Germany Day 7

Today the weather showed it was going to continue not to cooperate so I decided it would be a driving day. I ate breakfast fairly quickly and then headed out to the car. It fortunately still hadn't started raining and I managed to get a good morning of driving in with only a few sprinkles. I decided to drive out past Linderhof and south through Austria and past a town called Reutte. I did manage to stop and take some pictures of scenery on the way especially by the lake before Reutte. Truthfully that town didn't look very much to see and I just ended up passing through it. I was going to stop and get petrol but the station was too crowded so I opted to pass on through and got back on the roads to Fuessen.  When I pulled into Fuessen I figured I should stop and look around. It is a tourist town that is bigger than Schwangau so hosts a lot of the tourist traffic that stays for the Ludwig castles. They have their own small castle as well that I could see as I pulled into the parking lot.

So far the rain was staying light and I was able to get into town and walk around a little bit and then turned towards their main church and visited that. The main church is just below the castle which I think is referred to as the Auldstadt which means old town or at least that area is. I couldn't see an actual name for the castle. Like Ambras it has been emptied out and is now an art gallery. It was starting to rain a little bit so I figured it was a good idea to go in and check it out.  There were not a lot of pieces but some were interesting. Most of it was from the 1800s it appeared. The grounds appear to be from Medieval times but of course it was damaged and rebuilt a couple times. After I finished up the castle I got outside and the rain had picked up a bit so I hid under a tower for a little bit then decided to move on. I had to move in stages as the rain slowed up for a little bit here and there.

When I made it back down the hill I found the first restaurant I could reach which was the Ghasthaus vom Schwanen.  I mainly chose to eat there because of the rain and it was basically the first door I crossed. I could see a few people inside as well. They had Croatian specials as well as German food and I had their Grill Plate Schwanen which was a huge amount of food. It was a mixed grill including turkey, pork, pork sausage, beef, bacon, French fries and their special Croatian style rice. I accompanied with two small Koenig Ludwig Dunkels and then followed with a coffee to hopefully make the rains go away.  Unfortunately I got back outside and the rains had only increased in intensity.

I basically did some canopy dodging to make my way towards the car until I found a place selling umbrellas for a reasonable price and then bought one for less than 3 Euros. That allowed me to get to the car and pay the ticket out. 3 Euros there too. A lot less than Innsbruck anyway. With the rain showing no signs of let up I decided I would just set the GPS to the hotel and take my time getting back. I didn't manage to get stuck behind any tractors for significant amounts of time so it was generally a wet but pleasant drive. I got back around 3pm or so and Erich was in the lobby so we started talking a bit and eventually he told me about the wireless he has and where I can reach it in the restaurant so I ran upstairs and grabbed my laptop and set up the wireless. It is so much nicer to be live online and not have to deal with the QWERTZ keyboard and things in German though I figured out most of the German I needed for the computer.  Still I would have preferred to be out a bit longer and have seen more, especially of Fuessen but the weather was akin to the rains I had when I was on Gotland during my Sweden trip and I just didn't have the will to fight it. It probably didn't help that I had shorts and a polo shirt on with no jacket though I didn't feel it was cold. It just isn't great shielding from the wet. So I made it a lazy afternoon in the hotel until dinner time and caught up on some computer things I hadn't been doing when not using my own laptop. After that I took a short nap and listened to some music on my cell phone until about dinner time. Along the way Kate texted me to come visit her in Bonn for Saturday so I agreed to do that and then went down to have dinner.

They had moved us indoors rather than on the porch for the weather and it was perhaps a bit quieter in there. Juliano was downstairs for dinner too and since the indoor room was more spread out we opted to share a table instead of sit at our own. We chatted about the past couple days and what we were doing on the weekend and such while we ate. Sid came down a bit later and joined us and we talked about things for a while before heading off to bed for the evening. I had already figured out that the wireless does actually reach my room so I had set that to uploading my second day Luxembourg photos to see if the speed was reasonable and unfortunately it is not great so I will still have load the larger number of picture days when I get home I am sure, especially with heading to Bonn on Saturday.  Still, I will post a link to those pictures separately.