Bavaria

20-21 May 2017

We drove from Munich, after picking up our next rental car (an Opel, not the Fiat 500 again), to Peißenberg (pronounced Pie-Sen-Boorg), a small town in the middle of the Bavarian region.

We stayed here two nights in an apartment where we felt very much at home.  The Bavarian version of a pot belly stove was an especially nice touch.  The host and her husband lived just upstairs and provided fresh breads both mornings, as well as did our laundry.

A Bavarian church and monastery.  Very scenic surroundings.  Paved bicycle trails going everywhere.

Another church in Bavaria.  See the Alps in the background.

"Neuschwanstein Castle is a nineteenth-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was built by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Great Escape and served as the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle."

Ludwig's hunting castle nearby.

The city of Füssen, and St Mang's Basilica and former monastery.  We took a long walking tour winding all around the city.  A town of 15,000, small, friendly and quiet, not a tour bus in sight.

To the left a senior living home with an attached cool old church - see the walkway over to it.

"Welcome to Tirol Resort Region of Reutte" or something to that effect - we enter Austria for the first time.  This arched bridge allows wildlife to move safely across the roadway (fences encourage them to use it). 

What 300 feet of free space looks like below your feet, as viewed through the bottom of a 1300 foot suspension bridge.

Yes, it swayed a bit.  But what a view from the middle - cheaper than a helicopter.

That drooping ribbon of the steel to the left is the suspension bridge - a world's record for pedestrian suspension bridges.  We parked in the valley pass below it, walked up the far side, crossed the bridge, then recrossed it to check out the fortress ruins.

Gliders zooming over our heads, this one skywriting in the background (okay not really, just a coincidental jet trail in its background).

Two forms of solar power, fields of gold and green, and cells creating electrical power at a lumberyard.

Another Bavarian maypole telling this town's story to us as we head "home" for the night.