Day 17 – Tuesday 7 June 2016

Another fabulous German breakfast, they really have got some very tasty fresh food, though we couldn’t fit too much in as we were both still full from the huge dinner last night. Our destination this morning is Neuschwanstein Castle, built by the Bavarian King Ludwig II from 1869. It is around 2 hours drive back up into the Alps near the Austrian border. We left at 8.15am to ensure that we get there, get our tickets, catch the shuttle bus up the hill to the castle, then be there when our allotted time-slot for the guided tour is called. The drive is very pleasant, again travelling through the Bavarian rural countryside, cattle grazing & houses built next to very large barns that house the cattle for the winter, when the ground is covered with snow.

We spot Neuschwanstein Castle when we are still a couple of kilometres away, it is perched high on a rocky outcrop & stands out looking like a fairytale castle. It has some amazingly impressive mountains closely towering over it in the background. As we drove towards the carpark another castle appears, this is the Hohenschwangau Castle, where King Ludwig was born & grew up. It is nowhere near as ostentatious as Neuschwanstein Castle. We make it & with typical German efficiency, at 10.25am exactly, we are allowed through the turnstiles into the castle. Our tour director was very anxious this morning, he worried about peak hour traffic or road closures etc. because if we would have missed our time allotment even by one minute that would have been it.

Our tour guide gave us a strict instruction – NO PHOTOGRAPHING. We took the stairs up the spiral staircase, all 170 (according to one of our fellow tourists with a sore leg) of them, to see first of all the king’s servants quarters, they are very spacious & comfortably appointed surprisingly. We then move into the King’s bedroom, with a little surprise, it has running water & a flushing toilet, impressive for a building commenced in 1869. It draws the water from a spring in the mountain about 150 metres higher than the castle, there is also central heating. The King’s bed has a very elaborately carved canopy, I can’t imagine how long that would have taken to carve from wood (or how long the poor servant would have spent dusting it). There is a small private chapel off the bedroom. A cave joined his bedroom & throne room. Next is the Throne Room, elaborately painted & decorated, including a massive brass chandelier with large coloured glass decorations. The throne is missing, as it was never finished. The paintings on the walls are of Jesus Christ, the 12 disciples & God. King Ludwig was very religious.

We then walked up another spiral staircase to the largest room in the castle, the Singer’s Hall, again very elaborate paintings, more of the large brass chandeliers & a stage. The paintings in this hall are representative of Richard Wagner’s operas, as King Ludwig was a big fan of Wagner operas. This is a very impressive room. The pictures on the stage were painted by a well-known stage designer, so was the castle – it wasn’t designed by an architect but by a stage designer, that is most probably why it looks like a fairy-tale castle. Every year in September they hold a concert in the Singer’s Hall. King Ludwig II was an absolute loony, lived in a make believe world, wasted all the money on castles etc. Often he was very depressed. His death is a mystery – he drowned in the lake with his doctor. From here it was all downhill, we finished our tour & wandered by ourselves back down the stairs & through a lot of the unfinished rooms in the palace, as King Ludwig only lived about 6 months in the castle, he died before the palace was finished, so it was never completed as it was deemed too expensive by the Bavarian State Government. The palace was opened as a museum 6 months after King Ludwig’s death.

The views from the balconies looking out to the snow covered Alps & over the lakes is amazing, it is easy to see why he wanted a castle here. The kitchen was complete with pots, pans, moulds & cooking tools, all original from King Ludwig’s time & displayed well. An underground tunnel led us out to a door at the base of the castle & from there we walked back down the hill, through the surrounding forest, to the small village at the base of the castle. We went for a short walk to the lake, admiring some of the other period buildings clustered in the village & also the views of Hohenschwangau Castle from the lake. All too soon it was time to depart, our legs & body were tired from all the walking.

Dinner was at the hotel tonight, again a very nice selection of typical Bavarian food.