Dad and Mom See a Castle

This is part two of Mom and Dad's trip... for part one, click here!

After going to bed early, we were a little more eager to get a fresh start on the day. We filled up on the hotel's breakfast buffet (delicious) and then made our way to the train station to take a trip out to Neuschwanstein Castle. 

We took the train to Fussen, then boarded a very crowded bus to the castles. If you're using the Bayern (Bavaria) day transport ticket like we did, you will not have to purchase a ticket on the bus.

You can take a bus, a horse-drawn carriage, or walk up to the castle, and we took door #3!

Hohenschwangau Castle - birthplace of King Ludwig. I've heard this is a nice castle to visit as well, but we haven't toured it!

Living life on the wild side...

Before our tour, we walked through the courtyard a bit.

 Since we've done the tour before, it wasn't important to Carson to do it again, so he walked over toward the bridge, then hiked up around from there. Looks like he got a good view!

Another tourist took this for him.

After our tour, we all met at the Marienbrücke. I took this on the way.

And Carson took this...

We were trying to get down to the bus so that we could make the 2pm train back to Munich and have time to see the Munich Residenz (palace in Munich), so we rushed onto the bridge, snapped some quick pictures, and hurried down the hill as quickly as four people in non-hiking gear can hurry down a steep hill.

 We got to the bus stop only to discover that the bus to the train station comes only once every hour (!!) and that it had left just two minutes before. We wouldn't make it to Munich before the Residenz closed. Such a bummer. I guess it was a reminder to check bus times - I wouldn't have thought it would be so infrequent!

It did give us an opportunity to hang around for another hour and enjoy a bratwurst for lunch.

And here we are, waiting for the next bus!

The train back to Munich is about two hours, so we caught up on a little sleep as we rode.

And once we were back in Munich, we grabbed our raincoats, since there was a chance of rain, and headed out again. Since the Residenz was now closed (the last admittance time is 5pm and we didn't get back to the train station until then), we had an open evening.

We walked through the Viktualienmarkt and admired the fruit and other things for sale. Carson bought some kumquats.

We ended up spotting this big Italian food/market thing called Eataly and wandered around there for a bit. Thanks to a little internet research, it looks like these exist in the US and in other countries as well! There are shops and restaurants inside, so we chose one and sat down for some Italian food.

It rained a little while we were inside, and for maybe 20 minutes after that, but then the skies were clear and it was a beautiful evening. We were nervous about the forecast because it was supposed to be rainy and chilly just about everywhere we went, but it only rained on this day!

Look! A rainbow!

Dad, Carson and I had gelato, and Mom wanted a pretzel, so we found a bakery and she chose this cinnamon one. It looked really good, but because it was the end of the day and because it was made with crispy phyllo dough, it didn't quite hit the spot. The next day (no pictures!) we got real pretzels that were 80 cents apiece and were delicious, which hopefully made up for this not-great one.