We started the second day of our pre-tour adventure with an early morning bus ride to Linderhof Palace. The scenic views of the rolling countryside and the Alps in the background were quite breathtaking as we walked up to the palace.
This was the small palace that we toured at Linderhof. The yellow fountain with the horses is perfectly aligned with King Ludwig II's bedroom window. I'm sure it was a very nice view to wake up to!
These are the grounds in front of the Palace complete with a temple to the Goddess Venus at the top of the stairs behind us.
Our big excursion for the day was a tour of the surrounding area and a visit to the Castle Schloss Neuschwanstein
Difficult to capture the scale of this image, the Alps are simply massive. In the center of the image is the castle. We're still miles away on the bus. There's a paraglider in the top left corner above the top of the mountain to give you a sense of scale.
The video bellow is us pulling into the town at the base of the mountain. It's understandable why the Disney Imagineers used this as inspiration for the castle at Disneyland.
Once we got to the village at the base of the mountain, our tour guide got us our timed tickets to travel up to the castle. We had some time on our hands before our viewing window, so we walked to a nearby restaurant for some lunch that had a lovely view of the castle out the window behind us.
After lunch, we boarded our tram and drove up the VERY steep and winding road to the base of the castle. The rest of the way was a picturesque walk to an eerily familiar looking castle. (Granted this is easily 5 times the size of the Disneyland castle that takes it's inspiration from Neuschwanstein!)
One of the options when approaching the castle is to take a path up to the bridge that gives an amazing perspective of the castle and the valley bellow. This is extremely crowded and the line was more than an hour just to go out on the bridge. We opted not to hike up and stand in line.
Walking up to the castle, it was amazing to see how huge it is. This is the back of the castle. We eventually got to go out on that balcony once the tour concluded.
The entrance and courtyard to Neuschwanstein Castle
You are not allowed to take photos inside the castle, but you can take them on the balcony at the end of the tour. The view, is AMAZING.
I stitched together a dozen or so photos of the view behind us to create this large panorama. It "almost" gives you the sense of scale!
We finished our tour of the castle, and decided to hike downhill through the lush and scenic mountain paths to the lake in the center of the image above. We boarded the bus back to our hotel shortly after to conclude our second day before the tour.
