One of our most anticipated attractions on this trip, our plan was to visit the castles on the 4th day, first thing after we departed Munich. That day when we checked out of our Munich hotel, we got ourselves a rental car from Avis. Both the hotel and car rental place are in the suburb of Munich, but not exactly close to each other. Because it was Sunday, not many places open, and even the one we visited opens for a few hours in the morning only. (Actually most people were there to return cars.) When we got the car, I was a little disappointed. First it was a Kia (I was hoping for a German car), and second it was automatic transmission. They probably figure they are doing us Canadians favor, giving us automatics. Oh well, at least the car was quite new.
It was about two hours driving from our hotel to get to the castle area. We actually stopped by the town Fussen nearby, to check in hotel and left our luggages there. We were right on schedule, which is good because we have booked tickets in advanced, with time of visited arranged. In fact because I put in buffer time just in case, we were actually early, so we had a bit of time to walk around before we visited the castles.
Weather weren’t promising, from the time we left Munich till we got to the castles, there were drizzle on and off. Then when it was time to visit the first castle, the older Schloss Hohenschwangau, sky cleared up a little, but it was still hard to see the other castle (which is the bigger draw.) The tour for the old castle was quite good, the guide gave us plenty of stories and background about the castles and the royal family. He also mentioned a couple times that the King who built the other castle monitor the progress of it being built from this old castle, but at that time, we could barely see it with some clouds and fog surrounding it. But as we finished our tour and stepped out of the old castle, sun actually broke in.
By the time it was for us to go up the other castle, Schloss Neuschwanstein, weather was perfect. This castle looks like the castle of the Disney logo; it should be noted that this castle came before the existence of Disney. A shuttle ride took us to a spot just a little above the castle. From there, we walked a little bit and reached a bridge that gives the amazing view of the castle. In my mind, we didn’t need to see the inside after viewing the castle from the bridge; not that the rooms inside weren’t any good, actually the throne room was quite nice. Instead of taking another shuttle back down to the parking lot, we walked down and saw some more nice view of the castle, with trees and leaves turning as well. I’m sure all of us thought that was a very good day.
