Day 7: The Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria

We had an early start today as we needed to take the team to the central train station.  Just outside the train station we were to get on our bus to take us to Mad Ludwig II castles. We got to the pickup point at 8:00.

To make our day more magical it had started snowing overnight. There was a couple inches of snow on the ground and it was still snowing.

We boarded our double decker tour bus for the trip to Neuschwanstein.  Along the way the snow continued to come down.

It took almost 2 hours to get to Neuschwanstein.  This is the castle that gave Walt Disney his inspiration for Cinderell's castle.  Normally you can se the castle as you approach, but it was snowing so hard we couldn't see it.  

When we stopped in the village of Hohenschwangau.  There was about 4 inches of snow and on the ground.   We began the laborious walk up the mountain to see the castle.  The tram was not working because of the snow and the horse drawn carriages had a long line. We were told it would be faster to walk.  We walked up the mountain in the snow and had a few minutes to look around outside the castle and take pictures before our tour time.  The walk took about 30 minutes. 

Here is a picture of the castle looking up from the waiting area. 

Notice the huge snow flakes!  It snowed the whole time we were there. By the time we left at 1:30 there was easily 6-8 inches of snow.  The sight was beautiful, but it was hard to take pictures of the castle. 

"Next door" to Neuschwanstein was the castle that Ludwig essentially grew up in. It is still part of the families holdings.  You could take tours of it, but we didn't as our tour needed to leave to visit Ludwig's other castle, really a palace called Hohenschwangau.

After visiting Hohenschwangau we went to At Linderhof.  We had a whirlwind tour of his palace. It was over the top ornate. They had used over 11 pounds of gold as good leaf all over the interior of the palace. Ludwigs inspiration for this palace was the Palace of Versilles.  But in the Bavarian/German Alps, there wasn't enough room for such a large palace some this was his scaled down version.

This is only part of his bedroom.

After our short time at Linderhof We headed to the small village of Oberammergau. This is such a quaint Bavarian village. Every 10 years the village puts on a Passion Play.  The next one is in 2020.   

We then motored back to Munich and had dinner at the Augustiner am Dom that is in the Marienplatz.  Most of the snow that had fallen in Munich had melted by the time we returned.  It was another traditional Bavarian meal. I ordered Bavarian meatloaf, expecting something similar to our US version.  When the waitress brought it she called it a liver worst. It tasted like a hot dog. I'll have to look it up later to really see what I ate.  

It started snowing again while we were at dinner and there was a fresh couple of inches of snow on the ground. We returned to our hotel to do some quick laundry (that turned out to not be so quick) and get ready for our next day of skiing in the German Alps!