Sleeping Beauty's Castle

Our day started out with such promise.  We were rested and well fed after our day in Legoland, and we had a free day in front of us before we continued our surprise vacation with the family in Venice tomorrow.  We had decided, that since our drive to Italy would take us past another very famous landmark that we would have to stop.  So, we packed up and headed out to Neuschwanstein Castle.  Better known as the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland.

See if you can see the many resemblances with the Neuschwanstein Castle.

Our batteries were fully charged (pun intended) and we had smiles on our faces, anticipating no problems with our short 2 hour drive...

And then this...And if you can't tell from the picture, that is stand still traffic, as far as the eye can see, on the Autobahn.  

And we were only 5 miles from our destination.  But still so far away.  After an hour of creeping forward, I took the next exit and let my GPS guide me.  And guide me she did.  Over the next 45 minutes she led me through more stop and go traffic, and left me thinking I had made  mistake leaving the Autobahn.  

But finally, we saw this...(that is the castle - up on that hill).

And we parked right under this...another famous castle - Hohenschwangau.  But our traffic delay had put us short on time, so we made a note that we would have to come back and visit again soon.

We started walking down a very quaint road in an unbelievable picturesque town, still wondering how we were going to get up that hill.

We stumbled upon our answer a few minutes later.  We were going to have to walk it.  So, we began our climb...

The views down, while we were on our way up, were stunning.  But nothing compared to standing at the foot of the castle and looking up.  

We hadn't gotten tickets to tour the inside (they were sold out by the time we decided we wanted to go).  But it was just as well.  My girls weren't up for a tour, and frankly, neither was I.  We were content just to see the beauty of the outside.  And in the end, it took us over 45 minutes to just walk around the facade and try to take it all in.  By that time we were beat.

It was a truly gorgeous grounds.  Everywhere we turned, there was something new to oohhh and aahhh over.  The girls thought we could maybe find Aurora and her prince, but sadly, they must have been on vacation themselves.  And we had no more time to search as we still had to walk back down the hill, and perhaps grab some lunch.  As luck would have it, there was a snack shop right below the castle, and it sold Bavarian style donuts and sausages.  Lunch was taken care of!  Though MadHatter ate all of the donuts (not the best of lunches) and Stinkerbell polished off the sausage.

And this is where I was supposed to leave you, waiting for our pictures of Venice, because our original plan was to meet the cousins in Italy the next afternoon.  But when we got in the car and I plugged our next destination into Lenka (our GPS.  Yep, she has a name) I saw that our 5 hour drive, had ballooned into a 9 hour drive.  Our traffic jam from earlier had grown.  And grown.  And grown.  I kept trying to re-route us around the stopped line of cars, but to no avail.  My minimum stand still traffic time was 92 minutes, and to get that I had to go well out of my way, only to come back and sit in traffic.  Though it cut out 90 minutes of sitting on the autobahn going nowhere, it added so much distance that it was a push as to which route would get us there faster.  I sat for a few minutes going over my options.

Option 1 - push on.  Get in to Padova a bit after midnight after spendng 9 hours in the car, with two small children, who would run out of iPad batteries, and patience, somewhere along the way.  And then have them even more sleep deprived the next morning.  We would be on our own until late afternoon when the cousins got in.  Finally, we would be able to spend a few hours with them before heading to seperate hotels, and leaving the next morning to drive all day.  And then driving for 4 hours the next day, so that we could get home.

Option 2 - call it a day.  I was only 4 1/2 hours from home.  Sure, we would lose our hotel deposits because it was too late to cancel most of them- and we would miss out on seeing the cousins again before they left for home.

And this is where I cut my losses.  We were all disappointed that we wouldn't be meeting up with the family.  And we all really wanted to see Venice again.  But the time that we would need to spend in the car to be able to see them for a few hours was too much to overcome.  Especially since we have been go, go, go this who break.

So we ended our surprise, mini-vacation at the castle.  And we headed back towards home, arriving just in time to put the girls to bed.  Where they slept until well into the next morning.  Which was perfect.  They would need to be well rested, because we leave again on Friday!

Legoland Revisited

The second day of our surprise mini-vacation - Legoland.  We celebrated Stinkerbell's birthday here last year.  We had not really planned on returning, since we have so many other places on our list of places to visit, but when the cousins are in town, who can resist.  It was a day of fun.  A day of laughter.  And a day of relaxation.  I am so glad we made the decision to come back again!!!

I won't bore you with the details of the day.  It was a theme park.  We did what you do at a theme park.  And we did it well!

Waiting for those on the roller coaster.