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!