Today we woke up nice and early to catch our bus to the castles! The best part about staying in Füssen is that you get this thing called the Füssen pass which lets you take any of the public transport in the area for free! This made our bus trip up to where the castles are totally free! Getting to the castles, you see their beauty and can’t help but think,”How the heck did they build these things on top of these big hills/mountains so long ago?” We got there pretty early by catching the first bus in. We wanted to make sure that we would beat the crowds. We were there so early in fact that we had some time to wait until the first tour started. This allowed us to hang out on some benches along the shores of the Alpsee, directly translated as Alp lake. I can see how it gets its name as the alps are soaring up around us! It was great to take a breath and take in the beauty of God’s creation. Then came the tours!
Castle tour #1, Hohenshwangau: This is the “smaller” of the two castles here, but that didn’t make it any less fascinating! When you go in, you see art everywhere and each of piece of art has a description above them. The descriptions were for the visitors to understand what was going on in the art work so they could understand the history that they were seeing. It was very interesting that the king and queen had their own separate floors and separate sleeping areas. I did enjoy that the king did have a secret staircase that lead to the queen’s bedroom though. Overall, Castle #1 was good and it was simple. Another thing that I really enjoyed was the telescope that Mad King Ludwig had to check on the progress of the castle being built higher up on the hill and castle #2 in our castle day, Neuschwanstein.
Castle Tour #2, Neuschwanstein: It started with a long hike up the road to the next castle. After the mile and half uphill hike, we reward ourselves with a snack and some delicious hot chocolate. We were also rewarded with spectacular views, I guess that is what happens when you walk straight up a hill for a while, which was a great view of the valley below us. Also, we got see up close and personal the amazingness of this castle.
Neuschwanstein, known as the Disney castle because this is the castle that Disney based Cinderella’s castle on. This castle was the pride and joy of King Ludwig II. Unfortunately for him though, he did not get to live in it long (6 weeks) before he died and it was never finished. This castle was worked on for 17 years and many in the Bavarian Government were not happy with Ludwig spending all his time building a castle and had a psychiatrist declare him insane. Then only a few days after this “Mad” King Ludwig and the psychiatrist ended up dead in a lake….suspicious, I sure think so. Anyways, back to the castle that Ludwig had built.
It was built as Ludwig’s beautiful countryside “home” as the main place of residence for the king was Munich. Now home is an understatement because this castle is huge. Not only is it huge but the views that you get throughout the castle are breath-taking! A great view of the Alps and the Alpsee was my favorite view as you can see below!
There was so much decadence in here. He had a throne room built like one in the old days where there was only 1 door in and the painting on the ceiling above signified that there was only God above him, the king. His bed had wood carvings on it that took 2 years to complete. Heck he even had running water in his bedroom! It really is too bad it wasn’t completed because the extra stuff that could have been added would have been that much more amazing! They said it would have taken them 5 more years to complete the rest of it! After Ludwig died, they turned it into a museum and a place that the public could enjoy. They even still hold parties and performances in the ballroom of Ludwig favorite composer, Richard Wagner.
Overall, it was a super fun day at the castles and the most fun really was hearing the history of what went on with these two spectacular places. The guides we had were really proud of the German history and what these castles represent. We then had one more castle and some more things to see back in our home base for this part of the trip, Füssen.
Travel Tales From BB-8 