Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castles

The following morning (Monday), we got up and headed to Neuschwanstein Castle. We had reserved a tour (in English) for 9:20. We had to pick up our tickets no later than one hour before the tour. We parked the car, picked up the tickets and decided to walk up the hill to the castle. There is a bus that goes up there, and there are horse-drawn carriages, but they weren't running quite that early.

From the bottom of the hill we could see Neuschwanstein Castle, but it was under renovation and had scaffolding covering the back side of it....so it wasn't very pretty from that angle!

How would you like to have that view from your front door?!?!?

The tour of Neuschwanstein was only about 30 minutes long. It was quite impersonal-it was an audio tour-no personal guide interacting with the group. Because the castle was never finished (King Ludwig) died before it was completed..there wasn't much to see inside....it had never been lived in. When we left there we headed over to the Hohenschwangau Castle where we had reservations for a tour at 11:30. It is just a 20 minute walk away. The tour there lasted about 30 minutes also and was more personal, our tourguide was very pleasant and personable!

We walked back down the hill and decided to have lunch at the Alpenrose Restaurant...on the lake. We had a wonderful, relaxing lunch there!

When we got back to the town we went into the Swarovski store and bought a miniature Bavarian "totem pole" which we plan to add to our little village that we set out at Christmas...
Of course, we didn't bring that here with us, so we'll have to wait to put it all together till we get back to the States!