Bavaria, perhaps somewhere you might not have thought of but we spent a great holiday there at the end of March this year. The weather was fabulous, warm enough to sit outside a café bar in a sun top plus great scenery and countryside – very ‘hills are alive with the sound of music!’

The region is very rural, rolling meadows flanked by the impressive Alps. Bavaria stands in a little triangle where Austria, Germany and Switzerland meet, allowing you to tour three countries in your motorhome with little hassle. We stayed in a lovely Bavarian town called Isny. From here you could travel to Zurich, Salzburg and even Innsbruck. It’s a bit like ‘buy one-get three free’.

Isny is a small walled town dating back to the thirteen hundreds with its own moat and quaint cobbled streets literally oozing with bars, cafes, restaurants, bakeries and Gasthofs. There is heaps of history in Isney and is well worth a stop. Not much English is spoken here although the people are so friendly you can get by, we did and we are completely non-German speaking except for rot Wien (red wine) danke (thank you) and hallo (self explanatory). But then the bread is so good and the local beer is even better it wouldn’t be difficult to learn the German for those two things and live on them for a week!

If you are thinking about going to this area it’s worth a visit to Lake Konstanz. It will only take you about thirty minutes from Isny and if you drive down to Landau and over onto the island of Bodensee you will find beautiful outdoor café bars, already warm and bright in the early spring sunshine. There are some fantastic shops here too, designer labels lining the wide cobbled platz. Great ice cream too!

Neuschwanstein castle is a must see. Up high in the Alps close to the Austrian border King Ludwig had a replica medieval castle built based on the operas of his good friend Wagner. It’s a great day out, you can even ride to the top of the mountain on a horse and cart and when you have completed the tour you can walk back down and enjoy frankfurter and chips el fresco in the sunshine at one of the little bars nestled at the base of the mountain – what a day out.

So if Europe is taking your fancy and you want to broaden your horizons and see something different on the continent brush down your lederhosen and get going!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 9:37 am and is filed under Holidays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.