Reflections of My Travel

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We woke up this morning with the Alps towering over us. And they were glorious. It was a little bit drizzly, but not too bad. We drove up to Schwangau to formulate our plan for tackling the castles. There are two very prominent castles in the Schwangau valley. There is the extremely large and fanciful castle Neuschwanstein that was built by “Mad” King Ludwig II and was later the inspiration for Walt Disney’s® Cinderella’s Castle. It perches up on the side of the alps and sets a majestic focal point for the valley. It also overlooks his daddy’s castle, Hohenschwangau. By all standards, this is no small castle either, yet the entire thing would probably fit into the courtyard of Neuschwanstein. Daddy’s castle was much more humble looking and older, having been originally built in the 12th century and later ruined by Napoleon and rebuilt by Ludwig’s daddy, Maximillian II. We decided that we were only really interested in taking the inside tour of Neuschwanstein so we bought our tickets and started hiking up to it. When we got to the front gate, I was surprised to find it immensely larger than I had imagined or than it had seemed from the town. The sheer scale of it was quite impressive, even without the fanciful beauty. We took the 45 minute tour of the inside, which was spectacular. Everything was so opulent, but not to a sickening degree (at least not for an attraction, it would be way over the top to live in). The woodcarving. Oh my goodness, I cannot even begin to describe how incredible the carving was. The king’s bedroom alone had a team of woodcarvers devoted to it for FOUR years! It was amazing. He also had hot and cold running water throughout. The rooms were immense, even though the inside of the castle was only about one third finished – the king having been declared mad, evicted from his luxurious castle, and found dead the next day after only 172 days of living in it. The shame about his premature and mysterious death was that not only Neuschwanstein never completed, but his next fantasy castle, Falkenstein, which appears that it would have been even more fantastic, was never begun. His bedroom also had a spectacular view of Mary’s Bridge and a great waterfall. The whole tour was fascinating and I would heartily recommend it to anyone. Once we had finished the tour, we hiked up and then down to the base of the waterfall. Then we hiked back up to Mary’s Bridge. Neither I nor Randal was entirely comfortable walking across this very high bridge. It was 200 years old, made of wood going long-ways, and the wood buckled as you walked on it. I know that I’ve become a skeardy-cat about heights, but I knew it was bad when Randal was gripping the hand rail all the way across. Once we had crossed it, we hiked another very vertical mile up the mountain above the castle so that we could get a picture of Neuschwanstein with Hohenschwangau below it. It was a very pretty hike, but also intimidating. The trail was small and often right along the steep edge, the wind was whipping at us, and the rain started muddying the ground. Finally, not far from the top of the mountain at all, I found the closeness to the sheer, steep edge a little too overwhelming and we turned around. It was just as well, Randal’s camcorder had just run out of tape and it was starting to rain pretty good so the trail was going to get slicky fast. The downward hike didn’t seem as bad, but crossing the bridge again seemed much worse with the wood wetted and, therefore, more bendy underfoot. We made our way back down to the car, loaded the camcorder with a fresh tape, and walked the short way up to Hohenschwangau. Even though we did not purchase tickets for the tour, we were free to walk around the grounds and take pictures of the castle and its surrounds. It was a very nice castle in its own right, although not nearly as aesthetically pleasing as Neuschwanstein, or even Burg Eltz. Once we were done ogling the two castles, we got back in our car and drove down into Austria. We wound up on a road that took us up and over a part of the Alps. The drive was gorgeous, even though the lack of guardrails made Randal uncomfortable. As we neared the top, there was snow all over the place. It was a wonderfully scenic ride. After making it down the other side of the mountain, we found a place to camp in Bludenz.