Now these castles are totally touristy. But I was okay with that because I had always wanted to see them! We first visited Hohenschwangau, which is where Mad Ludwig grew up. I'm not a huge fan of the yellow, but I'm not Bavarian royalty so my opinion probably doesn't matter too much.
I had had issues ordering tickets online, but fortunately only had to wait in line for about 30 minutes and ended up getting the tour time I had wanted anyway.
We hung out in the castle gardens while waiting for our tour. More unusual fountains.
And some random statues that seemed to be staring at you.
It's hard to tell here, but the views were really pretty. I can see why they built here!
Turrets and everything! I couldn't help but think of the kids - I think they would have really liked seeing these castles.
I saw the no pictures sign after taking this picture. Oops. But they must be relatives of Gaston, what with using antlers in all of their decorating and all. The castle was pretty interesting, but nothing too extravagant. (At least compared to the next castle.) Our tour guide was okay... I think she mainly just memorized her English script.
After the tour we wandered the little tourist town a bit and had more brot wurst for lunch. This view was a little surreal. Here was Lance eating lunch with a real life castle up on the mountain just behind him! We also experienced our first pay toilets down there, and I have to say those bathrooms were not worth the half Euro I paid. Gross.
After lunch it was time to hike up to the main event: Neuschwanstein. It was a pretty good hike, but the weather was gorgeous and we didn't have any whiny kids with us, so life was good.
The sun was in the worst spot for trying to get pictures once we were at the top.
Once again, no pictures inside, which was a bummer. But if you really want to see what it looked like, just Google it. Ol' Ludwig was pretty extravagant in the rooms he actually finished before he mysteriously died. He definitely outdid any of the castles his dad built! And the views from Neuschwanstein were even more amazing. Seriously.
It was literally like something out of a fairy tale. Because that's what Mad Ludwig was going for.
After the castle we decided to hike up to Mary's Bridge for the views. I just kept thinking about how Tess would freak out with excitement over this - a REAL castle!!
Just us and thousands of our tourists friends at the bridge. Dang. Fortunately, the line didn't take too long.
And it was totally worth the wait and jostling of the crowd. It was surreal!
It was just so nice to spend a beautiful day hiking around the Alps with Lance!
After the Schlösser we were pretty worn out. But we decided to drive to nearby Füssen to find a German grocery store and stock up on snacks and treats. We found a place called REWE bought so much chocolate!! It was awesome. I'm sure the cashier was thinking about how weird tourists are. But it was fun to see what a grocery store was like (pretty similar) and what they sold (some things the same, some quite different). The prices were certainly cheaper there than at any of the touristy spots.
We made the long drive back to Munich and had to stop for gas one more time. (This one you didn't have to guess how much diesel you wanted.) Our little Mini was a pretty great car for this trip.
Trying to get the car back to the rental place was a NIGHTMARE. So much downtown traffic and construction and poorly-behaving GPS units made it pretty stressful. Once we finally dropped the car off I was pretty much done for the evening. But Lance convinced me to go out to dinner, so we found a place near the hotel that served Bavarian food. I had wurst again (because it is delicious) and the best sauerkraut of the trip - it was cooked with bacon and was so tasty I about cried. (Is that weird?) ((Nope, I'm gonna say it's not.))
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