A German & Austrian Trip in 2001 - 5
Kitzbuhel to Herrenchiemsee

Saturday 15th September 2001

The Schweizerhof was Sch1883.18 Half board for two = £91.66. Another mooch, as we were expecting the cows to come down. Something new for us (who have skied here often) was a market in the Innerstadt. Kitzbuhel is a walled town, the walls having been taken over by buildings, so it has a front & back Town within the walls.

Kitzbuhel Vorderstadt West	Kitzbuhel Vorderstadt East	Kitzbuhel Market

The cows didn't materialise, so we drove off in somewhat better weather North, stopping in Schwendt to look at their about-to-be-rained-on Bauernherbst.

Schwendt Bauernherbst	Herrenchiemsee

Back into Germany at Reit-am-Winkel & up an attractive road to the Chiemsee. This took us East of the lake, so we went round it & parked in Gstadt to take the boat over to the islands, getting it just in time. It was a quarter hour walk from the landing stage on the Herren Insel to the chateau, Herrenchieemsee, the last of Loopy Ludwig's follies. Based on the middle slice of Versailles, the shell was finished in the seven years is was under way (stopped on Loopy's death) but only 20 rooms out of 70 were fitted out, in the over-luxurious style of the Linderhof. It was full of Louis XIV-isms & a complete fantasy for a constitutional monarch who wanted the trappings of absolutism. We are getting used to Loopy by now. I thought that they should commission artists like Anselm Kiefer to finish the bare rooms in their own style. We had a late lunch in its café of leberkase (Avis) & bratwürst (me). The boat back was slow, as it called at the Fraueninsel (where the nunnery was). We drove to Prien, which was a disappointment. Not so, the Priental, which is a finger of land poking into Austria. We stopped at the last village, Sachrang, & booked into the Sachrangerhof, where we had dinner of sole (this far from the sea but very good) & cake we did not need.

The Herrenchiemsee fountains are grotesque		see what I mean?