Garmisch

At the start of the month we went to Garmisch, Germany. Brad and I were both really looking forward to it since everyone has told us what an awesome place it is. While very picturesque, I think it'd be a place we'll enjoy a lot more in the summer when we can go hiking in the mountains. We thought we'd go skiing, but never did. Neither of us had the right gear.

Our biggest disappointment was the first two days. We drove up Saturday so we could have Saturday and Sunday to look around before I had to go to my conference on Monday. We were planning to drive back home after the conference Wednesday night. So we dropped the dogs off at the kennel and headed out in the late morning, stopping on the way and arriving there at @3:30. After we checked in, we headed out to go shopping, thinking the stores would all close around 6:00. Instead, they all closed at 4:00 - as we were walking up to them!!! And to add insult to injury, they weren't open at all on Sunday (most tourist towns here have stores open Sunday, but no, not this one). We did wander around and found a nice place to sit outside, enjoy the sunny day and drink some coffee. And on Saturday night we went down to where there was a free live concert in honor of the fact that the world skiing championships were being hosted there that weekend. We didn't stay long because it was cold out, the crowds were heavy, and the band was only okay.

Then, looking at things to do, we realized people love the place as a base of operations - there isn't much to do in Garmisch, instead it's a good launching point for seeing things in the south of Germany. We fully intend to go back in the summer and do just that!

The two best things about Garmisch were the neat paintings on the buildings, and the awesome food - we were really enjoying eating out. We ate once at a steak reastaurant right by the hotel - awesome food! We went back there again and I had ostrich steak - I can honestly say I'd never atten ostrich before; neither had Brad. It was good, but tough! Not on my list of things to have again. Maybe it was the toast, peanut butter, & tomato it was served with.... (it is actually as wrong as it sounds!). Normally I figure that it's just a taste combination I haven't tried before but is probably pretty good - in this case, NOT! It was okay...

We stayed in the yellow building shown here - the Atlas PostHotel, built in 1621... let me say that again 1621!!! Crazy. Our room was weird with a nice modern bathroom, a small room with a chair and a couch, and the bedroom was enterred from two separate entrances on each side of the bed, because the bed was built in to the room and went from wall to wall! Our biggest complaint was there was one, pitifull lightbulb in the ceiling, thus the room was really dark. We did have an excellent view of the church tower, and we were located right in the center of downtown.

One of the restaurants we ate at was built in the 1700's! They both retained elements of the original decor too, it was just really neat! We finished off the trip with dinner the last night at an italian restaurant, I ordered the caprese and a spicy penne pasta dish - my god it was so hot my belly was still warm the following day! Yum :-)