July 13 – Neuschwanstein Castle & Cows
Following the long walking and travel day of yesterday, today we decided to head out to explore a castle that was fully intact…Neuschwanstein Castle aka Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Germany. Hoping on their website, we realized we should have booked it a bit better to get a tour of the inside of the castle, which looked amazing, but unfortunately tickets were sold out until the third week of August. Not to be discouraged, we made the 2 hour drive (not a long distance but the roads here are very narrow and twisty.
Other than Paris, this has be the busiest tourist area we visited on the trip. We lucked out to get a parking spot in a close parking lot then it was on the way towards the massive amounts of people. A quick bit for lunch and we decided to splurge and take the easy way up to the castle in a horse drawn carriage with 8 other people. To give an example as to how diverse the visitors were, there were 2 from Florida (talking Patrick’s ear off asking if we spoke english in Nova Scotia…as they converse in english), 2 from Denmark (they are talking to me able feeling bad for the horses) and a family of 4 who spoke mainly german so not 100% where they are from. The ride up was slow (with one poop stop) and people were either keeping up with us or passing us.
At the top there were hundreds of people but seeing all the vantage points were amazing. From the view of the lake to the view of the castle it was hard to pick a favourite. Heading towards Marienbrücke (Mary’s Bridge), we hopped into the queue to get the iconic view of the castle. This was about as bad as waiting for a ride at Disney. But we waited and it was worth it. The view was amazing but the bridge boards were a bit wonky for some of us. After a quick picture, Sable exited stage left to wait for us. Few more pictures we were heading back to allow others to take their turn.
Trying to get back down the hill was a bit challenging. We have found people are just very much the type that I am walking here with my family and I am not going to give you enough room to get by type. They take up the whole walkway with no budging. There was a bunch of excuse us as we pushed our way through. Then it was downhill from there…literally! Going down and seeing people struggle coming up, I am glad we made that decision to go hike down instead of up.
Visiting all the gift shops was fun then more gelato and we were off on our way back to the hotel with a quick grocery stop on the way. Spotting another alpine coaster we stopped but with a 60 minute wait it was a bit much for the end of the day and grocery stores here seem to close between 6 and 7 so we would not have food again if we waited.
With the hotel having our kitchen area, we were able to have a pasta and pizza meal here before Patrick and I decided to head out to explore our area. It amazes me the shear amount of trails around to hike on. We headed a short distance up our steep road and were on a trail complete with bell ringing cows. One kept following me so after seeing someone else scratch her head I did the same and ended up giving her a shock 🙁 She was cute but the look I got she was very disappointed in me 🙁
The weather the next few days are a bit dicey so we will see where our adventure takes us tomorrow and Wednesday. Thursday Patrick and Sable will be going to do a mountain hike as Bryan and I go explore the town.
Total steps today, had to do the evening walk to get it up over 10k, 12,304.
