neuschwanstein

We just had the best celebration weekend ever! It was our Valentines Day present to each other and our way to celebrate Chase finishing Pathfinder School.  Btw, here is a pic of me pinning on his Pathfinder torch :)

We left bright and early Saturday morning to head to the Neuschwanstein Castle! It was only about a 3.5 hour drive and we used the spiffy new GPS I bought Chase for his birthday (you all know how well the GPS on my phone worked..not! lol). The new Garmin worked perfectly!! And we seriously couldn't have asked for better weather for the drive down there.  Check out these few pics of us approaching the Alps - where our hotel was located!

See what I mean? PERFECT weather!

Breathtaking..

Getting closer!

We passed through a few REALLY cute ski-lodgey looking towns on our way too! Then we finally got to the foot of the mountain that the castle is on and there is a town full of hotels/restaurants/ticket centers/souvenir shops/etc.  HOWEVER, the hotel that Chase booked was supposedly ON TOP of the mountain right next to the castle...oh yea..he did good! So we started driving up the hill that TONS of people were walking up and down.  Between the people walking not getting out of the way and getting stuck behind a horse and carriage carrying a load of people it took awhile to get up the hill.  We just kept driving though...hoping that our hotel was indeed at the top haha.

It was a tight squeeze on the tiny road for them and us! lol.

Dodging people left and right.

Then we finally made it to the top to find the cutest hotel RIGHT next to the castle. :)

Our hotel: Schlossrestaurant Neuschwanstein. :)

Schlossrestaurant Neuschwanstein.

Our hotel and the Neuschwanstein castle right behind it!! (Told you it was close!)

As you probably noticed, there is scaffolding on that side of the castle.  Unfortunately, they are renovating the castle in 2012 so the scaffolding will be up all year.  But that did not damper the beauty one bit.  After we checked into the hotel and brought our stuff in, we grabbed a bratwurst from the stand right outside the hotel/restaurant and headed to the castle to check it out!

Schloss Neuschwanstein (Schloss = Castle)

Feeling on top of the world!

How 'bout that view, folks? (I'm talking about Chase here people)

We walked around on our own for awhile, taking pictures and soaking in the view before sunset.  I probably took hundreds of pictures of the castle/Alps/view so I'll post a few of the best pics..enjoy:

It went on forever

One of my favorite pics of the weekend!

Side of the castle.

Front corner of the castle!

The front of the castle. LOVED IT!

The coolest door to the entrance!

Walking inside the castle.

If you look really hard, you can see a bridge in the mountains.  Next time we come, we want to figure
out how to get on that bridge!! :)

So, after we did as much sight-seeing as we could without the guided tour, we decided to head back to our hotel and have a little dinner before the restaurant closed (everything closes so early here!).  Chase ordered the biggest piece of pork I've ever seen! It was knuckle of pork, with a potato dumpling and sauerkraut.  I had spaetzle with jager sauce and a small salad...DELISH!

That's about as German as it gets for dinner!

This was the best spaetzle I've ever had.

It took him awhile to figure out how to eat it hahaha.

After dinner, we headed back to the room to drink some Kellerbier and watch the sunset behind the Alps...surely a sight we will never forget (but in case we ever forget, I took a million pictures haha).

Our cute little room. 

So happy!

Perfection.

The view from our room!

Probably the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen..

The colors just kept getting prettier and prettier!

The next morning we woke up bright and early to have an awesome breakfast and buy our tickets for the guided tour of the inside of the castle.  There are actually two castles in that area.  Neuschwanstein was King Ludwig II's castle and Hohenschwangau was his father's castle.  The castle of Hohenschwangau is right at the bottom of the mountain we stayed on - right next to the ticket center where you buy all the tour tickets.  We only toured Neuschwanstein but I got a pretty awesome picture of Hohenschwangau when we went down to buy our tickets:

The Castle of Hohenschwangau

It was a little more overcast the day we toured inside so I'm really glad we took so many pictures of the outside the day before.

Walking inside for the tour!

The only picture I got before they told me I couldn't take pictures inside of the castle.

The tour was AWESOME.  Every inch of the castle was beautiful! After the tour we checked out of the hotel and bought one more brat before we hit the road back to Bamberg! Don't worry, before leaving we found a fellow tourist to take a picture of both of us in front of the castle. :)

One more down on our list of places to visit before we leave.  Neuschwanstein Castle: CHECK!