Neuswanstein

Since we have a couple of friends from home visiting, we went yesterday to check out Königschloss Neuswanstein. It's only a couple of hours away,which made me wonder why we had never gone there before. Seriously, why wait until we have visitors to go and do interesting things?
Anyway, we had a great time. We decided to walk up to the castle instead of taking the bus thingy, which was both good and bad. (The above picture is the Schloss when viewed from the little town at the bottom of the mountain, where we were when we started walking.) It was a beautiful, and we got the chance to stop and look at things that we would not have been able to see if we had taken the bus. I got some nice pictures, too. On the other hand, I am totally out of shape, and I was huffing and puffing before we were even half way up. They had a little souvenier shack at about 2/3 of the way, and we stopped so I could sit down and catch my breath. It was kind of embarassing, actually, but I just blamed it on the baby. :)

This is what we saw at the front of the castle. It happens to be the entrance to the Schloss courtyard, where people would queue up for the periodic tour of the castle.

And this is what we saw when we walked through that front door. (Sadly, no, there is no protcullis; there was only a large wooden door.) It was gorgeous! Even better than the castle itself, in my opinion anyway, was the view from the courtyard: a stunning panorama of the Alps and the surrounding countryside. And it was not only visually stunning. You could hear the rush of a narrow waterfall as it cascaded down the mountainside across forom the castle. The crisp autumn air was crisp and cool; it was nippy in the shade, but refreshing in the sunshine. There were birds flitting about everywhere, chirping at the people below them. One actually landed on the wall right next to me for a moment, just long enough for me to say "hello, Birdie" and then it felw away. (At which point, Bran asked me if I was some fairy tale princess. If only. I pointed out that if I was, then the bird would have landed on my finger, and we would have sang to each other).

I had Tony take this picture in the corner of the courtyard, hoping to catch some of the beauty behind us, but it doesn't even begin to do it all justice. Sure, you can see the mountainside behind us, but there is no sense of the scope of it. I guess it just boils down to this: if you haven't been already, then you need to. Immediately.

But I digress. We ended up having to wait over an hour for our tour, and after everything else, it was rather anti-climactic. The tour itself was rather short, and we couldn't even take pictures inside the castle. Don't get me wrong! It was beautiful, in a wastefully opulent sort of way. I'm glad I got to see it. But the man who had it built, King Ludwig II, only got to live in it for a few months before he was deemed insane and unfit to rule, moved to a small palace outside Munich, and found floating in the lake only a day later. Of course the guy was crazy. He lived in the late 19th century, but he built medieval style castles anyway. But to go to all that trouble, and then never have anyone use the darn thing? The castle was never even completed!! It just seems such a shame.

Anyway, if you haven't been and want to see pictures of the interior, I suggest that you just Google it. There have to be a ton of images floating around the internet. Or, just go and see it for yourself. That will work too.