About an hour on the road we stopped to gas up Leon the first time. I was pretty impressed! It had been almost a week, and this was the first time we had to stop. But poor Leon was thirsty! I finally manually stopped pumping gas once it hit € 50. Dang!

I needed a picture to fill out this section...

So there was lots of traffic heading down to Garmisch-Parmanenien, and I began to get more and more worried that we weren't going to be able to find hotel rooms for the weekend. What the hell were we thinking? This non-scheduled vacation stuff was for the birds! It is actually much more relaxing to have everything booked, so you can just tour around and not have to worry about accommodations. Anyway...

On the way down the boss had to pee, so we stopped in a small town that also seemed to have a neat town wall. Unfortunately we had no change for the parking meter, and I was getting nervous about Garmisch-Parcarkirkenhold, so we didn't stay for long.

On the way out of town, we turned on to the highway only to see that the road ahead was closed! Oh noooz! So now we're in a foreign country, with a map written in French, on what seems to be the only highway to Garmisch-Parablolas, and I'm freaking out about finding a place to stay.

But the Bonneys are resilient, and Lin-Wei comes up big. All of the promised, but rarely delivered navigator skills finally come to the fore, and she charts out a detour. One that takes us through tiny winding roads, up through hills, past farm after farm, but we do eventually bypass the construction, get back on the highway, and find ourselves in the outskirts of Garmisch! And it was raining. Boo!

Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Garnish your valley with delicious Parmesan

Garmisch-Parmesan used to be two towns that were combined into one for the 1936 Olympcis (maybe, my memory if failing me) and it was hoppin'! Tourists everywhere, cars everywhere, and Al's blood pressure is rising. We were actually able to find the last parking spot on a side street, and walked to the tourist office. Guidebook said that they could help us book a room, and they were right! Asking if there was a room for three nights, the nice older lady behind the desk replied, "Why, yes." The first place we called did not have a private bathroom. No dice. Second place she called, we were in! And a pretty nice place to boot.

Guidebook also said that you can take a train to the top of the Zugspitze. So that seemed weird, but we were (well, I was) determined to check it out. We asked about the weather. Looking at the reports on BBC World, it didn't look good for the next week. Lots and lots of rain and cold weather were coming. But the tourist lady said that the next day would be the best, most likely in the morning. So after checking in we tried to buy our tickets at the train station for the next day, but we had to wait till tomorrow.

That night we ate a very good Italian dinner, but Lin-Wei was feeling nauseous and couldn't eat much. Also, the setting sun was just blasting us for most of the meal. Dang, that was hot.

We walked around a bit that night, found an internet place, and kicked it. I was pretty psyched up for tomorrow. Soaring to the rarified air of the Zugspitze