Our Mini-Alpine-Adventure

I'm going to try not to be too wordy because I have TONS of pictures to share. We just got back from our quick mini vacation to Berchtesgaden, Germany. It's a little town in Bavaria, just minutes from the Austrian boarder, nestled in the Alpine Mountains. A beautiful place!! My pictures do not do it any justice at all!

We stayed here, it was a nice hotel, there were some quirky things about it that I wont bother going into now, but it gave us a place to stay and they had a real good breakfast in the morning. :)



Elizabeth ended up getting a pretty bad cold on our way down to the mountains and that night she got a temperature of almost 104. The next day, she seemed to be feeling better: no temp, better mood, still runny nose. So we decided to take it easy and just do a few things around the town.





The town was adorable. All of the houses were something out of a picture book. It's like they had a local law that everyone had to have flowers in their windowsills. haha!







The houses that didnt have flowers had elaborate paintings framing their windows. It was really neat.



This building here in particular has a painting with the dates from World War 1 and 2 and underneath, inside the archways, there is a memorial with a list of names.



OH! This picture here was taken because we thought it was pretty funny. I'm not going to tell you what it was that had the boys giggling. You might have to click on it to make it larger to be able to see it, but take a look!



We found some fun little "ride-ons"for the boys during our walk. This scoop truck thing was a blast!



Then we found a nice area called the "Sonnenpromenade" on the side of a hill so we enjoyed some ice cream with a great view of the town.





On day 2 of our trip we went up to Kelsteinhaus (The Eagle's Nest). This was a house built for Hitler and where he would have meetings with heads of states and such. The bus ride was a nail biter though! They require you to park and take a special bus up the mountain because the road is so windy and very narrow. There were quite a few times I just had to close my eyes!





The bus dropped us off here. Then we had to walk through this big tunnel to take a brass elevator up through the heart of the mountain into the house. For some reason, this reminded me a lot of Willy Wonka's Elevator... dont ask...



The view up there was spectacular though! I tried to take a panoramic picture (and piece all the pictures together). I'm not sure if it will work and you'll DEFINITELY have to click on this one to make it larger. I'll put the panoramic picture here on the bottom so you can view that last.



It was a bit chilly up there and a lot of clouds but worth the trip.



This cross here is the top of this mountain and looking down on the Kelsteinhaus.



This is the view from that cross:



We went inside the house, which is now a restaurant, and had a nice lunch infront of the fireplace (which was not on) haha!



Then we made our way back down the mountain and went over to Lake Königsee. If you are a Sound of Music fan (as I am), this lake is featured in the beginning credits as the camera is flying over. This is the big lake with a tiny red topped church on the shore. Unfortunately this is the only "Sound of Music" site I got to see this trip, but we'll be going back to Salzburg another time, I'm sure of it.

This is a quick picture of the Waltzmann - the giant mountain that oversee's this area. Apparently a popular skiing spot as well. I managed to catch it when the clouds parted for a split second, you still cant see the top of it in this photo though.



You can take a cable car up to the top of that one but with the weather going downhill we took a, what we thought would be quick but really was long, boat ride on the lake. The tour guide only spoke in German so we didnt get to understand most of what he was saying but at one point they stopped the boat and played a trumpet so we could hear the beautiful echo through the mountains. NEAT!



Oh! I'm proud of this picture here: This is the St. Bartholomä - the red topped church on the shore of the lake. The weather was not cooperating for good pictures, but this one turned out!



After that, we headed back to the hotel to end our day and get ready to leave. It was a quick but fun trip!



Here is the promised panorama from the Eagle's Nest - it's not perfect but gives you a nice idea :)

Click on it!