Day 4: Linderhof Palace, Germany & Salzburg, Austria

We drove to Linderhoff. Beautiful drive. I was getting pretty good at reading the map and being more positive about my directions to Jeff. But it takes all your time—you can’t look away for too long, or you miss something.

Here is Linderhof. It's another palace that Ludwig had built for himself. (He lived in the castles we visited: Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein).

 These are the gardens and fountains and statues in front of the palace:

 The fountain went off right at noon.

Inside we were only shown a few rooms; the rooms Ludwig mainly used. All the rooms were the crazy Rococo style. Way too decorated and busy. The piano was adorable, but they say he didn’t play very well. There were plaster vines that went up the walls with leaves that stick out here and there; they create a tiny shelf, and tons of little porcelain vases were placed on them, randomly. The little vases were popular for some reason.

In the dining room, the table was lowered (like an elevator) into the floor below. The servants would set it with the food, and it would be raised back up—just so he didn’t have to see them. When he had guests over, he would have a huge vase and giant bouquet of flowers in the middle, so he wouldn’t have to see or talk to them. Of course the king was served first, and he would eat as fast as he could so he could get away, because when the king was finished, everyone was. So the guests usually went hungry; but, they were silly enough to go along with it, so it’s their own faults.

Ludwig tried to copy King Louis of France in many different ways. He had statues of him, quoted him, and tried to do a hall of mirrors, like the one in Versailles. Incredible palace.

After the tour, we went behind the castle, and it had even more statues and things.

Above the palace there was a cave. The rock door would swing open, and inside of the cave, they barely lit it up. 

 There was a swan boat on a pond in there. It's called a grotto and he had Wagner's productions in there. We couldn’t get very good pictures of it, though.

We had one day left after that, so Salzburg was our next stop again, since we didn't see a ton of it the first time because we were trying to find that stinkin' hotel. But on our way there, of course, we were sidetracked by the beautiful German Countryside. Random old barns spotted the fields here and there, and we stopped to take pictures (for you, Ida).

So back to Salzburg we went, into a better hotel. Or so we thought. A storm from the night before had wiped out their wifi. We were going to see the fortress and go to a museum, but most things were closed, and I still had a ton of homework to do.

You can see the white Salzburg fortress at the top of the hill in the middle of the picture.

So we just walked outside for a minute to get dinner. We found kebabs! Wasn’t the best, but Jeff wants another one, so it was good enough:)

We went straight back to the wifi-less hotel. At least it was clean. Of course all of my homework was due that night. They had one computer with an Ethernet cord, so we waited for awhile to use it, but the guy would not get off. So we tried McDonald’s, then Burger King. We finally just went to another hotel. He said if we gave him a star on the hotel survey thing. We agreed…and I think we forgot to do it. Ha. But it didn’t work, either. By the time we got back, the other guy had left and so I got all the instructions for my assignments and put it on a flash drive and worked late into the night…When we go on our next trip I will be done with school, so that will be a relief.

Day 4: Oberagmmergau, Germany

Day 4

We left our rustic little paradise after the same breakfast of croissant rolls with meat, cheese, and nutella. Our old host said good morning and goodbye to us in his lederhosen, and we walked around the little town.

The cute town of Oberammergau, surrounded by gorgeous mountainous landscapes. 

For Ida because of her Noah's ark collection ;)

There are all the nativity figurines, dad--hundreds of them. And this is just one wall of one of the shops. I also really liked the way they carved those trees to the right...

There were shops that were only Christmas decorations: nutcrackers, nativities, propeller-driven candle carousels, etc. Aren't the ceilings cool?! We got a little nutcracker man to dangle on our Christmas tree, a decoration of the Neuschwantstein castle, and a teeny music box for me. We go big when it comes to souvenirs.

The cuckoo clocks were awesome. They all had different songs when they went off. Mostly Edelweiss; we actually heard a real cuckoo bird one of our first days in Germany. That was cool. They're pretty awesome clocks--extremely intricate and fun.

Some had little wooden people that danced and water wheels that turned...

But this was my favorite: The dark wood with the elk and leaves...it is around $3,500. It was gorgeous, I would have put it in my house.

Then we set one off:

Day 3: Fussen, Germany (Neuschwanstein Castle)

Day 3

Jeff: 
 I have always wanted to go to Neuschwanstein. Almost 40 years ago, when my Aunt Brenda was living in Germany, my Grandpa and Grandma Meikle visited her and went to Neuschwanstein. In Grandma's house, she has an embroidered picture of Neuschwanstein and I always liked looking at it.

We ate after touring Hohenschwangau (bratwurst is disgusting), and paid 2 euros for a swig of hot chocolate. It rained pretty hard for about 15 minutes, but it immediately cleared up, and we waited for a horse carriage to get up to Neuschwanstein.

 But we finally decided that because of the amount of people we probably wouldn’t get into a carriage without punching someone, so we started walking. The lady at the ticket office said it would take us 40 minutes…we made it in 14. Jeff likes walking fast, and wanted to see how fast we could go. I didn’t whine for too long. Because I saw THIS:

 

The castle was amazing. We saw the backside of it; you don’t see many pictures of that—it’s red!

After Jeff took this picture, he found a Polish penny and was pretty happy about it.

 We went inside, and while we were waiting for our tour, we tried to take pictures. There was a lady that kept posing ridiculously—she was older and would point her leg out, and place her arm on it…funny. She's not doing it as dramatically in this one, though. Yes, I am laughing at her.

 This is from the inside of the castle--that's the bridge where you can get the coolest view of the castle

Neuschwanstein has never been finished. King Ludwig was told that he wasn’t considered fit to rule, and soon after that he either killed himself or was murdered (they still haven't figured it out), they immediately quit working on the castle. But they kept it just how it was—everything is original. It’s really not terribly old. It was very cool inside. (Sorry the pictures are blurry and small, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so these are from the Internet).

Hallway

The throne room was pointless—didn’t even have a throne—but had an incredible view. The chandelier was awesome, too. It's kind of shaped like a giant crown and of course weighed tons.

There was a ballroom (above) with a stage for the orchestra and murals on the walls. The floor was wooden, and it was easy to imagine having a ball in there (after having seen so many Jane Austen movies and such).

His bedroom was dark, dark wood. His bed was intricately carved at the top. Ludwig liked to think that he was destined to rule because God had wanted it that way, and he was better than anybody else.The carvings indicated that. You'll hear some of his ridiculous stories on the 3rd day of our trip, at his OTHER castle, Linderhof. There were huge mirrors on either side of the bedroom…it was cool.

I also remember there being a room where it was his favorite place to read. It had columns that separated his reading space and chairs from the rest of the room. There was a table with the original tablecloth. It was blue and gold and had lots of little details. An amazing, intricately carved bookshelf, and more murals on the wall.

The door handles were shaped like swans (NeuSCHWANstein) and the next room was kept to look like a cave. It was just for 10 feet or so, but it looked sweet—like it was part of a mountain. Then there was a balcony-like garden right after that. Jeff and I just wanted to stay there. It overlooked the valley, and had some pretty plants and chairs.

Then they sent us down to the kitchens, where the servants stayed, mostly. There were huge old pans, and even butter molds! There were swans and things...

We walked down to the bridge to get that classic view of the castle. Most of the pictures people see are from this bridge. It connects two mountains, and below is a river and waterfall. Pretty cool. There were a couple of girls that were afraid of heights haha they were crouched down really low, and tried not to look down. They were walking slow and had terrified looks on their face:) Kinda funny. One wouldn’t go near the sides and tried to stay in the middle the whole time, another wouldn’t let go of the sides for a second. It was really windy, so I bet they felt like they were going to be blown over.

 We asked a lady to take our picture, and she got our heads—and not the castle. Then we kept doing the same thing...so we asked somebody else.

 Ding!

Jeff was cautious about who we chose because he could just visualize them raising the iPhone to take a picture, and dropping it off the bridge. Haha I was pointing at people and he would say, "No...no..." I think he was afraid I would do it a couple of times…it does make one nervous because it’s not completely impossible.

We walked back down, went to the car, and drove back. The drive went through the mountains and although it made me sick, it was beautiful. We passed Lake Plansee, which was gorgeous! It was quiet and rainy. The water was that same glowing green.

 We passed some elk, and Jeff pulled over and whistled at them haha they weren’t birds, I told him, but he definitely got their attention.

 An awesome old fortress in ruins--Ehrenberg.

 When we got back to our little hotel, dinner was being served, and was delicious. Then I worked on homework as much as I could—stayed up late, woke up really early.