We had breakfast at the hotel. We bought another day Bavarian ticket to take the train to Füssen, the official southern end of the Romantic Road, and our first trip to the mountains. As with our last trip to the Alps, the day started out very foggy. “I’m Fog Girl,” Connie sadly said. But we eventually left the fog behind, and Connie finally got to see her mountains.
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| View from Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany |
From the train station in Füssen, we took a bus to Hohenschwangau where we bought our tickets to see the Neuschwanstein castle built by King Ludwig II. Connie calls it the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang castle. Sheila calls it that too, because despite all those years of German she can't pronounce Neuschwanstein. We could see the outside of the Hohenschwangau castle from the ticket office but we decided to just visit Neuschwanstein. (It’s possible to reserve tickets for the castle tours on-line. We didn’t do this, but we recommend it.) From the ticket office we took a quick shuttle bus just up the mountain to a point just above the castle. This shuttle drove up a narrow winding mountain road and it was a good thing Connie was sitting on the floor and couldn’t see how fast the driver was taking the hair pin turns. From the shuttle stop at the top, we hiked just a few minutes to the suspension bridge that looks out over the gorge to the castle. The view was stunning as long as you don’t look down and realize how high up you are. A very nice man who spoke very little English offered to take our picture together with the castle in the background. He and Connie fumbled handing the camera back. Luckily, it landed on the bridge and not 100s of feet below.
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| Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany |
We saw someone parasailing above the castle. Across the bridge there was a trail and Sheila braved it for a bit while Connie waited. (Germany does not believe in guardrails. Connie does not believe in walking along steep drop-offs that have no guardrails – note the theme developing – Connie is scared of heights!) We had assigned times to tour the castle and enjoyed a guided tour in English. The interior decoration in the castle was amazing. There were swans everywhere, for example the door handles and fireplaces. King Ludwig’s bedroom had a private bathroom with a leather upholstered toilet. After the castle tour, we took the shuttle bus back down the mountain and then caught a local bus back to Füssen. The lovely town was so quaint that we opted to stay for dinner rather than head straight back to Munich. We meandered through the streets and saw a wonderful modern fountain with revolving stones in front of the tourist information office. There was another little fountain with statutes of three children playing in the water. A grandfather was making the water squirt one of the girl statues and his grandson, about age 3, was quite tickled by it. Although, it was hard to tell who was more thrilled, the little boy by the water or the grandfather by the little boy. The grandfather tried to speak to us but he didn’t speak English. He didn’t need to. His smile spoke volumes.
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| Fussen, Germany |
We walked around the St. Magnus Abbey below the "Hohes Schloss" (High Castle) and found a beautiful park behind it. The shops were closing so we found a restaurant; unfortunately they had stopped serving anything but coffee and pastries. We didn’t have a lot of time before the train would leave and since we were too hungry to wait until we got back to Munich, we broke down and walked back to a little hole in the wall restaurant we had seen with a sign for “Pizza Pasta Americano.” Okay, we realized this was really whimpy, but we were tired and hungry. We each ordered salad and spaghetti and it was fantastic. There was so much food we couldn’t possibly finish it all. Connie considered this the best food for the entire trip. Ali – the owner – entertained us as we ate and even proposed marriage to us both. No – that was not why Connie liked the food so much, but the charm made up for the lack of ambiance. We heartily recommend eating here, - if you are hungry in Füssen. The address is Ritterstrasse 23.
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| Fussen, Germany |
After dinner, we waddled to the train station where Connie realized that she had lost the ticket. We decided to try seeing if just the receipt would be good enough, but turns out nobody checked our ticket. There was apparently a problem with the train because someone looking like a railroad employee came out to the platform and said something in German and everyone at the platform began to follow him. When in Rome…. We followed him too and were loaded onto a bus going somewhere. We had no clue. We boarded on faith. Turns out the rest of the crowd on the overloaded bus had no clue either. Sheila guessed that we were being taken to be eaten by Werewolves (she’s read too many urban fantasy novels). However, that assumed that we would live through the bus ride as the driver sped around narrow curved roads through small towns. After about 45 minutes, we ended up at another station where a dark train awaited. We walked across multiple tracks in the dark and boarded a dark train. Once again, we were just following the herd. We sat in silence in the dark train awaiting our fates. We were much relieved when the train actually started and returned us to Munich, even without a ticket!
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| Fussen, Germany |
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