Chiemsee Palace

On our way home from Bavaria, I begged my family to stop off at Cheimsee so that I could see yet another one of Ludwig's Palaces.  Remember that he is the one that tried to build the Neuschwanstein (Cinderella) Palace.  I believe this last one completes the set.  This particular one, Herrenchiemsee Abby, is patterned after the Versailles Palace in Paris that was done by Louis XIV.  Apparently Ludwig had a fascination/scary stalker issue with the Sun God and Louis.  The palace is so amazing on the inside and I highly recommend it if you are in the area.

Now back to the begging part.  It was not a good weather day, rainy and cold.  They type of day you want to stay in your car instead of climbing aboard a boat to go to an island where there is not transportation and you have to walk everywhere (it is not a big island).  But because my family loves me, and Chiemsee has been on my list since we got here (have. to. check. off. those. checks.) they gave in and we went.  My girls are really good at stomping their feet all the way to the dock. Just for the record, it did stop raining once we were on the boat.

The coolest part about the whole experience was that we got to use our fabulous rain boots! Sweet! Stylish!  They even make 2 stomping girls look good.  Mark can't even be contained in the photo because of his lack of rain boots.  I could now say it was worth the space they took up the whole entire week when we didn't even need them.

You know what that lady is thinking right?  "Oh brother, just another one of those silly American men who giggle whenever they see my fabulous form"  You can just hear her right?  I mean look at the way her right hand is just trying to shoo him away.  Silly boy.

There were two fountains outside the palace that were pretty impressive and had a lot going on.  Lot's of stories.  But my favorite one is the story of the fountain in the picture above of just Bailey and I.  I don't remember details and am too lazy (or as McKenna would say "lousy") to look it up.  Apparently the people cut off the goddesses water supply (seriously? you don't mess with Gods let alone their Goddesses).  So she got mad and turned them into frogs.  The people around the outside of the fountain are right in the middle of changing.  McKenna was mesmerized by this and we had to look at each one and pick out what part was human, what part was frog.

Trick fountains in Salzburg

During our stay in Salzburg we took time one afternoon to visit the Hellbrunn Palace to see the trick gardens and the gazebo from The Sound Of Music.

The trick gardens were so fun, not just for the kids but for the adults as well.  They were established back in the 1600's by an archbishop who had a bit of humor and combined it with a side of practical joke.  As you walk through the garden you just never know what is going to happen.  Of course water will come at you but you don't know when or where it will happen.  Here the water is coming from the deer antlers!

Here we are in a little amphitheater facing the dinner tables.  Guests are invited to sit at the table but it is considered very rude if you rise before the head of the tables, which in most cases was the Archbishop with the humor/practical joke issues. The picture below shows what happen if you are seated at the table when the water works go.

Here are a couple more pictures from the gardens, we really enjoyed that tour!

Mark and the girls at the famous Sound of Music gazebo.

Trying hard to get a group shot.  McKenna!!

Awe, Bailey!!

McKenna!!

That's what I'm talking about!

Salzburg = random

I didn't even realize how random our Salzburg experience was until I got home and perused our pictures. I was also surprised to find that I didn't have a picture that included Grandma, but she was there! The first time we visited Salzburg we did the Sound of Music Tour and not much else could fit into our schedule. This time, we expanded!

First stop: Mozart Wohnhaus which is a museum in the house where Mozart lived and composed. The house has original pianos that he played on and you could hear his works during the whole tour. I really liked this museum. Our favorite part was at the end. There is a glass case containing volumes of his works, it stacks to the ceiling. It was so visually cool.

We also visited the Salzburg city graveyard. Interestingly enough, it is not the one they used in the Sound of Music movie, but the one they did use was patterned after this one. If you look into the mountain above the graveyard, you can see a panel with a window. These are Salzburg's catacombs. Except when you enter you climb up instead of climbing down like all the other catacombs I have read about. Random!
In this picture you can see the white castle on the hilltop.
More randomness, this is actually an art piece that is in the middle of the square by the cathedral. Don't really know what the point of it is, and couldn't find anything about it in our travel books. Just randomness, a guy on a ball.
Here is our random mime, levitating. . . so random!!

Part of our day was spent at the castle where we visited a random puppet museum (I'm going to be using the word random alot, just sayin). The girls got to work an actual puppet, and it took two to get all the limbs working.

Didn't really understand this random wall in the museum. Maybe they were putting on a puppet show for "Night of the Living Dead" or "Any Zombie B movie".

This picture of Bailey is taken from the castle, looking down on the city of Salzburg. It really is a beautiful city. Full of interesting, albeit random, things to see and do.

After stepping out of the puppet museum we ran into this . . . well, uhm . . . . princess? She looks like a princess but nobody else was with her and I really didn't understand the point. She wasn't even asking for euro. But the girls were thrilled to get a photo with her. We'll just call her "Random Princess".

Will you look at the size of these pretzels?? They looked so good, soft dough (a must for me), and every topping you could think of was offered. We randomly picked the chocolate one of course!



One of the best random things we ran into was this group of Russian musicians. I love the bass! It is so unique and I have never seen one shaped like that before. I included a video of them so that you can see how great they were.

Monkey Mountain - best rockin' day EVAH!

On our way home from the Black Forest we took a wide west detour through the Alsace region of France so that we could go to Monkey Mountain. Monkey Mountain is a bit like a zoo, but instead of looking at monkeys in cages, you get to go into the cage with the monkeys! So Cool!
When I told Mark about this, he was totally on board. His favorite zoo animal was always the monkeys. Monkey Mountain is actually a research center for this particular monkey who is now endangered. They are providing a safe controlled environment for monkeys to live and reproduce while researching their behavior. Then they send some of the population back to Africa. Makes me wonder if after arriving in Africa, the monkeys sit around waiting for popcorn to be handed out.
When you arrive at the Mountain, you enter into the "cage" with words of caution on how close to get, how to act, how to feed them. Then you are given a handful of popcorn and let loose!
Here is a momma monkey with her baby on the right. You can barely see the baby, she is cuddled into her mom's tummy, but her little black arm is reaching for food.
Mark and McKenna jumped in with both feet, could not wait to reach out to that monkey and give the popcorn. Bailey held back a bit, but then she realized how cool it was and soon her popcorn was gone.
We loved this experience! It was totally worth the detour and waiting out the rain that day. I mean, come on, look at this dude! Love that face! I mean the monkey, not my man. But I love his face too! Aack! I'm so torn . . .
Even Grandma got into it.

Rhinefalls Switzerland

On one of our days in the Black Forest, we took a detour and drove to Switzerland to see the Rhine Falls. It was rainy again that day, but we forged on and found out, we would have gotten wet anyway.
If you look closely at the next picture, you can see a rock formation in the middle of the falls.
You can take a boat ride that will drop you off at this rock, along with a million other people, so that you can squeeze your way up to the top. It is a great view, having the falls on all sides. Here is Mark with McKenna making their way up:
This was part of the views from the top of the rock:
We took 3 different boat rides, one to the rock, another to the opposite side of the river to tour the castle, and then the last ride was a look down the river away from the falls.
These are what the boats look like:
On a side note (and I hesitate to even mention it because it reveals how massively cheap I am), here was our lunch in Switzerland, 3 butter pretzels and 2 Diet Cokes. I even resorted to letting my children drink Diet Coke because I refused to buy water at the price of gold. Totally my bad, I left our food in the car thinking that this would be a 1/2 day experience instead of a full day. Wanna know how much that was? After exchanging first from euro into Swiss francs, then adjusting for the crappy US dollar to euro exchange rate, it came to a whopping $22. What the?! Switzerland will make your wallet bleed green! Is it because they are neutral that they get away with it?? I'll not be bitter.
Plus, I have never met more rude smokers in my life. Standing in line to buy food on the outside of the door, puffing away and blowing it INTO the store. Yep, that actually happened.

I enjoyed seeing the falls, but this was not my favorite day of travel. First, it was super expensive and second, my mom has seen Niagara Falls. Bit of a let down. I wouldn't recommend this unless you happen to be driving through on your way to something more grand. But then again, we were in Switzerland, it is not like I can complain about THAT!