Bavaria

Monday was a holiday here, so for the 3 day weekend we decided to take another trip.  We went to Bavaria, to a town called Füssen, Germany; and from there to Reutte, Austria. We left early Saturday morning by train and made it to our destination by 3PM.  Füssen is home to the famous Neuschwanstein Castle.  We took a tour there Saturday night- it was so impressive!  We had to hike up to the castle (although they did offer horse and buggy rides up), but it didn't take long.  

The view there was amazing- mountains and blue lakes- I'm starting to want to move to the mountains after seeing how gorgeous they are! 

 The Neuschwanstein castle is what the Walt Disney castle was modeled after.  It was built in the 19th century though, so it was really modern; Ben and I both agreed that we were ready to see something that felt like an actual castle, where you could picture a battle taking place to defend the fortress, that type of thing.  Sunday, we got our wish.  We took a 45-minute long bus ride just over the border to Reutte to see the ruins of a castle called Ehrenberg.  Let's just say that we also got our fill of hiking in on this trip as well- it took about 45 minutes just to walk to the base of the mountain, then we hiked up to the first ruins, which was about a 25-minute, uphill walk.  These ruins were AWESOME!!  

Ben and I loved it- finally felt like we were seeing a real castle.  Ben kept describing all the architectural details to me, explaining why there were windows in certain places that were wider on the inside than the outside (for shooting arrows), how the beams of the floor above would have gone into these holes in the walls, etc.  I guess it was more fun to see the ruins and just imagine what must have happened there, as opposed to seeing mad King Ludwig II's favorite reading chair at Neuschwanstein.  After these ruins, there was a "steep trail" (according to Rick Steves) up to some more ruins.  Wow, I thought I would die- it only took about 30 minutes, but it was SO steep, straight up the whole way...we had to keep stopping every couple minutes to let our legs rest and catch our breath.  Finally we made it to the top...the ruins there were neat, but I liked the first ones we saw better, so I was a little disappointed after such an exhausting climb to get there.  We took a longer, but flatter, trail back to the bottom, but it went fast going downhill.  We walked in the rain (luckily we had an umbrella, but we still ended up pretty soaked) back to town, then had to wait over an hour for the next bus back to Reutte.  We were pretty cold and miserable sitting there waiting, but after a great Italian dinner (I know, doesn't make sense, but pizza and pasta just sounded good) and a hot shower, we felt great after a day of touring and hiking.  All we did Monday was travel back to Düsseldorf, so it was nice getting home around 6PM to just chill out a little while before starting back to work the next day.

And by the way, we saw lots of people wearing lederhosen on this trip...I guess that isn't just a stereotype of Bavaria after all!  I still haven't heard any yodeling in the Alps though...

We'll have a full photo album of Bavaria to add to the list of galleries soon, so check back for those later.