Peeling the Apple: Just Like Cinderella

Day 6 / May 31 --- Neuschwanstein Castle

We began the next day on another tour bus. The first stop was a tourist knick knack store. I think it's pretty funny that tours stop at these places. But people really did buy things. I admit, even I bought a Christmas tree ornament. This store had the biggest collection of wooden EVERYTHING I'd ever seen. From miniature people and dogs to full on nativity scenes and coo coo clocks. Even put Michael's craft store to shame.

Then we moved on to church that seemed to be in the middle of a field. There was a doughnut and tea shop next door, but I'm not sure what else is in the area. The church was beautiful - and huge. It's called the Pilgrimage Church of the Scourged Saviour near the city/town of Steingaden. It was designed in 1470s in the rococo style.

The church was nice, but I was a bigger fan of the fields of flowers and mountains around it. It was so beautiful.

Then it was back on the bus for the main event. Arriving at Neuschwanstein is a little like arriving at Disneyland. It's full of tourist. There's a big parking lot for cars and buses. There's even horse and carriage rides up to the castle. This was Trey's transportation of choice, course he didn't tell any of us, so we debated on if he got lost or just didn't want to see the castle and left. Turns out he was just speaking Chinese to some new friends on the carriage. Oh Trey....

We choose the hike up the mountain, but somehow ended up taking the hard way up. It was fairly steep at points. I like to think we got the better views on the trek up though. Not sure Mom was ever convinced. She still beat me up though.

The castle itself was magnificent. They assign you to a group and give you a numbers. When it's your groups' turn you go through a turn style and walk up a hundred or so stairs on a narrow winding staircase.

There's tours in English and German. Since only about 1/3 of the castle was completed before King Ludwig's mysterious death, it doesn't take very long to go through. The rooms that were finished are incredibly elaborate. There's not a surface that hasn't been ornately decorated with paint or a sculpture. The king was obsessed with Richard Wager operas, so most of the murals and artwork are scenes from his stories. It was interesting to see stories depicted that weren't from the Bible. Just totally opposite most art in classic Europe.

Most interesting fact of the day - the Walt Disney company fessed up years ago that the Disneyworld castle was based on Neuschwanstein. Now they pay the castle (I think the Bavarian government..?) 1 million bucks a year for the copyright. Craziness.

The bottom of the mountain had many restaurants for the castle tourists. We enjoyed our last meal of Bavarian food and beer. We returned to the hotel around 5 pm and immediately left for the train station. We had to go back north to Munich to catch the overnight train to Rome.