On Tuesday, December 20th I grabbed breakfast at the hotel and then walked about 15 minutes to where I met my tour for the day. On my first visit to Munich, I only had time for one "day trip" outside of the city and I chose to go to Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, but I always knew I wanted to venture down to the Bavarian Alps and see some castles on my next visit. I had booked the premium tour and it was so fancy. There was a snack bar and they even served beer and wine on the way home after the last stop of the day.
First stop was at Linderhof Castle. This was a "small" castle of King Ludwig's that was a partial mini-replica of Versailles. It was a snowy walk to the castle...
Interior photos were not allowed, but you can see some pics of the interior HERE
Like Versailles, there are fountains and sculptures surrounding Linderhof, but they cover the statues with wood huts to protect them from the winter elements.
After visiting Linderhof, we made a (too) quick stop in Oberammergau. This village is know for it's Passion Play that is put on once-per-decade. They also have painted homes that usually tell a story. Most of them I only got to see from the bus and this is a bad pic I snapped as we drove. This house is telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood.
Our next stop was Hohenschwangau. There are two castles located there... Hohenschwangau Castle and Neuschwanstein Castle.
I had lunch before heading up to see Neuschwanstein Castle. I had pork tenderloin with crispy fried onions on top. It was served with cheesy spätzle.
There is normally a shuttle that takes you a good portion of the way up to Neuschwanstein Castle, but it doesn't run this time of year. So hiking up the mountain it was!
This was King Ludwig's fairy-tale castle that he build from 1869-1886. Construction stopped at his death, which left only about 1/3 of the interior finished.
During World War II, the Nazis used this as their primary secret storage of stolen art. Disney used the castle as a model for the ones in their parks.
I was so disappointed the bridge Marienbrücke was under construction. You can get the best views of the castle from there.
Once inside, you can tour 15 rooms with their original furnishings, but you are also going to have to go up and down more than 300 steps (mostly spiral staircases). Did I mention we had to hike up the mountain just to get there before the 300+ steps?
This is the bridge we couldn't visit as seen from the castle.
This is looking down at Hohenschwangau Castle. It was the castle where King Ludwig spent his summers as a boy. It was originally built in the 12th century, but Napoleon destroyed it and King Maximilian II (Ludwig's father) rebuilt it in 1830.
A closer look at Hohenschwangau Castle. We didn't get to tour this one, but it was located right by the bus parking lot.
The tour lasted 10.5 hours. After returning to Munich, I made another pass through the market and got one last bratwurst.
I then went to start packing up my things since I had to leave for the airport fairly early the next morning. I flew from Munich to Charlotte, NC and then had about a several hour layover in Charlotte before flying home to DFW. Once at DFW we had to wait over an hour for the flight's luggage to be put out, so it was basically bedtime when I arrived at home very tired but having had another amazing European adventure!
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