Germany Road Trip - Day 8

We headed out a little later this morning because we had slept in, and traveled a short distance to Linderhof, which is the only palace that Ludwig II finished before he died. We weren't expecting much from the palace, so we were pleasantly surprised at the elegance and ornate nature of the palace and gardens. It was all pretty small, but since it was styled after the Palace of Versailles, it couldn't do anything but amaze. We once again had a group tour in English at a specific time, so we did the tour of the inside first. And once again, we weren't allowed photos inside, but it really was quite pretty. Our favorite room by far was the 'hall' of mirrors which gave the illusion of being in a hall of mirrors when you looked into the mirror. We also enjoyed that there was a table that lowered down into the servants quarters, and then would come back up with food for the King (so he didn't have to see his servants). This was the castle that Ludwig II spent most of his time in. All in all, I'm glad we went (it was on the 'maybe' list). The outside of the palace was amazing, and we spent a ton of time wandering and taking photos of the grounds right near the palace. See photos below:

First glimpse of Linderhof. I love Carsten's face in this :).

Gardens in front. 

Fountains in the back. So pretty!

Us at the top of the gardens. 

Love! Andy took this :).

After throughly exploring the gardens immediately near the palace, we took a hike around the rest of the grounds which included a tour through the grotto (blessedly cool) and the hunting lodge. It was super hot, and walking through these covered arches were torture because the humidity went through the roof inside. I should also mention that the grounds were super steep, so by the time we got up to the grotto, we were all pretty gross. So, going in the grotto was wonderful because it was fun to see and amazingly cold. The grotto was a created scene from one of Richard Wagner's operas, and it was lovely.

SO HUMID AND HOT!

Then entrance to the grotto.

Inside the grotto. So nice and cool!

After we left the grotto, we continued walking the grounds and got to see a Moroccan palace with peacock throne and a hunting lodge along the way. There was also a beautiful forest where Carsten fell asleep in his stroller. We found a quiet spot where we could keep walking him, and he ended up sleeping for about 45 min. In the meantime we had sent Mom and Dad to get our packed lunch and we took turns eating our lunch by the palace. Carsten was NOT happy to be awake, so it took us a little while to get moving. Here's some photos of the grounds:

Moroccan palace and Dad.

Running in the forest.

Pretty forest.

Sleeping buddy.

We headed out to go see Oberammergau, a cute nearby town with ornate frescos and a reputation for wood carving. We had stopped at the tour office and they had told us where a playground was, so Andy, Carsten, and I set off for the playground while Mom and Dad toured a woodworking shop. The playground we were headed to was completely under construction, so we were a bit frustrated because we had hoped to let Carsten burn off some energy. We ended up going back to where we had left Mom and Dad only to find out that they had not stayed long and were almost to the playground we had just left. Whoops! We ended up finding a small garden where we could take a short break, but all of us had had enough of the super hot day, so we ended up headed back to Fussen pretty soon afterwards. Here's a few photos of Oberammergau:

The frescos were so detailed! This is the main town hall building.

beautiful!

Pretty!

Cute!

I'm starting to run out of adjectives here... :) Andy and Carsten are in this one!

 On our way home, we decided that we wanted some more Bavarian food before we left, so we stopped in Fussen and wandered around a bit before we found an excellent restaurant. I love kase spaetzle :). I've actually even attempted making my own since we've been back in Egg; it's not the same, but still yummy! After the restaurant we found a fountain that Carsten could play in before we headed home. He got pretty cold and wet, but I think he enjoyed it!

Pretty fresco in Fussen.

These people were having a spin class on the bridge in the super hot weather. 

Fun fountains!

He got pretty wet!

The sunset was pretty that evening, so I took a photo! It was a fun day! :)

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.

"Move, please!"

This morning Carsten was trying to squeeze between me and the wall while I was sitting on a stool. After a lot of effort on his part, I finally noticed and taught him to say "move please!" to get me to move out of his way. This afternoon, he kept running his car into an unoccupied chair near the wall and saying something... after a while, we realized what it was: "Move, please. Move, please."

Germany Roadtrip - Day 6

Sadly, we had to leave Rothenburg on this day, but the hotel even had breakfast early so we could leave at the time we wanted. As a side note, the breakfast at the hotel was amazing and it was fun to have breakfast prepared for us (we're usually choose to save money by not getting hotel breakfast). We got our stuff into the car and headed north to Wurzburg, which is one of the start points for the Romantic Road. We only had the morning to spend there, so we started out by touring the Residenz (for those of you paying attention to the palace names, there is also a Residenz palace in Munich that we saw as well). We got to park right outside the front of the palace, which was a first for us (normally we never find the close parking lot). And we were impressed at the size of the palace. Most of the palace was destroyed during the last few weeks of WWII when Wurzburg was bombed. A few very impressive rooms were saved though, and they saved all the furniture and tapestries by moving them to a safe place prior to the bombings. The palace still had a lot to see though, and they have managed to reconstruct most of the rooms. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photos in the building and my camera died that morning (it's a shame when you run out of batteries) - so I'm a little lighter than normal on photos for this post.

We got into the palace right away, bought our tickets, and proceeded to take a self-tour through one wing of the palace. We were a little frustrated that they didn't mention that there were free guided tours that you had to take for the other wing of the palace, so we ended up wasting about an hour waiting for another tour. It wasn't a total loss because we went out to the gardens for a while. However, at one point we did think it was a total loss because they almost didn't let us back into the palace in time for our tour (they locked the doors and posted a sign that the palace was too congested). I'm glad they opened the doors in time so we could take our tour, and we also realized that our stroller was locked inside (they made us leave it while we toured the palace and we had left it there since we were coming back for another tour). Once we started our free guided tour, Carsten fell asleep in the Ergo carrier for the duration of the tour (about 45 min). It was pretty early for a nap for him (11:00 am), but I did get to enjoy and listen to the tour while he was sleeping, which was nice :). He ended up sleeping for about an hour in total, which is the longest non-crib nap he's taken in a while. The nicer part of the palace was covered in this tour, so I'm glad we made the extra effort to take the tour. Here's a couple of photos from the Wurzburg Residenz:

The middle portion of the Wurzburg.

Sleeping kiddo.

He woke up right after this photo.

Group shot with timer. 

Back of the Residenz.

Carsten likes to touch and smell flowers.

I promise that he didn't fall over.

 We wanted to find some lunch before we headed out for about a 3 hr drive in the afternoon, so we wandered into the old town of Wurzburg where we found some excellent sandwiches and got to see two churches. The first church was a Jesuit church, and it had nice mix of traditional and modern art paintings inside, which I've never seen before. Also, Carsten managed to fall into a very old (1532) probably very gold (aka valuable) object which made him cry a lot. Fortunately, as far as we could tell, neither he nor the expensive golden object were damaged. Here's a few photos of the churches in the old town of Wurzburg:

Jesuit church

modern paintings mixed with traditional - it worked pretty well :).

The large golden candlestick (taller than me) was what Carsten fell into.

Gorgous church and square.

Mom and Dad inside the church.

Carsten found a concrete chair to sit in.

We headed on the road to Fussen, which was about a 3 hr trip. Carsten did great and even helped my mom wake up (she kept dozing off) by handing her trucks until she woke up. Carsten had a lot of fun playing with my Mom during the trip to Fussen (see photo below).

Mom dozing. Sorry Mom, had to post it :).

Carsten having fun with my Mom.

When we were close to our destination, we were greeted by the Bavarian Alps. They were pretty, and the best part is that we could see them very nicely from where we were staying :). Hooray for a next destination to explore!

Bavarian Alps.