Alpine castles

Earlier this summer (early June) Kristen and I took some real vacation time and traveled down to the Bavarian Alps. I'll divide this trip into two seperate posts because of the amount of pictures we took and the amount of stuff I could write about. So, the first half was castles!

The southeastern corner of Bavaria is home to some of the castles built by "Mad" King Ludwig during the 19th century. This eccentric and arguably insane monarch was obsessed with the romantic notions of chivalry and castles and all things middle-ages. Since he was King, he had castle after castle built to match his romantic notions of castles. He grew up in Hohenschwangau (the yellow castle), which he had renovated as an adult. His final project as an adult was Neuschwanstein, the castle that inspired Cinderella's castle for Disney.

First we drove down to Fussen, the town closest to Hohenschwangau and Neuswanshtein. There we stayed at a bed and breakfast that I had stayed at five years ago when I was studying at Maastricht. The place was fantastic! We walked around the town that evening and saw the old castle (an actual fortification, not just for show like H and N). After breakfast the next morning we took tours of both castles. Hohenschwangau still has all the furniture from Ludwig's childhood, so the tour shows off how royalty lived. Neuswanstein was never lived in- never finished actually- so the tour more or less shows off the over-the-top style of Ludwig. After the tour we started talking to a pair of couples who had stayed at the same bed and breakfast as us the night before and we'd been bumping into all day. We took the hike up the mountain above Neuswanshtein where there is a huge suspension bridge above a gorge from which you have a great view of the castle (last picture). From the castles we got in the car and took a drive across the border to enjoy a scenic alpine drive to Garmisch, the second half of the trip.