Castles Galore

This morning after breakfast we set out for Schloss Neuschwanstein, which was the inspiration for Cinderella’s castle in Disneyworld. Driving up to the city surrounding the castle we had a great view looking up at the castle itself. It was very overcast and rainy today so the castle looked a little bit eerie up there.

Across from Neuschwanstein is Hohenschwangau which was the boyhood home of the king that built Neuschwanstein. We didn’t go inside this one, but saw several views of it as we walked around the city and Neuschwanstein.

We took up bus up to Neuschwanstein, rather than take the steep 30 minute hike. From where the bus dropped us off we walked out to Marienbrüke, or Mary’s Bridge, which has an excellent view of the castle. The bridge is over a canyon with a waterfall and is the reason King Ludwig built the castle. He loved the view of the mountains and the bridge was there before the castle. He positioned the castle so that there would be a great view of the waterfall from the windows.

(The last two are views from inside the castle, we could take pictures out the window)

After touring the castle we walked back down to the town. We did some souvenir shopping and also got lunch, bratwurst on a roll, which was delicious. After we walked around for a while we drove out to another castle. Along the way we stopped at a huge waterfall, Lechfall. As we drove up to Linderhof, we saw three other castles. Two were on the top of the mountains and are mostly ruins now, but it was still very impressive to see them.

We didn’t actually tour the Linderhof castle, but we walked all around the gardens. The gardens were very formal with a lot of statuary and gazebos. There was also a covered walk way going up the hill to a view of the castle. Everything was very ornate and a lot of it was painted gold. In front of the castle (which is relatively small compared to the others we’ve seen) was a gold fountain. Every half hour it would go off and the spray from it was huge!

Following our walk around Linderhof we drove out to a city called Oberammergau. This little town was different from others we’ve seen in that many of the walls of the buildings had murals on them. Several of the buildings had fairytales on them. The fairytales we saw included Hänsel and Gretyl, Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood), Aschenputtel (Cinderella), and Puss in Boots.

It was raining pretty hard while we were in Oberammergau so we decided to stop for dinner at one of the hotel cafes. We had some warm soup and got to watch Germany play Croatia in soccer. It was pretty exciting to watch, although it looks like Croatia was quite a bit better than Germany.

When we finished eating we drove back to our hotel (and stopped for chocolate along the way). It poured rain nearly the entire drive (about an hour). Once there, we packed and got ready for our flight home tomorrow.

This is a picture of our car which took us over about 3,300km (about 2,000 miles) of 4 different countries. It’s amazing to think how far we drove and how much we saw in just 12 days.

Our flight leaves at 9:30 AM from Munich and we arrive in Salt Lake City at 11:30 PM. It’s going to be a long day of travel. What a trip this has been though!