Neuschwanstein Castle

July 1st—Today we took a 2 hour train to the small town of Fussen. Fussen is located South of Munich right next to the Germany/Austria border. Upon arriving in Fussen, we took a taxi to the small village, Hohenschwangau, below the castle. The taxi dropped us off right at the ticket center. We walked right up and got our tickets except the next English tour wasn’t until 12:55, it was 11:00. It worked out well though because it gave us a chance to walk around the village and eat lunch. After eating lunch, we took the shuttle bus up the hill to just below the castle. There was still a walk to get up to the castle, but before doing that, we walked across Mary’s Bridge. The bridge gave us the best view of “Mad” King Ludwig’s castle. The bridge was quite an engineering accomplishment 100 years ago. From the bridge, we walked about 10 minutes to the castle entrance and waited for our tour to begin. The tour was about 30 minutes long of viewing 16 rooms inside the castle. The Neuschwanstein Castle was King Ludwig II’s home for only 172 days before his death. The construction of the castle stopped with Ludwig’s death (only a third of the interior was finished) at the age of 40. The castle was extra special to see for Abby because it resembles Cinderella’s Castle… or wait I believe it was Disney that copied the Neuschwanstein Castle. After finishing our tour of the castle, we took the horse carriage back down to the village. From here, we got a quick snack and took a 5 minute taxi ride over to Tegelberg. In Tegelberg, we enjoyed the luge course and playground among the mountains. (In the wintertime, this is a ski area too.) After having been in Switzerland during the winter, we had discussed wanting to go back to experience Switzerland in the summer. This gave us a good taste of the nice, summer mountain life. We all had so much fun that we missed getting back into Fussen for our 4:19 train to Munich. Instead, we caught a later bus into Fussen and ate dinner before getting on the 6:19 train back to Munich. We were all entertained on the train ride by Abby and Austin’s new friend, Manu. He was traveling with his mom and Aunt. They were from New York. Manu is 5 years old and the kids had a lot of fun together. It made the ride go by fast and we arrived back into Munich about 8:40. We took the subway back to apartment and arrived there about 9:10. This is where our evening gets really interesting…upon arriving back at the apartment, we went to unlock the door and couldn’t get the key to turn. After trying for about 10 minutes, Mike called Thomas to let him know that we couldn’t get into the apartment. He said he was on his way, but 40 minutes outside of the city. Luckily, there’s a little courtyard area with a picnic table outside the apartment. And, luckily, it doesn’t get dark until about 10:00 around here so we didn’t have to sit in the dark for long. There were so many thoughts going through our heads like: Will he come with tools? Will he have to call a locksmith? Where are we going to sleep if we can’t get in? Thomas arrived around 10:20. He quickly determined that the key was not going all the way in so he jammed it into the lock with his tools and turned it opened, but he had to replace the lock. So, yes, he came totally prepared with tools and a new lock. It didn’t take him that long to fix the lock. It was about 11:00 when we got the kids to bed.