Today we are going to visit the most popular tourist attractions in Bavaria, the Kings Castles, which are 5km from our hotel. So we will walk to the Castles as there is a very good trail from Fuessen. We made it to the ticket center in about 35 minutes and bought the English tours for both Castles. The first tour is of the older castle; Hohenschwangau (High Swan Land) which was built in the 12th century, ruined by Napoleon and rebuilt in 1830 by King Maximilian 11 (King Ludwig's father) who used it as a summer hunting lodge. However, the most popular castle is Neuschwanstein (New Swan Stone) which looks like a fairytale palace and was the inspiration for Walt Disney. It looks medieval but its built with modern iron & brick construction techniques. Constructed from 1869 to 1886 with only a third of the interior rooms decorated due to the sudden death of King Ludwig its cost in todays currency is about 15 million Euros ($21 million Can), which seems rather inexpensive to me.
King Ludwig became King of Bavaria at the age of 18 and ruled for 22 years until his death at age 40 in 1886. He did not want to govern his country and prefered to design castles, read and hold parties for his friends. He was a romantic who's best friends were artists, poets and composers. In fact he dedicated Neuschwanstein to the composer Richard Wagner and many of the murals and paintings in the castle depict scenes from his Operas. Eventuallyt he was declared mentally unfit to rule Bavaria and removed from his beloved castle. Two days later he was found dead in a lake. To this day people debate whether he was murdered or committed suicide.
King Ludwig spent 17 years building his castle and lived in it for only 172 days. Within 6 weeks of his death it was turned into a museum and tourists were paying to see it. Today an average of 8,000 tourists visit King Ludwig's castle every day.
After touring the castles we took a steep 15 minute hike to Mary's Bridge to get the best view of Neuschwanstein. The bridge was built by Ludwig 100 years ago and was quite the engineering marvel for its time as the steel bridge is suspended between the deep Pollat Gorge and its waterfall. After decending from the bridge we took the hike down to the bottom of the Gorge and followed the trail back to the ticket center and stopped for a well deserved coffee and cake break before walking back to our hotel.
As we were leaving Bavaria tomorrow and being very hungry we decided to have a traditional dinner of Schweinshaxe (pork knuckle), sauerkraut and dumplings washed down with a pils beer and followed by a local marillen (plum) Schnapps. It was a wonderful and satisfying way to end our time in Bavaria.
Rita on the trail to Mad King Ludwig's Castles with Hohenschwangau Castle in the background
Neuschwanstein Castle as seen from the trail
Mary's Bridge suspended over Pollat Gorge and Waterfall as seen from Neuschwanstein
Rita munching on emergency rations outside Neuschwanstein Castle
View of Hohenschwangau Castle, village and Alp Lake from the Mary's Bridge trail
Neuschwanstein Castle as seen from Mary's Bridge
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