returned from a week-long, family road trip through Bavaria and Austria with my mother, centering on the German towns of Fussen and Berchtesgaden and the Austrian city of Salzburg. The boys were (mostly) wonderful and it was my mother's first time back on German soil since my father was stationed there in the Army back in the early 1970's.

We all had an outstanding time, including among many other things a couple underground wood-rail slides in a salt mine that required leather pads to keep our pants from heating up and an outdoor, dry, toboggan run. We took in spectacular castles, churches, and fortresses at each destination plus all the breath-taking views you could ask for. The weather could not have been any better were made-to-order. Our traditional meals were outstanding and we washed them down with very tasty local beers and mediocre local wines (the climate in Germany and Austria isn't fit for good wine).

I may write more later, but in the mean time here is the obligatory photo of King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein ("New Swan Stone") Castle in the Bavarian countryside. It was intended to honor the great operas of Wagner, whom even non-opera fans will recognize from his Hallelujah Chorus and Ride of the Valkyries, which was perhaps most famously sung by Elmer Fudd.

If the castle looks familiar, this is the castle that inspired Walt Disney to design the Sleepy Beauty Castle as the centerpiece of Disneyland. In case you are wondering, we did not cut and paste that photo from the internet. We saw it with our own eyes and took it with our own camera.