Our trip to Germany... Part 2!

So, after a good night's rest, we woke up to start our trip to the Neuschwanstein Castle. This is one of several castles that were built for King Ludwig of Germany. He was somewhat of a strange man and a loner. He was never married and never had any children so he just kind of kept to himself. The castle is extremely elaborate but was never finished. We took a tour of the parts of the castle that were actually complete. On our way to the castle, our tour bus made a few stops. The first stop was at a wood shop. This area of Bavaria is famous for their wood products and was at one time the main source of income for the locals. The shop was really cool and we bought a few souvenirs from here.

This is Emily waiting for the tour bus to pick us up at the hotel.

These are me and Em outside the wood shop and then her and RT.

Our next stop was this little church in the middle of nowhere. It was so gorgeous. The inside was unlike any church that I have seen. It was very detailed and beautiful.

This particular image really stuck out to me. I just stood there staring at it for quite some time. I know that this sounds weird but I couldn't help but to wonder if this is what my Mom first saw when she got to Heaven...

After this brief stop we were off to the castle. The drive there was so pretty. There were actually two castles in the same area. The older one was one that King Ludwig's family owned and where he spent time growing up. We didn't visit this one but we got some pictures of it. We took a bus to the top of the mountain and then went to a bridge that gave an awesome view of the castle. I was scared to death to go on the bridge because it was REALLY high up and over water. The biggest thing that scared me was that there was a ridiculous amount of people on the bridge at the same time. RT took Emily out there and got a picture I will show you. I do not have words to describe what this castle was like in person. I have read about castles and places like this in books and you see them in movies, but this was real. A real king lived in this thing. Oh yeah, a little side note, This is the actual castle that Walt Disney used as the model for the Disney Castle.

This is the older castle that the King's family owned and where he spent time as a child.
This is the Neuschwanstein Castle from the bridge.
The bus only brought us to the bridge and then we had to walk up the rest of the way to the castle. This is us on the hike up.
This is the view as we were hiking up... beautiful.
Unfortunately we were not able to take pictures inside the castle because the furniture and paintings were the originals and were hundreds of years old. RT tried to sneak some pictures inside but they were all blurry because he couldn't use the flash and give himself away! We decided to walk the entire way down the mountain on the way back. Here are some pictures from that. The first one is RT eating a quak ball. As we came down the trail there were several vendors selling different things. We stopped at a small vendor selling these pastries and decided to try them. They were SO good! They are little pastry balls with some kind of yogurt thing in the middle and rolled in powdered sugar. YUM!

Emily has a new obsession with our camera and is always asking to take pictures. This is one she took of me and RT. Not too bad for a 2 year old!

Once we got to the bottom of the trail, we were pretty hungry. We grabbed lunch at a cute little restaurant and got to try the authentic German food and real German beer! It was really good. This is Emily sitting on the stairs of the restaurant.

This is was such an awesome trip for all three of us. We had such a good time. After we returned to the hotel, Emily and I were exhausted as you can see. RT went to play the slot machines in the casino area of the hotel. Then we all went to for a swim in the indoor pool. I will have the next "installment" of our trip coming soon!!