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Trip 2007: Munich – Around the Old Town

Jul 6th, 2008 by


Michaelskirche on Neuhauser Strasse



During our lunch on the third day, our last day in Munich, Vincent suggested him and Naomi to do some more city tour, as I continue visiting the art museum we were in. (So it took him 3 days to notice this light bulb…) Actually Vincent understands that I was determined to visit this art museum, but he also felt he had not spend enough time to get to know Munich, even though we had been crossing the city a few times, going to different attractions.

In the original plan, I did have reserve some more time for walking around the old town on the third day. But since we did not went to all the museums we planned for the second day, I thought I would rather to visit the museums than touring the city. So we agreed to meet up in the Old Town around 6pm. So for that afternoon, Vincent and Naomi spent some time visiting the Englischer Garten (or the English Garden.) It’s a nice big park with some interesting landmarks (one of the more famous is the Chinese Tower.) They also visited a couple churches, and climbed the St. Peter’s Tower. (They got some nice shots of Old Town Munich from above.)

As for me, it turned out that I needed only an hour and half to finish my visit of the art museum. So I did a little bit of city walk myself. I walked by a major shopping area, pedestrian-only street called Neuhauser Strasse. Walking toward the Hofgarten (Court Garden), I passed by a few big churches and squares, so I think I did get a good sense of Munich. I do think that we could use another day in Munich. In the end, I guess Munich has exceeded our expectation.

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Trip 2007: Germany – Bavarian King’s Castles

Jul 5th, 2008 by


View of Neuschwanstein Castle from Mary's Bridge



One of our most anticipated attractions on this trip, our plan was to visit the castles on the 4th day, first thing after we departed Munich. That day when we checked out of our Munich hotel, we got ourselves a rental car from Avis. Both the hotel and car rental place are in the suburb of Munich, but not exactly close to each other. Because it was Sunday, not many places open, and even the one we visited opens for a few hours in the morning only. (Actually most people were there to return cars.) When we got the car, I was a little disappointed. First it was a Kia (I was hoping for a German car), and second it was automatic transmission. They probably figure they are doing us Canadians favor, giving us automatics. Oh well, at least the car was quite new.

It was about two hours driving from our hotel to get to the castle area. We actually stopped by the town Fussen nearby, to check in hotel and left our luggages there. We were right on schedule, which is good because we have booked tickets in advanced, with time of visited arranged. In fact because I put in buffer time just in case, we were actually early, so we had a bit of time to walk around before we visited the castles.

Weather weren’t promising, from the time we left Munich till we got to the castles, there were drizzle on and off. Then when it was time to visit the first castle, the older Schloss Hohenschwangau, sky cleared up a little, but it was still hard to see the other castle (which is the bigger draw.) The tour for the old castle was quite good, the guide gave us plenty of stories and background about the castles and the royal family. He also mentioned a couple times that the King who built the other castle monitor the progress of it being built from this old castle, but at that time, we could barely see it with some clouds and fog surrounding it. But as we finished our tour and stepped out of the old castle, sun actually broke in.

By the time it was for us to go up the other castle, Schloss Neuschwanstein, weather was perfect. This castle looks like the castle of the Disney logo; it should be noted that this castle came before the existence of Disney. A shuttle ride took us to a spot just a little above the castle. From there, we walked a little bit and reached a bridge that gives the amazing view of the castle. In my mind, we didn’t need to see the inside after viewing the castle from the bridge; not that the rooms inside weren’t any good, actually the throne room was quite nice. Instead of taking another shuttle back down to the parking lot, we walked down and saw some more nice view of the castle, with trees and leaves turning as well. I’m sure all of us thought that was a very good day.

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Trip 2007: Fussen in Germany and Innsbruck in Austria

Jul 3rd, 2008 by


Innsbruck



The last place we stayed in Germany is in the town of Fussen, just across from the famous Bavarian castles we just visited. In fact, we checked into our hotel in Fuseen before we went to see the castles. Fussen is also just 5km from the Austrian border, so it allows us to have a quick visit in Innsbruck, our first stop in Austria, the next morning.

Our hotel in general was pretty good, although some of the furnishings was a little old, but at least bathroom was newly installed. The restaurant where they serve breakfast was quite nice as well, but for dinner we went to a pretty good restaurant nearby, as recommended by a book. After dinner we did a little bit of walking around the hotel area. And that’s all we saw in Fussen.

Then the next day we started driving early to go to Innsbruck, a major Austrian city that is famous for winter sports (two Olympic Winter Games were held here.) The Old Town there is nice, and its major attraction is the Golden Roof. But we spent most of our time in another major attraction, Swarovski Crystal Gallery, Swarovski’s biggest store in the world. Both me and Vincent understand it is important for Naomi to get the gifts for her family, so we kept quiet most of the time. We ended up spending more than an hour there. It was only later that Naomi realized we had a pretty tight schedule for the rest of the day.

So shortly after our visit to the Swarovski store, we left Innsbruck. We had plans to make some more stops along the way, including our hotel check-in at Zell am See. But we decided to skip all that and headed straight to Grossglockner High Alpine Road, probably our most interesting attraction on that day. And of course we ran into some traffic jam for no good reasons. Being the driver, I tried not to lose my cool, but it got Vincent a bit miffed (first time seeing him like that.) I guess he was quite looking forward to the Alpine road. We did manage to get there to have a good Alpine road trip.

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Trip 2007: Austria – Grossglockner High Alpine Road

Jul 3rd, 2008 by

Grossglockner High Alpine Road



This is one of the first attractions Vincent suggested when we were planning for the road trip. Usually for road trips, I think i usually look for attractions that take just a little bit of time, especially when we have all our luggages in the car. It turned out, for this trip, all our stops were quite lengthy. In fact, this attraction, the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, was a 4 hours driving detour. I actually have friends who had been there, but it was a disappointment for them because it was foggy the whole time, so my expectation was not high. Also, I had some unpleasant experiences before getting on the road; twice I was shortchanged, once at the gas station, and another at the entrance of the road. I got the gas station person to correct it, but not the one at road entrance (because we were in a rush as it was getting late, and we only realized after we drove a little bit.) Not a good impression of Austrian people (or were they East European immigrants?) I want to think it is their math skills…

As I was saying, it was getting late, but weather was great, and I wanted to drive as fast as possible, without skipping good view points. There were numerous checkpoints, and we stopped for a few of them. It was all very nice, and surprisingly, it reminded me of driving south shore of Maui, but instead of water ocean on the other side of the road, it was the big mountain range. If there is a destination of this drive, it would be the visitor center located close to Grossglockner, the highest mountain in Austria. But by the time we got there, it was pretty dark. It wasn’t that late, but the visitor center is surrounded by mountains, so there would be sunlight only when it’s earlier in the day.

Our hotel for that night is in Zell am See, not far from the entrance of this alpine road. But it would be a harder drive, going back the same way, in the dark. So we chose to finish the drive, and got out at the other end of the road. Then we speeded through the highway around the mountains. By the time we reached our hotel, it was well past 8pm.

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Trip 2007: Austria – Zell am See, Gorge, Ice Cave

Jul 2nd, 2008 by


Liechtenstein Gorge



On our way to the city of Salzburg, we made a stop at a town called Zell am See, and stayed there overnight. It is not far from Salzburg, in fact it is in the same state, also called Salzburg. This is basically ski country in winter time, hiking for the summer. Our hotel (more like a road-side motel) seems to be a good place for skiers, but this time around the hotel is filled with people doing road trips. The town itself was pretty quietly, with only a handful of people. Maybe it has more to do with the fact that we got there pretty late. Most places were closed already, so we were lucky to find a restaurant open late even in quiet season. Food was alright with good price, but they spoke little English; so we kinda feel like eating where locals eat.

There are a few interesting attractions between here and the city of Salzburg. One of the more well-known attractions is the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, which we visited just before we checked into our hotel in Zell am See. Then on the next day, we visited two more attractions before getting to Salzburg. In terms of timing, I think we followed our plan quite good; one attraction in the morning, another one in early afternoon, and then reaching Salzburg in early evening. Both attractions require some hiking (nothing Naomi could not handle.) First attraction we went to is called Liechtenstein Gorge, where they built walkpaths in a narrow canyon in mountains. There is a river running through it as we walked up, and eventually when we reached the end, there was a nice big waterfall.

Then in the afternoon, we went to an attraction called Eisriesenwelt, literally means World of the Ice Giants. It is supposed to be the largest ice cave in the world, and with some lighting inside, it is quite nice to look at. However, it is a long way from the parking lot to the actual cave; there was 40 minutes of walking with a cable car ride in the mix. I actually thought the hike going up was not bad, and we got some really nice weather. We just had to rush a little bit when we got close to the cave because the ice cave tour was about to begin. The tour wasn’t terribly exciting, we just get to walk a bit in this huge cave, and to see some interesting ice formation with pretty lights. Like most other places, we weren’t allowed to take pictures, but I doubt we can have any nice pictures in such dark cave.

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Great Movie Experience

Jul 1st, 2008 by

You know you are watching a pretty good movie, if not a great one, when the movie got complete attention of you and most other people in the theatre. It happened when we were watching WALL-E, closer to the end of the movie, when the female robot EVE had tried everything to fix WALL-E and nothing seems to work, there was complete silence in the theatre, a theatre jam-packed with small kids, teenagers, and parents; everyone was just so intently watching. Obviously this kind of experience works the best in a full theatre (it’s kinda easy to get that in a mostly empty theatre) but it doesn’t happen for most movies.

There was another moment in the movie I remember, when WALL-E was about to enter the scene (to “save the day”); while it was nothing spectacular and little suspense of who is coming in, one kid yelled out, “it’s WALL-E!!”. It’s funny that everyone in the theatre can hear the kid so clearly, and most people including me just had to laugh. It almost felt like a community in the movie theatre.

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Trip 2007: Salzburg

Jun 28th, 2008 by


St. Blaise's Church



Not being a fan of Mozart or Sound of Music, four nights in Salzburg seems a bit long. Actually, there were three full days, and we crossed the border for Germany on one of the days. Still, we seemed to have more time than we needed. There was only a few attractions that we really looked forward to see; there were actually more interesting attractions one hour driving away from the city (which is why Salzburg is a good starting point for travelling.) It might be a bit tourisy, but to be fair, Salzburg, especially the Old Town, is quite pretty, and I bet it’s even more enjoyable in dry warm weather.

Our apartment in Salzburg is not too bad. The main reason we chose this, other than reasonable price, was that it could house 5 people (originally we had more people to travel together) The apartment was indeed big enough for more people, but there was only one bathroom (and its water pressure is a little low, plus draining is a little slow,) so I was glad we had only 3 people. The owner was quite nice, meeting us in person at the apartment, and showing us around in the neighborhood.

As for eating, most places were fine, with a couple restaurants more stand out. It probably has more to do with the fact that we wanted to spend less, after we had our fancy dinner in Munich. Here is the list of places we visited:

  • Carpe Diem Finest Fingerfood (International, reviewed in Frommers) – It might be finest, definitely expensive for something that can’t really fill up the stomach (we thought this could be our dinner.) The fingerfood there is mainly the “cones”, so instead of ice cream, it is appetizer type of food (like chicken wing and catfish) Everything is nice, so the main problem is the portion and relatively the price.
  • Ganshof Gasthaus (recommended by the apartment owner) – This is one of the few restaurants that is close to our apartment. It serves mainly local people; we can tell because most people there do not speak English. There was one serving us spoke a little English. It was really a pub, and the menu was small, but food was decent, and price was good as well. It was just a little smoky, but it’s nice to have some local experience.
  • Mensa (University Canteen, reviewed in Lonely Planet) – Food is cheap and decent. It’s mostly students there, and it gets a little smoky as well. University is in Old Town, so this place is in great location.
  • Wasserfall Restaurant (Italian, reviewed in Frommers) – I like this restaurant the best in Salzburg. It’s not expensive, and food was great. The place itself is nice and comfortable. This place is in a busy business area, just across from the Old Town.
  • Zum Mohren (Austrian, reviewed in Frommers and Rick Steves) – It’s weird that we ended up ordering mostly Italian stuff at this place; maybe the Austrian dishes were more expensive. The decor inside is a little offbeat with some strange paintings and sculpture; it’s interesting nonetheless. It’s located in the middle of Old Town.
  • Pizzeria Il Sole (Italian, reviewed in Frommers) – Near the elevator to the Museum of Modernity, this place is slightly under the street level. Both the food and price are fine, it’s just the portion a little small.

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    Trip 2007: Berchtesgaden National Park

    Jun 25th, 2008 by


    Town of Ramsau



    About half hour driving from Salzburg, crossing the border to Germany, there is a big national park called Berchtesgaden. It is a popular place to visit for people based in Salzburg. The best thing about staying in Salzburg for 4 nights is that we can have a pretty flexible schedule. When we got to Salzburg, we found out the nice weather we have been enjoying was going to last for one more day in the coming week, so we went to the national park first. It was absolutely the right decision, we couldn’t ask for a better day to visit Berchtesgaden; it’s too bad we didn’t get that nice weather for the rest of our trip.

    Before the trip, I got whole bunch of books from public library, and I brought a few with me for the trip. One of them is about road trips in Germany, and it suggests a driving route in this Berchtesgaden area. The book is pretty good, except for the beginning part of the route, where it took us off the highway and leading us to some local traffic for some small town. So even though we started pretty early (shortly after 9am), we probably lost about an hour, trying to get back to the main route. By the time we got to our first stop, a lake called Hintersee, it was 11am.

    Hintersee gave us a good introduction of what this area is like; a decent size lake with high mountains surrounding it. There is a couple of hotels or inns right by the lake, but in general it is not tourisy. It feels more like cottage country, with a quiet and calming feel to it. There are some hiking trails around the lake that leads to a town nearby, but of course we were only driving by this area.

    The town nearby is called Ramsau. Apparently Vincent was quite looking forward to visit this town. He said he saw some nice pictures before the trip, and he knew what picture-taking spot to look for. I myself usually look at only a few pictures while preparing for a trip; maybe I want to save my first experience unspoiled. So my first experience of Ramsau: there is white mountains, clear water running with a bridge over it, a nice small church, bright blue sky, and green grass with some leaves turning colors. It looks better than my words can describe.

    One of the Berchtesgaden’s biggest attraction is the lake Konigssee, literally it means King’s Lake (but they say it is not entirely correct.) There are two things most people do in Konigssee: one is to hike 20 minutes to a spot called Malerwinkel, literally Painters Corner; the other is to take a boat ride to a church called St. Bartholoma, which is on the shore, halfway down of this long lake. The view of the lake from the Painters Corner is great, even better with the leaves turning. The St. Bartholoma church is quite unique; I’ve never seen any church like that.

    By the time we finished with Konigssee, it was well past 3pm. There was really enough time for one more stop, and it should’ve been Eagle’s Nest (another popular attraction in the area), but I thought we could squeeze in a quick detour, driving on a scenic route on Rossfeld road. But in the end, we missed the last bus going up to Eagle’s Nest. In fact, we thought we just made it, but we got on the wrong bus; we managed to get off the bus before it took us further down on the hill. Even though we didn’t get to see the Eagle’s Nest, I think we all felt it was a very good day of sightseeing.

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    Trip 2007: Salzburg – Cathedral and Mozart Districts

    Jun 24th, 2008 by


    Horse Pond and Tunnel to exit Old Town


    As popular as Salzburg is as a tourist destination, I’m not sure if there was one attraction that I would call a must-see. Maybe the must-see thing there is the town itself, more precisely the Old Town, where Mozart used to roam around, or where they shot some of the scenes in the movie Sound of Music (although I think more scenes were shot outside of the city.) In a map provided by local tourism agency, they define a few different districts in the city. We spent most of our time in two of them: Cathedral District, and the Mozart District.

    There are quite a few churches or cathedrals in the Old Town. We walked by most of them, went inside for a few of them; there is one called St. Peter’s, its cemetery reminded me some scenes from Sound of Music.

    Most memorable of them all is probably the Salzburg Cathedral. We got there late in the day, like just one hour before they close. So we were taking our time touring the place, then one clergy came to us and told us we should go to one particular room for a special exhibition they were having. He ended up being a little bit like our tour guide, guiding us different rooms, speeding up our tour a little bit. I think he wanted to secure the rooms for closing at the same time. At one point, he asked us where are we from. We told him we are from Toronto, and he just nodded. Wanted to keep conversation going, I added that we were all originally from Hong Kong, then he seemed to be more interested, and started telling us that he has been to Hong Kong, and how much he enjoyed the time there. I think from that point on, whenever someone ask us, we told them we are from Hong Kong; Toronto is not as good a conversation starter. Near the end of our tour of the place, the clergy bid us goodbye with some final words: “Remember, the world is good when the people is good.” I don’t know what Vincent and Naomi think of that, but to me, he seems to be saying, “and since we are all sinners, this world is in trouble”. That is one gentle wise man.

    While none of us are big fan of classical music, we managed to visit only one Mozart related attraction, the Mozart’s Birthplace Museum. Although they call this the Mozart district, there are some other things to see (and there are not that many Mozart related things anyway.) We wanted to see the Residenz State Rooms, but they had it closed for some private functions; we did go one floor above where they have the Residenz gallery (not that interesting.)

    As much as I like Salzburg (especially walking around in night time) I really wanted to enjoy the Old Town more. I think if the weather was better and warmer, we would spend time sitting in some outdoor cafe and relaxed a little. But it’s been cold and wet most of the time, we forced ourselves to look for places to visit. We visited this brand new museum called Salzburg Museum. While everything there was new and nicely presented, it is more about the history of local people (other than Mozart), and it was just not that interesting to us. Maybe it’s more interesting to local people.

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    Trip 2007: Salzburg – Fortress, Garden, and Above the City

    Jun 24th, 2008 by


    View of Salzburg from Watchtower


    The Salzburg City Center is actually surrounded by hills, with a river running through it. One of the hills is supposed to be in a good defensive position, which is why they have this big Fortress sitting on top of it. As Salzburg literally means Salt Castle, salt (which was valuable back then) is what they stored in the fortress. Now it is a popular tourist attraction, with its entrance in the Old Town, offering Cable Car ride up to the fortress. Some of the things they display in the Fortress is kinda interesting; there is a small museum of Marionette (like puppets), and some exhibition on the history of Salzburg and the Fortress. But I was more interested in seeing the view of the city from here, even though it’s been raining on and off the whole time.

    To get a good view of the Fortress, on the other hand, we went to the the Mirabell Garden in city center. The garden is part of the Mirabell Palace, now a city administration office and library. The garden with fountains and the view of the fortress is a major attraction in itself. We didn’t get to see the inside of the palace though.

    Other than the hill where the Fortress is situated, there were other hills that offer good view of the city. One is just across the river from the Old Town, where we climbed some stairs to get to a church. There is a watchtower and some opening with a good view of the river and the Old Town. Another good viewpoint is where the Museum of Modernity located, on the north end of the Old Town. They run an elevator service from street level up to the museum. The view is not as good as the other two, but the museum is not bad. It happens that they have some kind of Chinese exhibition; their theme name is Mahjong, but we didn’t see any Mahjong related.

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