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| We traveled into the gardenlike landscapes of the Bavarian Alps
this morning on our way to Neuschwanstein Castle (Germany's best known turist attraction), "Mad King Ludwig's" version of a
fariytale castle. The Cinderella Castle at Disneyland was modeled after it. John, one of the tour members gave us an extensive
backgroud talk about King Ludwig. John knew so much about this King and Bavaria because his grandmother is a Countess living in
Bavaria. He has visited there a lot and when his grandmother dies, he will become Count von Schlosser of Bavaria. When we arrived,
a shuttle bus took us above the castle to a bridge where we got a great view of the castle and the surronding countryside far below.
From there we walked down and around the castle to the drawbridge and entrance gate to start our guided tour of the inside.
To me, this was the most spectacular of all the places and things we saw on this trip. Ludwig's father's castle,
Hohenschwzngau, was visible from the visitor area where we had lunch. |
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That afternoon, we went to Ludwig's second caste, Lindhof, a hunting lodge in a densely forrested valley
of the Ammergau Alps. His castles are numbered one, two and three because of the order in which they were
started, but they were all three being built at the same time.This place could have fit inside the Great Hall of
Neuschwanstein. It was very small compared to all the other places we had seen and had rooms copied from
Versailles, as did Herrenchiemsee. There were a lot of gardens , pools, fountains and other stuctures he had
built to represent sets and scenes from operas written by Richard Wagner (Ludwig was his patron). We left
Germany and drove through Innsbruck, Austria by some winter olympic sites and spent the night in
Seefeld, Austria, another site of winter olympics back i n the 30's . |
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