Europe Adventure: Day Twenty-three, part two- Oberammergau

After leaving the castle we drove to Oberammergau. 

As we were leaving the castle area I had to pull over and get some more pictures of the area. It was just too beautiful. 

 

My mom took more pictures as we drove...

Oberammergau is a fantastic little town full of shops and beautiful buildings. 

We were heading to the Kathe Wohlfahrt store.

It is basically where all your Christmas decor dreams come true. 

We shopped for quite a while and bought a lot of things and then explored the village some more. 

Then we decided to get back to our hotel. 

The roads were amazing in Germany- so easy to navigate. And the tunnels were so cool. They had these huge fans in them that kept air flow going through. 

The welcome to Austria sign...

I think some of the above pictures were taken in the morning when we left but they were out of order so I am just leaving them as is. 

It was still afternoon when we got back to our hotel. 

We hadn't eaten lunch yet so we picked up some food in our hotel and took it back to our room.

They were sandwiches in pretzel type bread. 

We spent the afternoon packing up all of our stuff for the return trip to the US. 

At dinner time we ate in our hotel restaurant again.

Then we finished packing and just hung out. 

Europe Adventure: Day Twenty Two- The Black Forest, Triberg, and driving to our next hotel

Tuesday, April 26, 2016 we woke up and enjoyed a nice, free breakfast in our hotel's restaurant. 

Then we checked out. We drove through the snow and unbelievably beautiful scenery of the Black Forest. 

Our next destination was the small town of Triberg, famous for their cuckoo clocks. 

In our opinion Triberg ended up being a bit overrated. 

We walked up and down the main hill trying to find a place to try Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte-

 Black Forest cake. However even though I had checked hours in advance, the cafe wasn't open for us to have any. The scenery was beautiful of course. I knew it would be a touristy town but it turned out feeling a lot more touristy than I thought it would.

So we just walked around until the Cuckoo Clock shop opened. 

We didn't find anything we really wanted in there. They had a lot of amazing clocks but they were quite expensive and not exactly what we were looking for. 

I hoped they would have a lot of other little things but they had a lot of random things that didn't interest me. 

We left and walked up to the waterfalls.

Then we got back in the car and began our drive to where we would be staying in Bavaria- Garmisch Partenkirchen. 

The drive was amazing. 

We were hungry and needed some restrooms. Luckily we found a gas station/rest stop. 

We went in and were happy to find it very well equipped with shops, restrooms, and a cafe. 

I bought some candy to take home to the girls and then we bought some pretzels and pastries for our lunch. 

They were delicious!

Then we continued our drive into the Bavarian Alps.

It was so beautiful. 

I had to keep pulling over to take pictures and look at everything. 

This was my little car. 

We spotted these castle ruins up on a hill and had to stop to take some pictures of it. Then I had to just take pictures of everything around me in all directions because it was so pretty. 

We drove around the corner and saw this huge walking suspended bridge going across the road and a ravine. There were some people up on it. I am assuming it takes you closer to the castle ruins. 

We pulled over again on the other side of the hill so I could look back and get a picture of it. 

Funny and gross story: After I got back in the car I smelled a very foul stench. I looked at my mom and said, "Did you poop?" That just made us both laugh so hard because it was such a ridiculous question as if 1) she would have and 2) she would be sitting there calmly if she had. 

Turned out I had stepped in something while taking these pictures and had it on my shoe.

At this point we were just in awe of the beauty as we were driving. We kept going back and forth between Germany and Austria without changing roads. 

Soon we were in our little town. 

Then we found our hotel for the next couple of nights... our last European hotel before going home. 

We would be staying in the Edelweiss Lodge. 

This is a military lodge so we were able to stay here because of my dad being retired Navy. 

It is in the most beautiful setting and it was a gorgeous hotel. 

The hotel was so nice and the room was big with two queen beds. Very comfortable. 

After settling in we went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner. 

It was a buffet and they have a different theme each night. 

This night was "Mediterranean" night. We enjoyed soup, spaghetti, salad, and bread sticks along with some dessert. 

It was really good. 

After dinner we went back to our room, relaxed, and watched Doctor Who. 

Doug text me this picture of Maddy showing where her very first tooth fell out during school.