Discovering Bavaria: Neuschwanstein Castle

Husband and I moved to Munich in January and since then we've been slowly exploring this city and the area around it. We've been to little medieval towns with a lot of charm, to beautiful lakes, to beer festivals and to huge markets and flea markets. So I've decided to share our little adventures with you all.

I'm sure you've heard about Neuschswanstein Schloss, or at least, you've seen it in pictures. It's probably so famous because it served as inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle. This makes it one of the most visited attractions in the whole Germany, with more than 1,3 million people visiting every year, especially in summer. We visited it on August, and I can tell you that it was packed with tourists. But both the castle and its surroundings are stunning, so totally worth a visit.

Neuschwanstein Castle is located in the village of Hohenschwangau, about two hours away from Munich. What you probably don't know is that in this village there's another castle called Hohenschwangau. It was King Ludwig II of Bavaria's childhood residence and apparently he fell in love with the area, especially the waterfalls, and because he was quite reclusive, he decided to build himself a personal refuge on the mountains. He also built himself a replica of the Palace of Versailles, you can read about it here.

When you arrive at the village of Hohenschwangau, you can already see both castles, Hohenschwangau is just a 5 minute walk up the hill and Neuschwanstein is up the mountain. There's a bus that takes you up there but it's quite an easy hike and most people, us included, opt for walking.

Also, in the village there's a gorgeous lake where you can swim if it's warm enough or take a little paddle boat. Before going to the castles, and if you want to get inside, you need to go to the ticket office in the village. When we were there, we arrived at around 11 am and they were selling tickets for 6pm already. So we decided to just have an outdoors day and come back in winter when there're less people and discover the interior then. 

So after having a walk around Hohenschwangau Castle and its gardens, we started walking towards Neuschwanstein. It takes around 40 minutes to get there but as I said, it's not a challenging walk at all. Another option is going up with a horse and carriage ride. This seemed to be the preferred option for children and it looked quite fun. I guess that's how Ludwig himself must have done it.

As soon as you get to the top, the views are amazing. Not only of the castle itself but of the landscape, with two huge lakes on the other side of the mountain. I must have taken a hundred pictures. Without a ticket to go inside, you can still get into the castle and see the patio. Which is spectacular, but now I'm really curious to see how opulent and elegant it must be inside.