Today we drove to the end of the romantic road to visit the castles that Ludwig II of Bavaria built and lived in, the most famous one being Castle Neuschwanstein, which is supposed to be the inspiration for the Disney castle that we remember from the credits of the old Disney shows. On the way we stopped at Landsberg Am Lech for lunch, another one of those villages on the Romantic Road, but this one had a nice view over the River Lech, so we skipped the quaint buildings and bakeries and went for a walk along the river instead. The countryside along this part of the Romantic Road was beautiful, green fields, picturesque farms and villages, and the German Alps in the background.
So far we have found the tourist crowds in Germany to be quite reasonable, so we think we've made the right decision to bypass France for now. We had read that the castles were very popular, but we certainly didn't expect the crowds that were there! We were lucky we didn't arrive at the castles any later, we joined the queue for tickets to Neuschwanstein around 2:15pm, and just managed to get into the last English tour at 6:15pm!
We had more than three hours to wait, so we wandered around the town of Hohenschwangau for a while, then headed up to the castle and took in some other walks to fill in time. The views were great, it really is a picture postcard place!The inside of the castle was amazing, incredible paintings all over the walls and even a man-made cave where Ludwig would sit and listen to Wagner! However we did feel the tour could have been better, we were rushed through what is an extraordinary place and we feel we missed so much. By the time we finished it was around 7pm, so we headed off to our hotel in a village not too far away.
No comments:
Post a Comment