Fussen

We arrived in Fussen earlier than expected Sunday morning. Cameron missed the exit (bit hard to change lanes at 170kph apparently. Germany has no speed limit on parts of the autobahn).We were going to Ulm, which had the crookedest house and the tallest church steeple, according to the Guiness book of records. I suppose it saved us a walk up to the top of the steeple (768 steps to the top). So we wandered the streets of Fussen instead, until our hotel was ready. Very pretty.

I found a shop selling Snowballs (biscuit balls with a filling), so bought a vanilla one with chocolate coating. Yummy, but a bit much, still have 3/4 of it left.

We walked all the way to the river, and then Cameron said there was a waterfall nearby, so we walked to that as well. Typical boys, they found the shed which had drawings and pictures of how they created the waterfall and used it for hydro-electricity. After studying them and examining the equipment left there, (excavator and old sluice gate mechanism), we walked back to town and booked into our hotel. (They have a beer garden here, so we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting around in there).

Monday morning, after a huge buffet breakfast, we visited the two castles of King Ludwig II. One was his family home, Hohenschwangau Castle (Matt was really impressed by the swans on the lake, on our walk to the castle)

 

And the other he died before completing (it did take 17 years to get to the current stage). Neuschwanstein Castle was King Ludwig´s dream castle, all themed on Richard Wagner´s operas, and is also the castle they modelled the Disneyland castle on. Simply magnificent. (We weren´t allowed to take photos in the castles, so I googled some to put here)

 And so much walking. 10 minutes walk to the first castle and 30 minutes from there UPHILL to the next castle and then Cameron wanted to walk to the bridge lookout as well, where we could see the castles and a waterfall. So we did that too. We were going to take the horse and cart back, but Cam informed us we had to walk 20 minutes back the way we'd come to catch that, so we took the bus back down.

Our weather today was a bit wet, and weather forecasts say the next few days have chance of rain. We are hoping to do a cable car up into the mountains tomorrow, before we leave Fussen, if it is clear. Then we are off to Lake Konstanz and the Rhine Falls, before we head to Switzerland on Wednesday.