Neuschwanstein Castle

The next day we visited Neuschwanstein Castle, Bavarian King Ludwig II's fantasy island castle near Hohenschwangau and Füssen in Germany. This castle was Walt Disney's inspiration for Disneyland. Ludwig was obsessed with Richard Wagner's work and he built this castle so he could pretend he was characters in Wagner's operas. The tour guide insisted Ludwig was a little eccentric but perfectly sane. Tour the castle and you will discover he was as nutty as a fruit cake. (Click on the picture and you will see a couple dozen hang gliders playing in the up-draft caused by warm air swooping up the mountain ridge.)

This is a view from Neuschwanstein.

This is another. It is of Hohenschwangau Castle, which we also toured. Hohenschwangau Castle was build by Ludwig's father, King Maximilian the II as a humble 50,000 square foot hunting retreat.

This is a view from Hohenschwangau Castle. 

And this was the view from the front porch of our B & B that day. Almost good enough for royalty, eh?
Late that afternoon and all evening we drove south through Austria, east on a cow path across northern Italy, then south to Venice. We stopped once for gas, and once to stretch our legs on the front lawn of a tiny inn hidden in the Austrian Alps. I asked the waitress if they had any desserts and she proclaimed, "We have strudel!" So we had strudel, while watching the snow slowly melt off the mountain peaks. I could do that again.