Visit to Neuschwanstein castle

Yesterday Birgit loaned us Hannas car.

This was my first time driving on the wrong side of the road and soon was my first drive on an Autobahn. Luckilly we had learned that some of the speed signs had a little caviet sign under them that clarified that the speed limit only applied in the wet or in the dark. However, I figured that this was not the time to test the no speed limit to the max. Anyway we pushed the accelerator and off we went. The speedo climbed to 110 which being good Queenslanders we knew to the the maximim safe speed known to man. Then a little more and amazingly we were still alive. And a bit more and we were cruising at 120kmh. This brought back memories of the pre speed paranoiah when the old yellow van used to cruise at its terminal velocity of 130kmh down the Newell highway or when almost half the Brisbane population used to do 130kmh on the road to the sunshine coast.

We drove via Austria to look at Neuschwanstein castle. As we drove through the alps, I had to smile as the GPS told me to drive straight for 35km. I doubt that there would have been 10 straight metres let alone 35000 of them. Chris was very helpful in reminding me when I was driving on the wrong side of the road.
As an aside, this picture shows people swimming in an alpine lake. I put my hand in the lake and it nearly snapped off. The other thing is that you have to be careful taking photos around Europeans. I had the photo lined up when one of the girls who was at that time fully clothed, decided to change into her bikini. So being the modest man I am I decided to wait before reframing the shot.
Neuschwanstein castle is a big tourist attraction helped I am sure by it bearing a certain resemblence to the castle used as the logo for the Disney Pixar films. Apparanly they rate only second to Lego land in terms of the number of visitors and it shows. After you see half a dozen rooms as part of a package tour, you exit through not one, not two but three gift shops. The prices of the post cards and so on get lower for the second and third gift shops. It also reminded me of other places where tourists are a captive audience. Like the top of Mt Cootha or the top of the Centre point tower, the coffee was dispenced from a machine. I would have liked to purchase a capochino or hot chocolate and sit on an outside balcony and enjoy the view. This however was not to be as I could not bring myself to buy a coffee dispensed from a Nescafe machine and sit in a pokey room with no view.

To get to the castle, we parked and bought tickets in a little town at the bottom of the mountain. The option of a 40 minute walk competed with a half hour ride in a horse drawn carriage. It started to rain (hard) and the carriage option won out much to Dan and Jemma's delight as they got to sit in the front seat with the driver.

After we had done the castle tour and bought some stuff, we walked to Mariansbruke (Bridge). This is a very high bridge across the valley behind the castle. Great view down.

We began our walk back only to discover, along with plenty of others, that we had missed the last bus so we had to do the down hill walk.
We reached the village at around 7:45pm somewhat cold and hungry. We had a nice it down meal in a Bavarian style restraunt. I think we brought the tone down a bit as three of us were very wet annd two were sporting disposable ponchos. We then keyed a destination into the GPS and begun our jouney home. This time we had to obey the 120km/h autobahn speed limit (rain) and dark.
On the way, we stopped at this Austrian (I think) town for lunch and to replace the fuse for the Zigaretten litghter (or however its spelt in German). Have a close look at the shell sign (down the bottom). Also note that the fuel is not that much more expensive than in Australia. I guess we shoudl be thankfull that all our taxes are making us more like the Europeans.