Europe 2014 (Part 6 of 6) | Germany – Castles

Wednesday morning started early. Turns out, if you want to actually see the inside of the Neuschwanstein Castle you need tickets. In order to get tickets you need to reserve them. In order to reserve them you should do so no later than 3 days prior. That didn’t work for us. Your other option is to show up early and stand in line. We heard and read about long lines. We had a back up plan though and that was to hook up with the free tour from the same folks that handled the Munich tour. They start their tour from Munich and the bulk of the cost is the train tickets to the castle, and when you get there you still have to buy the tickets but tour guides have an in and can get them. So that was our goal to drive down and meet the group at the train station.

We left Munich about 9am, it’s roughly a 2 hour drive, but we wandered through some small German villages on the way and pulled into the town beneath the castle just prior to noon. We made the call to just stand in line. The line was about 30 minutes long and our tours for the castles were at good times. 12:50 for Hohenschwangau the castle the crazy king lived in, and 3:20pm for the fancy castle.

Words cannot describe the beauty there.

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You have lots of options to get up the mountain to the castle. Busses, or horse drawn carriages. But you still have a good 15-20 minute hilly walk in front of you.

The views are amazing though. So, the short version of the story is, this King, King Ludwig II was kind of a nut. He never married, lived alone and like to decorate and build ‘fancy’ castles. You can draw your own conclusions. He started on this castle well after the home we live in was built, so in the scheme of castles it isn’t very old. It is cool though, and it was a good idea to finish it even after he died. It would have been a shame to let that go to waste.

They don’t let you photograph anything inside either of the castles, primarily to keep the tours moving and motivate you to buy a book.

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After touring the castles, we beat feat south, through the Alps. There’s no point in taking photos in the Alps. You cannot do them justice with a point and click camera. The shear beauty of the

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We have some pretty impressive vistas here in the states, out in the Rockies, but they still don’t compare. After rolling through the Alps we stopped in Innsbruck, Austria for dinner. We found a quaint Italian restaurant in town and dinned there. It was late and again just about everything was closed so once again we ended up with Italian.

IMG_3220_thumb Claudine was beat, I think it was the yarn shopping on the prior day that did it. 😉

On Thursday we stayed in town. I walked Freising with her, and we stopped in at the local cathedral. It was simply amazing.

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After spending the morning in Freising, we headed north to Landshut where both Martin and Rob live. Trausnitz Castle is there at the top of the hill, and it dates back to the 1200’s. We didn’t have time to take the tour, so we walked the grounds and all the public places. It was amazing.

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The park and surrounding grounds of this castle were amazing. We saw deer in the forest on the way back to the car. We then headed back to Freising to have dinner at the Weihenstaphan Brewery Beer garden. The oldest continuously operating brewery in the world. The food was great and the beer was great what more could you ask?

After dinner we drove Mark to his hotel and returned to ours to pack for the flight home in the morning. We got up early for the long day, only made longer because both of our flights home were delayed.

So there you have it, 2 countries, and a whole bunch of stuff visited in about 4 and a half active days of vacationing.

Now I need a vacation from my vacation.