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      10-11-2017, 12:17 AM   #8
keylime503
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Drives: M2C 6MT, Audi A4 Avant
Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: Bay Area, CA

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Day 5

Route for Day 5:



Today was all about the Alpenstrasse, also known as the German High Alpine Road. Our first stop was back in Germany at the Salzbergwerk Berchtesgaden salt mines. We had pre-reserved a specific tour at a specific time online in advance but it seemed like you could just walk up and buy tickets for the next tour. When you’re driving here, ignore the navigation and follow the parking signs on the road. I ended up parking in the employee lot by accident because I had put in GPS coordinates for the salt mine and that’s where it took me.



The salt mine tour was really cool. There was some interesting learning combined with some fun wooden slides and an underground train ride, definitely worth the stop.



Our next stop was Lake Konigssee. Even from afar the traffic was really starting to build up and having already seen a bunch of beautiful lakes the previous day, we decided to audible and skip this stop.



The previous night, I stumbled upon a cool gorge hike along the Alpenstrasse that was supposed to have a ton of waterfalls and only required about a 20-30 minute hike up to the start. I drove by the turnoff twice before spotting it, this was definitely more of a roadside hike for locals than a tourist trap!

Link to gorge hike

It took a couple of laps around the parking area before we found a spot in the dirt lot in the back.



Notice how much a blue car stands out in this picture! This was a common trend throughout the trip, I was really surprised to see how most other cars in Europe were greyscale.

The older gentleman in the shack at the bottom of the trail only sold sparkling water and it was getting hot so to be safe we decided bubbly water > no water. After about a 20 minute walk uphill, you come across a random token machine where you have to buy tokens to access the gorge. Make sure not to miss this because there is no token machine at the actual gorge entrance.

The gorge was absolutely beautiful and coming from California it was nice to do a waterfall hike where the water was actually flowing…



Back on the road on the Alpenstrasse it was starting to rain and the new windshield wipers were getting a full workout. Good thing they were up to the task, because from this moment it rained for the rest of our time in Europe.



Our stop for the night was this awesome SPG Design Hotel called Hotel Bachmair Weissach on Lake Tegernsee. I used only 12,000 SPG points for this 5-star hotel that runs $400+ per night, crazy steal! For some reason, we also got upgraded to a 1-bedroom suite so it’s really a shame we were only using this hotel as a place to crash along the Alpenstrasse instead of spending more time here.

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