Tuesday, October 05

A very nice breakfast, followed by the disappointing realization that the cloud cover was so low, there was no point in riding the gondola to the top of the nearby mountain. So on to Plan B, which took a while to put together - a trip to Neuschwanstein Castle.
So we tried to program the navigation system, now named "Helen" (as she sounds like Helen Miron) to go there. Try as we might we couldn't get her to recognize as a point of interest or anything else, so finally we got her to take us to the nearest town. From there we thought we could see the castle, but there were no signs pointing the way. However, by an absolute fluke we ran across the parking lot for it.
We bought tickets, found a washroom and started the trek to the castle. Signs warned us that if were late we would forfeit, others that it was a 40 minute climb at a hiker's pace or 45 if we were walking a dog. As we started we realized that our tour was starting in 42 minutes, so we started to hoof it! Couldn't sustain that uphill pace though, so moderated it a bit. Part way up it started to rain and we got quite wet [ though Larry said he was wetter from sweat than rain ].
Suddenly we were at the castle. It had taken 19 minutes so we had 23 minutes to hang around in the rain.
The castle is very different from any other we've toured. It's very Bavarian, with heavy beams, lots of wood carving, brightly painted details, and beautiful paintings on the walls representing Wagner's operas which he loved.
On the way back down the mountain we bought some deep fried cream cheese balls, covered in powdered sugar( when you're wearing black! ) I was well-dusted almost as soon as I started, but they were really good!
Back at the car we worked out a plan to get to Switzerland tomorrow. That brought us through the rain to Lindau, Germany, where we're in a hotel for the night. We're near the edge of the lake, so an interesting part of town.

Photos 5 Oct

No comments:

Post a Comment