Germany Road Trip - Day 7

Fussen is the other end of the Romantic Road where the highlight are two castles right next to each other. The older one is Hohenschwangau Castle and is where Ludwig II grew up. Once he was king, Ludwig II built the beautiful Neuschwanstein, which is also known as the fairy tale castle. We arrived early to beat the throngs of people that our guidebook told us would be there, and once we had our tickets, we parked the car and took a carriage ride most of the way up the hill to see Neuschwanstein. Carsten was absolutely enthralled with the horses, and he sat very nicely until we had to leave the horses. It was a pretty hefty hill, and I felt a bit bad for the horses (Fiona and Rosie :) ) who had quite a load of people to take up the hill. We finished the walk up the hill and were greeted with amazing views of the valley and of the castle. Here's photos of our morning up until this point:

Hohenschwangau Castle.

Rosie on the right. Fiona on the left.

He sat like this the whole time. :)

Mom dropped her lens cap, so the horses had to stop. :)

First view of Neuschwanstein (just a small part of the castle)

Front of the Neuschwanstein. 

Inside the courtyard of Neuschwanstein.

Tower in the courtyard. So pretty!

Our tickets had a specific tour time, so we got in line for our tour and had a guided tour in English with a group. Unfortunately, we were not allowed photos inside the castle, so to see what we saw you'll just have to go there yourselves! The inside was very ornate and had a lot of tributes to Richard Wagner (opera writer) including the great hall, which has a stage on one side and scene painted from one of his operas. Unfortunately, King II died before he could finish and enjoy the castle (he was making Bavaria broke with all his castle building (he built several)). They are pretty though :). After our tour, we ate lunch, and then hiked up to Marienbruke (seen in photo below) where we could get a view of the entire castle. It was hot, but well worth the hike for the amazing view :).

Marienbruke.

View of the valley and Hohenschwangau as we hiked :). SO PRETTY!

AMAZING. 

After managing the significant feat of getting ourselves off the super crowded bridge, we hiked down the hill to our car. The plan was to let Carsten fall asleep in the Ergo carrier on my back, which he did in record time. However, after about 5 min sleeping, he woke up screaming because he was too hot. Whoops. So then we kept him awake until we could get to our car and drive back to the hotel to put him down for a nap. During his nap, my parents went inside Hohenschwangau, and came back with the report that we had seen the better castle :). Carsten had a really good nap (I think Andy and I even managed to get groceries during the nap), so we didn't have much time for anything else in the afternoon. So we stayed around our town, and went down to the local lake after supper to enjoy the view. Carsten enjoyed throwing rocks into the lake. Here's some photos of the lake:

Carsten taking in the Bavarian Alps.

Carsten throwing rocks.

Throwing rocks is fun!

Bavarian Alps + rock splash from Carsten.

My Dad was really, really good at playing trucks with Carsten, and Carsten requested to play with him all the time. In fact, most mornings he woke up and the first thing he would say was 'Grandpa. Play?!' Here's a couple of photos of them playing in our hotel:

Love this.