June 21 - 22, 2010

June 21

Today was to be a beauty-drenched sojourn down what is reputed to be Germany's premier scenic drive, the Romantic Road, which stretches from just north of Rothenberg to the Austria border. But it was a disappointment, with just one interesting town (Dinkelsbuhl) and rolling hills that were nice, but nothing to write home about (so here I am writing home about them...).

We did see some noteworthy things -- Germany has hundreds of miles of terrific paved bicycle paths that frequently parallel the highways, but so far we've only seen one bike rider on them (maybe two weeks of rain has sent the bikers under cover). The other interesting thing is the number of solar installations on homes. In some communities, a large percentage of homes have solar panels on the roof. We also saw some huge solar farms today == very impressive. It's clear that Germany is way ahead of the U.S. on solar energy.

Tonight we're staying in a beautiful guest house in Austria, just south of the German border. It's actually a working farm with a bunch of horses just outside our window (which looks up into some incredible snow-covered mountains. The hostess tells us the weather forecast is for good weather (for a change) so we're excited!


June 22 -- Happy 35th Anniversary to us!!!

Well, the weatherman lied -- it's another soggy day, but that's OK because today was castle day with visits to Hohenschwangau, which was "Mad" King Ludwig's childhood home, and Neuschwanstein, his fantasy castle built in the late 1800's. We were pleasantly surprised, finding both castles to be quite beautiful and his fantasy castle filled with interesting art and wood work. It's a good long walk up to the castle and the whole scene is a little UN, with people from all over (and lots of Americans).

Tomorrow it's off to the Innsbruck area.

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