Neuschwanstein Castle – Füssen

“I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream. I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam. Yet I know it’s true, that visions are seldom all they seem… but if I know you, I know what you’ll do: you’ll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream…” – Princess Aurora, Sleeping Beauty (1959)

On Day Five we spent the day in the village of Hohenschwangau, near Füssen. There, we toured Neuschwanstein Castle, Hohenschwangau Castle, and the Museum of the Bavarian Kings.

The start to our day was a little more hectic than we had anticipated. The first mistake was taking our luggage with us when we left our hotel. The smart thing to do would have been to leave our luggage at the front desk of our hotel in Fussen, since we were taking the train out of Füssen later that afternoon. However, we did not do that, and we ended up dragging it around trying desperately to find a place to check it.

Our next mistake was not realizing sooner that it was a holiday in Bavaria. So the bus that we planned on taking at 7:30am, was not running. Luckily we were able to take a cab, and it wasn’t very expensive (about 11€ for the 5 minute drive). Also, the information booth, which was really the only option in Hohenschwangau to leave our luggage, didn’t open until 10:00am. Again we got lucky, because the bathroom attendant allowed us to leave our luggage with her until the office opened at 10:00 am. This is just one of the many examples of how kind the German people were.

So two very important travel lessons learned. Don’t gamble with luggage, especially when your hotel is convenient, and always double check for local holidays and special operating hours.

Once we picked up our tour tickets (we reserved months in advance- which I recommend! It sells out very quickly), we made our way to the first castle (Hohenschwangau Castle) for our audio tour. We grabbed a quick snack of cheese pretzels and donuts, and we were on our way. We spent some time enjoying the views from the castle and the grounds, while we waited for our tour to begin at 9:45am.

The first castle was originally a knight castle, a sort of outpost. However, when Maximilian II of Bavaria came across it on a walking tour, he fell in love with the castle and the beautiful area and decided to buy the castle as a summer home for his family.

The tour was a quick 30 minutes. After that, we quickly checked our luggage in officially at the now open information center. The lockers inside the information center were very small, but luckily they checked my larger bag behind the counter for the same price as a locker (1€). Since we had time before our 11:30 tour of Neuschwanstein Castle, we decided to hike up the mountain, instead of waiting on a bus (which had an incredibly long line) or taking a horse and carriage.

The walk is estimated to be 45 minutes, but it only took us 20 to reach the top. That still gave us plenty of time to take pictures and explore the castle grounds. It was so beautiful up there. The waterfall was breathtaking. It was a little chilly at that elevation, but not bad. I warmed up with a mulled wine in a souvenir mug.

Our tour was a guided English tour, but I think in this case we would have been better off with the audio tour. The information we were receiving was pretty sparse, while other groups ahead of us seemed to be in the rooms much longer. Much like the first castle, this was designed as a summer retreat for Ludwig II of Bavaria and not a traditional palace.

Ludwig died before the castle was complete, so only his living quarters and those for the staff were complete. Along with the throne room and a grand ballroom. Since it’s a relatively young castle, and Ludwig only stayed there 11 nights (that are documented), the castle had been very well preserved. It also has modern amenities, including a telephone, which was really weird to see in something straight from a fairy-tale. In fact, Walt Disney, modeled Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disney World after this one.

After our tour, we explored the grounds, hoping to capture the perfect picture of the castle. The official viewing bridge (Mary’s Bridge / Marienbrücke) was closed for maintenance, but fortunately for us, we stumbled across a blog called  Justin Goes Places, where they found a secret path to an old viewing location with identical views. So with a little searching we were able to find this secret path and the viewing location. We were the only two people at the vantage point which was a welcome relief from the thousands of tourists visiting the castle.

It was the perfect view, although very dangerous, because there is a shear thousand foot drop off, about four or five feet from the tree line. Once I realized how high we were, I immediately grabbed the nearest tree so I wouldn’t plummet to my death. As I am having my minor freak out, Justin is calmly taking photos about a foot from the ledge, like it’s no big deal.

I carefully made my way over to a tree with very large roots to sit on so I could finally appreciate the view without freaking out. Once I looked up, Justin was kneeling right in front of me. All of a sudden he was asking me to marry him, and it was wonderful and magical. There was lots of crying (me) and hugging. So in the end, it was nice that we got to use this secret place in the middle of the woods, because it felt like this view was just for us. We spent some time there taking pictures and enjoying the view, before heading back down.

Again, the walk down took about 20 minutes. We took a brief pause to snap some photos of Hohenschwangau from up on the mountain. It was such a picturesque little village with the Hohenschwangau Castle nestled next to Alpsee lake.

After we got down to the bottom of the hill, we took a lunch break, featuring bratwurst and fries, before heading to our last stop, the Museum of the Bavarian Kings. This was interesting, because it had a pretty comprehensive history on the royal family in Bavaria. Something I had very little knowledge of beforehand.

After a perfectly fairy-tale day, we made our way from Fussen (the bus was now running). We had about an hour to kill before our train left for Berchtesgaden, so we decided to take this opportunity to explore Füssen a little more and to call friends and family back home to tell them the exciting news about our engagement.

We then spent the next 5 hours on a train to Berchtesgaden. Our train got in late (9:50pm) and we were told we needed to try to get to our hotel by 10:00pm to check in. There was some very frantic searching in the dark for this place, because there were no cabs that late at night, the passenger bridge over the train tracks was under construction, none of the streets were labeled, and there were hardly any street lights. After hopping over the train tracks themselves, hiking up a mountain, then hiking up a different mountain, because we were on the wrong one thanks to Google Maps, we made it to our hotel! 150 floor Fitbit badge and fiancé in tow!