Castles, Castles, and More Castles!

Sunday we woke up with plans to go to Neuschwanstein Castle, which many of you will remember the poster we had in our apartment of it. Chris was there many (many many :D ) years ago, and I was pretty excited to see it. We woke up reasonably early for being on vacation (8:30 is early!) and after eating a leisurely breakfast and dessert we headed out. To get to Füssen, the nearest city, you have to go the central station in Munich and get a train there. When we got to the central station, there wasn't any information about trains going to Füssen, so we went to a ticket machine to see if we could find it. Thankfully, it had an English option, and we got our tickets for there and back. We found the train, and when we asked to make sure it was the correct one, the guy told us that we took this train to the end of the line, then switched trains to get to Füssen. OK....

The first leg of the trip was about an hour. When we got to the end of the line and switched, we found out that we would have to switch AGAIN at the next station! Are we ever going to get here? The castle closes at 4, it's now well after 1, and we still have another hour to go, not including time spent waiting for trains to leave after we switch. We did really enjoy the journey though. Bavaria is absolutely stunning, so peaceful. It actually reminded me a lot of Michigan in many places, with the patchwork of fields, woods, and countryside. (The weather was about the same too, only sunnier.)

We got to Füssen at 2:45 and had to wait until 3:05 for the bus to take us to the actual village of Hohenschwangau, which is nearest to the castle. Although we knew it was getting late, it was 3:15 and we figured we could get in. Not so much. We were informed that the last tour had been scheduled for 3PM (what a rip-off, it doesn't close until 4, and the tours are only 30 minutes! You need to do a tour at 3:30, people) and we had missed it by 15 minutes. You can't go into the castle without being part of the tour. We were told that we could visit the other castle, Hohenschwangau Castle, which is where Ludwig II, who built Neuschwanstein, grew up. Of course, even though it closes at 4 as well, there was a tour starting at 3:55. Bastards. Anyways, we picked that, and figured at least we'd get to see one castle today!
That castle turned out to be really cool. The outside was the coolest, since inside we had the weirdest tour ever, which was an audio tour with a live guide. Strange. We also had some really really obnoxious Americans in our group, which made me wish I knew German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, ANYTHING besides English so I could have not been in the same group as them. They were an embarrassment to all Americans everywhere. (Yes, I'm still a bit hostile about them.) Our tour guide was lovely, and really knew a lot about the castle, although we didn't get to talk much to her since it was an audio tour.
We left and were going to take the bus back. We saw that we had missed the last one and the next one wasn't coming for another forty minutes. Uh, we'll get something to eat, and catch the one coming in an hour and a half. It's FREEZING. We ate our very good meal and went back to wait some more (the 80-minute-later bus never appeared, the first and only time that happened in Germany). It was much later than we had planned on, after 7, but we figured we still had time to get back to Munich and eat more sausage at Marienplatz. We probably would have too, if we had caught the train that left the station before we could see where it went. (Oh yeah, it went to Munich, without as many changeovers. Geez louise!) The next train wasn't coming for another hour. Chris quickly got bored and decided we needed to go exploring.
It was actually a really good thing we missed our train, because we got to see a third castle! Not really publicized, we had noticed it on the bus to and from Hohenschwangau. We were able to walk up to it and explore around the courtyards at our leisure, which was nice, since we had an hour to kill. Can we say awesome!? Chris took a bunch of pictures, which actually turned out incredibly well since it was pitch black. They'll be on the blog soon.

After walking around for a bit, we were able to catch the trains (yup, a total of 4 trains between there and our hotel) and got back at 11. The latest night to be followed by the earliest morning wasn't ideal, but it was worth it. And maybe next time we'll get to see Neuschwanstein. :)