Pictures are up - you can click on them to make them bigger :)
We spent our last day in Munich touring the Residenz here. It was the huge amazing palace the rulers used to stay in (life was goo...they also had a giagantic summer home 3 miles away we
didn't get to see). We took the tour and got to see 90 of the 130 room that have been restored so far - almost 100% of the place was LEVELED in WWII.The rooms they have restored were pretty fantastic, and they
saved a lot of the original artwork and wall hangings by removing them from the Residenz before the bombing started so some of the roms are supposed to be close to how they looked in the 17th and 18th centuries. Anyway the place was awesome, and we were pretty bummed when we thought about how much history, culture, and life was lost 
in the war.After the tour we had yet another fantastic Bavarian meal. After a beer and a lot of different meats, we were exhausted. We took a nap and rested up for the night....we had plans to do a "Beer Crawl" - its an organized tour of the Beer gardens and pubs near our hostel. It started raining after our little nap, so we weren't sure that the tour would go on. We were quickly reassured that rain, hail or shine, the tour goes on!
We had a pretty good time, and saw 2 new beer gardens and had a couple more great beers. I had a "Radler" - its 1\2 beer and 1\2 leomonade, and it was great!
We woke up early and had to say goodbye to Munich, and got onto our
FIRST CLASS train :) We had our own little compartment for the first half of the ride, and it was fun. The scenery was of course spectacular, and the train slid by so many adorable little Bavarian villages!We switched trains, and eventually got to Interlaken. I LOVE
SWITZERLAND! Like last time I was here, I am in awe of these mountains. Interlaken sits between two huge alpine lakes in a beautiful green valley. Every house has shutters and window boxes full of flowers on every window. Its adorable!We found our hostel - we were staying in Switzerland's oldest hostel....Balmer's Herbage. Its huge!! We were only there for a nigh
t, so we threw down our stuff ran to the grocery store and had a picnic on the river between the two lakes outside of town.We went to bed early, because today we woke up to go canyoning! I heard it was "like white
water rafting without the raft" and that was pretty true. We got all dressed up in a super thick wetsuit, put on a helmet, threw on some booties, and hiked up a canyon with a river running through it.They were smart enough not to let us get acclimated to the water, and basically made us jump off a cliff into a rapid into the FREEZING wa
ter! Taylor was the first one to jump in the group :) We slid down rocks, rappelled down cliffs, swang around boulders, and jumped over waterfalls. It was so much fun!After the adventure, we rode the train, bus and cable car up to Gimmelwald...but people are waiting for the computer, so I'll tell
you all about it tomorrow!Enjoy the pictures,
Kristyn
Those mountains really do look amazing!
ReplyDeleteNo negative comments on beer at every meal from me. Except for the radler. I've had the same thing here called a shandy and I thought it was pretty nasty. Is that the Lowenbrau lion?
ReplyDeleteCanyoning sounds pretty sweet. Your castle pictures are beautiful. I'll tell Janice to take a look to see if they are the same ones she was at in 2000.
Safe travels