Monday in Bavaria

We slept in and relaxed on Monday in our lovely apartment at the Fisher farm (Wolfeicherhof). The Fishers are lovely. We gather that most guests are Germans and Austrians getting away from the city, so no one speaks much English. The Fishers have neighbors that speak English quite well and have been very helpful in helping us communicate with each other.

This is a working farm with "farm holiday apartments" added on to the property to supplement their farm income. Many farmers around this area have done the same thing. They have about 20 milking cows, pigs, horses, rabbits, a guinea pig, nine cats, etc.... It's also a great location - right in between Munich and Salzburg.

We are staying right near a large body of water known as the "Bavarian Sea." It's called the Chiemsee. There are several islands in the lake. One of them is called Herrenchiemsee and we took a ferry there this afternoon. King Ludwig II of Bavaria acquired the land in 1873 and built a palace modelled on Versailles. The palace was still incomplete when he died in 1886 and he only stayed in it ten days.

Having been to Versailles, it's pretty impressive to see what Ludwig built. He built all of his castles with his family's money (not Bavaria's) and pretty much ruined his family. He was enamored with Louis XIV - The Sun King - and built the Royal Palace of Herrenchiemsee as a homage to him (two hundred years after he died). It's such a good copy that people from Versailles visited often after the French Revolution to make sure the rebuilding they did was correct.

Another cool thing about the island is that the Constitutional Assembly met there in 1948 in the former monastery (Old Palace) to prepare the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).

We saw a giant banana slug as we walked up to the palace.

After our tour, we ate dinner at a nice restaurant on the island.