Neuschwanstein

In route to Munich today, we went through the Bavarian Alps. This is DEFINITELY an area we want to revisit!! The mountains and small towns are like storybook settings, exactly the way your mind imagines them, only better!
The little villlage at Neuschwanstein is best known for it's beautiful castle - Disney chose this castle to design
Cinderella's castle at Disney World - but is not easy to get to. We'd already decided not to go inside the castle because it has numerous (hundreds) of stairs. Two people who visited Neuschwanstein this summer told us that their tours were very quick and wouldn't allow extra time for resting. After hearing that, we planned only to go up to the base of the castle, look around, and take pictures. There are two ways to get to the base from the village - either a 20 minute walk uphill or a carriage ride 2/3 of the way with a walk the last 1/3 of the way. Because we're getting a little tired and also it is raining today, we decided to just stay in the village. I think you'll agree, we got great pictures from the village!
The motorways in the Alps are sometimes marked the way our maps are, and sometimes they are not! We also found out that occasionally the motorways are simply not marked at all!! We got turned around a couple of times when there were no signs at major entrances. We eventually got where we needed to be by pulling up to small stores or houses and asking the locales or anyone we could find!
The scenery on the route to Neuschwanstein (and actually everywhere we've been) is breathtaking. We know that next week we'll be pinching ourselves in order to believe the places we've been!
We were beginning to feel the effects of days of high temperatures, so today was a very nice break from that. We used our jackets for the first time.