Schloss Neuschwanstein (schloss means castle)

Today's plan was all about castles. Our plan was to take the train to Fussen which is a small town about 4 km from two Bavarian castles. We had purchased tickets to tour Hohenschwangau Castle, Neuschwanstein Castle and the Museum of the Bavarian Kings. Joe wore his Disney shirt, because Neuschwanstein is the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. All was going according to plan until it was time to change trains at Buchloe, but our train arrived 10 minutes late and by the time we got off and found the platform, we had missed our connecting train. So we had to wait an hour for the next train. The hour delay caused us to miss our first tour. That was a disappointment, but we were happy to have made it. We had a few hours before our next tour, so we walked the 200 meters uphill to wander around the exterior of Hohenschwangau Castle.

Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein are pretty close each other. Hohenschwangau was built many years before and then renovated by Maximilian II as a summer home. It has a lovely view of a lake with mountains towering over it. We walked down to the lake enjoying the view and Zach spent some time wading in the water.

Next we went to the museum and learned about Bavarian royalty. Maximilian died unexpectedly and his son Ludwig II became king at 18. He loved science, the arts and stories of medieval times. He was also heavily influenced by Louis XIV and the opulence of his palace in Versailles. Ludwig decided to build a castle that represented all that he valued and the work on Neuschwanstein began. Ludwig had some political troubles and ended up being declared insane which led to his removal from the throne at the age of 40.  A few days later, he was found dead in the lake and the cause of his death remains a mystery.

I was feeling lightheaded and needed to eat, so we had a quick lunch at a cafe and then it was time to catch a bus up to Neuschwanstein. Our reservation was for 3:30, and we we told to be at the castle 15 minutes early. The bus ride was less than 10 minutes and we got to the bus around 3:00 pm thinking we had plenty of time. Even though the bus was full, the driver waited 20 minutes before he left for the castle. I never saw a schedule posted, but I began to worry that we were going to miss our second tour! When we got off the bus, we had to walk another 600 meters to the castle. By this time I was certain we would miss the tour. The instructions were very clear - No Refunds or Exchanges. We got to the castle at 3:40 and the attendant told us to go to info center to see if we could change our times. The great news of the day was that our reservation was at 3:50 NOT 3:30. Hallelujah! We had made it in time.

Once inside the castle we were told not to take photos or touch anything. We then proceed to walk up a spiral staircase. I have to admit that I am a little tired of climbing stairs, but there were even more stairs after that. In fact, half of the 40 minute tour was spent climbing up or going down about 5 flights of stairs. The tour was interesting and we learned some more about Ludwig, but we still had to walk back to the bus stop and this time it was uphill. After huffing and puffing up the long hill, the ride down the mountain turned out to be much faster than the ride up.

We took the bus back into Fussen where we had about 75 minutes before our train back to Munich departed. We found another restaurant where Joe and I split a yummy strawberry ice cream dish. Zach bought some snacks to eat on the train and now we are riding the train back to Munich for two hours and should be back at our hotel around 9:30 pm.

I am glad that we came to Munich. It is our central hub so that we don't have to take our luggage everywhere, but we are definitely spending a lot of time on trains.