Lake, food and an evening out... still in Garmisch.

After our adventure up to the Alpspitze, we drove to the Riessersee, a small lake at the base of the mountains.  We walked around the whole thing with a stop in the middle to throw rocks. 

Katie girl could not stop making ‘nature jewelry’ the whole day.

It was interesting to ‘try’ to read the Olympic information here.  Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany hosted the 1936 Winter Olympic Games. (The games were officially opened by A. Hitler)   When this lake froze in the winter, they used it to cut square blocks of ice to make the bobsled track just a km or so away. What a lot of work.  They also held the men’s hockey games on this lake.  (That year Great Britain upset 1932 gold medalists: Canada).  The Bobsled Museum was open but the kids were dying to eat and get back to the hotel’s pool!

We picked a German/Bavarian restaurant downtown Garmicsh to eat lunch called Werdenfelserhof. At 2:30 in the afternoon we had the whole restaurant to ourselves.  We’ve heard the German dining experience is slow and can take hours so we prepared ourselves but other than the hotel pool beckoning to the kids, we had nowhere to be anyway.  We sat at a large wooden table and ordered drinks.  We should have searched the menus for the price before we ordered but we were so thirsty we just went ahead and ordered – plus the tap water isn’t great.  We paid 4 euro per drink! – that’s like five bucks a drink without refills. Mental note: don’t go thirsty to a German restaurant? OR don’t take family of 8 to a German restaurant.  Yes, that’s better.

Chris ordered the recommended “Farmer’s Platter”  which consisted of smoked meat, roast pork, belly pork, sausage, sourcabbage and a bread dumpling.  Whew.  He liked it, but had a hard time finishing the whole thing.

I ordered Asparagus and Hollandaise sauce on Schnitzel (with roasted potatoes on the side).  Very good.

The kids ordered a cream schnitzel with noodles.  Their schnitzel and sauce was delish.  They also ordered some wieners and pomme frites (french fries) to share.  We give our first real German meal two big thumbs up.

We walked down Lugwigstrasse for awhile before heading back to the pool. 

Later that evening, after the kids were in bed and Ryan and Katie were babysitting, Chris and I headed back downtown for an evening stroll.  I can’t even tell you how fabulous it is to leave our kids back at the hotel.  We wandered hand in hand (with no stroller) through the shopping district, although all the stores had closed by now.  Instead we found great gelato, and sat down on a bench under the big tree in the center of the cobblestone square.