The Bodensee is CLOSE - as in I'm surprised we never went prior to now.
It was a good drive. it's mostly autostrasse (aka freeway) which makes it such an easy drive. we could have stayed in Konstanz BUT I decided that I wanted to stay in Friedrichstafen as it would make doing three countries in three days WAY easier - honestly Lindau would have been MUCH easier BUT I discovered that there was a zeplin (blimp) museum in Friedrichshafen as this is the birthplace of the zeplin - who knew? You can actually take rides but they are PRICEY!!! Like $400 EACH pricey - not worth it to me. I can do a whole heck of a lot for almost a thousand dollars, thanks!
I did email myself some details the day after we got back and I wrote them down and have been sitting on them until now. sigh. I have been a slug about updating the blog, sorry!!
Departure 8:30am.
Bright sunny day with fog.
Lots of traffic closer to the lake but all in all a good drive down.
Lots of grapes and apple orchards in this area.
Cute smaller lake compared to Lake Lucerne
Then you look on the map and realize this lake is HUGE in comparison to Lake Lucerne. I guess the comparison is that there aren’t any huge mountains leading right down to the shore on this lake – there are long low rolling fields leading up to the shores of Lake Konstanz aka Bodensee.
We found out in a museum tour that there is now ownership of the lake it’self and it has it’s own ruling party over it as it boarders three countries. Very interesting, eh? Maybe it seems smaller because you can SEE all of the shores? Lucerne with it’s twists and turns you couldn’t see all of the shores. I would think that I could see the shoreline of the entirety of the Bodensee where Lucerne you really couldn’t. Hum… i
So - on to pictures...
Lots of fog in the distance...
Fog deep in the valley - tends to be the case most times we drive around at this time of year...
Cute villages in the background over the farm land. Fog rolling in and out of the pictures as we drive south.
THAT is not fog in the distance, that is the LAKE - hello Lake!!!
http://www.birnau.de/ We did not go into it or even drive down to it. BUT I did look it up just now to see what it was. it's an active church. we could have stayed in a bed and breakfast right down the road from it in a "Schloss" which is a castle of sorts... more of a manor home. But... hind sight and there is no train station near it.
Anyway we parked at the hotel for the day with a parking pass. We stayed at the PLAZA Hotel Föhr am Bodensee
It wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was a hotel with a great breakfast J
We parked, talked to the front desk, got a car parking notice and left the car and bags at the hotel as we were not able to check in until 3pm. Fine, I had plans for the day anyway. It was 11am by the time we actually got there, got parked and got moving – public transportation is a hurry up and wait mode most of the time, so transportation wasn’t as quick as I hoped.
Our train station - YOU try to say that one... I was made fun of by some local Germans when attempting to ask if the train we were about to board stopped here... yeah. Such is life.
Let the trek begin on the trains.
We ended up changing trains in Lindau and had an hour to kill and hungry bellies to feed so we walked towards the lighthouse and the Bavarian Lion statue there
After our lunch was had at a small kiosk beside the road we hopped on the next train to Bregenz and to the Pfanderbahn to go to Pfander mountain.
Random shop in Lindau
I did miss the stop I should have gotten off on to go to the mountain. I went to downtown rather than the stop closest to the actual take off point to the gondolas, but it worked in my favor as the bus dropped us off WAY closer than walking from the train station would have J OK, only by a block closer but to we old and fat people that’s a good thing to be closer J
It was pretty cool as we got to see a Zeplin taking off from Friedrichshafen headed to who knows where up the Rhine. Zeplin’s actually move fairly fast which to me was surprising!
I was tracking the zeplin as it was making it's way closer and closer...
It moved fast and was soon past the mountain and moving its way south and UP river on the Rhine as the Rhine travels from south to north. I always find that so weird.
going DOWN!!!
The next stop was to be St. Gallen in Switzerland for Chocolate and cheese, however regrettably it was 4pm by the time we got back to the train and the schedule just was not going to get us there before everything closed so I chose to head on into Romanshorn as that is where the Ferry would depart from anyway and it was already 5pm at the ½ way point on the train…. I figured we could get some dinner then head on to the ferry and be good. It was the right call as it would appear the ferry stops running at 9:30 or so. We RAN to catch the 8:30 ferry and had 5 whole minutes to spare
It was a 45 minute ferry ride from Romanshorn to Friedrichshafen and we had until 11pm to actually check in to our room. Can you tell that we had lack of planning on a lot of issues? Well, we walked the 15 minute walk to the train – got to the train and to the hotel by 10:30… whew!! Talk about cutting it to the wire a few times in one day, eh?
Caramelized goat cheese - OMG to die for!!!
Do you see the moon down low between the masts on the boat? Just above the "fire work" light? It shows up so much better on my phone than it does on this computer.
Butch had steak and I had lamb. it was very tasty!!
I'm the rebel without a mask on the boat as it is OPEN air and not indoors... Butch was not convinced !
It was actually a nice night but the wind on the water was a bit chilly!
Day 2 later start - breakfast (stock photos from the hotel website which were surprisingly accurate)
Train to downtown Friedrichshafen - then a walk down the way to the Zeplin museum. I didn't even notice he was HOLDING a Zeplin honestly! ha!EEEK a naked flower!!! hahaha! When we left the museum he was eating - such a non flower thing to do but at least he was eating fruit... ha!
Did YOU know how zeplins were built and that there is a LOT of living room inside of one of these things??? Who knew? Two stories of space to occupy. The Hindenburg held 50 passengers and probably about 1/2 that many support staff. The bottom floor was support staff, kitchens and things while the upper floor was for passengers. It's basically like train cars in the air..
The outer shell of the Zeplin - and there was a mock up of the inside that you can go through - you can see the blue stairs in the lower right corner of this picture - we went up those stairs into the inside of the mock up - we saw the downstairs support areas then went up and into the observatories and cabin area. Very cool.
Of course we always have to share what we EAT on these trips, don't we?
This was the Gyro Special with a cream tomato sauce and lots and lots of cheese... the only saving grace were the french fries that you could add in to take some of the richness out. I had wanted the grilled version but caved to the special - it was good but I think my mind and body was set on the grilled version with taziki sauce :)
A parting shot of Zeplin boy. As you can see the difference in just one day is amazing - we came in with sunshine and warm temps and left with rain. We got back to the hotel and car JUST in time for it to start raining. Thank goodness I already knew I would be driving home in the rain :)
I let Waze tell me where to go and it took me through some small towns on the way home to avoid some heavy traffic - the good news is we stopped at one farm with an automat and picked up some raspberries and blackberries and further down the road one farm had a roadside honor stand for apples and plums. I have been enjoying the plumbs daily and the raspberries lasted until just the other night. Butch still has some blackberries in the fridge. Hope they don't go bad.
