Day Eighteen: 5/10
We got up bright
and early to catch a bus for our Royal Castle Tour;
tour 16. We got bad directions again. But we managed to find it just in time!
The bus took us to a central meeting point and we changed buses to a
double-decker bus.
The first stop on our tour was Linderhof.
This is the first of the three castles built by King Ludwig II. On the way we learned about a monastery that
was started by the King. This monastery
is famous for Ettaler
Liqueur?
We arrived at Linderhof and took the tour. The famous
fountain in the front was turned off and they were cleaning it. Fortunately after the tour it was back on.
The best part of this tour was all of the hand painted porcelain fixtures. Some
of them looked like photos. We could
not take pictures inside, so I do not have anything to show you. At the end of the 
tour, they take you out a secret passage way. We were lagging behind the tour and we got locked in at the end
and could not get out the exit. We had to walk out the entrance to the castle.
When we got outside, we noticed that the view of the valley was incredible. The
sky was so clear and the colors were so vibrant.
After our tour of Linderhof , we
headed over to the city of Öberammergau.
This is the city that is famous for the Passion
Play. We stopped to do some shopping. Angie found a wood carving of Neuschwanstein. We also found some
ornaments. Steve finally found a cuckoo clock! Finally! It’s a long story, but
he has been looking for one since his 1st trip to Germany in 1983.
Along the way we saw some really cool buildings. These buildings had paintings of fairy tales on them. The picture
to the left is a scene from Hansel and Grettel.
After
we packed up our purchases we headed out to Neuschwanstein. We arrived and ate
lunch at the Hotel
Müller. The food was not very good; it was sub-par compared to all the
other wonderful restaurants we ate at. This is the last time we take a
recommendation from the guide.
After lunch we
took the shuttle bus up to the castle. There was NO way we were walking up that
hill. It almost killed Steve when he was here as a teenager in 1983. So there was no way we would do it at our
age. We reached the top of the hill and had about an hour before our tour.
We walked to MarienBrücke. What a view! Angie was scared of the bridge
because the bridge had a slight sway and the wood planks wobbled. Yes, that is
Angie hanging on for dear life on the right.
I could not get her to let go of the rail to take this picture.
There were a number of people on the bridge so it was tough to get a
good picture, plus I ended up having to take about 5 more pictures for other
people with their cameras. Silly Tourists J
We walked the remaining distance to the
castle. Our tour was to start in about
15 minutes, so we walked around the courtyard of the castle. There were about
100 people waiting around for tours. We
purchased some postcards from the gift shop and then got in line to start our
tour of the castle.
Steve’s
favorite room is the King’s bedroom. The bed is hand carved. It took 14 people
4 years to complete the canopy. The detail is incredible. Somewhere Steve has a
postcard of it, and will put it up on the web when he finds it. With preparing to
move (a whole separate story), it’s not easily found. The view on the right is
of Schwangau. Did we
mention that the view from the castle is incredible?
We decided not to
take the bus or the horse cart back down the hill. Instead we walked. We
stopped at a food stand and bought a beer pretzel and an ice cream. They were yummy. The walk down the hill took us about 20 minutes. We beat the
horse and wagon down the hill!
At the bottom of
the hill, we saw a BMW that had flowers on it.
This belonged to a couple that got married at the castle. They must have been staying at the hotel
here. We then boarded the bus for the 2-hour ride back to München.
We arrived back in
München and decided to just take a walk. We walked past St. Michael’s church.
It was closed to public visitors. It
looked like they were holding a choir practice or some musical event. We walked
down the pedestrian precinct (Füssgängerzone). This is a stretch of road that
is blocked off to vehicular traffic. Only foot traffic is allowed.
We stopped into a
bunch of shops. We found the exact same cuckoo clock we just bought in a store.
And it was $700DM more!! And that did not include shipping or insurance. That's
amazing for buying it in Öberammergau.
So I think we got a great deal. I did not take a picture. So you have to wait
until it arrives to see it.
By
this time, we were both hungry. We started looking for a place to eat, but
Angie didn't want pork and with her picky taste, we ended up at McDonalds! Now
here is something you will not see in the states. We found a Burger King right next-door to the McDonalds. This was so out of place, we had to take a
picture of it.
We stopped at the Hofbräuhaus, but didn’t stay for a beer. Instead we
got a souvenir penny. We walked back to
the room. On the way there we came across a street fair near the VirtualMarket
place. There was lots of music and booths with food and beer. It was really
neat to walk through and check it all out.
We finally made it back to the room and went to sleep.