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Kilometers - 259
Passes - Fernpass
This was it, our final day on tour, and we had big plans for the day. Once again we're riding with Richard and Leslie, and Donna has joined us. We headed out looking for gasoline for David, and with the help of some locals found it in Tarrenz. The weather was actually "hot and dusty" today (the answer Rob gave any time he was asked about the weather: we had to ride regardless of the weather, so we might as well assume it would be hot and dusty ;-) Because it's Saturday there were swarms of Germans headed all over the place filling the roads with long lines of cars and slowing us down considerably. Our plan is to go see Mad King Ludwig's Castle Neuschwanstein, but the direct route there is closed for construction! We ended up trapped in a parking-lot of cars on the road. We finally break free of the traffic jam for a short time until we ride into Füssen, only to be stymied by worse traffic trying to get across Füssen to the castle! We were all very warm and at this point Leslie (who was leading) decided to take the quickest route out of town and find a place for lunch.
Half an hour later we were sitting under canopies eating lunch somewhere near Sameister. After much discussion we decided we'd try approaching Neuschwanstein from the other side of Füssen (after initially planning to bail out on it), but once again Donna decided it was time to head for home, and left us to head north.
We were expecting the worst of the traffic as we got closer to Neuschwanstein, but much to our surprise the roads were nearly empty, and we rode right up to the parking lot after pausing for this picture, and
this one of the paragliders sailing around the hills to the north of the castle,
and I just had to capture Richard's parking job :-)
We decided to take the bus up the hill to the castle: Brian's ankle wouldn't allow us to hike it, and we'd been warned that it was a difficult hike by our friends Alex & Jenny. Perhaps we should have taken the horse and carriage ride, but it was so hot David would have felt badly for the horses. At the top we had a short walk to the castle, and we took the side-path to get this picture of Mad King Ludwig's boyhood home of Castle Hohenschwangau.
This picture of Neuschwanstein through the trees didn't work as well as I'd hoped, but you get the idea.
After buying some drinks and our tickets we headed up to this court-yard to wait in line. It took about 45-55 minutes before we were admitted into the castle, and it was a hot wait standing out in the sunshine, especially after waiting 20-30 minutes in the sunshine for the bus to pick us up.
The tour was great, but it could have been more informative on the background details for those of us not terribly familiar with Wagner's operas and all the fairy tales that the decorations were based on. The interior is impressive, unfortunately they don't allow picture taking inside (a rule several Asian tourists had no problem ignoring... I kept waiting for them to sweep down on them and confiscate film, but they didn't so I wish I'd just snapped a few pictures of my own.)
We decided to walk down from the castle, and Brian said he thought he could manage. We paused to take this picture, and a few other times as we descended. Back at the base area below the castles we stopped in a shop that advertised fresh strawberries with ice cream and had a snack (another time knowing German came in handy, since this sign was only in German, and this dessert wasn't on the menu!) It was strawberry season, and over the past weeks we had frequently ridden along roads through strawberry fields full of people out picking strawberries and advertising U-pick... the smell always tempted us to make a stop.
By the time we finished the dessert it was getting late, so we plotted the fastest course back to the hotel and pushed it there fairly quickly. When we hit the Autobahn the girls (in the lead) pushed it up to 160 KPH (100 MPH) but Richard and I decided to keep the pace down to a more reasonable 130 KPH (the "suggested" maximum on the German Autobahns.) It turned out we were the last group to arrive back at the hotel that evening, I think we got in around 6:30pm.
We quickly unloaded our stuff from the motorcycles and uninstalled tankbag mounting straps so the motorcycles could be inspected and taken down to the garage where Graham could perform their between-tour maintenance in the coming week.
Our final dinner of the tour, the first time I took a camera to dinner. Unfortunately I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I should have. Here are Richard and Leslie.
And here's another picture of Richard and Leslie, this time she doesn't have a camera in her face :-)
And finally, a picture of the cobblestone candle up above the wonderful soup we were served as our first course for dinner.
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