THE ROAD TRIP (Part 2)

finally continued...

The next morning we took a bus to Venice! There were lots of tourists everywhere, especially in the Piazza San Marco, as well as the usual cheap tacky souvenir stalls, which was a surprise since we’d so far been off the beaten track. The canals and ultra-narrow streets were pretty unique, but as a whole I was actually a little disappointed. The whole feel of the city was a little sad – everything was slowly decaying or sinking. We did however manage to get lost (WITH a map) in our first 30 minutes there. A cheerful (though corny) sight was the gondoliers complete with navy stripes and cute hats.

After a few hours we headed back to the car for the drive up to Germany via Austria. We saw some really beautiful countryside – classic northern Italy slowly changing to mountains, with cliffs galore.

We stopped for pizza along the way at a restaurant whose staff spoke no English, French, or German…we had a good laugh trying to gesture to the waitress what we wanted. The Austrian landscape was familiar with its typical style of houses and snow-capped peaks. We then arrived in Munich (to our surprise since there was no actual border to cross from Austria to Germany) to stay at ‘The Tent” which we’d read about in our travel guide. It was a really awesome campsite with room to pitch your own tent or you could have a bed in a huge main dorm-like tent. It had its own café with breakfast and dinner (all organic) and the cheapest beer we found of the whole trip. The showers were really clean (and solar-heated), the staff were friendly…we couldn’t have asked for a better place to stay. That night we watched Germany vs. Poland in the Euro cup – it was amusing to see how passionate the Germans were about their soccer…I mean football. We also met a nice Aussie bloke named Ben from Newcastle to chat to about travelling and everything else.

The next day we drove to a town called Fussen which is near Neuschwanstein castle, which is this awesome fairy-tale castle perched on a hill. It was Ludwig II’s (who was mad) and the inside was completely painted with scenes from Wagner operas and swans. We took a guided tour which was fairly interesting, and had a nice wander through the woods around the castle checking out the view. I wouldn’t have minded living there – even the servant’s quarters were pretty impressive. That evening we went into Munich and had a wander around the city through the shops. We saw the coolest buskers ever who were a band with a pan-flute and stopped for a beer in a beer garden. (Which you can’t come to Munich and not do!)