27th September 2016. Andechs, Germany.

The plan for today is that we’re making our way to Kloster Andechs (Andechs Monastery).  We’d mentioned it to Mark and Lucy and they said they would try and find us, hangover permitting, so it remains to be seen if either of us get there.  Exciting!

We did go to Andechs.  Excitingly, as we neared the stëllplatz we drove past two deer in a field, I photographed them but sadly they appeared as little dots.

We had a great surprise when we drove into the car park, Lucy and Mark were parked up having lunch and waiting for us to arrive.  We parked next to them then joined them in their van Frankie.  We drank coffee, lovingly prepared by Mark, and chatted about what we’d all been up to since we last met in Würzburg.

When we’d caught up with all the news we walked over to the monastery to have a look around and try their beer.

The parts of the monastery that we were allowed to visit were extremely ornate.

We were hoping to go to the top of the tower to see the view but when it came to paying we discovered there wasn’t a person taking the money as we’d hoped, they’d installed a turnstile which was no use to us as none of us had any 1 Euro coins so it was back down again to the courtyard and off to the biergarten.

We found a table in the sun with a wonderful view of the green rolling hills and Darren and Mark went off to get the beers and pretzels.  The pretzels were huge and the beer was gorgeous.  I had dunkel bier which was a dark beer, Darren had a light beer, we decided mine was best.  We had half steins and I couldn’t even manage to drink all of that as lovely as it was.

We sat chatting for a long time until the sun went behind the monastery and we got cold then we went back to our vans.

Darren and I sat and watched a new series on my Kindle (thank you to my parents for their help in getting that delivered to us) but we had trouble hearing it until I remembered the headphones we’d bought on Mark and Lucy’s advice.  They were fantastic, I’ve never watched TV with headphones on before but they made everything so clear and we could even hear things going on in the background at the characters home!

I’d like to say we had a peaceful night but unfortunately someone must have heard my comment to Lucy earlier about the church we’d seen at Eichstätt.  It had chimed every 15 minutes and I had commented that it would have been extremely irritating at night time.  I can tell you now, it is irritating but at least it gives you something to do during your ‘wide awake’ hours as you count the dongs!