What a beautiful day! We could not have asked for better weather. When I was at Neuschwanstein just last Friday, the weather was rainy, wet, windy, and cold. Outside, we were just miserable. Today was sunny and warm with just a gentle breeze to keep the air moving. We arrived in Hohenschwangau around 9am and had so much fun with the castles that we did not leave until after 4pm!
Hohenschwangau Castle was first. It was built by Maximillian I on the ruins of a 12th century castle. A summer retreat, it is a rather small castle (as castles go), but lovely nonetheless. The first floor housed the Queen’s Quarters, and the second floor belonged to the King. There was even a secret passage way from the King’s bedroom to the Queen’s.
As we passed from one room to the next, I happened to look up at one of the paintings that had a monk in it with a knight. The caption overhead said something about “Luther’s flight from Augsburg.” I asked the docent about it, and she said there is a legend that after Luther met with Cajetan at Augsburg in 1518, he slipped away in the night because he feared for his life. It is quite possible that he traveled south to Hohenschwangau and stayed in the ruins of the castle (before the new one was built) or somewhere nearby.
From there we walked across the valley and caught the bus to take us up to Neuschwanstein. Oh what fun we had! It was really great to hear the tour information again. The docent from my previous tour last week had such a thick German accent that she was hard to understand. The one today was much better and shared a few more things that I did not learn about last week. We also went up into the courtyard today. Ludwig II had plans for a chapel there, and the outline of those plans can be seen in cobblestones inset among the others stones in the pavement.
After we returned to Fuessen and picked up our luggage from The Sonne Hotel – an extremely nice place to stay, by the way – we remembered that today is a holiday and the office at the train station was CLOSED! After asking a bus driver who spoke almost no English, we found out there was an automatic train ticket machine around the back side of the station. It took a while, but we eventually found it on the platform. Another bus driver saw us struggling to figure this out and helped us buy a pass for 28 Euro for the both of us. That gave us a bus ride (where we had to stand the whole way) to Marktoberdorf, and from there, we got on the train and rode it all the way to Munich.
I had been reading the Rick Steve’s’ travel book on Germany, and he highly recommended The Royal Hotel, just a few blocks from the train station. Sounded great, so off we went. We eventually found it, and the gentleman who helped us was so nice. First he gave us a discount because he said he could, and then when I told him about Rick Steves, he gave us another one! Funny thing, too – this room is so much nicer than where I stayed last week, and it is right across the street from Der Drei Loewen! Free internet here, too.
We decided to go to The Hard Rock Cafe for supper. It was 9pm by the time we walked over there through the Marienplatz (where the Glockenspiel is). It was SO good! I couldn’t find the Hard Rock in Berlin, so I wanted to make sure we went to this one so I could get a t-shirt. They had lots of other tempting things in their gift shop as well, but I was good and just bought the shirt.
Tomorrow we go to Dachau and decided to add on the 3rd Reich Tour. If you book both at the same time, you get a discount. The 3rd Reich got its start in Munich, and of course the Nazis being in power led to the Concentration Camps. I’ll let you know how it goes!
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