A Detour for Castles in Germany

After a week in Switzerland, we planned to drive south to Italy, which is what I was looking forward to most. But if you're married to Yuriy and he has his own car, he's going to try to squeeze in as much as possible. He convinced me that we should swing by Germany real quick, because Munich is only 5 hours away (from Zurich). He really enjoyed Munich when he visited with his brother almost ten years ago, and I'd never been to Germany, so I was pretty easily convinced to take a little side trip with the promise of a good brat and beer and some German history. 

Since we were already taking a detour to Munich, we might as well stop by and see some castles along the way, right? That's the problem with Europe... everything is so close and there's always something that's "basically on the way". One week in, and we were already feeling one month in Europe wasn't nearly enough...

We visited Neuschwanstein Castle and Hohenschwangau Castle, both belonging to King Ludwig II, who became king of Bavaria when he was just 19 years old in 1864. What else would you do as a teenage king but build a better castle? The castles are so close, you can walk from one to the other.

Unfortunately, the bridge that offers the best views of Neuschwanstein was under construction, so we missed out on that. We also arrived as the castle was ready to close for the evening, so we didn't get tickets to go inside. There were so many crowds and school groups leaving the castle as we were arriving, so we didn't feel too bad about missing the chaos, and got to walk around the castle with a little more peace and quiet. 

Munich up next!

- Yuriy and Julia

Look closely at the mountains in the background to see Neuschwanstein Castle.