Sunday morning we rose bright and early, ate an excellent breakfast at the hotel (typical German breakfast is amazing bread, cold cuts, chesses, yogurt, granola, eggs,) and headed to Austria. We drive along the Rhine River for the first part of our drive and passed several more castles, but decided against stopped to tour them because of Isaiah’s napping. The drive to Austria was a long stretch (4 hrs), but the drive was incredible! Once we hit the mountains, I was in awe- Ben had to pick my jaw up off the floor. It was a cloudy day, but that just added to the majesty of it all. Huge peaks, shrouded mysteriously in clouds moments before, would leap into our view as the sun broke through. Ben got pretty sick of the whoosh of air that happened every time I rolled down the window to take a picture. We arrived at our hotel in Ruette, Austria a little after 2pm, but our hotel was completely dark and locked. We waited around for a bit, but no one seemed to be coming, so we decided to continue with our activities and head back to the hotel later. So, off we went to find the Ehrenberg ruins. In Rick Steves words, “If Neuschwanstein was the medieval castle dream, Ehrenberg is the medieval castle reality” i.e. ruins. The cluster of 4 castles once made up the largest fort in Tirol (the part of Austria that we visited). They were built in the 13th century to defend against the Bavarians and to serve as a toll way to the strategic Via Claudia trade route, which cut through the Alps connecting Italy and Germany. We visited two of the four parts- the fortified Klause toll booth on the valley floor and the oldest castle, Ehrenberg. As mentioned before, visiting any castle requires at least a 25-30 minute hike uphill, so we hoisted Isaiah into his traveling backpack and off we went…in the wrong direction…twice. When we finally found the path, which was as well marked as the tourist landmark signs in downtown Brussels, we stepped into the world of fairies, dragons, kings, queens, Gandalf and Frodo. We managed the climb through the woods in 25 minutes, 5 minutes short of the sign-posted arrival time and patted ourselves on the back for a job well done. The panorama from the castle was incredible, absolutely incredible; it was cloudy and dreary and it was still breath-taking. The majestic peaks met the green, lush valley floor, where a steeple and a smattering of red tile houses lay. I could have stayed up on that mountain top just taking in the view for hours; it was surreal. The picturs we took can’t really do the view justice- I guess you will all just have to visit Bavaria see for yourselves one day!
We headed back to our hotel, which has been run by the same family for ages, which explained why everything was locked up when we arrived…probably ran to the store for milk! Our room was HUGE- the only downside was the presence of a very scary photo of a person wearing a white carnival mask. Fortunately it wasn’t glued to the wall and I made Ben take it down every night before we went to bed.
Playing on the slide at our lunch break. Germany is great- rest stops with restaurants, play areas and super clean bathrooms every few kilometers...it almost felt like the US!
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