We got up early to set off for Bavarian Castle country. We had purchased our tickets in advance a few days ago and had our first visit around noon. We didn't leave ourself an extra cushion of time, so between rain and an unexpected road closure on our route, we ended up arriving too late. In addition, Susan had forgotten to bring the confirmation number along, so we were concerned that our advanced tickets would not be honored. Thankfully, they just rescheduled our visit for a few hours later and we were on our way without waiting in the long line for those who had not purchased tickets in advance.

It was raining all day and Susan hadn't realized that 3 weeks of walking in her old shoes had left large cracks in the soles - at least she didn't know about them until she stepped outside where her socks were instantly soaked through. It was cold, rainy, and foggy all day, which detracted considerably from the majestic views we were hoping to get of the outside of the castles - especially Neuschwannstein, which is the most famous of all Bavarian castles - the one that the Disney castle is modeled after. The first castle of the day, Hohenschwangau, turned out to be the most rewarding (although least well-known) because the interior was amazing and there was a lot of information provided through the audio tour. Neuschwannstein was quite disappointing - considering that they had 17 years to build it and they only managed to finish a dozen rooms or so. The view from Mary's Bridge is supposed to be amazing, but we just saw white nothingness from the fog.

The next stop on our Bavarian castle tour was Linderhoff. We were told that it was a copy of Versaille, so we were expecting something quite large. It may have been inspired by Versaille (Johan Ludwig was a great admirer or Louis XIV and Louis XV) but it's certainly not a copy. We had a nice tour but then were so tired of the cold and rain that we made a beeline back to our home base for the night where we got warmed up and dried and ate some yummy food.

Labels: Europe 2008, Germany