It was cold, raining and very cloudy as we left Lindau.  Depressing.  We drove to Hohenschwangau to see the two castles.  It took about 1 ½ hours on mostly two lane roads.  It was beautiful country but the clouds were low all the way.  We were delighted when we saw our hotel, both the Lisle and the Jaegerhaus were pretty. 

 We checked into the hotel.  Our room was in the Jaegerhaus across the street, rather than the Lisle.  It seemed that we were upgraded, into a  beautiful two room suite.  The bed had a canopy and the water faucets in the bathroom were swans.  We had a whirl pool bath which we didn’t try out.

Admission to both castles were advanced sale tickets.  We decided to do one castle a day.  Our first tickets were for  a 3:15 English tour of Neuschwanstein.  We went back across the street to the hotel’s café for lunch.  A young fellow from Peru ,who spoke English, sat with us.  He had been everywhere and was presently living in Italy. 

 Neuschwanstein Castle

 King Ludwig II had lived in Hohenschwangau Castle. After death of his father, Crown Prince Maximilian in 1864, Ludwig decided that he wanted his own castle. The foundation stone was laid September 5, 1869. The gate house finished in 1873 and construction on castle began. The shell of main castle was finished in 1880. King Ludwig died in 1886 with castle still under construction. Most of the castle has been completed.  

 There were several ways to get to the Castle….walk up a steep road,  take a bus near the bridge but still a steep walk (so they said) or go in a horse drawn wagon which would get one pretty near Neuschwanstein castle.  We chose the horse drawn wagon.   It was raining so the wagons were covered.  Each held about a dozen people.  When the carriage let us off, we had to walk further up – yes- a steep hill.  When we got to the front gate, the gate had a portcullis, we had to wait about an hour for our tour.  I took a lot of pictures as I had made a model of Neuschwanstein.  It was interesting to see all of the little pieces of the model in person.  The model really captured the castle.   My wife was the only woman in the group whose husband said “yes, building that part took a long time, I had trouble with the windows.  I had to use tweezers to put on those little dormers.…”  I got a lot of funny looks from those standing around. While we were waiting, we started talking to a couple and her sister.  They were from Tennessee.   They were with their father and mother, who were down at the hotel.  The father was a Church of God pastor who had been a missionary in Germany.

We toured the castle…no pictures were allowed inside.   It was beautifully furnished.  The tour was great. At the end of the tour we went into a café on the second or third floor in a corner where we had cake and water.  The views were wonderful after the rain stopped and the clouds moved on. Photo on left is from castle showing a bridge one had to cross if one chose to walk to up the castle.   When we were ready, we walked down the hill to the wagon stop, it was 5:00 when we got on the wagon. 

In town, we went to a gift store and bought a few gifts.  We ran into the folks from Tennessee and met the father and mother.  He knew Ron and Paula Gore, my former secretary at Calvary Church, whose husband was a Church of God pastor in Front Royal- small world.

We tried to find a bar ….there were only two hotels in town.   We finally found a bar in the hotel across the street.  We were the only people in the bar, and had a hard time getting someone to wait on us.   It seems that in small towns, Germans don’t do cocktail hour.  We had a drink and then decided to go ahead and go to the hotel (Lisle) dining room.  We finally got a second drink.  We shared a salad and duck liver.  I had salmon in orange vanilla sauce and my better half had a fillet of fish which they filleted at the table.  The fish was good, but the waitress was teaching a staff member how to fillet the fish, and the fish was not hot when it arrived on the table.  We decided to go for “effect” for dessert, and we had a flaming crepes for dessert. 

We went back to our room.  I went back out to take a few night shots of the castles.  Our room faced the Hohenschwangau Castle.  It was well lit. Photo on left was taken in our bedroom.