We had brought some books for bedtime stories with us from home - but one of the books on the shelf in the apartment caught our eye and was in English, so we decided to give it a go - it was called "Happy Birthday Bad Kitty" by an author named Nick Bruel and it turned out to be hilarious - we were all in stitches reading aloud and laughing!
It's just a really nice moment captured, one that could have otherwise been forgotten, so thank you Ruben! (The other photos he took were close up pictures of feet and cups... the toddler usual.)
Well after a day on the lake, we slept pretty great that night. Good thing too, because the next morning - after taking a little time to relax and play around in the apartment - we were taking a day trip to Austria to visit Zugspitze mountain!
We set off around Midday and made the relatively small trip (about 45 mins or so) over the German border to Austria for the day - funnily enough, the mountain we were visiting was actually half in Austria and half in Germany - it's the highest peak in Germany (roughly 3000 metres high) and we decided to take the Austrian side up, on the Zugspitzbahn - a cable car that travels up to the top of mountain.
Before going up, we took a look at the little miniature models of the area, and of course got some obligatory face-in-the-hole pics!
Going up the mountain was a really smooth and slow ride - the views were unbelievable on the way up. The cable car can hold around 100 people but it was just our family and about 6 other people - so we were able to walk about and get a 360° view all around. Surprisingly - none of us were at unease with the height, I thought maybe our oldest would have an issue,but she was absolutely fine - we were all fascinated with the view blow our feet!
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| View from the cable car |
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| My face says terrified, but I swear I was just awe-struck by the view 😂 |
Up on top of the mountain there was a lot to see and do, a large outdoor observation deck - the views were amazing, we got there just in time, an hour later it got really cloudy and we couldn't see a thing, so I'm glad we got there early enough to catch the views.
There was also a large museum where you can learn about the history of the mountain and also of the Zugspitzbahn, and there was also a small snowflake museum - which was really cool. In one area there was a glass floor over a large drop - we were all pretty eager to step on!
We had brought our lunch with us, but we decided to stop into the restaurant there just to get some fries for the kids - which we ended up going back and ordering more of because they were SO. DARN. DELICIOUS. I've never tasted fries like them, I'm not sure what they were seasoned with but we all agreed they were the best we'd ever tasted.
After we'd seen all there was to see the kids wanted to make the journey back down the mountain - this time the cable car was pretty full, so we weren't able to move around as much but it was still so nice seeing the view as we dropped back down.
We wanted to explore a little more of Austria before we headed back to our apartment in Germany, so we took a drive, did a bit of shopping and then stopped into the most amazing playground - with the Alps as a backdrop, and all this amazingly creative wooden play equipment, it was so much fun.
We stayed a while and enjoyed ourselves until it started raining pretty heavily (big fat rain drops - not like I'd seen before) - so we made our way back to the car and started our journey back to over the border to Germany.
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| Austrian Countryside |
We weren't in Austria all that long, but what we saw of it was absolutely stunning - I can't wait to go back and see more some day.
