Is it Any Good? We Rode Bikes to Germany’s Stunning Alpine Lake | Eibsee, Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Biking, hiking, views: Join us as we bike from Garmisch-Partenkirchen to the famous Lake Eibsee.
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Channel: near.fromhome
Ben: strawbennyjam
Camille: freshspringham
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Lake i’m say behind me is often considered germany’s most beautiful alpine lake i mean if you listen to tripadvisor instagram or reddit but has it really earned that reputation or is this just going to be one of those spots with one good look and not a whole lot else

Well the only way to figure that out is to go for ourselves i’ve been putting it off for long enough so come with me today and let’s go check it out So how are we getting to this most best of lakes huh well naturally considering i’d say is a tourist hot spot it’s got to be somewhere near garmish partner kicking and in fact it is nigh on only a few villagers over so to get to i’m say we’ll be first

Heading to garmisch-partenkirchen by train from the munich halbon half a pretty classic move for this channel the trains leave roughly every hour around the half pass but of course always check your own train timetables but regardless it’s going to be pretty easy to get there and

Work this into your schedule as a day trip like what i’m doing i’ll be leaving around 9 30 a.m though i bet camille would have liked it if we left a little earlier All right so we’ve officially made it to garnish token that’s the train station that i know oh so well but the real question now is well how am i going to get to ipse and i haven’t done a ton of planning for this one to be honest

You know garmish is where i come to be low-key so how do people get there well you could take the zooks with spawn which you might have seen in one of my other videos that’s the expensive train the cogwheel that takes you all the way to

Ibese and beyond up to the glacier now of course i don’t really want to do that because i’m trying to save a bit of money so you could also take the bus but then you don’t get to really get out into nature it’s just there and

Back again i think that might be pretty boring too so for myself well i’m gonna go try to run a bike wish me luck i’ve never done that before here so let’s find out all right so there was no reason to be worried renting a bike was super easy

Barely an inconvenience the mountain bikes well they cost about 16 euros but the guy told me well if you’re not looking for a workout and you’re trying to go adventure and ebike is the way to go because i’m so you can get a little steep so that’s what i went for

That cost about 30 euros compared to the mountain bike 16 so obviously quite a bit more expensive that’s the big ticket splurge for today and hey it should be a lot of fun let’s stop waffling on in the city and get out on the roads huh navigating the maze of past between the

Small towns isn’t too hard most of the journey is rather well signed posted with clear bicycle route signs and even arrows to points of interest littered along the way so don’t worry about getting lost but maybe worry about getting a little sidetracked you’ll also be gifted with pretty varied terrain

Keeping the ride nice and interesting as the path constantly switches between dirt trails meadow paths cow pastures and of course paved streets overall i’m really loving my choice of biking over the burst of the train as you get just a much better feel for the local area seeing details you’d otherwise miss

Though i suppose that comes at the expense of some soreness tomorrow i haven’t actually ridden a bike in years i mean i used to all the time in fact an electric bicycle was my only vehicle for a fair few years when i lived outside washington dc

But that was a long time ago now and no doubt my butt has grown weak in the interim as even though this should be a pretty chill ride with an e-bike no less we do still have 22 kilometers to crush and about 320 meters of elevation too

But no worries that’s all future ben’s problem as current ben has a trailer Ride all right so kind of need a little bit of a break we’ve been biking for 9 45 minutes or so now though the electric motor is proving to be well worth it is i’m not sweaty and i wanted to just talk a little bit about getting to know locals because

Even though the ride was it’s not that hard to navigate there are a lot of bike signals everywhere letting you know where to go and you got google maps but knowing the most picturesque well that’s just really hard to tell from a top-down map isn’t it

And so while we were riding we almost went over to just a main road boring full of cars you hate that kind of stuff well actually a bunch of locals flagged us over and said hey are you riding around in the air where are you going

And we said oh we’re heading out to ibesto they said well go back the way you came hook up around the church and oh you’re going to end up in this masterpiece of a viking valley absolutely fantastic but my favorite part as always the fact

That i finally got to get a good view of the little cog wheel i mean that’s awesome i’m always in the train never next to it so i’ve never gotten a proper peek at the little gear tooth mechanism that’s really really cool anyway i really like the route that i’ve taken so

I’m gonna go ahead just put that in google maps so you can see it put it on screen right now and well after i finish my coke i better get back on the saddle and get to i’m saying that is supposed to be the main event of the day of course right

Not the bike ride so that’s quickly turning out to just be brilliant let’s go After say another half an hour you’ll know you’re almost at the lake shore when the trail becomes pretty damn steep even for an e-bike the only way is up though but you do have two choices on how you’re gonna take the incline number one you can follow the main road with its

Smooth pavement and smooth gradient it should make for a pretty consistent ride while you’re constantly passed by cars and buses or option two and what i chose continue up the dirt path it’s a little harder and the inclines are more variable some steeper some less you know lots of rocks but also

So much more visually and physically engaging so i’d call it just a lot of fun though on the return journey when the light’s fading and man i need to get back to garmi’s parking perking to return these bikes before the shop closed well you know that i’m going to be going

Down that smooth road no matter which you choose though once you’ve finished crushing the ascent you’ll crest a final hill and pop right into the ibise hotel parking lot from here we can finally ditch the bikes stretch our legs for what should be the prettiest lakeside walk in bavaria so let’s see

About that all right so i’m finally off the bike and we’re on the trail but to be honest i’m getting major flashbacks of my camino videos because that bike ride was just like a mini camino in the way that it was completely flat easy and chill until right at the very

End where honestly i’m really glad i had the motor no idea how people did that without the motor but good for him anyway now it’s kind of time for like a lunchbot but as expected it’s pretty crowded i mean that’s what i thought right so i’m gonna walk for about 20 minutes

30 minutes see if we can thin out the crowd a little bit before i have my nice lunch but pretty starving so let’s keep walking All right so here we are on the picnic blanket by apparently the most beautiful lake and yeah i’m ready to eat we’ve walked around 20 minutes maybe i should have walked a bit further but i haven’t eaten yet today and i need to eat my sandwiches i can’t wait any longer

As for initial impressions well it is a bit touristy but there’s plenty of lake left to impress me plenty of light left to enjoy it so i’m not feeling too down on it for now though yeah i think i’ll enjoy the view with my picnic not bad huh Throughout this video i might have come off a little skeptical perhaps even a little sour which is in truth because the start of this walk fails miserably to live up to the hype you see the hotel parking lot where we ditch the bikes but it sits right on

The east bank of the lake and it sort of shunts you and all the other tourists down clockwise towards the southern shore and this is the area that i found to be rather crowded and where i ended up eating my lunch it’s not a bad spot no

Don’t get me wrong but if we’re being honest compared to all the hype is definitely a letdown the southern shore is simply too busy and the views though no doubt beautiful are in no way germany’s best all in all this led me to believe that i’m say was

Fully over hyped and not particularly worth it however as you round the halfway point and start walking back towards the hotel along the northern shore well now we’re talking this part of the lake is full of character absolutely stunning bays set upon that crystal clear and hyper-reflective water

What is it reflecting back at you germany’s highest peaks is absolutely astounding it’s something else it takes the mediocrity of the southern shore and tosses it right out the window for something truly special let’s just say it turned my mind and my mood around completely though in the end i still

Don’t think it’s the very best having spent all this past summer journeying the lakes in bavaria i of course have my own personal favorite but now that i’ve given ipesa a proper chance i definitely have gained an appreciation for what this lake has to offer and i’ll 100

Be coming back in the summer for sure enough chatting though let’s have a look at these legendary views Oh Hey So with the hotel right behind me that’s kind of the end of all the new content for the video as we round out back there we’ll be on the bicycles and on our way home so what do i think well there’s definitely a lot more depth in just a

Singular instagram spot there are at least 12 but overall it can feel especially in the fall a bit mediated you know i want to go in the water it’s so clear and beautiful but it just can’t the benefit of it though is that i mean look at these reflections they’re absolutely

Eye-watering and the amount of people with all of their photography gear out there with the tripods getting excellent pictures is awesome and so i bet everyone is pretty happy with their instagram pics as well i know i am for now though that’s pretty much it i’ll compare it to

All the other lakes and go in a bit more in depth when we get home for the conclusion but for now i mean i’ve only got about an hour and a half to drop off those bikes and the sun is fading so i better get going hey everybody and welcome back to our

Apartment in munich ready to talk about i’m saying and as promised we’re going to kind of compare it to the other lakes that we’ve been to this year however we were discussing it and we kind of thought that we should tackle it from two different signs one person going over the negative and

One person going over the positive and so it’s kind of jump right in and in fact i think i’ll go first if you don’t mind because i’m going to talk about negative and then you can round out the video by getting all peppy it’s going to be weird anyway so the

Whole thing with i’d say for me it comes down to one major problem and that is clearly not enough cake and beer you see if you’ve watched the rest of our lake videos you’ll notice that they’re kind of two broad categories that we’ve gone to i class them as amenity lakes and remote

Lakes you see the amenity lakes are kind of like tegan’s a valkensay those kind of things right there’s so much to do you’ve got tons of cafes breweries beer gardens hikes the lake itself you know they’re pretty busy they’re a little touristy but there’s also

So much to do and they’ve got the remote lakes those are all about the nature right getting out there being solitary or with friends and then getting out and just getting those amazing vistas and i’d say to me kind of feels like the worst of both worlds it’s incredibly busy

Like an amenity lake but there’s only the hotel and the small walk to do so you’ve got kind of all the downsides of the remote and all the downsides of the amenity not to say it isn’t beautiful but i mean i guess maybe i’m just being

Salty that i didn’t get enough cake and beer anyway why don’t you go ahead and hit us with the positive what’s all the good stuff about this lake yeah so a little bit of backstory is required to talk about why i feel so positively about it so we’ve been living

Here for two years now and we’ve known about ibeze the whole time because like any time you type into google like best day trips you know outside of munich or best lakes in bavaria this one always comes up but because it comes up so frequently and so much and i’ve heard

So much about it there’s a lot of like click bait around it and etc i kind of assume this would be on the same level as like neuschwanstein or the dzukesh bits which are nice but they’re very touristy and that’s just really not the type of thing we like to do we like

To hike get out into the um nature and really experience the culture or have a lot of cake and beer and these and these like very touristy activities they usually are involve you being kind of schlepped to a place you take your instagram photo and you leave i’m really really not into

That so i kind of assumed all of these years that is going to be that kind of situation so we finally got around to doing that and i actually really loved it and i think a lot of the reason is because um there’s a lot of physical activity involved i’m

Really really glad that i listened to your advice and we rented e-bikes my idea in garbage partner kirkin and rode from there to ibse it takes about an hour and a half two hours tons of fun yeah i think it’s a really really good way to experience sort of

How people live between the tourist destinations and the bigger towns out in bavaria um so you get to see like all the cows that live out there the little villages and what people do out there and then once you get to the lake um you know there’s an hour and a half two

Hour walk around the lake which is pretty accessible you know people who aren’t really into hiking could easily still do something like that and the whole time you’re you get to see the beautiful mountains and then reflecting in the lake which is actually really beautiful i was really rolling my eyes expecting

It to not be beautiful because everywhere online says this is the most beautiful lake in bavaria but it really really is quite beautiful it’s probably in my top three it’s the north bank yeah the north bank i’ll agree with you i can do that and there are a lot of

Really good places if you are really wanting to get a good picture for instagram it’s very accessible i find a lot of different lakes that we’ve been to maybe there’s one or two places to get a good picture but i’m not the best at framing or lighting or angles and

Stuff like that and i find it difficult but at this like there’s so many different places so i feel like you can really get a lot of exercise in and you know still do something very accessible right i’m keeping it low-key yeah right now for sure i think that

Pretty much sums it up and so the recommendation truly is you know if you’re in the area which come on it’s garment kirk it’s another duke spitzer you’re gonna be near there at some point right so if you are you’d be missing out if you didn’t at least check out the north

Shore you should definitely do that i think the way that we set up this little day trip is really really fun but i wouldn’t go too far out of my way to do it because instead if you liked this video what i would recommend you check out is

The vulcan save video the tekken’s a video i mean all of them really and of course the shrek say video i’ll put them on screen now so you can click on them because i would love to compare those with this one you know if you like this you’re really

Gonna love them and i think you’re gonna be able to find the best lake for you but the end of the day this year’s been about going to the mall and i don’t regret a single one of them and so that’s pretty much it for this

Video see you in the next one bye pigs worldwide action news pigs and trolls oh my pigs