Summer Vacation: Neuschwanstein Castle

These next few posts about our summer vacation are very late, whoops. I promise I will try to be better about blogging! We had three weeks off for vacation in August and while most people headed straight to the beaches, we traveled up north first to escape the heat.

After stopping by Switzerland for a few days in the mountains near Geneva, we made our way to Germany. First stop on my list, the fairy tale castle, Neuschwanstein. ^^The picture above is when we finally made it to Queen Mary's Bridge or Marienbrucke for a great (kind of scary if you are afraid of heights!) view of the castle. We arrived around 10am on a weekday and found a parking space with no problem. As we made our way to the ticket booth, there were plenty of staff around to answer questions and give general information. We were told that the line just to the ticket booth was around 2 hours then we would be given a time slot to visit the castle (only with a guided tour to see the inside), probably the earliest at 5pm. All of this was true, the line moved quickly, but still was 2 hours. After we received our tickets and time slot, we decided to have a little snack and wander around. 

^^Our first of many currywurst with potato salads and pretzel meals. We ate at one of the on site self-service restaurants. Since this is a huge tourist destination, there are of course plenty of places to eat, relax, and shop while you are waiting to see the castles. In addition to the Neuschwanstein, there is also Hohenschwangau, which we chose not do the tour of the interior, but both castles are free to visit from the exterior.

Since we still had a couple of hours to pass, we decided to take a walk around the lake which took about one hours. It was an easy walk with a clear path to follow and I would recommend it to anyone who has time to kill before their guided tour in the castle. 

^^That's me on a bridge during the walk. If anyone is curious, my bag (new favorite!) is from Madewell and I highly recommend it if you are looking for a simple leather tote. 

Since Neuschwanstein is up on a hill, you can either walk (free), take a bus (1.80 euro uphill or 2.60 euro roundtrip), or a horse carriage (6 euro uphill, 3 euro downhill). ^^We opted for the horse carriage uphill and then walking back down. 

^^This was the entrance to the main gate of the castle where you head for the guided tour. Everything was very organized. You just had to wait for your number to appear on the screen and they let probably around 50 people in at a time for each tour. The our lasted for about 30 minutes and no pictures were allowed. The castle was actually never fully completed, but the tour includes all of the finished rooms. 

By the time we made it back down the hill and it was already close to dinner time. Although it was long day with a couple hours of waiting in line, A and I both enjoyed it. ^^We had A's parent's campervan so we headed to a nearby campsite and settled in for the night. The following stop on our agenda, Munich, which I will post about next!