A Day on the Zugspitze

Sorry thise posts are running late - been so busy I haven't had a chance to do this for a few days! This post is from 1 Oct.

We were very pleased with our hotel in Garmisch – the Atlas Post Hotel. Here’s a view of the room:
Here's the view out our window:

Our very own little Alpine Chalet! The breakfast included with the room was wonderful and each morning we started the day that way. Then we walked around for a while – boy, we sure have done a lot of that since getting to Europe!

Finally we decided to spend the day going up to the “Top of Germany” as the Garmisch-Partenkirchen chamber of commerce calls the Zugspitze. If you would like to see info on the Zugspitze, here is their web site: http://europeforvisitors.com/germany/garmisch/zugspitze.htm. As for us, we took some cool pictures like this:

Although we could have climbed the mountain in 10-12 hours (yeah, right!) we decided to take the Bayerischen Zugspitzbahn Bergbahn cogwheel train and cable car. This was a cool ride on a narrow gauge train designed to go straight up the mountain and cable cars that hang thousands of feet in the air.

The countryside on the rail ride up was beautiful.

In addition we saw several para-gliders soaring over the mountains – you can just see one in the center of the picture. Boy, I REALLY want to do this!

Once the train got to the cable car station, we transferred to that mode.

Here’s the view as the Eibsee-Seilbahn cable car ride began:

And once you get to the top, here’s how the lake looks after going almost straight up for over 2,000 meters :

At 2,962 meters (about 10,000 feet or almost 2 miles high) this is Germany’s highest peak and you get a panoramic view of Austria, Italy, Switzerland and of course, far into Germany. Here are some shots from the summit:

In addition, there are several restaurants and venders at the top. At one of the outside eating areas, this old mountain man was playing an auto-harp and yodeling - here’s a video:

After wandering around at the summit for a while, and having a bratwurst and beer, we took another cable car down to the glacier.

The little building you see over Vicki’s head is the Chapel of the Visitation, Germany’s highest church! I went out & wandered around in the snow for a while and walked up to the church.

But Vicki decided she didn’t need to do that so she stayed on the rocks.

By this time it was getting late and since we didn’t want to spend the night on top, the last rides down the mountain were at 1630 so it was off for Garmisch. Another night in our little Alpine Chalet and Gute Nacht from the “Top of Germany”!