Munich was our port of arrival, we would have 2 nights in Prien on lake Chiemsee before travelling through for a week in a timeshare apartment in Zell am See, Austria. We would then return to Prien for a final 2 nights. This worked out wonderfully. It is an easy 60 mile drive to our hotel on the lakeside from the airport, so makes a good base for either side of our main week. So impressed were we with this area and our hotel, the wonderful Luitpold am See, that we will certainly be returning for long weekends now and again.
The hotel, Luitpold-am-see is in a great situation, sitting alongside the docks where a paddle steamer and various craft ply back and forth to the islands. Laden with tourists and visitors to the grand palace on the main island. As you know by now, in these Travel Bites, we try to find the ‘ahh’ spot in the resort, where it is best to sit and watch the world go by or survey the scenery. For this trip, the Luitpold’s outside restaurant terrace overlooking the ferries coming and going, was where we spent many an hour. The restaurant, personally overseen by the hotel’s owner, Herr Wulf, was like the rest of the establishment, superb with friendly attentive staff, waiting to serve us delicious meals or copious glasses of ‘Radler’ (lager shandy).
Overlooking this are the rest of the lakeside hotels in this marvellous resort, with outside bars and cafes competing for trade. We preferred the relative tranquillity of the Luitpold's sunny terrace. Just past the other hotels is the best swimming complex we have ever visited.
Prienavera, this complex is comprised of various pools, spas, steam rooms, sun lounging areas and a truly great outside pool on a wooden boardwalk/ sun-terrace that juts out into the lake!
To the right of our hotel, behind the docks is a large yard with kiosks and toilets for the day-trippers and home of the Chiemseebahn. This elderly train was built in 1886 and now conveys tourists from the town centre mainline station a couple of kilometres away down to the docks. With a whistle and a toot, off it chugs to collect the next load of boat passengers, great. Beyond this yard are all the car and coach car parks, with a lakeside road heading south and the town centre up the hill to the west.
Arriving at the hotel at about 2pm the friendly receptionist guessed our name (not hard to spot a Brit abroad) and handed us the key to our lovely room. Spacious and meticulously clean, with a great balcony overlooking the little train and the docks. We also had, by using the airport’s online hotel booking service, a complimentary fruit basket, chocolates and mineral water, it’s the little touches that show the difference, very nice.
The first thing we did after the, relative chore, of unpacking was to sample a couple of ½ litres of Radler, refreshing lager shandy on Herr Wulf’s great terrace. We only found out about Radler on our last trip to Austria, in a heatwave, we were drinking large volumes of cold beer (lovely, but strong) to keep cool and then having to have an afternoon siesta to be ready for the evening!
