Day 7: The Madness of King Ludwig
Food of the Day
Pizza
Gelato
Practicalities
City: Füssen
Weather: Sunny, Beautiful
Hotel: Altstadthotel Zum Hechten
Sights: Hohenschwangau
Neuschwanstein
Laundry
It’s a mundane topic, but laundry is an essential if you are packing light. The one thing that most irritates me about Rick Steves tours is that they don’t give you laundry information in advance.
If I could change one thing it would be to get a complete laundry list at the same time as the hotel list. And by complete I mean that I would like to know in advance which hotels absolutely forbid you to wash clothes in the sink, which have laundry facilities or services and what the fee is for those, and which stops have laundromats.
For this tour I was able to determine through my own research which stops had laundromats: Salzburg, Lauterbrunnen, and Chamonix, but that left the middle of the trip laundry-less as far as I could tell. This was not good because even the average person on a Rick Steves tour is going to need to do laundry by the middle of the tour. And I am not the average person. I know that within any month I am likely to have three days of blood-stained clothing, and while I will wear things again if I spill chocolate, wine, or coffee on them, I draw the line at blood. Blood-stained clothing could occur at any point in a trip to Europe, so I need to have laundry options throughout a trip.
If I’m designing my own itinerary it works out because I can plan to stay in places where I will be able to do laundry. But if I am not certain about the laundry situation I have to bring at least four outfits, which is more than I like to bring on a trip. So I was stuck with overpacking for this trip because I didn’t know what my laundry options were going to be.
When we went on the Greece tour, I had not yet learned the packing extra outfits lesson and was forced to wear soiled clothing for too long because I didn’t have the opportunity to do laundry and had not packed extra clothes.
So I implore you, Rick Steves tour folks, get your laundry act together! It matters, and it should not be that much of a challenge to gather the information. The tours stop in the same cities and towns year after year, and I would bet that you use mostly the same hotels every year, too. And I’ll step off my soap box now. :)
This morning we breakfast and catch the 8:05 bus to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. We collect our reserved tickets from the ticket center and take a leisurely walk up to Hohenschwangau.
I'm particularly looking forward to Hohenschwangau, which we haven't seen before. On a previous trip we did Linderhof and Neuschwanstein on a bus tour from Munich. Linderhof is another of Ludwig's castles, and I vividly recall seeing the dining room where Ludwig ate alone. The table would be loaded by the servants one story down from the dining room and then hauled up using a hoist. He was quite a character.
Early Morning Hohenschwangau
Hohenschwangau is located on a hill below Neuschwanstein and was one of Ludwig's childhood homes. We explore the garden as we wait for our tour. The tour group is large, and they move us through quickly, but it's still a fun glimpse of the castle, which is not as grand as its higher neighbor, more of a comfortable home.
After our tour we descend to the village and poke through the souvenir shops before taking the bus up to Neuschwanstein.
Crowds Waiting to Tour Neuschwanstein
Bill cannot resist taking a photo of the helpful instructions in the rest rooms.
We take the whirlwind tour at 11:55 of the house that Ludwig built but never got a chance to live in or, indeed, complete. This has been a tourist attraction from the day it opened. Particularly notable are the throne room, never used and painted with ancient kings, the man cave, literally a cave constructed inside the castle, and the theater painted with scenes that remind me of Walt Disney's former Snow White ride at Disney World. Disney was apparently influenced by this castle.
One of the biggest reasons to come back to Neuschwanstein in the summer was to take in the view from Mary's Bridge and walk the nearby gorge, but unfortunately both the bridge and the path to the gorge are closed. So we'll have to come back another time. We walk down the hill and return to the ticket center, stopping to take parting shots of both castles. Hohenschwangau, between the lakes, appears at the top of the page. Neuschwanstein is below, and if you look carefully, you can see people paragliding to the left of the castle.
There is a long line for the bus when we reach the bus stop, and we don't make it onto to the first bus that comes and have to wait for the second. All the same by 2 we are back at the hotel, where our clean laundry has appeared, neatly hung and pressed. I have never seen these items of clothing so wrinkle-free! I have a list of possible things to do this afternoon, but we're too tired to do any of them and opt for a quiet afternoon. At dinner time we venture out for wonderful pizza at La Perla, followed by gelato, which I'm always impressed that you now seem to be able to get anywhere in Europe. On our first trip to Italy in 2000, I had never had it, and it was a long time before I saw it outside of Italy.
Hohenschwangau between the lakes