More Stories from Germany

Please forgive the delay in posting. We had a busy weekend, got Cindy off to Nice for work again, and dealt with our first illness.

Sunday early evening we headed to dinner prior to dropping Cindy off at the airport. She is in Nice until Wednesday evening working hard. Sunday I was feeling like I was coming down with something. Not too bad, just weak, tired and a little tingly. Not the good tingly, the one you get when a fever is coming on. Got to bed early and got up the next morning not feeling much better. Katherine got her usual cereal but only ate a few bites and started complaining it was soggy. Eventually we got out the door and the kids to school. When I returned I was wiped out from the morning activity. I spent most of the day resting or asleep. This turned out to be a problem. See, Katherine tossed her cookies early that morning at school. The school at this point only had Cindy's "handy" (cell phone) number which does not work in Nice, unless you pay high roaming charges. The school finally decided to email us both that afternoon. I only got the message a few minutes before I would normally leave to get them. So yes, Katherine spent almost the entire day in the nurse's office. She also had a visit from her brother. He decided to trip over that rope course thing previously pictured and drove a sharp rock into his skin at around his knee. Both kids at the nurse and they cannot get in touch with Mommy or Daddy. Nice.

I took the lecture from the nurse in stride. She had to tell me they already had to have an ambulance come to the school twice this year, and it would not be good if that had happened to us and they could not reach us. Yeah, yeah, whatever. I am more worried now wondering why ambulances are needed two weeks into school. What is going on around here?

KatieBeth got sick at home later Monday evening after having some crackers. Later we tried some plain pasta, she ate a little, drank some water and went to bed. David's knee is not too bad. Tuesday we all got up. David got ready for school as he usually does. I am not sure if everyone is aware of David's attendance record for school. He is in the 5th grade now and he has NEVER been late or missed a day of school yet. We keep telling him he is going to get sick eventually and have to miss, but so far his record is intact. Katherine is not going for this record. She was working over Daddy this morning to stay home. She has been fine today, although this morning I was not 100% sure she was back to normal.

It has been a pretty good day with my girl so far. We had a cleaning person scheduled to come to our temporary apartment to clean this morning. When we got back from school, sure enough he was here, and he was parked in my spot. There is no other close place to park so I drove to the post office where I had an Amazon package waiting to be picked up. I guess DHL and the German postal service are the same or related in some way. I stood in line, handed the notice to the lady working and she pulled the package for me. This post office is right next to the train station and next to a McDonald's. I was pretty sure Katherine was okay after she had cereal this morning and then put down a McNugget meal at 10am. We came back to make a pit stop, the cleaning person was still here so I parked in the place next to mine which has not been used since we have been here. Katherine and I spent the next couple of hours walking around the neighborhood. We walked into a few shops and bread places seeing what they had. By the time we got back the cleaning person was wrapping up. It was a nice morning of strolling along with no agenda with really great weather. We are not going to tell David that he missed the McDonald's trip.

So lets rewind a little to last Saturday. With our new castle pass burning a hole in my pocket I found a place about 90 minutes drive away from Freising. It is a lake that is southeast of Munich known as Lake Chiemsee. This lake is nestled in far south Germany at the foothills of the Alps. We decided to take the road less traveled instead of the autobahn. This was the same stretch of autobahn that we saw on the way back from Nice. There was an alternate route that took us through some small towns. Cindy and I really enjoyed this drive. Below is the only picture that was worth posting.

 Once we arrived in the area we had to park and take a ferry to get to the island. The palace is built on a large island in the middle of this lake. There are a couple of other smaller islands. One looks uninhabited and the other looks overrun with people. The larger island with the palace just has the palace grounds, a large hotel, and open land with some horse and cattle.

 The ferry system here was pretty good. We bought our ticket and got right on a boat. Ten minutes later it was in route.

 These two pics above show the overrun island. To my surprise more than half of the people on our boat got off at this stop. We sat there hoping that the boat would continue on to the island where we wanted to go. It soon got underway again and headed towards our island. We have this public transit thing figured out. Just get on a train or bus or ferry and you will end up at your destination eventually. We have been really lucky so far.

This was the island we were headed to. This is the large hotel and restaurant located where the boats drop off. The mountains in the background were beautiful. We got off of the boat and found our way to what appeared to be a ticket booth. I gave the lady our annual pass and she handed over four tickets to the guided tour starting in 20 minutes. We needed to take a quick hike along the tree lined path to get to the palace for our tour.

This really was a fun journey getting to this place. A 90 minute very enjoyable drive, followed by a 20 minute boat ride, followed by a 15 minute walk.

When we emerged from the trees there it was. 

This palace is known as Herrenchiemsee New Palace. It was the last palace the Ludwig II built during his reign. He ran out of money and died before it was completed. He had some sort of man crush on Louis XIV of France known as the Sun King. This palace was built to copy the Versailles Palace as a tribute to the sun king.

This is standing at the entrance of the palace looking out towards the lake. There is a clear shot all the way to it. The grounds between the lake and the palace are all landscaped and well cared for.

Our tour was for the inside of the palace. Nobody ever told us the significance of the water fountain monuments. Unfortunately they did not allow cameras inside the palace. It was stunning how much money was spent to finish out each of these rooms. The main entrance was a marble staircase that was wide in the middle and split going east and west. The walls were made to look like colored marble but were what was described as a more expensive plaster made to look like it. One thing I enjoyed about this location was that the war did not impact this site. Almost everything there was original, even if it is only 115 years or so old. Plenty of gold everywhere. These chandeliers had hundreds of candles. The hall of mirrors is a long room that runs the entire length of the front of the castle. The guide told us it took 40 servants about 40 minutes just to light all of the candles in that one room.

I lifted these pics off of the Internet. 

There were some really cool pieces of furniture and decor to look at. They talked about the secret passages the king had access to from his private bedroom. Most of the chandeliers were what you might call typical except for one in the main dining hall. I don't even know how to describe it. It is the largest porcelain chandelier in the world made of Meissen Porcelain. It was also referred to as the most expensive piece in the place. Below it was the dining table that actually lowered into the room beow to be set, then raised back up. The royal bath was a bath the size of a large living room. So only about 20 rooms were ever finished. It was interesting to see the unfinished parts. I was blown away when I saw this plain brick constructed rooms. It is hard to imagine they took those rooms and made them into the finished product that we saw. No wonder it took decades to finish these places. 

We had a good lunch and saw a few more things on the island. We decided to head back towards the boat and make our journey back home.

 It was a good thing that we did. Right after we got in line for the next boat, the people started coming in droves. This was the dock at the place where we got back off. Once again we had no problem getting on and finding our way back to our destination. But soon after we secured our seat it seemed like everyone else was headed somewhere too. I was very surprised to see how many people were around this lake.

Once we got back on the main land near our car we found a boat rental place. The kids had been asking to paddle boat around the lake. The best news of the day was that the paddle boats were already rented. We ended up getting a little electric boat that was perfect for the four of us. We trolled around in the boat for a while, until the kids were bored, then headed back. We had a great day.

For now we are waiting for Cindy to come back home. Saturday is our big all day tour of the first castle that Ludwig II built, that is finished. Everyone take care and we will talk again soon.