Garmisch Day 3 (Part 2) - Birthday Trip

So Inigo and I decided to skip the castle and see what else I could see. So we dodged around the crowds, and went back to the castle map. We saw that folks were walking up from a walkway to the right of the map, so we took that path to see what else we could find. Well, I snapped off another couple of pictures of the castle itself, including the exit and the east (I guess) face of the castle. (#52 - 55). As we continued walking down the path that was to the right, we noticed that the path that we were taking would take us to the bus stop for the castle itself. Well, we were about to head back when I noticed that there was a path that was heading down the "southern" side of the castle (towards the mountains). So Inigo and I went down the path to see where it went. It was great that we did head down. It was a two person wide dirt path with steps edged out in stone. The steps themselves were fairly large in side. Could almost high step the stairs if you don't have the long legs that I have. :-)

Well, we got to a landing, with stairs continuing down, that had a fantastic sight! Inigo and I took a couple of pictures from off that landing (#56 - 62), and continued on down. Well, we finally got to the "bottom" of the path (it actually continued down into the forest itself) and snapped off a couple more pictures of the river itself (#63 & 64), as well as the "southern" side of the castle (#65). I'm putting "southern" in quotes because I didn't have a compass handy to find out the layout of the castle itself, so I'm taking an education guess. :-)

Well, after taking those last couple of photos, I saw that I was losing time, so we headed back up the path (which was quite a workout! There was probably around 100 steps) in head back home. Once we got to the top of the path, we noticed that there was a steep path (paved) going down, so we figured that we wanted to save time so went down the steep path. When I mean steep, I mean, "straining the brakes on a bike to slow down" kind of steep. :-) And it took us right down to the gift shop. Well, after the hike that we did, (up the steps) we figured that our legs could use a rest. So we paid 5 euros total to take the carriage ride back down the hill.(#66)

Well, on our ride down, Inigo called his parents so that they would be ready for us, and they had parked the van and were sitting at a cafe that was built into an inn. They said that they were close by the carriage ticket window, or at least, that's what Inigo said. So after getting off the carriage at the very bottom, both Inigo and I started to search for his parents. Well, we went down the main street with no success, so we started back up the main street again, with a dead battery on the cell phone (just died right there.), looking left and right searching for his parents. We finally found them (or maybe Inigo's parents found Inigo...), and we headed down to the van. Inigo's Mom went to use the restroom, before we headed off, while Inigo, his father and I went down to a nearby lake, and snapped off a few photos (#67 - 70), and took one last photo of the King Ludwig II's parents "house" (#71). Well, after telling Inigo's parents of the failure to see the Neuschwanstein Castle from the inside, they kind of insisted that I at least see one of his three creations. So we took off to another one of his palaces.

Well, after stopping off to get something to drink, we get to the King's Linderhof Palace/Castle. Well, at this moment in time, the clouds had rolled in with rain in the forecast, and it was already drizzling when we got to Linderhof. So Inigo and I purchased a small umbrella (to protect the digital camera) from the nearby gift shop, and continued down through the gardens (#72 - 75) till we got to the Linderhof itself (#76). Well, before getting in line to get into Linderhof itself, Inigo and I took a couple of photos of the Linderhof's front yard. :-) (#77 - 82) Well, by that point our tour line was about to go into Linderhof (15 minute wait, we had bought the tickets around the gift shop area), so we packed up the camera, got in line and headed inside. I tried to shake off as much water I could off the umbrella before we went inside, it was still sprinkling, but I didn't want to damage anything.