Jim managed to snap this picture of our town, Rottach-Egern, during a very brief, miraculous moment when the sun peeked out from the grayness
Like the spa at our hotel, this pretty river walk reminded us of Japan
These flower-draped Bavarian buildings are ubiquitous and irresistible
When we were organizing this trip a few months back, the plan was to recover from Oktoberfest by getting away to a lovely spot on a Bavarian lake for a few days. Sven recommended Tegernsee, a lake that we wouldn’t have even know about because it did not make it into our Lonely Planet guidebook. Good to have Bavarian friends when you are planning a trip here.
We checked out the lake and found two hotels that interested us. We went back and forth between the two because one seemed to have a better location, but the other had a really stunning Japanese-style spa, something you don’t see everyday in Germany. We decided to go with the place with the Japanese spa.
When we told Sven where we were staying and why, he suddenly recalled that his brother Ralph was the architect who designed the spa. Small world!
So here we are in our lovely hotel with a lovely spa to recover from Oktoberfest, not realizing how much recovery we actually needed. Turns out, a massive gathering of partying Bavarians is also a pretty good breeding ground for COVID. Jim was feeling sick the day we arrived, and by the next morning took a COVID test and got a positive result (as did one of the other members of our Oktoberfest contingent.)
So we spent our holiday by the lake with Jim isolated in our room, feeling like absolute hell. He spent a couple really rough days with cold symptoms that were just really, really bad.
Oh, and did I mention that the weather here was unseasonably awful? Cold, wind, rain. On the first day, the sun peeked out for a short time, and then Jim got sick and the weather was just awful for the duration.
I tested negative and never had any symptoms, so I made the best of a crappy situation — keeping a bit of distance from Jim, making a visit to the nice spa, battling the wind and rain to do a bit of sightseeing. This stop was not exactly what we intended, but yes, we are on our way to recovering from Oktoberfest!
Here we are on a little hike in the crappy weather before Jim started feeling terrible
Strolling lakeside during the brief period of sunshine
On that first day Jim also got this nice picture of the town of Tegernsee, and its most prominent building, the brewery. Trust me when I say that the period of blue sky was very brief.
Sightseeing on my own, this how our town looked in the rain and wind and gloom
These cute Bavarian outfits made me think maybe we should have had kids after all
Sightseeing lonely on my own, I had lunch at the brewery in Tegernsee. It was a fun scene, and I drowned my sorrow in these really delicious sausages, sauerkraut, and the local brew.
Catching the ferry back to Rottach-Eggern after my lunch