Day 9: May 16th

Day 9 was a more relaxed day, especially compared to Dachau yesterday.  We went to visit Neuschwanstein castle today, which was absolutely beautiful.  The ride was a little over an hour and a half long, and I slept for most of it.  When I woke up, I looked out the bus window to see the Alps towering over us, right off of the highway.  The view was absolutely astonishing.  When we got to the castle, you could see a neighboring castle sitting on a small cliff, which is by where we parked.  Across the parking lot was a gorgeous lake that was so flat that you could see a perfect reflection of the Alps in the water.  If you looked closer, you could see straight through the water down to the bottom of the lake.

After looking at the lake, we started the half hour hike up the Alps to visit the Neuschwanstein castle.  From the castle, there was a breathtaking view of the Bavarian countryside down below.  We weren't allowed to take any pictures of the interior of the castle, but it was decorated with a lot of dark wood  and dark paints.  Everything was dark and gloomy inside the castle-  I liked looking at the exterior and the surrounding views much better.  

 Me and Veronica

Katie, Lucie and I

After visiting the castle, we drove to a smaller town to eat lunch and walk around for a little bit.  It was a very cute downtown, and we got gelato and some weird type of dessert dough ball covered in chocolate.  I really liked walking through downtown, and I ended up buying a really cute scarf and some souvenirs for me and my family.  

Our lunch

The gelato from a small local gelato shop

One of the main streets of the little town

Our doughballs that we got

When we got back to the hotel, I ended up falling asleep for three hours, before getting a pizza for dinner and spending the rest of the night in the hotel, eating and blogging.  Today was very lowkey and relaxing, which is really nice because I needed a day off to catch up on sleep and recover a little bit from all the other crazy- busy days!