Saturday & Sunday

Berchetesgaten, Germany

Edelweis
Halfway up the mountain - that's a museum -- there are a couple hundred miles of bunkers and tunnels all over the mountains in this area


One of the tunnels


At the top of the Eagle's Nest - 30-32 degrees, foggy and SNOWING!


This is the only picture where you have any clue that you are near mountains


This is what it looked like when we left - the weather kept getting worse and more and more foggy - you really can't see anything behind us - supposed to be amazing mountain top views

Well, on Saturday we took the train to Berchtesgaten, Germany to go up and see the Eagle's Nest, which was Hitler's 50th Birthday present from the Nazi party. We were both so excited to go, this was supposed to be our big grand finale - amazing ride up to the top of the mountain and amazing views of 14000-16000 foot Bavarian mountains. Well, it wasn't so exciting. Fog and drizzly rain had set in at the base of the mountain and when we got to the top it was 30-32 degrees and snowing and very foggy. We couldn't see more than 15 feet in front of us, as we were up there the weather continued to get worse. Knowing we were up there was amazing, but so disappointing that we couldn't take in the views. I was so excited, so I definitely felt let down. Then on our way back down the mountain a woman realized she forgot her purse so we had to wait 30 min for it and ended up missing one of the buses we needed and had to wait 2 more hours until the next one. Then when we got to the train station (we stored our luggage in a locker while we were gone) the storage locker was out of service so we missed a train while we waited for someone to fix it, and then finally got on the train to Munich from Salzburg. We finally arrived at our hotel sometime after midnight and were completely exhausted.
Thankfully most of our flight from Munich to Charlotte was a million times better than the flight out - plus Lufthansa is a much better airline. The only issue we had was about 300 miles from Charlotte we hit some turbulence and then dropped - I don't know how many feet, but we all raised up a little out of our seats and people actually screamed. The next 10 min were tense and turbulent. When we landed, we just kind of crunched onto the ground and people let out a mini scream. At this point, I was ready to rent a car and drive home, but Brian talked me into continuing with our flight. Thankfully our last flight was great!
We love, love, loved our trip, but are so glad to be back!!! Going away made us realize how much we love America!