Yesterday morning we drove to the Schwangau area fairly early to check out Neuschwanstein castle, as well as the smaller and older Hohen-Schwangau castle and the nearby Linderhof castle. Charles reserved tickets for us in advance, so we were able to catch the first bus up the hill to Neuschwanstein castle before the throngs of last minute tourists bought their tickets and made it to the shuttle.

Neuschwanstein was built in the 19th century by King Ludwig II, the Bavarian “Mad King”. It’s designed to look much older, as Ludwig was fascinated by medieval design, and serves as the model from which Walt Disney based Cinderella’s castle. The shuttle dropped us off first at “Mary’s bridge”, a small wooden pedestrian bridge that provides a good vantage point of the castle for photographs. Charles and I were both eager to get out on the bridge to get a good look at the castle (and a few good photographs), but became quickly apprehensive when the wooden planks of the bridge buckled and moved under our feet with each footstep (and with the footsteps of our fellow tourists). The apprehension heightened when we looked down to inspect the bridge and could see the miles of open air in the valley below us in the small gaps between the planks. Always looking for the silver lining, I thought to myself, “Well good – when I vomit in a few minutes, it’ll have somewhere to go…”

Behind the smiles, you can see the terror in our eyes.

We quickly took the pictures we wanted and got off the bridge and headed for the castle for our audio guide tour. The tour is somewhat brief (around 30 minutes), but plenty long enough for you to get a good feel for the grandeur of the castle. The castle was barely lived in, as it wasn’t even completely finished when the “Mad King” died at age 40 under mysterious circumstances (declared mentally unfit to rule, institutionalized, and found dead in a lake one day later). In addition to his fascination with medieval architecture, he also idolized France’s Louis XIV and based much of his design on Versailles.

After we finished the Neuschwanstein tour, we hopped on a horse-drawn carriage down the hill to then hike up a different hill across the valley to check out the Hohenchwangau castle. This was the family’s “summer home”, where Ludwig II (that same “mad king”) spent summers as a child and from which he supervised the construction of Neuschwanstein on the neighboring mountain (they’ve preserved the telescope he used to watch it being built across the valley). The castle is considerably smaller but much richer in history, so the tour was very interesting (albeit provided by a nervous and somewhat unwilling tour guide who must have drawn the short straw to give the English version of the tour).

After touring Hohenschwangau, we made a quick loop through the museum (a good source of information about the Wittelsbach family) before heading to Linderhof castle, about an hour’s drive from Schwangau. The drive was beautiful as it wove through the valleys between the snow capped mountains and around pristine mountain lakes. Luckily, Charles did the driving – as I found the narrow, winding two-lane “road” as terrifying as the scenery was beautiful. (He tells me it was two-lane but I have my doubts.)

Linderhof is another of the mad king’s creations – the only one that he actually completed before he died. This one is considerably smaller than even the Hohenschwangau, but completely over the top in opulence, as it bears an even stronger resemblance to Versailles in style (though not in size). The king’s “reading room” is a smaller version of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, he has two separate dressing rooms (one for dressing in the morning and one for undressing in the evening), and an upstairs dining room with a table on an elevator so that his servants could send up his dinner on his dinner table without him having to interact with them (he was a bit of a recluse, if you couldn’t tell). The Linderhof gardens also mimic the gardens at Versailles, though much smaller.

After our tour of Linderhof, we hopped back in the rental car and made for Munich for the night. We returned the rental car, found a cozy place for dinner, and called it a night (there is a lot of stair climbing and hill hiking involved in castle touring).

Today we spent the morning back in the Christmas market buying those last minute souvenirs, enjoying the ambiance of the Christkindlmarkt on Christmas Eve (gluhwein, festive Christmas music played by brass quartets, and holiday shoppers desperate to buy those last minute gifts before the shops and booths closed), and watching the Glockenspiel on the New Town Hall.

We’re now on a train en route back to Paris, we’ll be catching our flight back to the U.S. tomorrow. We’re sad that vacation is ending but will be glad to sleep in our own beds and get some puppy snuggles from our dogs.