Neuschwanstein and ZEE Alps!

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We woke up bright and early to begin our castle tours, starting with Hohenschwangau which was where King Ludwig II grew up and watched the construction of his new home, Neuschwanstein. Hohenschwangau was really neat, lots of great murals/paintings. Next was Neuschwanstein, which is the castle that Disney’s Sleeping Beauty’s castle is modeled after. King Ludwig II unfortunately only lived in the castle for 172 days. He was arrested in the castle, and declared “unfit to rule” (insane) and 1 day later was found dead next to a lake outside of Munich. To this day the circumstances of his death remain a mystery. The interior was only 30% completed, and construction stopped immediately upon his death. Within 6 weeks, people were already paying to tour it.

Our Rick Steve’s book made this tour seem lackluster in comparison to Hohenschwangau, but we strongly disagree. The inside of Neuschwanstein was absolutely amazing. The level of detail, paintings, woodwork, mosaic floors, etc…continued to surprise us as we toured each of the finished rooms. Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed inside of either so we have nothing to share.

We hiked up to the St. Mary’s bridge as we had done the previous evening for some more picture perfect photos. It’s the best view and we noticed that people put locks engraved with their names on the bridge’s fence…pretty cool – romance at it’s best. On the walk back down to town we stopped at a restaurant and had a really great lunch. Matt ordered a liter of beer (see the pic, it is the size of his head), and we had the yummiest pretzels ever! They were huge, crunchy on the outside and perfectly soft on the inside. It reminded me of when I first tasted a bagel on the east coast and realized that I had been eating hockey-puck dense crap bagels on the west coast for my entire life. I am convinced we will never eat pretzels that compare unless we come back.

After our morning/afternoon of castle touring it was time to drive to Mittenwald in the middle of the German Alps. The drive was once again beautiful the entire way. We stopped in Oberammergau, which is a very quaint little town that once every 10 years hosts the very famous Passion Play. We found out late that today was actually a German holiday so many of the stores were closed…bummer. We got to Mittenwald around 7pm as we did some exploring along the way. The “guest house” we stayed in was awesome. The woman who ran it was so friendly and the room was fantastic….so big, great bathroom, beautiful view of the Alps. She recommended a restaurant in town for dinner from a chef who had “stars” at his previous restaurant in another town but had decided to move to Mittenwald. Although this restaurant has no stars, she said his cooking was top notch. She was spot on….another meal that we will never forget and I will go on record and say that it will probably be the best we have our whole trip. The restaurant was cozy and they brought us a glass of Prosecco to start. The chef came out and hoped that we spoke a little bit of German, which of course we don’t. He tried his best to say that he had a 3 or 4 course menu and then tried to describe each course in basic English. We were like “that’s ok…we’ll do the 4.” It was all To-Die-For and we were able to sit and enjoy each course.

We had a nice walk through the cute little town of Mittenwald after dinner in the crisp Alp air. Everything was closed of course as it was late, but it was lit up and just felt like that perfect German town feel we wanted. It’s definitely on the list for tomorrow morning…..

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