Thursday August 14
Finally, here we are waiting for our Thai first class flight to BKK then onto MUC on Friday - we’re in the SQ first class lounge - it’s a little known fact that you can use this lounge when travelling on any *A airline even though the airlines direct you to the very tired looking Air New Zealand lounge with no first class section.
It’s been a really stressful 6 weeks leading up to this trip - a bathroom renovation which only finished yesterday and floor repairs caused by the company who installed our new TV.
We had a great flight from SYD-BKK - loads of Dom and special-order lobster (Thermador for me and stir fry for Dieter) - unfortunately it was a bit on the cold side. We landed at 4:40pm and took a limo-taxi to our hotel the Akura Prestige (an LHW) for our overnighter. Being rush hour it was a bit of a slow ride to the hotel. After checking-in we went to the bar for light meal and glass of wine before hitting the sack.
Friday August 15
We had a leisurely morning at the hotel before heading back to the airport at 10:30am - by 11:30 we were all checked-in waiting for our flight to Munich. After an 11 hours we landed in Munich, had a quick trip through customs, immigration and luggage collection and were all checked-in to the Kempinski at the airport by 8pm. We went to the grocery store at the airport and bought a few drinks and a cheese sandwich for dinner. It was off to bed by 10pm.
Saturday August 16
After a sort of good night’s sleep we got up early, showered and had an excellent breakfast at the hotel - this was included in our el-cheapo rate we had found on otel.com - good luck as the full breakfast would have been $50pp. Then it was off to Garmisch-Partinkirken (aka GAP) for 2 weeks in the mountains staying in a holiday apartment.
We checked-out and went to the Budget desk to pickup our hire car - what a zoo - the car hire counters at 10am were a scrum - we were “lucky” and only waited 30 minutes at which time the line was more than twice as long. Our Mercedes (booked via AmEx travel) was actually a VW Passat which cheesed me off but actually it turned out to be a very nice car. So we were finally on our way at 11am - we decided to take the autobahn rather than the scenic route as planned, due to our later than expected departure and the inclement weather - it was overcast, with periods of drizzle and some heavy patches of rain with a high of about 18℃. With heavy traffic on the last few k’s to Garmisch we finally arrived at our apartment around 1pm. We checked in - the apartment was fantastic - large, German-Mountain modern, very clean with a balcony and a great view of the mountains - it was however quite far from the “old” town - 30+ minutes walk. We headed to the main street in our part of town (3 minutes walk) for a German pub lunch then some grocery shopping.
Back at our apartment around 4pm, we unpacked and settled in.
We had sandwiches for dinner and an early night.
Sunday August 17
Slept in until 8am - after a bit of a restless night - got up to beautiful sunshine with a high of 22℃. We walked over to the tourist office to get some more info and buy our 13-day lift pass; however, their internet was down so they could not sell us the passes. On the agent’s recommendation we drove over to Alpspitz but the parking was overflowing so we gave it a miss and headed over to Wank where we lucked out a got a parking spot just as someone was leaving. We bought our 13-day lift passes (150€ pp - a great deal considering a single trip to the Zugspitz is 50€ pp) - at Wank we took the gondola up to 1700m and had a mediocre lunch then walked back to the base at 700m - it took about 2h15m and we were both quite stuffed at the end - seems our conditioning was not up to scratch.
We got back to the apartment at 4pm and relaxed on our balcony before showering etc - we stayed home for a light dinner of mushroom pasta and salad. We both went to bed very early - 9pm.
Monday August 18
We got up early - 6:30am to a very similar day as Sunday in spite of weather forecasts to the contrary. We had an excellent fruit salad (even if I say so myself) and yoghurt for brekkie then decided it was the right day, weather-wise, to head up the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain. We left on the 9:15am cog-wheel train which was very full - it takes 1h15m to get to the ”Zugspitze” where there are restaurants etc and lookouts as well as a cable car which takes you to the real summit - with more lookouts and restaurants including Germany’s highest beer garden. It was very cold (2℃, 30k wind and 150k visibility) so we took a quick tour and a few photos but did not stay too long due to the cold and the altitude - 2980+ meters. We took the cable car (vintage 1962) back to Eibsee instead of the cog-wheel train - a 9 minute trip instead of 45m on the cog-wheel train and final gondola. It was nice and warm at Eibsee so we stopped at the lake side cafe for a light lunch then did the 1h30m walk around the lake. We caught the 2:15pm train back to GAP by the skin of our teeth - we stopped to do a bit of grocery shopping then stayed home for dinner of veal geschitzeldis.
Tuesday August 19
After our now regular brekkie of fruit (lots of berries) and yoghurt and some lazing around we took a village walk complete with shopping and restaurant recco. I bagged some skinny jeans, to add to the meagre 10 pairs of pants I had packed, 2 T-shirts, and a new pair of hiking poles; Dieter got a new knapsack. We had lunch at a village restaurant then headed home. We went out for dinner at Riendl, the fine dining restaurant in one of Gramisch’s 4* hotels, this turned out to be an excellent choice.
Wednesday August 20
Another day similar to yesterday - cloudy with rainy patches so we hung out in the apartment waiting for a clear patch. Dieter had a funny problem with one eye (flashes of light) so he made an appointment with an eye clinic for 3:30pm which sort of defined our day. We set out around 10am for Partnackklamm - an amazing gorge with raging water and a walk/tunnel along side of it. At the end of the gorge you can either turn around and go back the same way or hike to the top of a mountain, Eckbauer @ 1250m - a gruelling trek uphill of 1.5 hours, uphill all the way. We returned to the base of the Olympic ski jump where our car was parked via the oldest gondola on the planet - must be at least 100 years old.
We did a bit of grocery shopping then went home to shower so Dieter could head off to the eye clinic. I kept busy doing some laundry and dinner prep. Dieter got back around 5:30pm to report the Russian female eye specialist did not see any problem but said he should return the following Tuesday for another check. In the mean time he was not allowed to drive for 24 hours due to the eye drops they used.
It was then left-overs for dinner and an early night.
Thursday August 21
Ah - the weather improved a bit - only partly cloudy but still in the low 20’s. After a lazy brekkie we set off at 10:30 for a 2 hour walk - lots of steep up hill parts rewarded with the down hill parts. We had lunch at home then set-out for a bit of shopping. For dinner we went to Husar - a restaurant owned and operated by a friend of Maggie’s. It was about 40 minute walk from our place which we both found a bit too far just for dinner - we did take a taxi home (thank goodness).
Friday August 22
Another day similar to the previous few - cloudy and cool. It was our mid-stay cleaning day so we headed out at 9:45am and took the gondola to the Alpspitz from where we walked to Kreuzbahn - some 4 k’s on a very slippery and steep, in parts, gravel track. It was freezing on the top of the Alpspitz (5℃) - not surprising since it’s at 2033m; we just weren’t totally prepared with our gloves back at the apartment. On the top of the Alpspitz there is a huge man-made overhanging lookout - not great for those of us with vertigo. By the time we reached the Gasthaus at Kreuzbahn it was time for lunch so we stopped and had soup and bread. The sun finally came out (well in and out) but it was a welcome relief even though we had warmed up by then. Dieter suggested that we continue walking to the base, another 2 hours, but I vetoed this as we had to do a big shop as the cupboard was bare and all our other grocery shopping trips had seemed to turn into a fire-drill. So we took the gondola down and headed into the center of town where there is a Tengleman and an Aldi side by side. All in all grocery shopping in GAP was disappointing.
We finished our shopping and were back at the apartment around 3:00pm but needed to head out again on foot to buy a few items which we had forgotten. Finally we could relax on our sunny balcony with refreshments at 4:30pm.
The rest of the evening was spent showering and preparing and of course eating dinner - an excellent repast of pork chops with pfifferlinge (forest mushrooms), white asparagus and roast potatoes, finished off with black current sorbet topped with an assortment of berries.