Schloss Neuschwanstein

Okay so now that I have returned to blogging-land, I figured I better clean up shop and post the drafts that have been waiting almost a year (eek!) to be posted. I hope this one was worth the wait!!

Last August while I was studying in Germany (see here,  here, here, here, here, and here) I was so blessed to be able to do some traveling over the weekends. Some of these roadtrips have already been mentioned here, here, here, here, here, and here if you need to catch up.

Our lovely road trip crew: Todd, Ashley, me, and Jennifer.

This part of the trip made all my childhood dreams come true as I got to visit the most amazing castle I have ever seen: Schloss Neuschwanstein (literally "New Swan Stone Castle").

The history of the castle is rather interesting. First off being that its really not as old as you might think having been commissioned by "Mad King Ludwig" in the late 1800s. Apparently he was a little crazy. He built the castle partly in honor of the German composer Wagner and many of the murals in the castle were painting using inspiration from his music. He also had a bit of a swan obsession--hence the name and many little swans carved into the furniture and even doorknobs. Ludwig wasn't everyone's favorite guy though and he and his doctor "mysteriously" drowned near his castle. Even though the castle wasn't completed, they opened it up for tourism that same year (1886) and it has been a tourist hotspot ever since.

Another interesting tidbit is that Walt Disney visited the castle and used it as inspiration for building Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland. There is also a mural in the ballroom that looks like it came right out of scene from Bambi! Our tour-guide told us this also was inspiration for Disney. I knew it looked familiar!!

See that little bridge spanning the canyon in the distance? We were able to hike to that for the view you see in the photos above.

Gotta love the abundance of castles in Bavaria! The castle below was another one we could see while we were spending time at Neuschwanstein. I don't really remember anything about it since we didn't visit but the view was definitely beautiful. Anyone else know anything about this second palace?

And if I could offer you one bit of advice for your visit to Neuschwanstein it would be to make sure you pick up some of these melt-in-your-mouth-powdered-sugar-goodness in the form of these tasty German doughnuts. You won't regret it and its a pretty long way to hike to the castle anyway so you may as well gain some calories while you burn them!

Sorry for no photos of the inside...no photography allowed. Guess that means you get to go visit to satisfy your curiosity!! ;-)