The Germany Trip Continues - with Castles!

Castle Neuschwanstein

Today was the day for Castle Neuschwanstein. When I programmed the GPS, it gave me the choice of Fast Route, Short Route, or Optimal Route. How could I resist? I chose Optimal Route. Turns out that's synonymous with Slower than Slow Route, although people who look at the bright side might call it the Scenic Route. It took at least 30 minutes longer than it should have, but the drive took us through lots of quaint villages, and narrow windy roads, and was a pretty good accident.

The Optimal Route

Except, that we were in a hurry. The seasoned traveler, who knows enough to read the Rick Steves chapter on Castle Neuschwanstein earlier than the night before, would have known to go online to make advance reservations before the deadline. We began reading the chapter shortly after the deadline, and learned that we could expect that after a long drive, we would stand in a long line, and still run the risk of not getting in. And it was too late to do anything about it.

We got there, finally, after two hours, and it was just as he described. We stood in line for an hour and were fortunate to get tickets to enter the castle at 4:25pm. One group of about 20 people is allowed in every five minutes. The last group is allowed to enter the castle at 5:00pm, which means that many, many people, still standing in the one-hour line behind us, would not get in. We had arrived at 11:30am.

Kyra and Paul on the
Mountain Hike

It was a gorgeous summer day, and we had plenty of time. So we grabbed some lunch – finally something German – bratwurst. (Kyra had pizza.) Then we climbed the winding, wooded trail near a beautiful alpine lake, up a mountain to the other castle Hohenschwangau. (Because one isn't enough for some kings.)  It's less well known, being just "the summer castle," but it was also beautiful.  Then we shopped for postcards and tacky souvenirs (a castle-shaped cookie cutter, a castle snow globe, and a castle refrigerator magnet) before it was time to wander down that mountain and up the next one to Neuschwanstein.

Castle Hohenschwangau

This is the first family trip we've taken like this, where we're not just visiting friends and family, but actually doggedly site-seeing, day after day. My family did a lot of traveling when I was a kid, so this kind of thing is familiar to me, but this is the first time that I was on the parent side of the whining. I've been looking forward to seeing this castle since we started planning this trip, and I've been wanting to see it for most of my life, since hearing my parents talk about seeing it on their honeymoon. But from the point-of-view of a 9-year-old, it's a two-hour car ride, followed by a one-hour wait in line, followed by a long, steep, boring walk, followed by a lot of standing around, followed by the pay-off of a guided tour through an old building, followed by another boring walk, another wait, and another guided tour. And then another boring walk back to the car, and a long drive home.

Our Ride up the Mountain

In retrospect, the fact that the whining episode was fairly short and isolated is actually kind of surprising.  Most of the time Kyra is proving to be a very capable traveler. And fortunately for her, the insides of the castles were pretty amazing, extravagant beyond anything we've ever seen. (In fact, it was largely because of the obscene extravagance and expense of building the Castle Neuschwanstein that King Ludwig II was declared insane, and deposed.) Plus we got to take a horse and carriage ride up one of the mountains, there was some pizza, some ice cream, and seconds on soda. Plus, a castle isn't like any other old, dusty building, simply because it's a castle. We ate some German food for dinner – pork and dumplings and sauerkraut. (Kyra had pizza.) And we all called it a great day.