Schloss Neuschwanstein

As I recall there was no flash photography allowed inside the castle and as I didn't have a Digital DSLR camera back then I have no good photos to show, except some taken of the outside countryside through an open window. The  interior shots you'll see were taken from the Wikipedia entry on the castle.

The rooms were dark due to the narrow windows and heavy tapestries on the walls. Furniture was ornately carved in an "over-thetop, I'm the King after all style". The King spent little time living in the castle between 1884 when it was furnished (but all the building not completed until 1892) and June 1886 when he drowned in a lake nearby under mysterious circumstances.

Here's where you enter the castle-the Gatehouse

Waiting to go in for our short tour...as the castle gets up to 6,000 visitors a day in small guided tour groups, tours are under 45 minutes and you are kept moving along.

The hallways are flooded with light

The Royal Bedroom

Dining room

The Study

Drawing Room

This next one is the "Singer's Hall" a reference to the Wagner opera Tannhauser...



The Throne Room

Throne Room detail

I took a couple photos from the hallway windows...here are the Austrian Alps in the distance. it would be 5 years until our first Austrian vacation....

Looking over the rooftops of Hohenschwangau

As it's all downhill from here we decide to walk back down to the village and take one last look over our shoulders at the castle...

After 20 minutes or so we are back to ground level and ready to pay a quick visit to the other castle-Hohenschwangau the summer home of King Ludwig II...yes that's our hotel in the bottom right hand corner.

Now for lovers of Wagner music this is the better of the two castles to visit. Reason being that Wagner actually stayed here and the King had a room set aside for him. So there's a piano that Wagner used to play the King what he had been writing or whatever the King asked to hear from his favorite operas. One of the most interesting rooms is the dining room where the large banquet table could be lowered to the kitchen below where the food would be added to the plates and bowls and then hoisted back up to the diners without footmen getting in the way of the guests.

This castle is also more of a home and less garish and ornate in the interiors, which appeals to me.

The day is wearing on and it's now approaching noon and we have a long drive ahead. We just give ourselves time to walk through the village and down to the lakeside....

We pack our luggage in the hotel and prepare for today's drive up the Romantic Road to our next stop-our first visit to Rothenburg. Down in the street the car is waiting...