A simply spectacular day. I went with a tour group early in the morning to visit the far away town of Hohenschwangau located in the Bavarian Alps, location of the castle of King Maximillian, and even more famous the castle of the mad “Fairy Tale King” Ludwig II. Schloss Neuschwanstein (noy – shvahn – shtine; New swan stone), which served as he inspiration for Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty Castle is a stunning and beautiful castle, not only on the outside, but inside as well. Begun in 1869, during its 17 years of construction, the main structure was completed, but only about 15 of the planned 60 rooms were finished before Ludwig II’s mysterious conspiratorial death, after which construction stopped and the castle was opened up only 6 weeks later to the public as a museum. He was in deep debt after such an extravagant castle. I have been to many palaces, and several castles…this was by far the most spectacular. I could go on forever describing the detail, this gives you a good hint – it took 16 carpenters 4 years to build and carve his bed frame. They forbid pictures inside the castle, so I did the next best thing, photograph the post cards in the gift shop, which are posted below. This was not all however. With the group we started with an exhausting bike ride around nearby beautiful Swan lake, then had lunch. Sadly there was a choice between doing the bikeride, or taking the tram way high up the mountain which would have been a truly amazing view of the country side, but I stayed with the bikeride , which I kind of regret. Afterwards many of us went on what’s called a Rodelbahn, hell if I know what it means, but it is a very fun slide ride luge bobsled style thing with a brake on your own personal mini sled cart that lets you control your speed. Gemany has many of these, and apparently so do other places in Europe. I recorded my second time down and posted it below. Once wasn’t enough. We toured through the castle later in the day and headed back. The tour is very short, you are fed in and out in less han 30 minutes, they only show you a few of the completed rooms, and they get up to 8000 visitors a day. His throne room, his bedroom, the chapel, the servants quarters and the kitchen before being force fed into not one, but two separate gift shops.

It takes 2 hours to reach the area, and 2 to get back, so you really don’t get to spend too much time, though all in all, easily one of the best days yet.

Some kind of good news, the castle was undergoing sand blast work on one face of the castle recently, but they finished and the solid scaffolding wall totally covering one whole side is gone. The guide said all the visitors who had come in the last whole year saw one side covered completely in scaffolding as that’s how long it takes to do the maintenance (mainly mildew and rot removal). The down side is, about 1 month ago, the nearby Marienbrücke (Mary’s bridge) which gives you an amazing view of the length of the castle had been totally removed, d ue to it being found to be wobbly, as it was the original steel put there in the 1800’s. He also said the weather was great, the last several days had all been much colder, cloudy and rainy, and the luge ride is closed in the rain.

The ride video, top of the hill overlooking the nearby country side: https://youtu.be/GuGhCzGK8CQ