Munich, Germany, Linderhof Palace, Neuschwanstein Castle, Dachau, Nymphenburg Palace, Englischer Garten, Days 11&12

The second day in Munich we took a bus to see the Linderhof castle.  It was built by the ‘Mad King’ Ludwig II who was the King of Bavaria from 1864-1886.  This palace was only a hunting lodge for King Ludwig’s Father.  He loved peacocks so you definitely can see them in the design all throughout the inside of the palace.  It is a very opulent palace inside.  They don’t let you take photos inside so you will just have to take my word for it.  The grounds around the castle are beautiful, too.  After our tour inside the castle we were able to walk around for about an hour.  It was awesome.  

There was not photography allowed inside the castle, but I did find these images off the internet of a few of the rooms.  You can see how ornate it looks on the inside:

The grounds were pretty large, but had some pretty views:

After leaving Linderhof Castle we drove through a quaint city that had painted murals on the outside walls which was pretty cool:

Next we rode the bus to Neuschwanstein Castle.  This is the castle that the Disney Cinderella castle is patterned after.  It was also built by ‘Mad King’ Ludwig II.  It is high up on the mountainside.  Construction on this castle started in 1869 (very recent), but never fully finished.  King Ludwig died in 1886 by drowning under mysterious circumstances. 

The village, Hohenschwangau, around the bottom of the mountain was beautiful.  We enjoyed a few minutes by the lake.

This yellow castle was Hohenschwangau Castle.  It was the childhood residence of King Ludwig II.  We didn’t have time to visit the inside of this castle, but it was cool to see the outside.

To get to Neuschwanstein Castle from the village you have to take a very STEEP 30 minute walk up a roughly one mile road that is completely uphill.  The views at the top were amazing, though.  

They don’t allow any backpacks inside the castle so we had to put our in a locker.  Did I mention it was a pretty steep hike to get up there on a warm day?  Aaron was kind enough to carry the backpack, but it definitely left a mark when he took it off--haha!

The castle was pretty big.

Again the views from all around the top of the castle were awesome!  Here you can see the yellow Hohenschwangau Castle in the middle of the picture:

We tried to get a better viewpoint on the Neuschwanstein castle, but the Marienbrucke bridge was out so this was the best we could get:

More views:

Here’s the front gate of the castle:

HEre’s the view from the backside of the castle:

After getting our ticket scanned we were ushered through the front gate in to a courtyard:

Then when our time came available for our tour we had 5 minutes to get inside or we would lose our spot. That part was a bit crazy, but we made it.  They didn’t allow for any photography on the inside of this castle either.  I did find these three pictures on the internet of the interior.  You can see it was just as opulent as the Linderhof Castle:

At the end of the tour they let us go out on the balcony where they did let us take picture of the views.  They were amazing!

After the tour we rode the bus back to Munich.  Then we walked over to check out the Englischer Garten which is a HUGE park.  It is larger than Central Park in New York!  Anyway, we walked around and just saw little bit of it.  During our walk in the Englischer Garten we were able to stop and FaceTime Josh since it was his P-day.  That was pretty cool.  You can see the Englischer Garten was very green and very pretty, but very easy to get lost in--haha!

We did get a bit lost, but finally figured out where we were when we ran into the Pagoda.  For some reason Google navigate didn’t work very well inside the park.  We were starting to get a bit nervous, but finally found a way out.

Right by the pagoda was a biergarten/eatery.  We stopped by to get some dinner, but there was a massive language barrier.  We had to point at what we think we wanted and the worker only got about 50% of what we wanted--so dinner was an adventure that night--haha!

We finally made it back to the hotel before it was pitch dark.

The next morning we got up very early and caught a bus out to Dachau.  Dachau was initially a camp for political prisoners, but it eventually evolved into the very first concentration camp of the Nazis.  IT opened in 1933 and was used for 12 years as a concentration camp where over 31,000 prisoners (mostly Jews) died.  Dachau was used as a prototype and model for the other German concentration camps that followed.    It was a very somber place to be knowing all the atrocities that occurred here.

The entrance gate used by all the prisoners said, “Arbeit macht frei” which translates to ‘work shall set you free’.  At the beginning of Hitler’s regime the concentration camps were touted through propaganda as reformation camps so many people didn’t realize the atrocities that were happening there.  When the prisoners would walk though the gate and see those words it was meant to encourage them to work harder and give them hope of being free again.  However, after a few months, everyone inside the camp knew that getting freedom back was not going to be an option.

Dachau was built on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory.  It originally had a capacity of 5,000 prisoners, but was later expanded to hold many more.  Here’s what it looked like as you walked through the front gate and where the prisoners were made to stand for hours upon hours on end:

We did an audio tour that took us through the different buildings and explained what was happening at that time.  They also had some personal accounts from people that were there.  It was absolutely heartbreaking.

The place was so large.  I can’t even imagine what life was like here....It must have been so terrible.  We walked through the showers and gas chamber as well as saw the crematorium.  We heard personal accounts of prisoners and American Soldiers who came to liberate the camp.  It was awful to see what humans can be capable of.

We were at Dachau for over 5 hours.  

After leaving Dachau we rode the bus back into town and went to see the Nymphenburg Palace.  Nymphenburg Palace was the summer residence of the Bavarian Kings for over 300 years.  It was massive!  This is only half of the palace:

You could at least take pictures inside this palace.  It was pretty fancy, too.

The grounds were even more amazing.   We walked all over to check them out.

Here’s a small portion of the palace behind us:

There were meandering paths everywhere.

Finally when we got this far away Aaron was done.  I took this last picture.  The palace is in the background and if you look really close Aaron is standing almost in the middle of the trail that runs through the pond:

Here’s Aaron:

When we were on our way back in to town we stopped by the Marienplatz again.  We stopped by the Frauenkirke, or Church of Our Lady, again.  We had stopped by this church originally on Sunday, but it was closed off because they were doing Mass.  We saw the the front area, but that was it.  However, an interesting thing about this church that I really wanted to see was the famed Devil’s Footprint.  This particular blackspot resembling a footprint supposedly follows the legend where when the church was under construction in 1468,  the architect and devil struck a deal.  The devil supposedly agreed to provide the funds to complete the church on the condition that the architect would eliminate all the windows from the plans so it would be darkness to celebrate the black of the night.  The architect agreed to the request.  Twenty years later after construction began it was completed.  The devil came to inspect it.  When the devil saw the interior the windows were blocked by the huge white columns in the entrance.  Satisfied the devil released the architect from the deal since he had held up his end of the bargain. However, the devil took a few more steps inside the church and saw the huge windows and realized he had been tricked.  He was so angry he stomped his foot so furiously the imprint was left permanently.  

Aaron and I had wanted to see the footprint when we got in to town on Sunday, but since Mass was going on they had the footprint covered up.  Now that it was Tuesday we got to see it.  I don’t believe the legend, but it was kind of cool to see.