The base was having fireworks & a cookout for the Fourth of July, but Shanna & I decided to do something different. Shanna had seen in the USO flyer a trip they were planning on July 4th to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwanga, two castles in Bavaria. Hohenschwanga was the castle that King Ludwig II grew up, and Neuschwanstein was the castle had built. He was deposed before Newschwanstein could be completed, but it's still an amazing place to visit. Unfortunately everything inside both castles were copyrighted so no pictures were allowed. We probably could have snuck a few if we were on a self guided tour, but we weren't...we had a tour guide, and neither of us wanted to risk getting thrown out considering the time & money spent on getting there.
Despite the fact that we couldn't take pictures, we had a great time. We were both nervous about the weather. It's been sunny & nice (albeit a little hot) for the past two weeks, but that day the forecast was rain in Stuttgart. We woke up at 4am because we had to be on base by 5:45am to get on the bus. Shortly after waking up the downpour started. It was still going when we hit the road...there were times on the Autobahn that I could barely see 10 feet in front of me. Thankfully at 5:30am there were almost no cars on the road. We parked the car, hopped on the bus, and 3 hours later we were in the small village of Hohenschwangau. The weather couldn't have been more beautiful. When we were about 20 minutes outside Stuttgart the rain stopped, the skies cleared, and it was beautiful. After we got our tickets, we started to head to the path to the first castle. According to posted signs, it was about a 20 minute walk up the hill to Hohenschwangau Castle. We had an hour before the tour started, so we took our time. It was absolutely beautiful there, both at the bottom of the hill and the top. Below is a picture of the lake there.
The first tour started promptly at 11:05am. Our tour guide was great...he mixed in the history of the castle and some humor. One of the more interesting things to me was the "secret passage" in the King & Queen's rooms. Apparently they didn't sleep in the same room, but when they wanted a late night rendezvous, they had to go through a secret passage that linked their rooms.
The tour didn't last too long...approximately 45 minutes. The next tour started at 1:30, so we had some time to kill. We walked around the little village for a bit, then took a bus up the mountain to Neuschwanstein. I thought the view from Hohenschwangau was impressive, but it was nothing compared to the view from Neuschwanstein. Below is an example of what you could see from up there.
At this point the rain that had hit Stuttgart had arrived. It rained for a bit, but it wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, though, the area clouded over and visibility wasn't as good as it was earlier in the morning. The tour was interesting. The girl giving the tour told us this was her first English tour, and she did just fine. She'd occasionally have a grammatical slip up, but I actually found that interesting...her conjugation and grammar were wrong for English, but correct for German. Since Neuschwanstein was not completed, we didn't take a full tour of the castle, but we saw all the completed rooms, from King Ludwig's room to the hunter's hall. We even saw the piano that the composer Wagner played on when he stayed there.
After the tour was over we made our way down the mountain and had an early dinner at the beer garten. The food & beer were great, and by the time we were on the bus, we both took a long nap.
It was a lot of fun, and definitely something I'd recommend to people visiting the area. To see more pictures from the trip, click here or any of the pictures above.
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