We started the day with just coffee and juice and hit the road early. We made sandwiches the night before, using all the bread and lunch meat that we have an eaten, and ate the sandwiches in the car. We had an hour and 15 minute drive to whole stat, which is a small town, less than 1000 people, on a beautiful lake in the mountains.

We ended up behind a tour bus on the road in, not a big surprise. Luckily we arrived reasonably early and there weren’t a lot of tour buses around. The weather was predicted to be nice, but it was pretty cloudy when we arrived and never really got clear during the day. We parked the car and hiked in the town.

The town was just as pretty as we saw on PBS and in the tour books. We took lots of pictures and wandered from one end of town to the other – took about an hour. This should not have been a surprise, but it was pretty touristy. Heather understood that the Chinese love the town so much, that they re-created an exact version of the town in China so would be easier for people to visit. Sounds like an efficient way to manage tourism, but still sounds kind of creepy to me.

Like apparently every other town in Germany and Switzerland and Austria, they had a church that was more than 500 years old. I think I am getting jaded and spoiled. Everywhere we drove and everywhere we look is like a postcard.

We really enjoyed walking around the town, and decide to stop and a little bakery for snacks. We got a chocolate croissant, and apple strudel, and a croissant filled with cream.

Once we finished our snacks we decided to rent a boat with an electric motor for an hour for a personal tour of the lake. The rental was cheap, only €22. This is much cheaper than the cost for four of us to take one of the guided boat tours. I climbed up front and Ryan sat next to me and steered the boat. Holly and Heather cell in the backseat. As a note, I don’t think the boat was designed to have two people 6 foot tall sitting in the front, but that was OK. We took off across the lake and it was wonderful. No crowds, no tourists. We turned off the motor and just sat in the lake and enjoy the quiet. The scenery was wonderful. In addition to all of the pictures of the surrounding mountains, we also had a unique view of the town. We took the boat in the wide circle and examined towns and houses on the lake front.

Unfortunately, about 15 or 20 minutes into the ride it started to rain. And since the forecast was not for rain, none of us have any raincoats. Luckily the boat had a canopy so he put that up, but unfortunately it didn’t cover far enough in the front and Ron and I were still getting wet.

As a note, there really weren’t a lot of instructions given to us when we took the boat. Such as where the lifejackets are located, I don’t think there were any. They didn’t want us to eat on the boat. But they never said that we couldn’t climb over the seat. So Ryan and I as carefully as we could, climbed over the seats to be in the back of the boat with Holly and Heather where there was more room and no rain. We then got on our knees in the boat and lean forward so we could reach the steering wheel. We took turns steering the boat, and Heather took a turn also, so none of our hands got too cold since it was raining and a little chilly.

We returned to the side of the lake near the town, about the time it stopped raining. We also were to send upon by about half a dozen swans, who we think we’re looking for food. Since we weren’t allowed to eat in the boat, we don’t have any food with us to feed the swans. We wouldn’t have fed them anyway, as there of been many signs not to feed birds and wildlife. We did take a lot of pictures of the swans right up against the boat, and pictures of the town as a return the boat to the folks where we rented it. We did climb back over the front seat out of their site before we turn the boat.

We asked for a recommendation of a good place to eat in town, and the boat people told us that they were all tourist traps and couldn’t recommend any place to us that they really liked. So we got the car and drove back to Saulsburg. We decided to go back to the shopping mall with the IKEA store, in part to return a couple of gifts that wouldn’t fit in our suitcase. While we were there we stopped at a sushi place and a fish place for dinner.

After reading we headed back home, where we are doing three loads of laundry and getting ready to leave from Munich in the morning.