Castle Town, Schwangau

We arrived in Munich at 6am but not before being served a breakfast of coffee, which I added dwater to, from the sink. I was about to take a sip, when I noticed the "DO NOT DRINK" sign. Boo. The sandwich we got as well, was terrible.

In Munich we bought a couple of Maps and then to Starbucks for a couple of Vanilla Latte's.

Where we discovered 1 of 3 errors which I'd made in planning this leg of our trip. Instead of borrowing a car from Enterprise across the street from the Bahnhof we were at, the Enterprise I rented from, was across town.

Troy was gracious with me and located a route on the metro. We found the enterprise easily and rented a tiny opel, which had just enough room for us, and our bags. We also rented a tomtom - our GPS system which like everything else this far, has been a Godsend.

We drove through the beautiful country of Germany and even got to drive on the Autobahn. The Opel had no problem keeping up, and easily held speed at 170 kph. It is quite something to be passed, while going that fast, especially when it is a mini-van!

We arrived at our hotel Landgasthof 'Zur Post'in Schwangau around 11am, and were greeted not by a person at the front desk, but by a note welcoming us to town, and providing our key and telling us they were on holidays.
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We found our cute room on the 1st floor (which is considered the 2nd floor in North America). We had a HUGE walk-out patio. We showered and got refreshed with clean clothes, and headed off to see the castles!

We drove to the closest parking lot available, and then purchased our tickets to both castles.

We had a bit of time before our tour began and were very hhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifungry. We both got a tasty bevarian sausage and some french fries to share. We then began to climb the massive hill to Hohenschwangau castle. We had a bunch of time to walk around the outside of the castle, before our tour started. What a beautiful place. It overlooked the beautiful Bavarian Countryside. Our tour guide LOVED his job, and it was easy to tell. He chatted a lot with Troy and I, which seemed to annoy some of the other people on our tour, but we had a lot of questions for him, which he was more than happy to answer.

The castle was filled with expensive gifts from dignitaries and famous friends of the Royal Family. Unfortunately they do not allow you to take photo's in the castles.

We took many photo's around the castle, and out windows in the castle, and then walked down the hill, on our way to the next castle.

Neuschwanstein looked magnificent from the valley below, and looked better and better the closer you got to it. We took a horse and carriage ride almost all the way to the top, and we walked the rest of the way.

This castle is really something to behold. It was thought up by King Ludwig II who was said to be crazy. They worked on the castle for 12 years, and by that time, had only completed 1/3 of the work. King Ludwig moved in at this stage, and 2 weeks later, was declared insane. 2 days after that, they found him floating in a lake in Munich. Ever since then, this castle has been a tourist attraction, for obvious reasons. The rest of the castle, has not been completed.

The castle is even more beautiful and elaborate that the first castle. Ludwig even had a secret room, behind his bedroom, which looks like something out of Indiana Jones. Its a cave room/secret passageway, and it honestly looks like you are walking though a cove 1000 miles, inside a mountain. There were stalagmites and different colors everywhere. Very different.

Troy and I tried to find secret passageways in the castle, but didn't find any luck. All the doors were locked, and none of the walls we pushed on moved.

We took many photos here, once again, not allowed inside the castle, but from the windows, and outside, and then we walked around to the bridge behind and above the castle.

We left the castles after trying a delicions donut like treat and another carriage ride down. Our feet, once again, were sore. We got back to our hotel, with still no sign of the owners.

We went to find some eats, after lounging around our hotel room for a bit. We found a local Italian eatery, and a friend. He was a cute old man who could not speak English, but managed to communicate he would be making our breakfast. We entered the restaurant with him, and ordered a shrimp cocktail, pizza's, and wine, and lemonade/coke for Troy. The shrimp cocktail...although not terrible, was something out of Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares. It was lettuce, cooked, but cold mini-shrimp, with about 1 1/2 bottles of thousand islands dressing on top.

The pizza's however were amazing. I think it was the best I've ever had!

We had a difficult time communicating with the waiter that we would like some dessert, but he did bring us a drink from the cute old man who couldn't stop staring at me. The drink was fairly nasty, but we could not let him know that.

Finally the waiter brought us a bill. I guess he did not want to serve us dessert. We got up to leave, and the cute old guy followed us out. He pointed down the street and told us we should go see "Life Music". We attempted to follow his directions, with no luck, more-so to appease him, than because we actually were super interested.

We couldn't find the life music (live music), but we did find another cute place where we got some Tiramisu, and coffee. Unfortunately we found out after we both started eating that the dessert contained nuts...so Troy couldn't eat it!

We walked back to our hotel in the rain, only to find it locked! Before trying our key, we rang the hotel doorbell, and the owner, who had since arrived, let us in, and told us our key would have worked in the front door. Good to know for next time!

The morning brought rain, so the plans to check out the bobsled, and the crystal spa which we'd discovered were also in Schwangau, were out. Boo.

We got up and ate a lovely traditional breakfast of bread, cheese, meats, yogurt, fruit, jams, etc, and some great coffee.

We then packed up, made a quick stop to the post office to mail our beautious picture, bid farewell to the cute oldie (who we gave the Canadian Pen we'd purchased in the TO airport), and headed off for Dachau.

The drive was beauteous, yet uneventful. It was raining in Dachau. Not hard, but enough to set the mood for a walk through the memories of the past. It seemed very appropriate. It was April 29th, 2008, which is the anniversary of the day that the prisoners of Dachau were liberated.

The Concentration Camp was something neither of us will ever forget, and very graphic. I had a difficult time taking it all in, and about 3/4 of the way through it, I had to stop, it was too much for me. They say that Dachau was not a death camp, because they claim they did not exterminate people there (although they do have extermination chambers). They say it was not an extermination camp, but it certainly was a death camp, because they worked people to death, starved them to death, and beat them to death. It is said about Dachau, that the crematorium burned 24 horus a day, the entire time Dachau was open, and that was not enough time to burn all the bodies of those who died there.

We left Dachau more educated in our world's history, but determined not to let it effect the rest of our day. So naturally, we went to Burger King.

We drove back to Munich, with the help of TomTom, and returned the car, and then were driven to our hotel, Motel One.