A little more organised this time & managed to have a shower AND make it to breakfast in time! We're impressed with ourselves already! It's going to be a good day!

Chatted with a French couple at breakfast who live just a couple of valleys over from Zermatt (20min by helicopter or about 4 hours by car!) . Mum had never stayed at a B&B before but she's loving the breakfast interaction with other guests & meeting new people.

Finished packing & we're off, "On the road again" (keep singing this in my head every time we head off, thanks to Julia as that's what she always used to say when we were travelling around Alaska with her!)

We were originally going to head straight to Partnachklamm (Partnach Gorge), but got sidetracked by Blindsee Lake, a very cute lake at the bottom of the mountain we've been staying on. Since we had perfect blue skies this morning, we just had to stop there to take a few photos of the little boathouse with the alps in the background. Ahhhh ... do we have to leave?  

Back in the car park, there were a group of divers (yes, you read that correctly), preparing for a dry-suit dive into the freezing but extremely clear waters of the lake . I'd read about this as an activity you can do before we got over here ... so wish I could try this out as I've only ever been diving in the ocean! Anyhow ... maybe another time as today as I have to be responsible & look after Mum!

On to Partnachklamm, a beautiful gorge that's 80m deep and about 250m long with thousands of tiny waterfalls gently spilling over its edges into the thunderous waters below. They cut a whole walkway along the edge of the gorge, though mainly so guys could climb down & un-wedge logs that were being floated downstream, rather than to make a beautiful walk for tourists ... but either works!

There were so many little trickles & constant splashes of water coming down, glistening in the morning sunlight ... a stunning sight!

Next, we headed to Ettal Abbey in the town of Ettal (no surprises there). After having a look at the outside, we nearly didn't go inside as we thought "Ho hum ... it's OK" but then we went inside & OMG! This place is incredible. Maybe more impressive than the Melk Abbey! So much gold everywhere ... this place is so over the top, it's crazy! Unfortunately, we didn't have time to do the full tour so just a quick visit, before stopping for lunch at a nice cafe about 200m away.

Next, was Linderhof Palace, King Ludwig's favourite palace. Silly us, we thought the Abbey was over the top ... then we walked into the palace, where every room is more over the top and more ridiculously decorated than the previous one! Only pictures can show how insane this place is!!

Our last stop for the day was Oberammagau, where Mum had been wanting to visit (with the shops open) ever since we stopped there a couple of days ago for our late dinner. If she could, I think she would have bought have of Oberammagau, as the shops are full of such cool & cute things!

It was getting late in the day by now so we decided to squeeze in two more alpine lakes before turning our car towards Munich so we headed to Walchensee for a few last photos, climbed the extremely windy road up & over the pass then down into Kochelsee, the second lake (yes, you guessed it ... more photos), then drove into Munich.

Arrived in Munich & found our hotel without too many issues (even found a temporary car park almost across the street from the hotel - car parks are rare in Europe so this was impressive!). Dropping Mum & all the bags off then I went back to the car to return it. Seems like a simple enough idea ... but I couldn't find the Avis office at the train station. The next closest office was about 2km away so I drove over there & after missing the turn-off about 3 times, eventually went in ... then realised I hadn't filled up the car so took off again to find a petrol station, then came back again, dropped the keys off in their after-hours box (it was about 9pm by now) & then began the walk back to the hotel.

Came across a train station so I thought "Great, I'll just take the train back as that'll be quicker than walking" but then there were police everywhere as some group was holding a protest demonstration nearby so it looked like the train station was blocked off (it wasn't ... it just had armed police at each of the entrances!). Went down & figured out how to buy a ticket then just missed the train and the next one wasn't for another 10min ... so I ended up going back to the street & continuing my walk home as it wasn't very far by then.

Anyhow, the whole car-return experience took about an hour and by then, Mum was starting to get worried. Unfortunately, both my phones died a few days ago (what are the chances hey!) so I had no way of communicating with her to let her know what was going on either!

It was all fine in the end but a bit worrying for a while, especially as the whole area around the train station where we're staying is a bit like a German-speaking version of Girrawheen or Rockingham.

Late night dinner of surprisingly good pizza at a late night restaurant.