New House

It all went down a little something like this:  

Moving Home.  Florida is the location.  Southern preferably as it is closest to the main international airport in Miami (which will fly B around a lot).  Narrowed a bit but it's still too big of an area; we need a city.  We research a few different places and finally settle on somewhere in Broward County as it has a fantastic school system, is NOT in Miami, and is still near the airport.  Still, a pretty large area to cover as the County is over 3000 square km (almost 2000 sq. miles).  Find a few cities in the Northwestern part of the County and ask Nana and Grampa to scope them out for us as they only live about 90 minutes away.  I send them an email with a bunch of houses that we like so they have an idea of what we are looking for.  Yahoo then sends me a link to one they think I might be interested in (weird how that happens as I never gave them my email and I never asked them for recommendations).  Morning of house scouting, Nana and Grampa go see that house first as Yahoo was right, I was interested.  Nana and Grampa spend the rest of the day touring other houses and ready to build lots and then call me with an update.  It is late our time (6 hours later here so it was creeping up on 11 pm) so I go to sleep and Grampa puts his thoughts and notes in an email and we say we will talk tomorrow.  I toss and turn thinking about the Yahoo house.  I patiently wait and call Nana and Grampa the next afternoon our time (let them sleep in until 7:30) and as we talk more about each place they saw, I realize that I really really like the Yahoo house.  Contemplate putting the offer in without even talking to B.  Don't.  Call B and tell him that I want this house.  He says yes.  Grampa makes the call to the realtor and we have a signed offer in before I go to bed that night.  

Folks, the moral of this story is don't send my parents out to scope out houses unless you are really ready to buy a house.  It took less than 24 hours from the time they left their house until we had a contract.  Consider yourself warned.

{I waited to post until we closed.  We closed today.  We move next week.  Yes, we move fast on everything.}

 The arrow marks the spot.

This backyard with the salt water pool, outdoor kitchen, and pond was a huge selling point.

Schleissheim Palaces

Bucket list destination of the week:  The Shleissheim Palace complex.  Friday's are a tough one for doing much exploring because our kids get out of school early, like right after lunch early.  Wherever we choose to go has to be nearby and we have to be able to fit it all in within a short amount of time.  While I was looking up things to do in Munich I found that Shleissheim fit the bill perfectly.  It is only 14 km away (about 9 miles) and with no guided tours we could wander the Old, New and Lustheim Palaces and gardens at our own pace making sure we were back in time for pickup.  

We set off in two cars and, with only a small snafu in the navigation system, we were at the New Palace doors as soon as they opened at 9 am.  As I mentioned, the tour was self-guided so we leisurely wandered from spectacular room to even more spectacular room as we chatted and caught up on each other's lives.  I'm not sure we retained much information about what we were seeing, but the company was so incredible that it almost seemed beside the point.  Plus, if I have to be really honest, once you have seen about a bajillion palaces/churches/castles it starts to all run together anyway.

 A group photo in front of the New Palace.

Impressive from the very moment you walk in and look up at the grand staircase, the New Palace was constructed in 1701 after the military defeat of Max Emanuel, the now not so popular King.  The Baroque Palace, which had been intended to be a four-winged complex that enclosed the Old Palace, the hunting lodge of Lustheim, a canal system, and the gardens, was downsized to a single building shell.  But no matter, it is still considered one of the most impressive Baroque palaces in Europe and the gardens are some of the most important.  

The grand entryway and staircase.

The ceilings were painted by Jacopo Amigoni in 1722 and are still the originals (save a very minor touchup).

Back outside and another selfie in front of the Old Palace...which didn't have much to take photos of inside so we walked the length of the gardens and canal.

The fountains were going off as we were walking by!  This is the back of the New Palace building.

And creating rainbows!

The original Lustheim hunting lodge is all the way at the end of the canal and currently houses the porcelain of the 1700's.

And this cute mouse orchestra.

It was getting late and we still needed lunch so back through the gardens we walked.

And drove the short way back to school where we grabbed a quick lunch and made plans for our next adventure.

Our Germany Traveler

It happens every year about this time.  Their current school takes the older kids (3rd, 4th, and 5th grades) on a team building/learning/bonding trip for a few nights at the very beginning of the school year.  This was MadHatter's 3rd and final year and it was a doozy.  For the first time, the school took them for a full week instead of only two nights.  Yep, a full week.  Added to that, they took them on a 7-hour train trip north!  She had been looking forward to since they announced it last year and it was finally here.  She could hardly contain herself.

She packed so carefully making sure not to forget one single item on the list.  She made sure she even had extras just in case she got wet or misplaced something. 

And then suddenly it was here.  We made our way throught he rush hour U-Bahn traffic to get her to the station on time.  We got there, checked in and she loaded on the train with her small group.  And she diligently posed for the picture she knew I would have to take.  And then she turned around and never looked back.  The train pulled out of the station and they were off.  From that point on we (the parents) were at the mercy of their guardians for any updates on what they were doing and how they were faring.  We were lucky that they were very good about keeping us in the loop with photos and quick snippets of their days but we had to wait for the kids to get back before we got any real details.  And boy did we get details.  I am not sure that MadHatter has stopped talking about the fantastic time she had since she got home on Friday night.

Needless to say, we are all so happy that she got to go on this trip.  The memories she made here (and the friendships she solidified) will hopefully last her a lifetime. 

Here is a glimpse - the only glimpse - into our 5th-grade traveler's life in Berlin...

On the train...

Morning 1 - making outdoor shelters.

The soup they made for dinner.

Dinner with Friends.

Bread making.

In Berlin.

Brandenberg Gate.

Selfie time.

Natural History Museum.

Learning to tie knots.

Building the raft.  Boys vs. girls and the raft had to hold two teachers as they paddled around the lake.

It held!

Bear park in Berlin.

Singing around the campfire.

Cleaning out their cabins and heading home.

Mad Kind Ludwig II

Some of you may have noticed that I have been mentioning King Ludwig II a lot lately in my blog.  It's not because I have a crazy obsession with him but mostly because you can hardly sightsee in Bavaria without ending up in a location that King Ludwig II either built a castle, a palace or a summer retreat.  The man was obsessed with his creature comforts and spent a lot of the citizen's money, and most of his own, on improving his lot in life (instead of theirs).  When the attempts by his ministers to restrain his spending failed, they used his extravagances against him and had him declared legally insane by a doctor who had never even met him.  He was transported to Berg Castle on the shores of Lake Starnberg on June 12, 1886.  On June 13, the same Doctor that had declared him insane reportedly told the ministers that he was confident he could treat and cure Ludwig.  Strangely, that evening both Dr. Gudden and Ludwig were found drowned in the shallow waters of Starnberg Lake after taking a walk together after dinner.  Alone.  With no bodyguards.  And he was a King...

No one has ever solved the mystery of how both of them could drown in less than a foot of water or how their heads and shoulders were both above the water when they were found or even why Dr. Gudden had strangulation marks around his neck.  And it seems they never will because even though they have exhumed his body and studied it carefully and there is evidence of a gunshot to the head in Ludwig's case, there is just no money in solving the mystery, and no one will declare a new cause of death.  

Ironically, the frivolous spending of money and building of opulent castles is probably what let to Ludwig's demise, and yet those same buildings are some of the most profitable tourist destinations in Bavaria to this day.  

But on this day trip didn't set out to see any of the castles - but rather the spot where Ludwig died and the chapel that was built in his honor.  We left just after dropping the kids off at school and headed about 30 minutes south-west of Munich to Lake Starnberg.  The lake is the largest in Bavaria and home to many of Germany's most famous (Heidi Klum has a house here).  We parked and then hiked from one side of the lake to the other passing many a scene like this...

And houses like this.

We made it to the chapel about an hour later.  It was quite the hike and all the way around the other side of the lake, but it was pretty, and the company was good, so the time went quickly.

Stopped for a quick selfie...

The inside of the chapel.  It was difficult to take photos because there is a screen in front of the entire thing but I did my best.  It really was pretty inside.

 

And out...

The cross marks the spot where Ludwig and the Dr. were found.  Even in this photo, you can see how shallow the water truly is.

We were a bit hungry from our trek, and it was nearing lunchtime, so we backtracked to a little restaurant we had passed on the way in and had a genuinely Bavarian lunch of Flammekuchen, Obazda and steak salads with a side of bier or weinshorle before heading back to Munich to pick up the kids from school.  I love adventure days like this.

Oberammergau

Oberammergau, a small village in the Bavarian Alps, is known worldwide for the Passion Play it puts on every 10 years.  Though, honestly, I had never heard of it before I started planning a trip to the region to ride the world's longest open-air slide.  I had also never heard of Lüftlmalerei until we were wandering around town looking for dinner and we noticed that almost every single house was painted with elaborate and intricate scenes.  After seeing about 10, I had to Google what it was all about.

The Luftl are fresco paintings on the houses facades that used to show the status and wealth of the owner.  The technique of putting watercolors on freshly laid plaster before it dried was ingenious as the colors became a permanent (and waterproof/sunproof) part of the building as the plaster dried.  It is impressive to see the brightness of color and the detail that remains on some of these houses (now hotels and restaurants in some cases) even though they were painted hundreds of years ago.  Most of them depict religious scenes, but some of the more famous ones are taken from the Grimm's brothers fairy tales.  Of course, we had to take a look and a few pictures before leaving town.

Where the Passion Play will take place in 2020.  Google it - it has a long and storied history.

We could have kept gawking all day, but we had to move on because we still had a few more bucket list items I needed to check off.  The first being Linderhof Palace.  I had been told on our bike tour that Linderhof was under construction, and you couldn't get in, but we thought we would try anyway.  It was a great surprise that the building was almost finished, and everything was open again.  Tickets in hand we walked to the starting point of our tour and on the way passed the original Linderhof...

This is the Linder family's original house.  King Ludwig II came to the region, loved its beauty and bought the land.  All of it.  He found the perfect spot for his Palace, nevermind that there was already a house with a family living there.  He did right by them though and moved the original home to a new spot and let them live there until they all passed.

And this is the new Palace that King Ludwig II built.  No pictures allowed inside or on tour but the grounds were fair game.

It was just about lunchtime and we were all a bit hungry.  B had heard that the beer made by the monastery in town (Linderhof is in Ettal) was the best in Germany.  Who were we to turn down a taste test?

Verdict?  It was good but maybe not the best in Germany.

After having the beer, you have to visit the Monastery that made it.  But most of it was closed.  So we settled for the chapel...

and then laid down and fell asleep not able to take one more step.

We did get her to the car, only to have her fall asleep again right away.  It is the sign of a trip well done!