12th Aug - Innsbruck, Austria

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Hello again - this time from Innsbruck, Austria. I am writing while trying to cook some dinner (actually Daniel is cooking) - it’s really windy and it keeps blowing our cooker out so we have had to move to a more sheltered spot outdoors as they don’t have kitchens in camping grounds in Europe.
So today we went and had a look at some more scaffolding with a significant tourist attraction annoyingly in the way. It seems that everything that we want to view and photograph is covered in scaffolding - the castle at Heidelberg, the bridge at Heidelberg, the church at Heidelberg, the Dom at Koln, and now the Neuschwanstein castle in Fussen. Maybe they knew we were coming so decided to renovate everything just for us - pity they didn’t finish it in time!
Anyway, back to our travels - we headed to the Cinderella castle today - Neuschwanstein. What a tourist town! We stood in a queue for about an hour and got tickets to go up to the castle in about 2 hours time (I think the other tours were all booked, as you have to take a guided tour). We had a wander around the village and looked in all the shops - all souvenir shops or eating shops, and then took a bus ride up the hill (as I couldn’t be bothered walking 40 minutes up the hill which all maps stated were steep, and it was hot). The Castle was quite impressive - however it was never completed as the King Ludwig was kicked off his throne one day (for being crazy) and drowned mysteriously the next day. We had a tour of some of the completed rooms - as he still used to use it even though it wasn’t fully finished. The servant’s quarters were reasonably flash, I thought. All wooden furniture and two servants per room, (ps - there are no photos as we weren’t allowed to take any). We had a look in the throne room - heaps of brass and gold colours. There were pictures of Jesus and the 12 apostles. The throne wasn’t there as it hadn’t been finished - and no-one put one in, because when the King died the castle was turned into a museum only 16 days later! The floor in the throne room was covered in mosaic tiles - which took 2 years to complete! We then looked at the King’s bedroom. This was covered in woodwork - including the canopy over the bed. The woodwork in that room took 4 years to complete. We then looked in through the dressing room and onto the living room. The living room was full of pictures, in particular swans; there were even swan door handles. We also looked at the theatre/performance room. There was a stage and big paintings everywhere, the acoustics in the room were really good due to the pine panelling in the ceiling. All in all is was quite a cool castle, a pretty rushed tour and masses of people.
We left the castle and headed down to pack up our tent and head to Austria. The original plan was to head to Salzburg but since we didn’t have a lot of time we stopped in Innsbruck. The campsite here is nice - lots of people and very windy - but good for drying out our tent after the downpour of rain last night.

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Photos

Neuschwanstein Castle
aka Cinderella Castle

Into Austria
Can you tell we've moved on to Austria?