We got up early for breakfast – more cold cuts, and then boarded the bus for a short ride to the trail head for our walk up to the castle. Thank goodness it was a nice day and not rainy again. We had a pleasant 1 ½ hour walk through the woods, crossing the boarder between Austria and Germany, there was an old crossing gate and guard house there, and on to Fusse, Germany.
We then had a steep walk up to Neuschwanstein Castle. The castle where he grew up is just across the gorge and it is called Hohenschwangau Castle. Neuschwanstein Castle was built by “Mad” King Ludwig and is only about 1/3 completed. We toured through all the rooms that were finished and they were definitely “over the top”. There isn’t any photography allowed inside the castle so we had to purchase postcards from the gift shop in order to have any pictures of the interior. The king actually only lived in the castle for 172 days. The walls and most of the ceilings are covered in murals and he even had a cave built inside the house where he could sit to listen to music.
Outside the castle you can take another STEEP walk to Mary’s Bridge, Marienbrucke, which is a suspension bridge across a deep gorge just beside the castle where you can get some great pictures of the castle and countryside. We did that and then headed back down to town for a beer and some lunch – MORE SAUSAGE!!
We all met back at the bus and headed for the luge. We each got to have two rides. We boarded our luge and were pulled up the mountain where we were turned loose to ride down. You had like a joy stick between your legs that you pushed forward to go faster and pulled back towards you to slow down or stop. Everybody took it easy on their first run and then on our second run we took off. Paul got a little too enthusiastic and managed to flip his luge and scrape up his arm. He was our only casualty.
Our next stop, in the rain again, was at a church about 30 minutes outside of town, Wies Church or Wieskirch. This is a rococo-style church and is very ornamental. The ceilings are painted with all kinds of scenes and there are massive amounts of gold leaf used on everything.
We returned to our quaint little hotel for a rest before we all met for dinner. We are losing our tour guide again and getting a new one for our next part of the tour in Italy. Our new guide is named Karen and she has lived in Italy for quite a few years. We haven’t been able to keep our guides since our original guide had to leave us but we have gotten guides in each area that are experts for that area so it is working out well so far.
Tomorrow we leave for Venice. We are all keeping our fingers crossed that it isn’t raining!!
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