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Europe: Day 4: Neuschwanstein Castle, Wierkirche, Linderhof Palace

November 25, 2013

This is the day I was most excited for!
We started out driving to Fuessen to see the famous Neuschwanstein Castle (Disney patterned his castle after it/the "fairy-tale" castle!).


(we are lovely, we know)

The views were to die for along the way,
so of course we stopped to take pics.







Seriously?!
Also,
we really lucked out and had THE best weather.
It rained the week before we got to Europe,
and then on our very last day when we were driving back to the airport.

I kept calling this castle the "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" Castle,
because they do an aerial shot of it in the movie.
I was soooo excited to see it up close.


Waiting in line to be taken up the mountain!


For all these castles,
we had to park a ways down.
Then you could either hike up or ride the bus.
We took the bus,
but there was still some hiking involved.




Some people got tired.





Can you see that other castle down there to the right?
That's the parent's castle, of the crazy guy (more on him later) who had the Neuschwanstein castle built.
It looks small from here,
but is also really big.
(you can tour that one too, but we didn't have time)


As gorgeous and alluring as this castle was,
it kind of turned out to be a disappointment because:
1. we felt like cattle rushed through our tour
2. we saw, like, nothing
This was pretty sad compared to our last castle where we saw a ton more,
and they let us go down some sweet passageways.
That's what we all really wanted to do...explore and find secret passageways to hidden chambers!
I'm dead serious.



After our quick tour,
we had the option to hike up to this huge bridge.
^^This is the view from there.^^



When we were done,
we stopped by the famous Wieskirche (meadow church).
Can you see Neuschwanstein up on that little hill/mountain to the right there?
In all the pictures I've seen,
it seems like the castle is up on this huuuuge mountain,
but it's not.
(another reason we really liked the Hohenzollern-it was on THE tallest mountain around for miles, which made it stand out and seem even cooler)


We also did a little shopping here.
Well,
shopping was done everywhere actually,
all the time!
hahah.
Our next stop was the smaller-yet even more extravagant (if you can believe it)- Baroque Palace Linderhof.


Like I said earlier, 
the guy who had this castle and palace built was a little loco.
In a nutshell:
his name was Ludwig II.
He was crowned King of Bavaria in 1864,
but didn't really hold any "power" like his predecessors.
He was kind of ticked by this,
so he started building the Neuschwanstein castle.
He wanted it to be the best and most extravagant castle of all castles.
He used up the family money,
so no one liked him and thought he was mad.
He then decided he wanted this other palace built.
He often came here to be alone.
He made his servants hide so he wouldn't see them,
so that everything would feel "magical" - like his food appearing upon a table.
Did I mention that he was also obsessed with the famous composer, Richard Wagner?
There's obviously a lot more to his story (and it's super interesting/mysterious!),
but those were the crazy points we picked up!







There were so many insane details in this place - inside and out!
No stone was left without some intricate marking.


We weren't allowed to take inside pics,
but this is after the inside tour,
on our way to Ludwig's Groto.


Ludwig would come down to this man-made Groto to be entertained/watch plays that he'd have his servants put on.
And he'd have his servants pull him around in this boat.
yeah. weird.



We were pretty pooped after this day and slept again at the hotel in Ettal.

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